Rules are not neutral!
They tell the story as much as the players...
A common online argument is that rules are neutral tools. While technically true, this overlooks a key insight: meanings are never isolated. They are part of networks, assemblages, of practices, signs, histories, and expectations. Rules tell the story as much as the rest of the game.
A role-playing system is not just mechanics. It exists within a broader ecosystem of published adventures, streaming shows, community habits, and aesthetic expectations. These form an assemblage (term created by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in 1980s book - A Thousand Plateaus). Within it, rules are not neutral; they carry traces of past use. A thing isn’t just a thing, it’s tied to the networks, histories, habits, and expectations that surround it. A rule system, an icon, even a vibe carries all the cultural baggage of how people have used it before. It’s never neutral. It’s never isolated. It always comes plugged into a whole machine of meanings that exceeds your personal intention at the table. The meanings, signs summoned, are attached to the culture around them. It’s easy to say, “You don’t have to play any game the way someone else does.” or that “tone is not attached to the rules”.
But the general culture still shapes what is expected, the material being published, the kind of players who want to join your table, and even if you, the GM, want to move away from a certain system or a set of references, it’s harder for players to understand that when you keep treating rules as being neutral. You can repeat “yeah, but we aren’t playing like that” as much as you want, even if a certain sign is not present in your personal game, they are still “up in the air” for players to grab it.
Roland Barthes famously argued that meaning in a text does not come solely from the author. In essays like The Death of the Author, he suggests that texts function as networks of symbols and interpretations activated by readers. Meaning is not imposed from above, it emerges through interaction.
Although Barthes wrote about literature, his ideas apply to RPGs. The “text” of an RPG story is not pre-written; it emerges from players’ decisions, interpretations, and interactions and the culture of play. The GM provides context, but the narrative arises from the collective play (which is affected by assemblage). In this sense, RPGs take Barthes’s insight further: authority is dispersed among players, rules, dice, improvisation, culture of play, discourse, and collective subconscious.
Umberto Eco’s concept of the “open work” sharpens this idea. In Opera Aperta (1962), Eco argues that some artworks are intentionally structured to invite participation and interpretation. These works are not closed, fixed narratives but open systems allowing multiple paths of engagement. Eco’s examples include modernist music, experimental literature, and artworks leaving space for interpretation. Tabletop RPGs arguably realize the open work literally: a rulebook, adventure, or campaign setting becomes meaningful only through play. The story emerges from interactions between players, GM, system and expectations.
Recognizing this can reduce the tension that arises when GMs try to impose rigid structures and the mismatch between what they are proposing and what the players expect from the game
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