Core Premises

The below core premises are held to be true for TTRPG design. Not all tabletop RPG design, but the type specifically held by the writers to be examples of good design.

The (temporary) name for this is Developer-Focused Design - the onus is on the game developer to provide a functional out-of-the-box experience that can be customised by the end user, but which does not need to be in order to be a functional game product.

Certain terms such as: RPG, GM, PC, and player are not currently defined in this document, and so some knowledge is assumed.

• An RPG has rules.
• The rules of an RPG exist to determine who has authority to narrate a given thing (GM, another player type, a randomiser, etc).
• A GM is not the same thing as a rules-enforcer; there are GMless RPGs in much the same way that two people can play Chess without requiring a referee.
• The table/group is the consensus, by social contract. People are playing the game because they chose to play the game; someone is a GM because the table accepted them as GM.
• Rules should be unambiguous, reproducible and result in the same spread of outcomes. For example, a player who learns the rules to Apocalypse World, sits down at a table playing Apocalypse World ‘by the book’, rules as written, can then sit down at another table also playing Apocalypse World ‘by the book’ and trust that they will follow the same procedures the player is already familiar with.
• Different systems with different rules will create different outcomes and will therefore be suited for different game concepts (see: every System Matters discussion). It is possible for one game to be better than another for a given specified purpose.
• In games with GMs, non-GM players are able to correct the GM on the rules of the game; as the table is the consensus, the table has agreed to play by a specific set of rules, and any changes of those rules are also required to be by consensus instead of unilaterally by a given player.
• Whether a rule should come into play in a scenario should be unambiguous. No rules-knowing player at a table should be surprised when a particular rule comes into play.

Notable Exceptions

The above premises are at odds with certain play procedures common to what is known as OSR play, and in particular is completely at odds with ‘Spicy Dice Roll’ play (to be described in a later version of this website).
This is not to suggest that these are invalid or inferior forms of RPG - instead, it is because they (often by design) do not have a consistent set of procedural principles that the writers are interested in analysing and presenting.