Comments from the Masters: How do you avoid Using It All?

[Andy Kitkowski]

So one of my biggest design hurdles these days (aside from throwing something together, running it with friends, seeing how it flies, taking notes and doing it again ;^) ) is trying to force myself not to use every possible gimmick in my game design possible.

I've got about 2 gimmicks down in the core of my system.  Then there's things like Wild Dice and other dice effects. Dramatic Editing (and various types of dramatic editing). Collaborative Storytelling twinks and meta-rules.  Many of these are pulled out of other games, or based on ideas from other games.

Even though I'm "focused" on what I want to do and recognize the ones that would get in the way or clutter a good rulebook, I can't help but want to include more. Or, to do more research (ir buy more games) to that effect.

Anyone else have these problems?  What do The Masters (being self-published folks) do in situations where they want to include too many cool rules or styles of play?

-Andy

[Jasper]

I have had exactly the same problem, Andy.  Especially when I first started reading the Forge, I fell in love with a lot of the new ideas discussed here, and tried to throw everything together -- it wasn't really my own creation though, except in a Frankenstein sense.  Maybe I speak to soon by saying I've now escaped this kind of thing...but I think critical thinking about each element, and what role it will really serve, should be your main tool to weed out what you don't need.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Kill your darlings.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not really sure there's a question here. You know you need to cut it sounds like to me. So, are you looking for support Andy?

The only advice that I can give is try to synthesize elements together. Is there something that two rules are doing that one slightly modified rule could cover entirely? Look for these sorts of opportunities to create elegant design. Often you'll find that the new rule is much more original, and more effective than either of the previous two rules.

Mike

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Andy,

I use a rule of thumb I call the One Crazy Thing rule. In any game, the average person can grasp one new or fresh idea, and needs the rest to be familiar. That sounds kind of harsh on people who play RPGs, but isn't meant to be. Every hobby has its far-out people, and those people can take anything - look at Trollbabe and Universalis compared to, say, Dust Devils and Donjon. Judging purely from the amount of online talk - which isn't an accurate measure, but I'm using it - it seems Dust Devils and Donjon might get played more.

Donjon is something incredibly familiar with one odd thing: the "success = fact" rule. Otherwise, it's an incredibly normal system (except the dice overkill) with an easily graspable idea: kill things and loot 'em.

Dust Devils is a western - something most people grasp, even if they don't normally play in that setting. The cards are based off poker, which is familiar. The narration is new and odd, though.

In contrast, Trollbabe has an innovative system, a setting unlike most I've seen, and few points of familiarity. Universalis is barely an RPG - and that's a good thing - that you can use to do whatever sort of story you might like.

Now, as a critic, I think Universalis and Trollbabe are far superior games to Donjon. (I'll not comment on Dust Devils, because it kicks ass, and it's not my game.) However, in terms of being bought and played, I think Donjon has a better chance.

In my new game, The Shadow of Yesterday, I'm trying to present a setting that mixes very familiar elements (elves, magic, swords) with bizarre elements not seen so much in RPGs (huge myth-creating apocalyptic celestial bodies smashing into the characters' earth.) The system is very familiar - it's not too far from Unisystem, to be honest - but includes some slightly unfamiliar elements (each campaign should change the characters from beginning power level to the highest power level in the game, with no exceptions; the idea of player-chosen character improvement methods). I'm loading a bit more than One Crazy Thing in there, but not much.

That's my two cents.

[Jeph]

I'm not sure what you mean by gimmick. Do you mean just 'non-standard game element'? If so, I try to limit myself to 2-3 gimmicks per game.

[Zak Arntson]

Not that I'm a Master, but here's my current opinion:

Shrink your game down to one rule. That's it. One rule. Anything you add to this rule is either a modification of that rule, or based somehow off that rule. Any exceptions to this rule should have a very, very good reason for existing. Oh, and this rule should definitely, in some way, reinforce the idea of your game.

Also note that in all my examples below, the rule is applied when the conflict is important to the game (the meaning of game here is both during play and the central idea as presented by the designer).

Chthonian - Die pool roll (dice = Skill + Expendable Resource) vs. target number (4 to 6)provides narration guidelines & possible harm to your Sanity or Safety.

Fighter-D Alpha - Die pool vs. die pool, with a 1 to 1 ratio of success to fact/damage point/etc.

Shadows - Good & Shadow results given, followed by Good Die vs. Shadow Die, gifted Tokens providing rerolls, higher die picks result.

Not my own:

Dungeons & Dragons (though they break this in places) - d20 + Modifier vs. Target Number, success/failure results in damage roll/effects to source/target.

InSpectres (if I remember right) - Die pool (skill + expendable resource) roll vs. Target Number provides guidelines for narration and impacts your PC effectiveness.

