Jon Hastings has an excellent post about the do-it-yourself (ie American) boardgaming culture versus the out-of-the-box (ie European) one. It’s clear and thoughtful, even though there’s material for disagreement there–especially when you start applying the same distinctions to the “mainstream”-versus-indie RPG divide.

Ben and I have this conversation once in a while, because he plays and enjoys stuff like D&D and Demon (I think–Ben, correct me?), while I have largely given up on those games in favor of stuff like Dogs in the Vineyard and Primetime Adventures. It goes something like

Brendan: Man, these indie games are great! They’re so clear and focused on what they want to achieve.

Ben: But I’m having a great deal of fun with my games. Why should I abandon them for some zany experiments?

Brendan: Good point. You should do what makes you happy.

Were we on RPGnet, of course, things would quickly devolve into

Idiot Forge Groupie: You have no idea what you’re doing. The fun you’re having isn’t good fun!

Idiot TSR Groupie: Your game doesn’t even COUNT as an RPG! Everybody knows RPGs have to have a GM and skill points and encumbrance and–

Idiot Forge Groupie: You are blind and stupid. Our Way is the one true Way!

Idiot TSR Groupie: I hope you die, game snob!

Anyway. While I’m on Mr. Hastings’s side–I think games should work out of the box–he makes the point about DIY culture that I keep chewing on in my head.

A lot of technical cultures start as DIY things–like sports cars, or audiophilia, or building computers back when they were only sold as kits. Eventually somebody starts putting them together and selling them out of the box; the DIYers scoff at, decry and pronounce doom on such efforts even as they succeed and gain a popular audience. This is embourgeoisment, and it’s nothing new.

The difference is that most RPG GMs (the people who almost always bring the game into their circle of friends) don’t realize they’re DIYers. They think they’re playing the game the way anyone would, because the game’s writers have told them it’s complete. All the house rules, discarded elements, assumptions and unwritten moral codes are game design, happening at game time.

I want games to work out of the box, but I don’t think learning game design from the ground up is a bad thing, and I do believe that DIY models can be superior to even the nicest storebought ones. But should we keep producing and buying broken-but-fixable games when we there are fixed-and-fixable ones out there? Is traditional RPG design really broken, or engineered to force players to be designers in a good and interesting way?