Secrets of a Primeval Cycle
An ancient pattern that governs gameplay and design
Anyone that has played more than one TTRPG has attempted to weigh and compare gameplay experiences. This is a surprisingly difficult feat, and most of us are relying on gut instinct to guide these comparisons because the discourse surrounding them is muddled.
Consider a method that poses hobby participation as a loop, cycling through Rules → Game → Experience and back to Rules from there, repeating forever. Sounds very abstract, but it can explain the source and nature of many problems. It clarifies why you should distrust those who don’t enthusiastically uphold rules, why the BrOSR can find success while the great mass of tables get it wrong, and why it is reasonable to speak of “mastering” a kind of game that is fundamentally cooperative.
Rules, Game, Experience
The Rules are the instructions that describe how to set things up, push them forward, and systematically resolve questions that arise. The Rules are not the Game—they just give us a starting point and a method of interrogation. We discover the Game through the Rules. Usually, for complex tabletop games, the Rules are a skeleton—the players are relied upon to make reasonable inferences and interpolations. In that sense, the Rules are incomplete until all that is logically necessary about them has been uncovered.
We achieve the Experience by mentally interacting with the Game, grasping at it like blind men attempting to understand the elephant. The Experience is the feeling of playing the Game, the satisfaction (or disappointment) of grappling with its constituent elements, and the memories and stories associated with playing it. The Experience comes with conclusions and insights and, often, questions. “This game is like being a pilot in the Alien universe” is a summary of an Experience—it marks how we feel about the gameplay and reveals our reflexive judgment.
But what is the Game? It is the most troublesome of the three to outline with a distinct boundary.
Succinctly, the Game is the answer to “what do the Rules result in?” Alternatively “what is implied by the Rules?” The Game contains the structural elements, organized and characterized by how they work mechanically and conceptually and aesthetically—the Damage system or the Stealth system or the Market system and their themes.
The Game is more than the necessary collection of abstractions. For our purposes, the Game also includes what we would call the gamestate, an instantiation of the concepts. More than just the idea of a wall and a siege engine, the Game includes the specific wall and a particular siege engine which is trying to knock it down.
Players use the Game to reason about what is happening and what could happen. The Game is the thing we’re mentally juggling while playing. The Monster is interacting with the Character through the Combat System, and the player begins considering the Healing System.
The RGE Cycle
Can our Experience directly cause the Game to change? No. Can we derive an Experience directly from the Rules? Not really. There is a directionality built into these concepts that goes as follows:
A player reads the Rules. This reading allows him to discover/uncover the Game. Playing the Game (interacting mentally with it to comprehend and progress the gamestate) produces an Experience.
But doesn’t it end there? No. How many games have we played where we developed mastery after our first encounter with it? When playing something of complexity (like a wargame or TTRPG), we arrive at situations where developing the gamestate leads to an Experience of confusion, disbelief, or realization that something isn’t quite right.
Driven by this Experience, we return to the Rules. Our hope? To reconceptualize the Game—but more correctly this time.
Thus we cycle from Rules → Game → Experience. Players that are more “experienced” with a game might be on their 99th iteration of building the Game. Players that are new might be on cycle 3 or 4, and it might all feel very provisional to them—a kind of experimental phase or a learning exercise.
Now that we’ve established some of what these ideas mean, let’s see what this RGE cycle can do for us.
Rules Primacy
This framework shows that the Rules are the most important element. We can’t build the Game without the Rules, and we can’t access the Experience of playing without a Game built from the Rules. Even after we’ve achieved some kind of Experience, the only way forward, to a superior refinement, is through the Rules.
Rule Zero (“if you don’t like a rule, then change it or discard it”) is the weakening of the connection from Rules → Game. If the pathway from Experience → Rules (starting a new cycle) is interpreted as seeking out the Rules for clarity and a more correct Game, Rule Zero is also interpreted as suggesting that we reduce or even eliminate the move from Experience → Rules and replace it with Experience → Game.
This creates a new cycle that involves only Experience and the Game (E→G→E etc.). Have a bad Experience? Ignore the rules and modify the Game directly! Sounds an awful lot like storygaming.
But we can’t start with a Game from nothing, nor can we start with an Experience. Thus, the Rule Zero crowd is implicitly relying on us to follow the normal R→G→E cycle and then eventually jettison the Rules to be left with an E→G→E→G cycle.
An innocent “none of that really matters as long as you’re having fun” is focusing on the Experience. But the Experience results from grappling with the Game. If the Experience is bad, why can’t I look to the Rules (to build a better picture of the Game) to correct it? These “designers” know why—it’s because their game doesn’t stand up to the natural RGE cycle.
Apologists abound on this subject. “The designers want you to take out parts you don’t like and keep what you like.” At once acknowledging the RGE cycle (the Game results from the Rules) and, in the same breath, undermining it. Astonishing.
