Game Rule Clarity: Monopoly vs. any RPG

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi All,

On my way out to my cousins on Christmas eve, I listened to a NPR program.  The theme was games: computer games, board games, old tactical wargames from the 19th century... And more.  A different guest for different topics.  

One of the guests was a former employee of Parker Bros, who had written a book about the founding of Parker Bros, its history and the reasons for its success.  The book is called "Game Makers."  The author and guest for the show was Phillip Orbanes.  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1591392691/qid=1072677177//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-8778266-1044856?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

The author puts the bulk of Parker Bros. success at the feet of George Parker, natural game designer and dreamer with actual drive.

One of the things Orbanes credits George with is a knack for writing game rules.  George prided himself on the clarity of his writing.  In Orbane's phrasing, "George knew that even though the game was published the east coast, anyone, anywhere, somebody in Los  Angeles had to be able to open the box and play the game without any recourse to anything but what was printed on the pages of the rules."

This got me to thinking.  RPG aren't like that.  Has there *ever* been a game that either a) wasn't so contradictory that you had to feel your way along and make your choices in the fog because there were nothing solid to grab onto, or b) even if the game rules are solid, demanded a solid dose of Old School letters to the Question Guy in game magazines, or the regular use of this new fangled internet thing to get immediate clarifcation on something you couldn't figure out.

This is not a post to wrap on lack of clarity.  This is a thread that asks, "Do RPGs have to be like this?"   I really don't know.  But I think its significant that the hallmark games of this country are damned easy to understand.  

Even if we strip out the arcana and minutia fetish of a lot of AD&D style games, we're still always left with, "But I don't get the initiative system."  

And books that are... well, books, as opposed to almost any other board game rules people buy for each other every Christmas.

Two things: Diplomacy I'll count as a classic.  (If a game makes it to the White House, I'll call it a classic.)  The rules are long, but complete.  So I don't think the issue at hand is only about length.  Because once you've got the rules for Diplomacy in your mind, you're done.  There are couple of fuzzy spots on the map, a couple of strange circumstances can crop up, but the rules cover them.

Thus, complete and final is one of the items here on the angenda.  Does the nature of RPGs deny the possibility of "complete" and "clear" rules?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  I don't know.

(And please, no straw man, "Not everyone gets every rule," arguement.  You know what I mean.  Let's move on.)

Second, I'd say the White Wolf Golden Rule is a desperate (and sad) attempt at avoiding this problem.  Faced with insoluable problem of making the rules actually clear to anyone who picks up the book, Mark et al just threw up their hands and said, "but if the rules are getting in the way of your fun, just think, 'there are no rules.'"

George Parker's rules were clear, compact, comprehensible.  Rules written for anyone to read and play.  

Can it be done for RPGs?  Has it been done?  If not, why not?  If so, how?  If not, is it because it can't be done?  Or have we simply missed something very obvious as a vital parameter for game design?

Christopher

PS  I am no authority on the games racing out the door of a lot indie shops, so if something is bluntly solving the problem here, school me.

[rafial]

This got me to thinking.  RPG aren't like that.  Has there *ever* been a game that either a) wasn't so contradictory that you had to feel your way along and make your choices in the fog because there were nothing solid to grab onto, or b) even if the game rules are solid, demanded a solid dose of Old School letters to the Question Guy in game magazines, or the regular use of this new fangled internet thing to get immediate clarifcation on something you couldn't figure out.

Well, let me offer an anecdote.

I did not originally come to the world of RPGs via the traditional oral culture.  When I was about 12, the drug store in our small town had a weird blue box show up on its game shelf, called "Basic Dungeons & Dragons".   I'd never seen anything like it before.  After a couple month, I saved up whatever it cost to buy the thing, and when I got home and opened it up, after initial confusion (where's the board?  What are these weird dice?)  I read through the book, and rolled up a few characters.  Later, I showed it to some friends at school, and they rolled up some characters, and I started running them through B1: In search of the Unknown.  None of us had ever seen or heard of an RPG before, yet I don't recall any degree of hopeless confusion, we just did it.  You read the flavor text to your friends, listened to them say what they were going to do, and then when the monster popped out, you followed the rules for combat in the book until either they or it were dead.  Easy Peasy.  No fog. There was no internet, and I didn't write to any games magazines, because I didn't know any existed.

