> I don't buy that the "heart of the game" is at the table. It's at the table where the game is being played, by the rules that the game sets up. In a way that

> I don't buy that the "heart of the game" is at the table. It's at the table where the game is being played, by the rules that the game sets up. In a way that no one had ever really played before, and a way everyone ended up playing since. To an extent, yes, but while, as I responded to the GP just upthread, I think Gygax's view, at least with AD&D, was that every game should be played a certain way, I don't think that's what actually happened. Every D&D campaign I have been in has had plenty of house rules, ignored some of the standard rules, and in the end, if what the rules said didn't make sense at the table, the rules got thrown out and everyone just roleplayed what made sense at the table. So in the end, I think the heart of the game is at the table; that's where the actual stories are made. The rules are a helpful framework for cooperative storytelling, but they don't and shouldn't be the final determiner of what happens in your world.