damn fine cup of coffee

Now I don't think the above actually counts as knowing the rules. D&D is a relatively crunchy game that actually rewards system mastery and actually learning how to play D&D well, as in to make mechanically informed tactical decisions and utilizing the mechanics to your advantage, is actually a skill that needs to be learned and cultivated. None of that is to say that you need to be a perfectly tuned CharOp machine to know how to play D&D. But to actually start to make the sorts of decisions D&D as a game rewards you kind of need to know the rules.

And like, a lot of people don't seem to know the rules. They know how to play D&D in the most abstract sense of knowing that they need to say things and sometimes the person scowling at them from behind the screen will ask them to roll a die. But that's hardly engaging with the mechanics of the game, like the actual game part.

When you have people that have actually done some reading on the rules vs. people that just coast and foist the majority of the game onto the GM, it makes it appear like the more knowledgeable players are sweaty power-gamers or rules-laywers.

My point is not to say that people who don't want to learn the rules shouldn't play, only that people who don't actually know the rules aren't necessarily engaging with the game to its fullest, especially in the case of a relatively rules-heavy game like D&D, and that as the previous poster mentioned it can actually result in a bad rules dynamic where the DM needs to do more work due to player unwillingness to learn the rules as well as casting players who actually know the rules and can engage with them in unfavorable light. All of these are negative elements of the culture of play surrounding.

Like, there isn't anything meaningfully gatekeepy about saying "players who don't know the rules of the game aren't as good at playing the game as the people who know the rules of the game." Because playing games is a skill that can be cultivated and knowledge of the rules is an important part of that skill.

I actually want to dial in on the phrasing here, which seems - insidious isn't quite the right word - but really weasely to me. There's this reflexive attempt to position the writer as the victim, from the way things are phrased to the actual sentiment. "I feel gatekept" (note that its not "I have been gatekept") is a pretty transparent attempt to claim victimhood, and gain the reader's sympathies. Likewise "I just wanna" and such. But then you have the sentiment of "I just want to play a silly game" and this carries this, like, baggage that game design is *not worth* taking seriously. Same with 'play it how u want', it's working to undermine the idea that you could *care* about this stuff, and it positions taking the artform seriously as an act of aggression against the poor victim who just wants to *not think about things.* Which is to say its classic anti-intillectualism. "It's just a [song/tv show/book/game] don't take it seriously" is like classic anti-intellectualism, and generally comes from a fairly regressive infantalised place.

They can set up the scenarios and build the maps and run the world. They already know the rest of the rules, so why not? They also know the stats for all the NPCs too, so might as well let them play everyone else

It's kinda their world and their game, too. So they can handle scheduling. My schedule is crazy, but they can figure it out.

The gits of it is - no one EVER knew how to play this fucking game, people had arguments before the official first edition, the white booklets era. Most people played based on their own interpretation, then arguet about it in zines. All the crunch in the AD&D onward was Gary Gygax's attempt to make the rule for everything because he grew greedy and wished to kill the competition that built careers on explaining his crappy rules better than he did (also, he made AD&D to screw Dave Arneson of his due money).

The first complete game - the Greyhawk supplement - is entirely straightforward and easy to pick up, and significantly simpler than modern D&D.

None of the early editions of D&D are hard to learn or obscure like you seem to think, so I assume you either have pudding for brains or are going entirely on hearsay rather than direct experience.

I'd wager nobody in the entire world has ever read the full comprehensive rules of MtG as they exist today.

And nobody expects you to! If you go to a Friday Night Magic with a random deck you bought in a toy store, no idea what the rules are like, I'm sure you'll find people willing to teach you, even explain how to properly play your deck in particular.

If, however, you keep coming to FNM for weeks, if not months, and you keep asking basic questions, like what "Flying" means, or what a "+1/+1 counter" does, or how any of the cards in the deck you've been playing for months does, if you call someone who tells you you can't block with that creature because it's already tapped that they're a "rules lawyer" who's "gatekeeping your fun", if it becomes apparent that you're not making any effort to actually learn the rules of the game... nobody will want to play with you anymore. You'll be labeled annoying at best, an asshole at worst.

