This column is admittedly a month late; it was supposed to be the companion piece to the book review column last month. But really, you don't have to read one to read and understand the other, it's just that my thoughts about The City & The City and City at the End of Time inspired me to want to revisit the topic of establishing rules. I've touched on establishing rules in the past in various columns, whether I was talking about magic, religion, or deciding whether or not there were vampires in your game set in the real world. But I'm pretty sure that I have never dedicated an entire column to the importance of properly establishing your world's rules early on in a game or book without boring the daylights out of your players or readers. When I speak of rules, I'm not talking about game mechanics, what die you roll to attack and what the upper limits of your stats are. I'm talking about the powers and limitations of magic, the level of technology, and whether faeries really do exist. In other words, the defining parameters of the world the characters live in (and which the player or reader will be immersing themselves in). The important thing is not to drown the player or reader in details right off the bat. Don't start your game or story off with a lengthy description of the creation of the world and the whole of history up until this point. Just give them the information that they really need, as they need it. If you're a GM, making a custom world for D&D or some other open-ended system, a great idea would be to set up a website or print up a packet that provides that information, allowing the players to read it at their own pace, and refer to it as needed, just as they would with a sourcebook purchased for the game. Unfortunately, that's not the only mistake you can make in establishing rules. I have two huge pet peeves when it comes to rules, and I'll discuss them each in turn. The first is to throw the player or reader into the midst of things with no clue what's going on. This can be done, but it has to be done just right. There's a limited amount of time that you can force them to stumble along, confused by the strange new world they find themselves in, before you start giving them answers. This is mainly what I was getting at in my book review last month. The City & The City throws the reader in and for the first few dozen pages, there's a feeling of disorientation as you try to figure out where exactly the book is set and what the rules of the setting are like. City at the End of Time does the same thing, but takes about 100 pages to answer questions established in the first chapter. The former is fun, the latter is frustrating. The second is to change your rules after they're established. If I'm told at the beginning of a book that Jenae the Dreamseer has prophetic visions every night, and then two hundred pages into the story she encounters a gaping chasm and flies across it, my first reaction is going to be "WTF? Since when can she fly? Could she fly all along? Why didn't the author mention it earlier? Because if I could fly, I'd be flying all over the place." Similarly, if I'm in a roleplaying game, and the GM states early on that magic cannot bring back the dead, no matter what, but then his favorite player's character dies and we take him back to the temple and the head priest pulls out an ancient scroll and resurrects our fallen comrade, I'm going to feel pretty mad about the cool character I had who died and didn't get brought back. Being true to your own rules is important, because it gives you credibility and it lets the readers and players know where they stand. Too often, rules are fuzzy and indistinct - especially when it comes to magic, super-advanced technology, psionics, or the abilities of supernatural creatures such as vampires and werewolves. If the GM or author doesn't establish - at least in their own mind, if not stating it out loud - exactly what these can and cannot do, it can get out of hand, and soon it's like those vintage Superman comics, where every time he encounters a new obstacle, he has a new superpower to overcome it. Most published roleplaying games will do the work for you, by providing detailed rules on magic, technology, and special abilities. The problem comes when you decide to tweak those rules (add a new school of magic, advance the technology level, introduce psionics to a game where they haven't existed) or set out to make your own game. As a GM, setting limits doesn't just let the players know what to expect from you, it lets you know what to expect from them. Leaving things too open-ended, or making a habit of breaking or changing the rules, leads to players gaming the system and coming up with ridiculous spells or devices that will unbalance the game and make you work twice as hard to come up with a challenging story for them. If the time comes where you feel that one of your rules needs to be changed or broken, do it in a way that makes sense and makes it clear what is happening. Before Jenae reaches the gaping chasm, have her receive a talisman of flight as a gift from a grateful wizard. If you've decided that resurrection should be possible in your game, send the players off on a quest to find a forgotten temple, wherein they find an ancient scroll detailing the lost ritual of raising the dead. Let the readers or players know that things can change, but not without good reason and hard work.

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Copyright © 2010 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.net