# Everything Matters *Created:* 2026-10-24, *Modified:* 2026-10-24 ![[Everything Matters (cover).png]] You know, I simply cannot resist a reference to Forge-era RPG theory. It's long past the time that we should have been able to return to that level of discourse, rather than running over the same ground over and over again and never getting anywhere, and worse, seldom creating new games with some grounding in theory without engineering. What good is science without engineering, right? Cannibal Halfling Games has taken up the torch, at least for the moment, with their article **[Premise Matters](https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2026/10/22/premise-matters/)**, a deliberate callback to Ron Edwards' original, even seminal, article, **[System Does Matter](http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html)**.[^1] You can be forgiven for looking at the titles of both of those articles and even this article, scratching your head and asking, *"Why are you saying such obvious stupid shit?"* That would be a perfectly legitimate response, and I would give you a quiet round of applause before I gave you the really long version of the explanation. If you weren't here for the long version of the explanation, I don't know who you thought you were going to read. Let me know. Send me a message. Color me curious. You didn't think you were going to get away without me actually talking about the content of this article, did you? Of course not. ## An Agreed-Upon Objective > [!quote] Aaron Marks, Cannibal Halfling Games, Premise Matters > A roleplaying game is an event where players take on agreed-upon roles within an agreed-upon premise to accomplish an agreed-upon objective. Those roles make it roleplaying (somewhat tautological, I know), and both the objective and the premise make it a game. That objective and that premise are defined in combination by the players of the game and the ruleset they have chosen, and that objective and that premise are more foundational to assessing a roleplaying game than either the players or the ruleset. You might think that there is nothing here in the first paragraph of **Premise Matters** that I could argue with. But if you thought that, you probably don't know me. I can argue with paint, and the paint will silently slink away because it's tired of it after a few hours. My argument is not with the overall expression. It is the softness of the phrasing, *"an agreed-upon objective."* Objectives help, certainly, and if you define "objective" broadly enough, then sure, every RPG has an agreed-upon objective, but if we're being technical, we need to differentiate between an objective created by the simple presence and intention of playing the game and a mission-based objective. An RPG doesn't *require* that the characters have a particular thing that they're out to achieve, though it does make storytelling within the framework a lot easier. It is a nice but not necessary requirement for the game itself.[^2] I am not advocating for anyone to play RPGs without characters that have clear objectives. I've written *so* many articles about that. What I am saying is that it's not necessary for the definition of a game. This, of course, gets into a lot of the weeds that we wrestled with nearly 30 years ago, because for some people it is impossible for them to define a thing without judgment. That is, the definition of a game differs from the definition of a good game. I understand why you might want to avoid the latter phrasing. It does bring in a lot of subjective discussion, but it's also incredibly important. I'll let you finish reading **Premise Matters**. ## The Ouroboros > When I discuss Dungeons and Dragons in terms of its strength of premise, it’s not as simple as saying that players will bring in their own knowledge from fantasy. In the last fifty years, Dungeons and Dragons has utterly transformed pop fantasy; as a fantasy property it started in roleplaying games but has since metastasized and spread throughout the entire fictional body. The influence of D&D on books, movies, and video games is so profound that many of both the setting and mechanical assumptions within the game are easily parsed and taken for granted even by people who have never played before. This, in essence, explains the development of D&D 5e; the popularity and conception of the game was so profound that the system would be more popular if it simply did not interfere with the preconceived premises of D&D as they already existed. It is arguably why 5e is so non-specific, and why D&D will likely never be specific or have a specific gameplay premise in the way, say, 4e did ever again. I think this is a really critical insight, specifically about **[[Dungeons and Dragons]]**, and it deserves to be hammered out more aggressively. Other people have made the point that **D&D** is no longer about playing out the fantasy of the contents of Appendix N. Instead, it's about playing out *the fantasy of playing **D&D***. It has become an ouroboros, utterly incestuous in its inspirations, and as such, increasingly detached from its sources and the ways that it used to be played. As it becomes more abstracted, it becomes harder to establish an actual premise other than *"I want this to be more of what it is."