Endless Lands, and There is No Such Thing As An RPG

Endless Lands is a fantastical RPG about traveling across the titular lands. As laid out in the rulebook, the game begins with everyone sitting down to talk about what kind of game they want to play, and then building the world that allows them to do so. The campaign’s Great Threat is discussed and decided on, all before the characters are created. Character creation is not particularly difficult, and the rules are simple enough to learn quickly and master easily.

At least, the rules as written.

Endless Lands does something that I haven’t seen many RPG rulebooks do. Most rulebooks have a sidebar or brief heading that assures the reader that if they don’t like this one particular rule or design choice, they are fully within their rights to change it as they see fit. The more liberal systems put this reassurance towards the beginning of the book, sometimes before the rules are even detailed.

Endless Lands, on the other hand, has a whole section devoted to Sets and Variants. Variants are what most people might call a house rule or a hack. A variant may add a small rule or adjust another to change how the game is played. A variant might add tokens to the die-rolling mechanics, or add Hit Points to the game. There are even “shared” and “challenge” variants, depending on what role you want the GM to take.

Sets are collections of variants aimed towards a specific experience. Think of them like modpacks. The Intrigue Set is full of variants designed to make the rules suitable for games about spying, diplomacy, and romance. The One-Night Set is for one-shots.

Usually, RPGs go one of two routes: either they remain as flexible and ephemeral as possible with their rules, brushing close to an SRD rather than a codified game; or they lock down their rules as clear and concise as possible, allowing for little flexibility, if any. One is not better than the other; Lancer would be far worse as a tactical-combat game if players could pick and choose which rules to follow.

But I say that, and I immediately think of a group who just decided that Lancer’s rules about flight were a little too unwieldy to bother with. Are they playing the game wrong if they hand-wave them away? What does playing a game wrong even mean? If the goal is to have fun, and everyone agrees to abide by the discussed rules, then as long as people have fun, can’t they do what they like?

That’s how many new RPGs were created. Hacks and combinations of disparate rulesets result in games like Mausritter, Knaves of Cairn/, and Gubat Banwa. Almost every RPG has mechanical inspirations from other RPGs.

In fact, especially during their origins, RPGs were constantly being hacked, adjusted, and tweaked to provide for more interesting and engaging gameplay. The first D&D manual ever printed required players to own and reference the rulebook for Chainmail, primarily because it was more of a hack than its own individual game.

Looked at that way, are RPGs nothing but hacks?

If nothing else, GMs are different, and that means they will make different judgments and allowances. One GM might consider swinging on chandeliers perfectly acceptable, while another decides that’s the perfect way to get stabbed. If even the established rules are interpreted differently, how can we say one RPG session involves playing the same game as any other?

So if the five or six players decide they want to add a weapon degradation mechanic for D&D, or give Bards a different magic system, why would it matter to anyone outside the group? Sure, it might matter if new players jump into the game midstream, but so long as they’re made aware of the house-rules, what’s the harm? More to the point, what’s stopping you?

Adherence to authority, I suppose. There is something about writing rules down that makes them significant. You have to follow them, because the rulebook is the ultimate authority on how the game is “supposed” to play.

But a lot of players think the GM is the ultimate authority. The OSR movement is very clear on that point, and so a lot of modern OSR games tend to be rules-light, getting as out of the GM’s way as possible, at once subverting and enforcing the idea that the book must supersede the players.

That’s not very Punk, is it? In gaming, the only authority is you and what you want to play. If you all agree to abide by the book’s rules than fair enough, but if you don’t, then there’s no argument I or anyone can make that’s worth a damn.

It’s a tacit admission, really, that every discussion of the rules is a bit absurd. Rulebooks are little more than suggestions from a single group of players who liked these specific rules. There is no “right way” to play an RPG, and every variant or hack that makes the game more engaging should be encouraged. RPGs are quintessentially punk, embracing the bespoke and individualistic DIY nature of the underground.

It’s a strange absurdity, then, that Endless Lands codifies it, establishing the unestablished and encouraging the discouraged. One might even call it condescending.

I don’t see it that way, myself. I see a game that has a Beginner’s Set for people who’ve never played RPGs before, and has a section on safe roleplay before it even discusses the game’s basic rules. It’s taking the “you can change the rules if you really want to” sidebar and making it more than an afterthought; making it core to the system. It’s a game that wants you to know that there isn’t “one way” to play, and if you’re a creative sort (like most RPG players are) then you could make up your own variants, maybe even for other RPGs.

Of course, there’s always the risk with these situations that the expressed freedoms limit the unmentioned freedoms. After all, if these variants are written in “The Book,” then surely there aren’t any other variants that are allowed, right? It’s a risk that can’t be easily circumvented, and given that it’s not a risk I see taken in many other books, I’m glad that Endless Lands did.

So here’s a question for next time: If all RPGs are hacks, does the hacking need to happen before the game is played, or can it happen during?