Rebuilding Chesterton's Fence

 There's been a lot of discussion lately in various (mainly political/economic) news & commentary that I consume lately. If you don't know, Chesterton's Fence is the idea that you don't tear down a fence unless you understand why that fence was put up in the first place. I'll let you draw your own conclusions to what self-styled super-genius's actions the media I was consuming was referencing to (there's more than one, to be honest). 

In terms of D&D and other RPGs, this is solid advice. We often, especially those of us in the OSR and the weird confluence of OSR and indie/narrative/story-first gaming circles, tell new GMs to "homebrew to make it your own game" or roll out adages like "rulings over rules." But if you don't know why those rules were there in the first place, you're likely to do more damage than improvement. 

I watched this video about improving 5E play earlier today. I'm still involved in two play-by-post 5E games (same GM), but I don't have much interest in the game itself these days. Still haven't bothered to look at the 5.5E rules yet. But at the same time, it's good to have some idea of that play culture. Especially in light of the (now cancelled, unfortunately) GM workshop I was preparing for.  

If you don't want to watch, he's talking about how the 5E "long rest" mechanic takes away tension and resource management, and ways to bring those back by limiting or putting conditions on the long rests. No arguments, no notes. He's right. If you want to play 5E, those are good things to do. 

While watching the video, I couldn't stop thinking of how WotC tore down Chesterton's Fence when they made 3E D&D and their subsequent versions either because they just didn't know what they were doing, or because there was pressure from players to take out the "suck" from the game. Actually, this may have started with TSR people in the late 80s/early 90s, around the time of 2E AD&D now that I think of it. I guess there's just been an accumulation of Chesterton's Fences being kicked down in the game over the decades.

And now, the younger generation is rebuilding some of those fences. It makes me happy to see that. Gygax and Arneson, for all their faults, ended up designing a great little game. And a lot of the decisions they made way back in the early 70s were integral to good game play. Resource management (including rests) may be boring and sometimes tedious, and it may not be something that emulates the heroic fantasy fiction that inspires our games. But without it, where's the game?