* This also means that it becomes harder to connect it to things that are outside of a very particular set of objective premises. When another fantasy property comes out, **D&D** can't easily pivot to face it unless that property itself is largely already **D&D**. This is part of why the attempts to revisit settings and modules that were popular in previous editions feel like they're damned to continuous failure. Those things existed to refer beyond themselves, and the new versions just exist to refer back to themselves. The ouroboros strikes again. It's a shame that **D&D** will never regain the specificity of play it used to have, or a specific gameplay premise in the way 4e did. I consider 4e a superior example of the form. The only way that Wizards of the Coast could fix 5e at this point would be to break away from Faerûn entirely and make their default setting something entirely bespoke. I'm not expecting it anytime soon. ## The Central Figure > There are several successful [Doctor Who RPGs](https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/tag/doctor-who/), and if you know the show this should initially produce at least a little skepticism. Doctor Who is about the Doctor, and though you could kind of form a party around them (especially in more recent seasons), the imbalance seems nearly antithetical to how you run a typical game. That is not to say the Doctor Who RPG is bad, only to highlight that it required real work to build a premise that was different from the show and still worked. I still say the [Modiphius Fallout RPG](https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2021/08/18/fallout-the-roleplaying-game-review/) fails in part because it merely presented a bunch of material from Fallout 4 in tabletop form, paying no attention to the fact that the game centers around a single person and assuming that the group who picked it up would fill in the blanks. And while I can point to how that failure of establishing a premise led to failures in execution of the game, the fact is that many GMs and other buyers of these rulesets are both willing and fully able to ignore this issue. I think this is worth talking about at a little more length, because it hand-waves away something that, while not a solved problem, has proven to not be that *big* a problem. Games that center on a strong central figure have a considerable history. If we wanted to go back to the strongest modern example, **[[My Life with Master]]** is right there. It gets around one of the inherent issues by making the master the GM who is explicitly oppositional to the players. That antagonism drives a lot of the engine, but that doesn't have to be the only way it rolls. The **[Buffy RPG](https://www.edenstudios.net/EDN6010.html)** is a great example of a game with a central, powerful PC. The other PCs play an ensemble piece alongside the Slayer. This is a particularly interesting example because while you would immediately think that a power imbalance is going to intrinsically make for a bad game, in practice I don't think I've ever heard of a group that had a problem because of that. Some people decided to run a group of all Slayers for other reasons, but that wasn't one of them. I think using this line of analysis on the **Fallout RPG** is thus a bit wrongheaded. While the video game is intrinsically a single-player experience, there's nothing inherent to the setting or even to the premise of the world that requires that to be the case. It's more of a limitation of video game technology. If anything, **[Fallout 76](https://fallout.bethesda.net/en-EU/games/fallout-76)** proves that multiplayer **Fallout**, even within the context of a video game property, functions just fine, although there are questions about whether the video game itself does. So it's not the multiplayer nature that's the problem. **Fallout** is an interesting property because it immediately introduces the counterargument: *"But why aren't there several of us leaving the vault together?"* That would make good sense, very arguably better sense than just sending one poor schmuck out the door. From that perspective, the tabletop RPG is closer to what the video game *should've*/*could've* been and provides a clearer objective for the players. ## The Meta-Premise > The simplest example of a game with a strong meta-premise is [GURPS](https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/tag/gurps/). While GURPS mathematically has a mechanical sweet spot, it succeeds at being generic enough that there is absolutely no definitive premise to what sort of game you’d play. When GURPS is described as being “front-loaded”, that in large part is referring to the fact that a GURPS GM must write their game premise by themselves and then either write all the mechanical guard rails themselves or leave it to the players to puzzle out creating characters that align with the GM’s premise. GURPS has a ‘meta-premise’, though, a premise marketed towards the GM, of being a flexible, extensible, and intuitive game creation tool. ‘Intuitive’ is key because it’s the reason GURPS won out over the Hero System: Long lists of traits and options are easier to use and more intuitive than math Here, however, I must depart from Aaron's argument because I find it gets more than a little silly. **[[GURPS]]** does not have a meta-premise any more than a screwdriver or a hammer has a meta-premise. Once you start defining things that broadly, you've thrown the definition on the ground and decided to stomp up and down on it.[^3] It ceases to be an argument and just starts being a vague outline thrown against the wall because a nuclear bomb went off nearby. If we do decide to define things that broadly, then we might as well just accept the reason **GURPS** won out over the **Hero System** is that Steve Jackson Games found a way to keep selling things to people without actually telling them how to build things for themselves with math. I suppose I can accept that human beings are lazy enough that they would rather continue laying out piles of money for an endless shelf of supplements and splatbooks, being spoon-fed bits they would be better off assembling for themselves, rather than being given the tools to make everything on that shelf to their own personal standards.