This summer I had an interesting discussion with a poster on one of the more grognardy D&D forums out there. The poster seemed shocked that I suggest he change certain rules in his AD&D 1st edition game. I argued that he should change that particular rule because I thought the rule in question was stupid. Interestingly, he did not do what I thought he was going to do, which would have been to argue that the rule was not stupd. In fact he seemed to admit that it was a rather silly rule. However, he protested wildly against changing it. Why? Because it was written in the rules. And he assumed that since the rules then must have come from Gary or possibly one of Gary's friends or even Dave Arneson, it would be wrong to change the rule.
The idea that he could be trolling did occur to me, but he did seem genuine about it, and the fact that there are entire forums dedicated to By The Book play means that there are probably more people in the Old School community sharing that opinion.
But what could be less Old School than By The Book play? Dave and Gary were both constantly changing the rules when they were DMing their early games. Many times suggestions about which rules needed to change would come from players. Like the time when the players suggested to Dave that their characters could maybe survive more than one hit, thus resulting in the creation of hit points. Other times, the DMs would figure out these things on their own.
Not that constantly changing the rules is a good idea. I often argue for sticking to the rules as written, especially before you know the game well enough. Some of the GMs I play with using non-D&D systems often seem eager to fiddle with the rules after a few sessions. I have found that this is often a bad idea since changing a tiny thing can have greater consequences than you know if you dont really understand the ideas behind the game. But after having played D&D for decades, I feel like I can do whatever I want with it.
Are you a BTB man?
-Havard