Dying Earth (broken in lots of places to the game's detriment, if I remember correctly) - Die vs. Die, expendable resource forcing rerolls, higher die gives success.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Thanks, all.  By "Gimmick" I'm meaning a way of either running the style of play (1 GM, 3-5 players, traditional roleplaying) or rules (added rules quirks) in a new way.

Ex: Style of Play: Ghost Dog RPG- 1 on 1 roleplay.
Ex: Style of Play: Universalis.  Uh, just about everything ;)
Ex: Rules: Adventure: Dramatic Editing
Ex: Rules: Buffy TVS: Dramatic Editing, That stat block thing for NPCs where you don't have to roll dice for them.
Ex: Rules: Paladin: 1. Non-standard attributes (no strength intelligence, charisma and the like, just active/reactive stats- I only call it a gimmick as it's not "standard" for RPGs- stats&skills), 2. Rules based on a code, 3. Rules involving flow of anima.
Ex: Rules: Dread: 1.The Cool Rule. 2.Drive.

So, I figure by Clinton's explanation, I could assume to go with one Major gimmick, and possibly a few minor ones.  Probably if I went with 2 or more major gimmicks, either in play, game background, or rules, then I'd lose most of an audience.

Maybe I'll just take those other gimmick ideas I had and spin them off into their own mini-games...

-Andy

[clehrich]

While I like the One Weird Thing and 2-3 gimmicks sort of rules, I think it's important that they be taken as rules of thumb.  The same goes for the "One Rule to Ring Them All" idea.  These are excellent principles, but they can become mechanical if pushed too hard.  I don't think anyone is really saying "you must do it this way," of course.

I think the principle of design elegance is (as Mike pointed out) what's desired here, and these rules of thumb help one spot this.

You might try condensing your rules into a series of groups or clusters, where each is a discrete element with a fundamental mechanic.  So for example, you have a kind of subsystem for melee combat, a subsystem for gunplay, a subsystem for character improvement, a subsystem for damage, and whatnot.  Condense to the point that you can neatly point to each group and say, "This stuff is all the same, it works like this, it's for that, and here's basically why."

Now look at the groups next to each other.  How many of them are really similar, and how many radically different?  Could you bend the structure of one group so that it's really the same principle as another?  Would this negatively affect play, or would you just end up with a cleaner, more elegant system?

The problem you're describing sounds familiar to me, and when I do it, it's a tendency to tack on a single rule or idea, sort of like tweaking old D&D games.  The goal should be to have that tacked-on bit, if you really like it, become an intrinsic part of the game structure, rather than a clear add-on.  If you can't make it so without breaking something else, it's time to kiss your darling goodbye.

As a writing teacher, I think of this like polishing an essay.  Cut, trim, polish, repeat.  Weigh up the strength of each bit, and decide whether it's in the right place with respect to the overall structure.  Eventually you should have something with no "waste," nothing that seems to stick out oddly; the whole system should seem perfectly internally coherent and consistent, so that when the reader comes upon a new rule, she thinks, "Oh, of course you'd have that rule, it makes perfect sense."

I don't know if that helps, but I often find that thinking in theoretical,  aesthetic terms helps me.

[Mark Johnson]

So one of my biggest design hurdles these days (aside from throwing something together, running it with friends, seeing how it flies, taking notes and doing it again ;^) ) is trying to force myself not to use every possible gimmick in my game design possible.

Why not put out the core game with only one gimmick and then a PDF full of "Player's Option's" gimmicks that any campaign can choose to use or not use in play?  This gives everyone who plays it a core playing experience but it allows for different campaigns to have different flavors according to their needs.  

Thanks,
Mark J

[Stuart DJ Purdie]

Having just done this, I can attest that at the end, all you'll be left with is an elegant, streamined set of rules.

Explain your game to someone who has never roleplayed before.

It's not fool proof (nothing is), but anything that is novel and different and doesn't work shows up just as well as dull and boreing and doesn't work, because your mesuring device only measures works / doesn't work.

Finding such a person who's prepared to listen and critque, however, may well be a Hard problem.  Note that sometimes a 'gimmick' may seem more natural than the 'conventional' - FitM was accepted much better than Fortune at the start, for example.

This is just a varient on "Explain the need for (this rule)", but the filtering through inexperienced eyes was something I found very useful.

[M. J. Young]

Andy, my impression is that you're designing your game backwards. It sounds like you're saying, "I've got all these cool ideas for a game, how can I use them?" instead of, "I've got this idea for a game, how can I build it?" It's like you're throwing together a pot-luck supper instead of a dinner party, that is, we're going to put everything on the table smorgasbord style, instead of serving an orderly sequence of courses.