[^4] But that's because I'm an incredible cynic who has a very low opinion of humanity and have observed the nature of the RPG hobby market for decades. **GURPS** found a way to continue selling people things they didn't really need but quite wanted, while **Hero** just kept handing them tools and refinements to make their own tools. Neither of them has any inherent premise. For **Hero**, the premise was provided by **[[Champions]]**, **Star Hero**, and **Fantasy Hero**: the books that grounded it specifically in an actual world that had a premise of its own, and in characters who had premises of their own. No one ever bought *just* **GURPS** off the shelf. They always purchased at least one sourcebook in order to ground it in a setting and characters that could have premises at all. The interesting question is whether we take the idea seriously that an RPG requires a premise in order to be an RPG. If we really believe that, then we have to say that *neither **GURPS** nor **Hero** is an RPG*. They are tool sets with which you can *build* an RPG.[^5] It's relevant to note that neither one has particularly significant sales in the modern marketplace. I don't think the idea of a meta-premise is entirely irrelevant, mind you. I just don't think it is meaningful in the context of this discussion. More importantly, I think it is separate from the definition of an RPG. Instead, it answers an entirely different question: *why was this thing published?* Beyond the obvious answer, to sell more of this thing, which one might hope is the reason many things are published. The motivation for publication is not the premise of the game, and it shouldn't be read as such. The meta-premise of **Daggerheart** is not to be **D&D**, but to be a more narrative **D&D**. The meta-premise of **Draw Steel** is not to be **D&D**, but to be a more 4e-flavored **D&D**. Which means that the meta-premise of **GURPS** and **Hero** is not to be a GM tool to build your own RPG. There is, in fact, no meta-premise. There is just, *"Why you do this to me, Demi?"*[^6] ## What Is a Roleplaying Game? > Board games do not have “What is a board game?” sections in their rules, and I don’t think at this point in the hobby’s evolution it’s too radical to point out that including such a thing is only going to be deference to design conservatism, not an actually helpful bit of writing. This, however, I can completely and utterly agree with. The "What is a role-playing game" portion of every book that comes out is wasted ink or electrons, and as such should be both looked at with disdain and mild disgust. Whatever column inches are spent on it could be better spent discussing what that particular game *is*, which is far more important, far more useful, and far more effective. Of course, I also believe that writers should write games that could profitably *use* more discussion of what that game is, because most games these days are just restatements and reskins of other games, rather than striking out and doing something on their own, something unique, something creative, and something worth spending money on.[^7] ## Intentionality Versus Inevitability > All RPG rulesets strike a balance between establishing their own strong premise, giving a GM or facilitator room to narrow the premise on their own, and using outside assumptions to guide what players should do. Aaron phrases this as an active concern, and I don't think that's actually true. What we perceive as striking a balance between a game's own strong premise, a GM/facilitator-driven premise, and a premise supplied by outside assumptions is not something that the game's author does consciously, actively, and willfully. This is just an inevitability, an observation of the way the world works. All games strike this balance because they are games, and they exist within a wider sphere of experience than just themselves. A writer doesn't even have to possess any *knowledge* of that experience. They can come to writing an RPG from an effective clean room, in much the same way as the first RPGs ever were written, without consideration of such things. Those things matter nonetheless. It's an issue of intentionality versus inevitability. ## The Game That You Want > Premise matters, because having a strong premise be central to the design of your game makes it easier to make both something new and exciting as well as exactly the game that you want to play I find it interesting that the last line in this piece is completely true, but it is almost orthogonal to the arguments made in the body of the piece. I think maybe it would have been better if this had been the core thesis all along, rather than the point toward which everything was driving. This is a much more provable point than what we started with. It makes a testable claim that could have then been explored and expanded. I for one would have liked to see that article. Does every game need to be new and exciting? It does if it would like to be sold. It certainly helps to actually get and keep people interested in it. Can a game that is well-loved, well-worn, and well-played — one that does things in a completely predictable but effective way — make exactly the game you want to play? I think it can, which would seem to disprove this statement. I think that the more important part of the contention is not whether you make something new and exciting, but whether you get the game out the other end of the meat grinder that you *want to play*. The issue of being new and exciting is immaterial. A thing that doesn't do the job for which it was designed is a failure, no matter how new and exciting it is. If playing the game that you want is your ultimate goal (and it should be), then don't get distracted by *being new and exciting*. ## Everything Matters Which brings me all the way back to the title of my article, **Everything Matters**. In part, this is a reaction to both **System Does Matter** and **Premise Matters**, because I think they're each trying to do something very intentional, separated by 27 years — one place to look for success, and one thing to blame when it doesn't work — but they fail in the same way. Both of them focus on *one thing* to the extent that the text itself invalidates their claims. It wouldn't be so bad if either one said, *"These things matter insofar as they affect these other things, which is how you get the game that you want to play."