Ben's Non-Standard Rant: Rules Length is not Rules Focus

[Ben Lehman]

I'm going to posit that textual construction of RPG rules suffers from a terrifying lack of development, and that is at the root of a lot of these interpretations and misinterpretations. Reasonable?

I'll chime in here and say that being a good writer is being a good writer is being a good writer no matter what the subject matter.

Books like Elements of Style by Strunk and White are essential to anyone trying to produce a quality writtern document.

Yes... and no.

While style manuals like S&W and a lot of language practice may be helpful to writers in any field -- and there are those that would argue about then manuals with you -- there are limits to the sort of help that they can provide.  Stylistic manuals are primarily concerned with structure and usage at the sentence level.  A complete manual may also provide some insight into the structure of paragraphs, but consider that even this is pushing it.  Because these manuals are only concerned with style inasmuch as it is universal.  How does style work at the level of the chapter, or in-between chapter arrangement?  You will not find this answer in a generalized style text, because it is fundamentally different for the argumentative essay, the novel, the instruction manual, the technical manual, the short story, the poem, and so on...

(This is where I take a moment to say that yes, these things are also different at the microscopic, sentence and word choice level.  But I am not so much talking about that, and there is some amount of universal advice for that level of language.)

What I am saying is that the RPG text, not being a novel, an instruction manual, a technical manual, nor a poem, really has its own structural needs in the way that it presents information, and that these needs are woefully underexplored.  I would welcome any exploration of this, here or elsewhere, because when talented writers such as Chris admit to having difficulties, we can tell that we are in serious need.

yrs--
--Ben

[greedo1379]

Assuming a big pile of text means that section of the rules is important is dumb.  I'm dumb as are a bunch of other gamers.  So I guess my question is: why do you write rules?  The goal should be to make your audience understand them.  If they miss the Crucial Little Rule (nice) because it is a single sentence written in the margins that's your fault.

***If you have a Crucial Little Rule then you should make it standout somehow!***

Don't make finding the CRL like finding the needle in the haystack.

Someone compared a rulebook to a piece of literature (~you shouldn't have to come out and say "The CRL is the most important thing~).  I think a rulebook should be like a "game playing instruction manual".  The goal should be to convey the important information as cleanly as possible.  I shouldn't have to reread a sentence so I can get around some clumsy sentence.  I shouldn't have to sit down with a monthly book club to figure out what a game is about.

***If you game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff have a chapter called "Killing Monsters and Taking Their Stuff".***

And so on.

[Mike Holmes]

I'd agree, Ben, that anyone who was mislead into thinking that length was the only determinant of focus would be in a sad state.

The thing is that I don't know anyone who believes that. Yeah, I think it gets said sometimes as shorthand, and there might be a danger that you're warning against here in terms of people hearing length quoted as a determinant thinking that it's the only one. And, as such, I'd support your rant as protection against such misunderstanding.

But all that said, again, I'm not aware of a single person who holds this viewpoint.

I think that it could be said that there are some who think that length is more important than others as a factor, and, again, we can probably argue about the weight of length as a factor till the cows come home.

But consider this. I completely agree with you that one ought not create focus by making a section longer, or heavier in rules. I would say, however, that one ought to consider making other sections lighter. That is, it's precisely the Combat Rant that people include too much of things not required, creating accidental focus on things not intended.

So, no, don't make more rules for the focus, make less rules for that which is not the focus. Or, yes, risk your focus being misconstrued. Not automatically, but as one factor amongst many that can affect this.

Mike