Trying to get that into RPG terms, to design a game, you start at the heart of what you want the game to do, and you build that core first. Then you look at it and ask what things it has to do that are not obviously covered by what you've got. For example, the heart of the game might be a resolution engine, but you need a way to build characters; or the resolution engine might resolve situations well but not give the starting point for who moves first. You have to examine these missing pieces and find a way to fill them; but always start with:

[*]Does the material I have already provide a solution to this problem? If so, don't create another solution. In Multiverser, the magic, psionic, and combat systems are all the same system as used for basic (technological and body) skill resolution, with modifiers appropriate to the tasks.
[*]If there's not an obvious solution to this, is there a way to stretch what I've got in a new direction so that the solution will become obvious? I can give a lot of Multiverser examples of this. When it came to me, it had tech, psi, and mag bias areas, but no clear way to handle body skills such as running, jumping, acrobatics, martial arts, flying, and more. I looked at it and said it needed a body bias area, a fourth category of skills, to cover that. Similarly, we knocked around several different ways of doing initiative in combat, but in the end made it a simple comparitive skill check, a mechanic we already had in place which did the job better than any of the alternatives we had considered.
[*]If you don't see an easy way to make the existing material cover the new area, you need to devise something to handle it that is consistent with what you've already got, that adds as few new elements as possible. For example, in OAD&D, there are dozens of different systems in operation. The thief class is a good example, as there are tables in several places in several books that determine what a thief can do and how to resolve success. It has the feeling that the designers had a game but didn't have a way to handle thief skills, so they created another mechanic out of whole cloth when they could have found a way to use the existing mechanics to apply to a new area (as evidenced by the 3E version, in which such skills are handled by the core engine). Don't create or add mechanics that are completely unrelated if related ones can be done smoothly.[/list:u]
The thing that does not make sense is having a list of things you want to cram into the game. Game design isn't about how many neat features you can squeeze into it. It's about how to make a game do what you want it to do smoothly and simply. If in the course of trying to solve one of your problems you see how this idea from some other game can be adapted to fit with what you already have to make the system work the way you want, do it. Don't approach it as an exercise in finding excuses to include "neat stuff". If you've got "neat stuff" you want to use, design more games.

--M. J. Young

[Andy Kitkowski]

Why not put out the core game with only one gimmick and then a PDF full of "Player's Option's" gimmicks that any campaign can choose to use or not use in play?  This gives everyone who plays it a core playing experience but it allows for different campaigns to have different flavors according to their needs.  

Actually, this is one of the options I've been considering.  Instead of a sourcebook of more goodies, more crunchy bits, more campaign background or adventures, why not a game supplements which offers new ways of playing the same game?  Like an expansion?

That might work the best.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Thanks for your commentsm MJ!

Andy, my impression is that you're designing your game backwards. It sounds like you're saying, "I've got all these cool ideas for a game, how can I use them?" instead of, "I've got this idea for a game, how can I build it?"It's like you're throwing together a pot-luck supper instead of a dinner party, that is, we're going to put everything on the table smorgasbord style, instead of serving an orderly sequence of courses.

Actually, it's more like this: "I've got an idea for this game, how do I build it?" while being in a room with every conceivable tool imaginable.  See, I have a pretty good grasp of what I want my game to be, with one major tweak or gimmick to the premise which I'm thinking of ditching (I'll explain in a bit).  The thing is, to so what I want the game to do, I could EASILY justify throwing in collaborative roleplay rules, dramatic editing rules, and other rules on top of that.  It would be a mishmash (until I started hammering stuff together, at which point it will be easy to access and consistent, but still a LOAD of gimmicks).

It's the picking and choosing of what goes, what stays, etc that is becoming a problem, or an issue...

But you make a valid point to my problem here:

>>>>
Trying to get that into RPG terms, to design a game, you start at the heart of what you want the game to do, and you build that core first.
>>>>

Heh.  I have 2 cores.  That, I just realized, it my problem.  For a minute, I was like, "No way!  I don't have 2 cores!  Why would i do something dumb like try to make a game with two focus points?" But then I realized that that's pretty much what I did. D'oh!

So I have to figure out what I want to be the "Real Core" of my game. Then I can probably face this problem easier.

BTW, the game I'm working on is posted elsewhere here on the Forge as Kyuseisha, a game originally developed as a Sorcerer mini-sup which I'm trying to turn into its own game.

Core 1: It's a game about powerful martial artists and "mentats" (as in Dune- I'm coming up with a new name) in a future post-halocaust world. Focus is on action, simulationist scenarios and drama...

Core 2: ...but the game is written as if it were looking on the past from a a further future. So the players move thier PC along with a historical perspective: Dramatic editing ("I read that legend, too- but actually it happened like THIS...") and the like is a big part of this game.

But you're right. Too games in one.  Too many gimmicks.  Maybe I should stick with one, and turn two into a modular supplement that can be used with any system...

>>>>
Don't approach it as an exercise in finding excuses to include "neat stuff". If you've got "neat stuff" you want to use, design more games.
>>>>

That's some good advice! :)

-Andy

[Mike Holmes]

Hmm. You can have more than one design goal. I don't see these as conflicting themselves. Just don't make rules for one or the other. Make rules that apply to both at the same time.

Mike