What's the point of rules and DMs?

[Cervantes]

No, I'm not doing some new age TTRPG design thing where I suggest we go back to magic tea party. I want a good ol' discourse on those fundamental things of systems and TTRPGs.

A starting place:
DMs are the Leviathan, given power to avoid the state of nature of everyone yelling over each other. Rules are a social contract that serves to limit the DM's power and act as a starting place for the group's eventual tapestry of houserules.

[Trill]

I think what exactly the point in GMs and rules are depends on the group and game.

• In some games the GM is the antagonist, trying to kill the player characters. Rules are a handicap to give the players a chance to win.
• In some games the GM is a collaborator, providing the players with a world to explore. Rules are a way to keep this world and the interactions consistent.
• In some games the GM is an impartial entity, running a world for the players and making things interactable. Rules are ways to make the players stay on certain paths and to arbitrate disputes in the way the world is run.

[Chamomile]

I agree with Trill that the GM and rules can have different functions in different games, but for anything cut in the mold of D&D, the GM and the rules both serve to offload the responsibility of worldbuilding from the players to other sources so they can focus on immersing themselves in their characters. The purpose of the rules is to provide a consistent framework that players can anticipate and plan around, and the purpose of the GM is to arbitrate the many, many places the rules fail to anticipate player actions (as no set of rules could possibly be thorough enough to anticipate the exact circumstances of even a single adventure path that permits any kind of real player freedom). The GM and the rules also provide a certain degree of pushback against player achievement, not for the purpose of actually foiling them, but for the purpose of making the achievement genuine in that it at least took some level of effort. The GM designs opposition and the dice provide a level of randomness that gives that opposition a fighting chance even if they are weaker than the PCs, and also allows for surprising events that neither the PCs nor GM had counted on.

[shinimasu]

Rules place limits on the conceptual space of the setting. If your game has rules about how to be a vampire or a werewolf and what those things can do, and does not contain rules for how to be a dragon, then the default assumption is that dragons are not playable in the game.

Players might decide they want to expand the conceptual space of the setting (hey why can't I play a dragon anyway) in which case new rules are added to accommodate.

Rules also provide an impartial method of arbitrating conflicts. If sally wants her character to teleport to the moon with her magic, and DM Kevin says 'no you can't do that, that's stupid' then that's Kevin being a killjoy and a wet blanket. However if Sally wants to teleport to the moon with her magic, but the rules dictate that she needs more dice than she has/a higher level spell/a different class feature then that's just what the rules say.

Or to put it another way every free form rp forum I've ever had the displeasure of trying to join has always ended in the same way. Either the mods are abusive power tripping weirdos who play blatant favorites, and the board dissolves. Or they get accused of being that, people split up into tribes over it, and the board dissolves.

Putting what characters can and can't do in the hands of a set of established universal rules means less fighting about Kevin's motives for outlawing moon teleporting. It also means that if a character should be able to do something and Kevin outlaws it, then you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the problem is Kevin not you.

Of course players still get into arguments with DMs over rules, but in my experience there is a more obviously objectively 'wrong' party in those cases.

[Dogbert]

-Rules are there so we can all know what game we're playing, and so we can play games other than Mother-May-I. Both players and GMs are bound by the rules, just like every sport has rules for what arbiters and referees can and can't do, and how to do it.
-GMs are there for the same reason all sports have arbiters. Also, someone has to play "the world."

[RadiantPhoenix]

Rules exist to:

1. Resolve conflicts when not all players agree on what should happen.
2. Create a stable reference with which to define a character's (PC or NPC) capabilities.
3. Provide inspiration for characters and scenarios.
4. Resolve scenarios in which the players have no idea what should happen.
5. Keep fans busy during boring periods between games.

GMs exist to: (as Dogbert said)

1. Play 'the world'.
2. Resolve conflicts between players.