System as theory

My academic background is in physics, so I have certain preconceptions about the term "theory". However, according to a couple of years of non-academic reading and watching of videos about media studies and critical theory, at least one form of theory in media is as a framework for comparison. The idea is that any individual artistic creation is unique, and no two can be compared on their own terms. Some form of abstraction or simplification needs to be performed in order to compare them, highlighting some aspects while downplaying others. On some level this is close to the use of theories and models in experimental physics, if you substitute "experiment" for "artistic creation". A theory or model will allow you to interpret consistencies and inconsistencies between different runs of the same experiment, or several variations of an experiment.

Classical mechanics as a theory encourages you to build models relating to masses moving in Euclidean space and interacting through forces. You can then perform experiments to explore, for example, the relation between the period and length of a pendulum, or the gravitational acceleration of differently-massed objects in a vacuum. Sometimes you conduct series of experiments that classical mechanics can't make sense of, where comparisons both with other experiments and with subsequent runs of the same experiment no longer add up, and you might be pushed to replace the theory entirely. You then think of the old theory as a more limited special case of the new one, or possibly just a limited theory, useful for a smaller set of cases. When you study modern physics you will be confronted with several seminal experiments which eventually forced significant paradigm shifts - the now somewhat out-of-date term for changing to an entirely new theory. Recent reflections on the development of theories suggest that the change was usually more gradual and piecemeal, with old concepts repurposed for new agendas.

An attitude I take from my academic background about theories is that they're not so much true or false, but rather more or less useful, given a certain situation. Classical mechanics is still very useful in a wide variety of fields, such as civil and mechanical engineering. Highly advanced quantum theories of particle interactions which ignore gravity - otherwise a very dominant force, requiring intense theoretical work in its own right - are cutting edge when it comes to understanding the limits of behavior in the highest-energy accelerators. Arguing "you shouldn't use classical mechanics because it's wrong" isn't going to get you far, even with broader theories available.

On to the topic of this post: system as theory. I suggest that the singular unit for a theory of role-playing games isn't a set of books from a certain edition of the product as sold, or a specific list of house-rules built upon such a set. The singular unit is the specific role-playing campaign, or session of play, or possibly even the individual act of play. Dungeons & Dragons is a theory of play that connects these activities, and compares and contrasts them. Call of Cthulhu is another. GNS is another, broader one. "Tabletop role-playing game" is yet another, possibly overly-broad one.

People will play D&D at different tables and make statements such as "that other dungeon master didn't know how to make the battles work, they need to get better at calculating challenge ratings and picking monster rosters for them", or "this other DM has this really interesting house-rule that makes exhaustion levels finally useful". They will sit at the same table and say "this session leaned more on combat, while last session was more about exploration. I miss social role-play!" All statements that suggest a theory of play that is highly informed by the 5th edition of D&D.

Players who have been playing the game in previous iterations might say similar statements, but also "this DM is too lenient. I miss when D&D was deadlier" or "all these characters having darkvision really ruins the dungeon crawl for me". Their theory is a wider D&D, of which play informed by the 5E books and play culture is a subset. People who have played a variety of games might say about a session of D&D "you know, this one looks like it might have worked better in RuneQuest" or "the DM is using something that reminds me of clocks from Blades in the Dark, but it's not having the same effect, because they keep them secret and aren't consistent with them." D&D is then a model of a subset of play, rather than the entirety of the theory.

Returning to the analogy with scientific theories, having people "try another game" is not just a matter of pushing against a resistance to learning new sets of rules, buying different books, or getting familiar with new settings. Instead, it requires a paradigm shift in their theory of play. They need to start placing play, their play, the games they have played and might play in future, in a broader context. And that's a very large hurdle, both for people not as invested in the whole thing, who might not want to go through the difficult mental transition, as well as for those highly invested in it, who have dedicated so much of their mental effort to improving and creating content that reflects their existing theoretical framework, playing D&D 5E well.

I do think, however, that it's an important hurdle for people to overcome. Because nobody owns the general theory of that thing we do as a tabletop role-playing game, or many of the more specific theories we could come up with. But an individual company owns D&D. And if your theory of play is D&D, everything that you do in this framework is always going to feed back into it. And you will always have that company and its commercial interests looming large in your thinking about play, and in the thinking other people bring to the table when they play with you.