Formalization of Mastery: The Last Cycle
What it means to master a game (without an established metric of success) has long been an issue mired in ambiguities. We recognize it when we see it, and we have an instinct for whether someone has mastered a game or merely fooled themselves.
But consider that the process of mastery definitely involves faithfully following the RGE cycle to a high iteration. A more masterful player is one who can get more from the Rules and, as a result, construct a more correct Game. From this Game, they will more efficiently gather an informed Experience. When the time comes, their mind is alight with questions and imaginings from that Experience, and they pursue the Rules even more avidly—and with even more focus.
Essentially, a masterful player can go farther in fewer cycles, ultimately allowing them to surpass others given the same time or access constraints. For complex games, only masterful players have a chance to reach the Last Cycle (full and correct understanding of the Rules → the ultimate and final form of the Game) or get very near it.
Onboarding Failure
Anyone that has played multiplayer games has seen someone slowly (or quickly) get frustrated, fail to find their way, and declare the game unfun or a failure. Let’s be honest: most of the time this happens, the issue is that the player could not successfully make it past the Rules stage.
With computers handling Rules and much of the Game aspect (simulating, displaying, tracking, and reasoning about the gamestate) in video games, modern players have every opportunity to grow accustomed to fast-forwarding to the Experience stage of this cycle, picking up some Rules crumbs as they go.
To these players, the cycle looks more like E→R→G than RGE. After 10 cycles through, there’s practically no difference anyway! But this phenomenon of upsetting the natural order is certainly causing an important psychic shift—because these days, you have to extensively deprogram many players just to get them started!
In different contexts, we can use the RGE cycle to understand that we should onboard a hesitant player by painting a picture of the Game for them rather than showing them the Rules—they’ll get to that later! Show them the Game and let the Experience unfold. The Experience will lead them to the Rules so they can be a better player.
Even video games, with their aggressive handholding and linear Rules-crumbs injection schedules cannot escape this cycle. There is a reason that many video game wikis resemble rulebooks.
Wishful Thinking
When we find confusion or psychic discomfort in an Experience, we naturally look to the Rules again for a resolution. If motivated reasoning takes over, what should have been a search for a truer and better Game can become a hunt for a particular conclusion.
This is an attempt to pass backwards from Experience → Game → Rules. “My negative Experience was caused by this part of the Game; it would be fixed if that part of the Rules was interpreted just so.” This is a common re-alignment strategy. Run the machine forward to see the outcome, then backward to trace root causes.
Do this enough times and we end up cycling E→G→E→G just like Rule Zero.
This is fundamentally a lack of faith in the game. If you play a game and have a strongly negative Experience, the virtuous move is to trust that you were wielding the wrong Game—that you misunderstood the Rules.
Unfortunately, people are primed to perform this misstep because of all the bad games out there. We inhabit an age of creative and spiritual atrophy, and we fully expect that all machines will magically run down or run dry. This fuels our cynicism.
But trust in the Rules! It’s the only way to master a game. If you faithfully follow the Rules and find that the Game produces an unworthy Experience, then you have arrived at this conclusion yourself—you’ve gained something powerful and tangible.
Designers in the Cycle
We’ve already addressed a number of player perspectives about the RGE cycle. What about game designers?
We cannot design an Experience. Plenty of buzzword marketing teams will disagree, but I want to deal in the terminology developed here. If we want players to have a particular kind of Experience, they can only get it through interacting with the Game.
Can we design the Game? Yes, actually. A lot of what game designers are doing is working on the Game directly and then figuring out how to form a Rules pathway to their creation.
Even if the Game is a really cleverly designed thing, it may not deliver the Experience we wanted. This could be an indication of a deeper issue.
Thankfully, the RGE cycle is a cycle. It is something that can be iterated through. We need to play the Game to understand the Experience—even smart designers have historically made failures here in assuming too much. Ideally, we design the Game to see the Experience and feel compelled to “hunt” the Rules to clear away irresolutions and confusion.
Ultimate Goals
A good game is one where the players who faithfully follow the Rules end up with the desired Experience.
Too frequently, games only include Rules as a means of handwavingly illustrating an idea. There is an expectation that players finish up the design work on the Game to craft the right Experience for them.
We have to recognize that as fundamentally incoherent.
We cannot tell players to make their own fun (the Experience) or hold them responsible for bad outcomes (ala Rule Zero). At best, we can admonish them to read the Rules better (or apologize for and correct subpar Rules).
If we cannot expect players to write the Rules (Rule Zero) or force the fun (Experience), then where do they have autonomy? That’s right—the Game. They cannot remake the abstractions in the Game, but they have enormous control over the instantiation of those abstractions. If we want to focus on player creativity and player-based outcomes, we have to make room in the Rules for the Game to accept player input.
The “make it your way” pattern of pretending to be a game is leaving players feeling like they’re pretending to play one. TTRPGs can move forward only when we stop giving players control over the Rules or demanding that they force an Experience.