If the goal is distraction, then burning down the inn makes sense. Killing the messenger bringing the quest makes sense. Doing anything that gives a momentary sense of control, as an escape from the weekly routine, makes sense. The game, then, isn't serious. It's fun. It's nonsense. It's a relief. In which case, the game is like an app ... it's not something that's being played, but something that's being used. But if that's the reason for the game, then that's fair enough.
If the goal is performance, then the alignment rules make sense. It makes sense to tell jokes and make snarky comments, it makes sense to pretend to be something we're not. It makes sense to outdo and outshine the other players, and talk in exhorbitant purplish dialogue. The actions carried out are a venue for demonstrating one's perspicacity and emotional range. For game sessions of this kind, simplification is ideal, because the performance covers over the drudgery of gameplay. The play itself is abstracted and the game time it takes up is only as much as is needed.
If the goal is exploration and discovery, then modules make sense. It makes sense to have a linear set of highly structured set pieces for the players to come upon, one by one, in order. It makes sense to run short, small fights that don't hold up the process of what comes next for too long a period. The players can hear descriptions of the next thing, each with its own glaze of novelty. There's no need for any continuity or "big picture," so again simplicity is a feature, since what matters is that we keep moving forward, not that any of it makes sense. And if the DM is put on the spot to provide these fresh, original rooms en masse, with the concommitant souvenirs they require that remind the players of their accomplishments, then modules are a necessity, since no one can be expected to churn out such localities, at the pace they need to be turned out, on their own.
If the goal is problem solving, then puzzles and mysteries make sense. It makes sense to play up the "weirdness" and semi-magical astonishment of the puzzles, since otherwise they'd be no better than word jumbles and ciphers. In deciphering the clues, the players are plunged into matters that appear to have no definite answer ... but the answer's not really the point. The point is that the players feel immersed in the dynamics of the game, the discussion with the other players, using the brain sweat of forcing an innovation to come forward. And if the players find the solution, they feel smart, and if they don't and it has to be given to them, they can marvel at the cleverness of the puzzle. In such games, dice really aren't a thing, because dice are dead and lifeless, and therefore useless to solving things.
The perception that D&D possesses any of these as its goal has merit. It's plain as day that distraction, performance, exploration and discovery, and problem solving, all have their part to play — and depending on which is given the greatest influence on play determines the sort of arguments the DM and players will make about what sort of game it should be, and what matters. Therefore, any dialogue had between players will be marred by preconceptions set up by these four identifications ... and other less common identities besides, because I don't believe I've listed all the possible pertubations of how the game might be viewed.
If I take up a discussion of dice with a participant focused on performance or problem solving, my arguments will fall and deaf ears. The same discussion might make some sense with those seeking destraction, but what they get out of dice will differ far and away from what I think dice are for. As with the perspective of a player seeking discovery. While these elements are not inconsistent from one another — a single campaign can easily include all four — the emphasis on each tends towards exclusion as its special importance crosses an eventual threshold of exclusion.
I'm reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which some readers will have leapt to on account of the post's title, while others have no idea what I'm talking about. So, with apologies, I must repeat the parable to ensure we're together.
A group of blind men have never heard of an elephant. With their first encounter, each reaches out to touch the creature, to learn its shape. The first touches the trunk and says, "Aha, an elephant is like a snake." The second touches the leg and says, "No, the elephant is like a pillar." The third reaches up and touches the elephant's ear and says, "No, it is like a fan." The fourth, standing by the elephant's side, says, "You're all wrong, an elephant is like a wall." A fifth, touching the tale, pronouces that the elephant is "like a rope." And the last, holding onto to the tusk, explains that the elephant is like a spear.
The tale is Indian in origin, and stealing from Wikipedia and the Rigveda, "Reality is one, though wise men speak of it variously." We continuously take an extremely complicated game, D&D, unquestionably the most complicated in human history, and present cases for what the dice do, or how characters should be run, or the value of problem solving, and a hundred other features, and boil them down to positive-negativist arguments that make no sense. Then we make dogma from these, such as "role-play not roll play," and pretend we've said something pithy and factual, when in fact we've demonstrated spectacularly what a bunch of ignorant blind folk we are.
Any single argument I've made on this blog is a waste if the other arguments that are also made are dismissed in the reader's mind. I am not describing an elephant's leg. I'm reminding the reader to stop speaking of D&D, or any role-playing game, variously — that is to say, characterised by its features. If another metaphor is needed, then understand that the different parts of D&D are not labeled beetles stabbed with pins. Every element and feature of D&D reflects upon every other feature ... and the process of elevating any one part only ensures that the game as potential is not being played. You haven't the elephant if all you feel is its trunk.
Because it so happens the menu is the example at the moment, some might presuppose that I've created a quaint little doo-dad that's all pretty and stuff, but surely has nothing more to offer than a bit of novelty. Au contraire, I argue. If this is your thought, you have nothing more than the elephant's tail in your hand.
Let's take this example I posted months ago:
A restaurant is not merely food on a plate. It is the culmination of human effort and knowledge, stretching back through a thousand generations of invention and risk. What is it that makes these items rise to the fore and remain there for centuries as familiar, tasty fare? Do you suppose these things are arbitrary? Could you not sit down this moment to a fattened trout or a forequarter of lamb? Such meals are familiar because the human pallet appreciates them, expands consciously upon them, grants them memory and substance in the imagination because we've had them.
And if you did sit down to such a meal, surely you'd recognize the trout and lamb came from somewhere; and that this somewhere is a part of the world that you can visit, touch and feel. That, like with mustard farms, there are matters of import associated with their recovery, well-being and transport. The very fact of these meals in the game world lends greater credence to the game world itself, manifesting itself as something that matters ... so that there is more here in the human soul than a mere list of foods.
Like anything else I've done, or written, or set as a standard for running a game, this menu has it's small place in that world's construction. And like this blog, the goal of creating it is not just to provide substance for my world, but to provide a larger scheme of thoughts for others. No one here doubts, do they, that I'm a teacher? Well, I'd like more students. I'd like to shake the game world up, by demonstrating what's possible, beyond more modules and puzzles. Beyond the arguments that D&D ought to be simplified. Beyond dice. Beyond the discovery of rooms. Beyond two-dimensions perceptions of game parts as fetishes.
The uninitiated, those who have never heard of me, picking up and holding this menu in their hands, will have their perception of the game world blown ... because the menu does not merely describe the game world, it IS the game world. A part of it, that can be held physically in one's hands.
What other unsuspected physical objects, apart from the obvious weapons and armour, lay out there waiting to be invented? What undisturbed imaginations might be stirred by the presence of this unique item in their hands? I don't know.
I want to know. I want to make it available to a great many more people than have perused my blog or understand my gaming philosophy. For that, I need help. A little help. I've already had some. I still need a little more. So take a moment, shake $20 or more from your wallets, and let's do something that gives sight to the blind. Let's wake some people up. Let's expand this game. Great things being with one little nail in a single horseshoe. I've made the nail.
Help me get it into the hands of others.