'tavern' as a music genre is haunting me

I played a game of D&D online with a bunch of friends the other day. I was thinking of not showing up because I was feeling like proper shit that day. I showed up anyway and spent most of the time laughing so hard I nearly cried.

I'm far more interested in deriving meaning from the fun I have with my friends around a table, and the stories we share afterwards, than whatever profundity I think I can imbue through my exquisitely crafted rules.

And like, I don't want to just endlessly poo-poo Forge games and what have you, but I do think the tendency towards venerating designer-intended experiences and imbuing tone and meaning into mechanics has led to some real ivory tower bullshit that leaves me incredibly cold.

I wanted somebody relatively new to TTRPGs to be able to pick it up, get excited about it, and think "hell yeah, I would love to run that for my friends". As a 'designer', nothing, *nothing* I have to say is more important than the enjoyment of playing.

Decree specifically started out as a solo game I was running for myself, using @chaoclypse.bsky.social 's Chaos Reigns as a basis, itself a hack of OD&D to bring its combat closer to Chainmail, which I tweaked extensively to account for its Destiny-inspired far future setting.

I'm far more interested in rules that accommodate as wide a range of play as possible. I don't really care about *how* people choose to engage with anything I put out, there's not really a 'wrong' way to play.

I'll start by setting out my stall that what I'm not particularly interested in when playing an RPG is 'design intent'. I see this term used a lot, and that some games have it, and others less so, and that it is important that a game's mechanical design facilitates a very opinionated mode of play.

Not me shouting "HE'S FRIENDLY!!"

To be clear, that was very much a rhetorical "Why??", ha. I'm forever vexed by how much people go to bat for this stuff.

Eugh. Why??