And that's the case in any dedicated gaming space. As an avid board gamer, there's nothing more infuriating to me than having to re-explain basic rules because someone doesn't listen, or explaining what certain cards/characters/units/items/whatever do because someone is too lazy to simply read.

And yet, somehow, in D&D, behavior like this is apparently not just accepted, but expected, nay, encouraged(!) by the player base!

You may not like cooking dinner—I certainly don't—but I do know how to make cooking dinner easier for my partner. I can chop onions or grate cheese, I can grab things for them while their hands are busy, I can make a simple side salad, I can put away ingredients as they're used, I can set the table and pour the water, I can clean up the dishes after the meal is over. I'm aware enough of what's involved in making dinner happen that I know how to help even if I don't do the most difficult central activity.

Plus, if asked what I want for dinner, I don't respond 'ooh, let's have filet mignon! I want filet mignon!' when there's no steak in the house, because I maintain at least basic working knowledge of the ingredients we typically have on hand and I know filets are not among them.

I don't expect my partner to handle 100% of everything to do with dinner just because I don't like cooking. Why? Because having somebody make me hot dinners is better than the alternative, and I'm not an asshole who's going to take advantage of the fact that my partner would probably cook for us even if I didn't help. I can help, so even though I would rather have an extra 30-40 minutes of fanfic time, I get up and help.

D&D is, like at a theological level, about what is good for the table. If you've got wargamers who have read a dozen rulebooks about artillery rules, they can have fun together. If you've got five nine year olds who want to let out their inner id, THEY can have fun together (or complete adults with the attention span of a five year old.) You can bring your partner to the table if they're into it, or your mom who's never roleplayed before or your uncle who was never been the same since Afghanistan. They will all come at different skill levels, and D&D can easily handle them all.

It's a long rulebook people! Not everyone reads it before the first time they show up. You can roll either way.

Now, if you've got a table where everyone is happily at one level, but one person is sticking out like a sore-thumb at a different (lower or higher) skill level, AND they can't adapt to the situation, AND they're complaining a lot about it, well you have a problem player and you have to have some hard conversations. This is true as well for what content they want to see (the character wanting more sex, or less death), or general table talk behavior.

But I'm saying that means the big complainer at your table just might not be in the right place, not who is objectively write about rule books.

You're right in saying that if only one person in the group insists on knowing the rules and using them then yes, that person is likely the one with an issue with the table culture. But if that person is the GM my advice is that they emphatically should be running a game besides D&D, because D&D as the game that exists in the rules is clearly not the game for the group. This is where most GMs encounter resistance, because many groups want to play D&D in name and with the rulebooks there to grant the game legitimacy, but then because of the widespread culture of "the game is actually what's good for the table" often with the expectation that the GM will act as a game designer on the fly and alter the game the suit the group.

This is, ultimately, not a good dynamic to put the GM into in the long term and in my opinion it is a significant contributor to GM burnout.

The other manifestation of this is a group who does wish to play D&D with all the bells and whistles but who do not make an effort to learn the rules because an expectation is placed on the GM to be able to adjudicate all the rules on the fly.

If this were only a case of an individual player in a group who doesn't fit the table culture I would still ultimately suggest "that group should play another game," because games as they exist in the rulebooks do matter and game design matters, and a different game would with near certainty be a better fit for both the players who care about the rules as texts and the players who don't. To this end it is important for me to push against the notion of D&D as the default game and in fact promote the idea that D&D, the game as it exists within the rulebooks, is a very specific kind of game. In an ideal world this would be beneficial to both D&D and other games.

I know the rules of soccer pretty well. Not all of them, but I know the basics; don't grab the ball with your hands unless you're the goalie, fouls can mean the other team gets a free kick, I even know about the offside rule.

I am not skilled at soccer. I played it regularly in elementary and middle school, but it's been close to 20 years since I practiced. And I was never that good to begin with; I just played for fun, mostly.

And that's fine, because I knew the rules.

It would be unreasonable to ban me from playing soccer at the park because I suck at soccer. It would be reasonable to ban me if I kept running to the other end of the pitch and arguing with the referee about offside, every week, for months on end.

And in my experience, quite a few people trying to play D&D are doing the equivalent of grabbing the ball with their hands.