* Instead, the way that they're phrased very much implies that they are the most important thing. I don't believe that to be true in either case, for good or ill, just as I would argue that you don't need to focus your mechanics purely on Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist play. I also don't think that you need to be utterly consumed with the premise to the exclusion of *system* or *mechanism of play*. Those are different things: system is what the author dictates, and mechanism of play is what the people at the table dictate. Just as the Threefold's aims each explain part of how a game plays, system, premise, and mechanism each explain part of why you get the game you get. ## Mechanism of Play Almost no one talks about mechanism of play except to denigrate it if you're a member of the OSR, or to simply assume that it takes care of itself because of Rule Zero if you're approaching it from the modern indie scene. Yes, that is me criticizing an element of the modern indie scene of which I am a member. I've never shirked being a heretic. Maybe one day I will write **Mechanism of Play Matters**, but I don't expect that to happen. The world is too full of articles trying to tell you how to make your game better without actually playing it, and I don't want to be part of that. The best way to make your game better is for you to play it. There are days when I would argue that the only way to make your game better is for you to play it.[^8] This discussion has immense legs and a lifespan longer than some of the people actually in the hobby right now. Like a lot of other subjects that have been kicked around over the years, it's not necessarily a subject that is about what it says it is. Really, it's a lot of us trying to figure out how to get more of the game that we like and less of the game that we don't like. To do it, we look at ways to break down the responsibilities of the writer, the GM at the table, and the players, looking for places where someone can be held accountable for the failures as much as they can be held accountable for the successes. Mostly the failures though. In a very clear sense, that's wrongheaded, but it's also very human. Everything matters. That should be the takeaway from this article. All parts of the game matter. If you focus on one to the exclusion of the others, what you end up with is something lopsided and malformed that won't do the work you intend. This is true whether it's all game and no narrative or all premise and no system. Everything has to work in harmony, which means that if you want to be a good game designer, or even a good game *player*, you need to pay attention to all of it. When you do, you're rewarded with consistently good play. When you don't, you can be the guy they talk about on [r/rpgHorrorStories](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpgHorrorStories/) or you might be sitting there after a session wondering where everything went wrong. Don't be that guy. [^1]: Edwards posted it in July 1999 — first at the Gaming Outpost, later at The Forge — and he called it **System Does Matter**, which tells you the fight he was picking. The fight was with the oldest shrug in the hobby: that the rules don't really matter, since a good GM can run anything. Fine, your GM is talented. Imagine how much better he'd be if he weren't spending the evening throwing out your mechanics. System, by his definition, is the method that resolves what happens in play, and it has to work twice over — for the people at the table and for the characters inside the fiction. From there he borrows the Threefold's Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist aims to argue that no system can serve all three at once: a good one knows its outlook and doesn't spend a single mechanic on the other two.[^9] That's the seed of everything GNS argued afterward, and it's also where system-light versus system-heavy got declared the wrong question. It survives as an appendix to **[[Sorcerer]]**. [^2]: Given how often I am pushing RPGs that have vows and motivations, goals, and opposition baked into the character generation process, this may come across as a little hypocritical. But again, there's a difference between "makes for a better game" and "is the only way to build a game that works." [^3]:  [^4]: You can try and teach a man to fish, but he'd really prefer that you gave him a fish every day. [^5]: There's probably a whole other PhD thesis in just this analysis — the prevalence of toolkits in the marketplace and how they are applied. In a sense, the rise of the SRD is a promotion of the toolkit to general applicability and broad licensing. But that's a story for another day. [^6]:  [^7]: That, however, is a whole different article waiting to happen. [^8]: This is, in fact, one of those days. [^9]: A lot of my arguments against the Threefold Theory hinge on the direct and simple observation that this extreme interpretation is stupid, and obviously the other elements come into play in order to shape a game, no matter what the focus is. But since we're already deep inside a footnote, inside a footnote, we're going to let that go for now.