Here is something to pin down:
What is the purpose of rules?
To the narrative player, these things get in the way of the story they want to tell. But when you strip them away, that same player feels… odd.
I often think about how Jon Blow discusses video games and their capacity for exploring the universe. The idea is this:
Let’s say we write a novel about some hypothetical reality, like Flatland. We can learn something from writing or reading that book. We can ask the question “what if?” But the answer, at the end of the day, to that question, will never really be true. It might be a good approximation, but it relies on a very discerning writer. For the act of writing does not require truth, but, really, it relies almost entirely on the strength of your rhetoric. When you read Flatland, the work succeeds not because it necessarily covers what an N-dimensional universe would be like, but because it is charming, because it is well-presented, and because it is relatively plausible. When we make video games, whose core essence is based in some computer system, we create truth without realizing it. In the case of games which develop consistent systems, we arrive at truth in much the same way that performing experiments on the natural world teaches us truth. In this way, the truths arrived at through fiction are only assumptions, but the truths arrived at through systems are necessarily predicated upon a factual system.
Now I’m not super keen on the implications of this idea. It’s obviously true, however. The trouble I have with the idea is mostly with the fact that almost all of the insights we can glean from the video games of today are useless. Like the everyday peasantry hearing about all sorts of book knowledge, we are befuddled by the meagre universes which games provide for us. What is more interesting to me and to the peasant are the moralizing stories.
Back to my original thought. I believe that this dynamic of Tabletop games and their rules has a lot to do with this fiction/system dichotomy. I think that players who feel uncertain when the rules are stripped away are seeing that all that we have remaining to us is rhetoric. They wonder if what they are participating in is real. In a sense, whether what happens at the table at all is real. However, I whole-heartedly believe that what happens at the table is real, no matter the rules, the system, or the rhetoric. Because the real “system” which takes place at the table is not in the numbers or the dice, it’s in the decisions which we make in the place of another.
The Truth which we, as role-players, are seeking is not whether this barbarian can cut through that dragon’s neck-bone, or whether rogues strike critical hits about 5% of the time. The Truth which we wonder about is…
The real question as a Game Master is not whether your system is “real enough”. Almost all “systems” are fake. They may be internally consistent (if administered by an honest GM), but they still represent things about the world which are false, exaggerated, or overly computationally complex. What the GM must ask instead is what their game truly asks.
But as a player, you can ask yourself this question. If we don’t have a “system” (numbers) at the table, then what governs this game? Perhaps the answer is that nothing does - that anyone can do anything when we sit down to role-play. But the more likely answer, the one which brings me hope, is that the thing which governs the game is the shared beliefs and dreams of the players. That is the magical experience we can all share at the tabletop session. That is what I pursue when I continue to perform this hobby with my friends and new strangers.