Many RPGs out there as part of their worldbuilding establish in-universe rules and laws the player characters ought to obide by. But since those are separate from game and mechanical rules, their interpretation is often fuzzy. Do those laws exist as absolutes and GMs ought to be enforcing them, or are they meant to be broken and existing as something the PCs ought to fight against and win?
Since this topic seems to be cropping up in many RPGs, I figured it might be good to explore it!
Nobilis and the Windflower Law
Recently, our group has been talking about Nobilis, a game by Jenna Moran. One of the players wanted to have a Noble NPC be in love with another character, simple backstory building stuff. But then we were reminded by one particular passage in Nobilis, a law passed down from Lord Entropy, which simply states:
THE WINDFLOWER LAW: Thou shalt not love.
Which sparked a debate about whether that law is meant to be absolute, or something that adds to the drama of the game. Lord Entropy is the absolute ruler of Earth in Nobilis (and since the PCs will most likely play on Earth, they will be under his dominion), he laid down the Code Fidelitatis for Nobles to follow, so you'd think the players ought to follow them as absolute laws, right?
But if you think of the game in context of its genre it is kind of implied that such rules exist to characterise and paint Lord Entropy as a sad ruler that has been scorned by love and thus shuns it, as well as giving your character an excuse to indulge in a "forbidden love" narrative to play into the genre and show how much their love means to them. As Randy Paush said in his Last Lecture - "The brick walls are not to keep us out, the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something, because the brick walls are there to stop people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the OTHER people."
Which reading is correct, I can't say. I find Jenna's writing to be needlessly obtuse to the point I can't slog through the 300 page Nobilis, or the 400 page Glitch, or the 550 page Chuubo's, nor did I immerse myself in paratext about the game that might explain the meaning of such parts of the game.
World of Darkness, its Traditions and lawful stupid enforcement of them
An example of a similar topic that I have read and experienced much more of is the World of Darkness, and its Vampire Traditions, Mage Protocols, Werewolf Litany or whatever else might crop up in each specific gameline.
Each of those games has a set of rules that the societies the PCs are a part of follow and they keep the world in a stable state. But then when PCs come along and start going against those age old Traditions, what ought the GM do?
On one hand, since you have those Traditions, people put in place to enforce them and a good top-down pressure to use them to keep the newbies in-line, why wouldn't you make your supernatural society into the most authoritarian state out there where every transgression is instantly detected with the supernatural senses of Auspex (after all, why wouldn't everyone pat down your aura each time you enter Elysium?) and punished with execution.
Understandably though, this is the most boring, most player-vs-storyteller way to play the game. It's the lawful stupid of World of Darkness. Heck, Vampire the Requiem 2nd edition actually recognised it and finally added a textbox addressing it - "The Traditions are broken regularly enough that there’s a need for law, but not enough to break down vampire society or the veneer of the ordinary world that the Kindred hide behind. [...] The Traditions are deliberately designed so that vampires have motivation to break them, and so that there will be drama when they do.". Finally, a clear indicator that rules are meant to be broken!
Such direct, unambiguous communication is vital to letting the players and the GMs know how a game ought to be played so we don't end up with decades of party pooper NPCs in every campaign coming in to stop players from having fun breaking the rules.
Genre conventions and laws that improve the game
While we discussed times when in-universe laws were meant to be broken, there is also a flipside to this argument - rules that enforce genre conventions and improve the game.
An example of this would be Legen of the Five Rings' Bushido. Since that game is steeped in the samurai cinema and its romanticised view of the Japanese history, its bushido is inspired by its real-life counterpart. Since the players are expected to play honourable samurai, these rules exist to steer the players and their characters into how they are supposed to be playing.
Of course, even such genre conventions and rules can still be broken, but ought to be done with intention and good reason. After all, Forty-Seven Rōnin is a big cultural touchstone for just such a thing!
Similarly, you can have the drama that comes from such rules coming in conflict with one another, or the tragedy of having to uphold them in extreme situations. It would be a much different game after all if PCs decided to go and murder the emperor because they decided he's weak and they would be much better suited to rule Rokugan...
All of that is to say, sometimes in-universe rules are actually meant to be followed.
Conclusions
When you are writing an RPG book, pay close attention to what you are stating as norms of any given setting. Be explicit about the differences between the setting as it sees itself and the setting as it is in practice. Use an appropriate voice to communicate such intent and don't leave things ambiguous. Make your point clear in the same spot you state those societal norms - don't expect the players to read the entire book to see a correction elsewhere. Don't expect the readers to have any knowledge of any ofther paratext that is not explicitly called out and referenced. Your work needs to stand on its own and can't rely on any clarifications made outside of it. It is okay to be direct and blunt, it's okay to call on genre conventions, it's better to state the obvious than let something that is not obvious remain unstated.
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