31
Mar

Purity or Density

   Posted by: Mark   in Annoyances, Game Design, Musings, Ramblings of Mark, rpg, rules

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There is a famous quote in software engineering or perhaps engineering in general, the gist of it being “the design is complete when nothing can be removed”.    The point is elegance from simplicity and purity.  No diversions from the focus of the effort.  I cannot find the original source tonight but it matters little.

For the record, apparently it is Antoine de Saint Exupéry who is credited as saying, “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. ” -KO

Deviation from the core of a system exposes the writer’s passion.  I feel the wanton need to deviate into topics that are not centric to a rule system.  Yet they are interesting to me and relevant to the genre. Looking through many rule systems, I see that many others have wandered down the same path.

When is it appropriate to sanction these departures?   How far do you allow them to progress?   If the deviation leads to an entry that hooks a novice, is it is truly bad?  Puirty provides elegance and the capability of those capable to expand it into many frontiers.

But… Recall that first system you held in your hands.   Likely, it was rules heavy and relayed something about nearly everything on how to play the game.   Just as likely, you tossed aside nearly everything ephemeral to the core of the system because it was impssible to remember or manage.  Still, fun was had by everyone in that first session.

I love light rule systems these days but I’ve had years to progress to that point.   I can tweak it to fit my needs in a matter of minutes and the experienced group I get a rare chance to play with can do the same.   The running of the system might hook someone but if they pick up the “book” is it enough to hook them?

– Ramblings of Mark -

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 9:58 am and is filed under Annoyances, Game Design, Musings, Ramblings of Mark, rpg, rules. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 comments so far

Admin
 1 

My emotional response to those who can play a system so laden with rules that it defines every aspect of the world in print and letter and table ranges from admiration to pity.

While I admire their dedication to a ruleset that contains so vast a wealth of rules that there should be no arguments on what and how and why action X generates result Y, I also pity them for eschewing the most obvious of understandings of RPGs in general; namely that the desire of the game (in my opinion) is to generate a shared imagining between the players – not the rulebooks.

Counter-intuitively, in my experience, the more rule-laden the ruleset, the more likely those niggling arguments arise about what and how and why action X didn’t generate player expected resuly Y. Strange that, but an experienced fact none-the-less.

As a GM, I no longer desire to have rules back my decisions. My decisions are just that; mine. and if the players want to argue/debate/canvince/cajole a divergent outcome, then I welcome their explanations of how their perceived view the world differed from mine.

As a player, I really don’t have the time to memorize every rule in a given rules-heavy system. I prefer my time spent playing, not studying how factor X applies to skill Y and what benefits it gives while costing what drawback. I’m not going to name names, but too many systems have gone down this path. And if you know what I’m referring to, you’ll note that in order to regain market share, they’ve given up on the more complex aspects for a more streamlined system.

–Kevin

March 31st, 2009 at 10:14 am
Kevin
 2 

In light of this gem, I’m going to break the ruleset into 2 products: The KORE Guidelines and The KORE Optional Guidelines. Basically I’m going to pull as much from the base ruleset as I can and still have a viable, playable system. Anything that gets pulled but will still add to the system (or I like because it’s cool) will be put in the Optional package.

While I have no real reason for doing this other than to see how streamlined I can make the rules, it should make for a good exercise in understanding how complexity creeps into a system unexpectedly.

April 1st, 2009 at 9:45 am
Mark
 3 

I’d not call it a gem. Rather, its a musing about when rules allow someone to see something in a game that they’d like to explore. Perhaps not even rules, even background material can serve the same purpose. What I was hinting at, poorly it seems, was the hook that gets someone into a rule set. If he’s with a group, my musing is far afield because he’ll likely end up with the game of choice in the group.

Background and far-afield rules can provide hooks for the novice. Background, at first glance, is not the hook. But.. who am I to argue with the dozens of modules produced, read, and set aside since they didn’t fit the campaign at the time. Certainly, many ran them blindly. I hope just has many took a nugget from reading and didn’t run them; choosing instead to continue the campaign they’d established. Or perhaps many people found them useful and founded campaigns on the modules. That seems foreign to me but is completely plausible.

Just as pearls must start with a small stone, some role players start with nothing. They are not the ones that get brought into the group but rather the ones that start the group. Those were my origins and I spent many a day looking at fancy rules before I found people with the same bent. My original post was not to knock the idea of rule simplicity but rather to consider the entry point I long ago found.

April 4th, 2009 at 8:03 pm

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