When talking about defaults in rules in his Legends and Lore column, Monte Cook used the analogy to a thermostat (my corresponding Indies & More post is here). I’ve seen that term used as a shorthand a bit now, and I’m not sure it’s actually a great analogy.
For reference, Monte’s thermostat analogy:
I was chatting with Mike Mearls about thermostats. Mike said that he wanted a book describing a thermostat to state, “The temperature is set at 70 degrees. If you want it warmer or cooler, here’s how you adjust the temperature.” I said that I would want the book to state, “You can set the temperature to anything you want, and here’s how. If you do nothing, the default setting is 70 degrees.”
Okay. So we weren’t actually talking about thermostats. Or rather, our discussion about thermostats was actually a metaphor for how to present information to a DM. The “temperature,” in this case, is rules implementation, and the adjustments represent the ability of the DM to alter things as he or she sees fit, based on the situation.
A thermostat is a pretty straightforward thing: you change the input, it changes the temperature. There’s not much technique to it. Likewise, temperature preference is pretty easy to determine and more or less set for most people. You know directly when you’re too cold or too hot and the process to fix that (by changing the thermostat) is simple and direct. You might have to iterate a bit (going from way to hot to a little too cool to just right) but it’s a simple one-variable process.
I don’t think that has much to do with a roleplaying game. On a small scale, sure: I can look at the Monster Manual, notice that goblins aren’t as tough as I think they should be, and bump up their HP. But on a larger scale, if I want my game to be grittier, how do I do that? Grittiness isn’t tied as directly to mechanic as HP, if I want grittier do I lower player HP? Increase monster damage? Change how I present the world? Organize threats differently?
It’s a complex multi-variable system, one where a simple dial turn doesn’t really map to what I want. If some designer has done all the work already maybe we can have a simple dial, but that’s only because someone did the work for me. If the game promises me dials I expect dials for everything I want to control, clearly labeled and easy to turn. Even when I turn such a complex knob, the results are complex and may be far reaching, nothing to simple as “too hot” or “too cold.”
Maybe a more productive analogy is a cookbook. Games are like recipes: they provide ingredients, steps, and techniques to produce an experience.
A strongly-themed game, one that helps create a specific type of experience, is like a typical recipe. It says to do these things to get a dish like this, but the cook executing the instructions still has a lot to do with the end product. (I know this from experience, I’ve tried Heston Blumenthal recipes.)
A game that doesn’t tell you what to do is like a recipe that’s just ingredients. It says “Gather 2 eggs, siracha, a pineapple, a pressure cooker, ground buffalo, truffle oil, gray salt, and garlic spears” and just stops right there.
Given that incomplete recipe an expert chef can come up with something amazing. You see it all the time on Top Chef. They understand those tastes and the techniques needed to combine them, they know how to get certain textures and prepare each part. It all comes together. This is like presenting a game that doesn’t tell you what to do to an experienced GM: they already know what they want to do and how to do it. They can take those ingredients and combine them with the skills they already possess.
Give that incomplete recipe an average chef, or one who’s not used to working with those flavors, and they’re at a disadvantage. They have to try to find a new taste profile to aim for or try to massage the ingredients into the type of dish they understand. You give a classically trained French chef a basket of Ethiopian ingredients and they’re going to be stretched no matter how great their souffles are. The obvious comparison: average GMs or GMs who just don’t run much D&D. You give them a basket of D&D ingredients and they’re going to struggle at best.
The worst case is handing those ingredients to a well-intentioned amateur chef. Since you didn’t give them any idea what to make with them you’re at the mercy of what they know how to do and what they imagine the final dish to be. They may just ignore some of the ingredients. They may make something inedible. They may use the ingredients in useless ways. They may make something passable when the ingredients could easily make something incredible. They may stumble upon something amazing. Except for the one-in-a-million excellent dish it’s going to be frustrating and a good reason to give up cooking. So this is the new D&D player trying to GM without the game telling them what game to play.
There are certainly lessons to be learned from failure, but if some of those can be taught instead it helps the skill develop. A new GM is going to stumble, of course, but a game can at least tell them “this is what this game supports, here’s the experience to create, here’s how.” Or “here’s the dish you’re going to make, here are the ingredients, here’s how to combine them.”
Of course cooking has an advantage here: it’s a common part of the human experience and someone has to do it. If you mess up a recipe you’ve got a higher tolerance for trying again. RPGs don’t have that advantage.
Another useful offshoot of the analogy is that it brings taste into the equation which is quite a good thing to mention with RPGs. A “good” recipe can be one that matches my taste, but it’s always one that’s consistent and clear. A “bad” recipe may be one that I just don’t like, but every incomplete recipe is always bad (because it’s not really a recipe).
While it’s easy to look at preset temperatures and say we don’t need them it’s a lot harder to look at recipes and say we can get by with just ingredients.