About a year later, I did the same thing with Gamma World (1st ed).

I didn't run into other people I hadn't taught to play the game until I started college.  Nobody taught me.  We learned from what came in the box.

Now here is the weird thing.  If handed that same blue box today, I'd probably find a dozen contradictory and confusing things in an hour, and be off to the internet forums to bitch about them.

I'll totally agree that many RPGs that get published could have used a good vetting by somebody skilled in technical writing, but I wonder if the "lack of consistency and clarity" that Christopher is bemoaning here is not in part a perception born of our own sophistication.  As experienced players, we have a sense for where the fracture lines are, where the rules break down, and so we immediately look to those parts of the rules in any new system, and find the flaws.  The unsophisticated newbie who has just picked up a book goes by their best understanding, wrong or right, and plays the game, and either has fun or doesn't.

Another point to consider in the writing of modern games is that many are now written for just such sophisticates as ourselves, with many exceptions and detailed special handling for edge cases.  Stuff like that just wasn't in the classic 1st editions.  You had the core system, and if you ran into an edge case, you and your friends just made a ruling, and moved on.  After all, that's what most people do when playing a traditional board or card game (apart from the highly regulated ones such as chess or bridge).  If the rules printed on the inside of the box lid are unclear or confusing, they make something up, and move on.  Perhaps in the quest for "more official rulings", we've increased the verbiage and complexity of our rule books and simply multiplied the confusion, rather than reducing it.  We've certainly made it more intimidating.

[anonymouse]

For reference, can you recall the name of the program? Many of the NPR programs keep online archives, would be interesting to give it a listen.

[Ian Charvill]

I can echo Rafial's point about the teach-yourself thing.  But I'm adding two caveats.

1. I've never heard anybody tell that story and it not be about basic D&D (red box in my case).

2. I can't think of a rpg I've come across in recent times that put the same effort into teaching you to play as that old red box did.

The lack of 'gateway' products out there is, I think, a real hinderance to the hobby as it stands.

[Christopher Kubasik]

The show was a Los Angeles homebrew, Talk of the City (I think), with Kitty Feldman (I think).  I might be syndicated out of LA.  I don't know.

I, too, taught myself RPGs out of the old D&D box.  So it can be done.  In part because the D&D set had no expectation of modelling "reality" (ie, the current grail of so many RPGs and so many burned dollars in the computer/video gaming world.)

I, too, think the "gateway" issue is a crucial one.

But I think the question stilll stands: what would a game be like that could be written up clearly?

[efindel]

Personally, I'd say the problem is one of scope.  In a traditional board game, your choices are very limited; actions that the game designer did not imagine simply are not possible.  In a "standard" RPG, on the other hand, your choices are nearly unlimited.  It's at least implicit -- and often explicitly stated -- that you can have your character try anything.

To put it more concretely:  consider, say, Risk.  You want to take over a space on the map, and there's someone already there?  Then you fight for it.  There's no other way to do it within the rules.  How you fight for it is explicitly mapped out as well, and there's no real player choice involved there, beyond what resources you want to devote to it, and when to give up trying.

Now consider an RPG.  There's a room full of orcs, and you want to get in there.  There's myriad ways you could do it.  Straight-up fighting them is obvious, but you could also sneak in and try to do a surprise attack, try to lure them out and attack them, try to lure out just one orc and get rid of him, disguise one or more of the party as an orc and try to con them, try to con them in some other way, and so on, and so on.

The only way to have a simple set of rules which covers all the possible actions in an RPG is to abstract them to an extreme.  Have actions like "attack", "con", "sneak" which cover all possible modes of attacking, conning, or trying to sneak in.  Don't allow any bonus for having a "clever plan" or the like -- that's just another way for GM judgement to sneak in.

In some ways, it's a difference in scale.  Consider how complex and full of edge-cases Monopoly could be if it tried to handle things at the level of detail most RPGs try for.  "Okay, my mob boss is going to go send the boys over to rough up the owner of Park Place so we can convince him to sell it to me cheap..."  or "I'm going to put some dead cats in the trash cans of Joe's hotel at Marvin Gardens, then call the newspaper.  Let's see what that does to his asking price..."

There are such vaguely RPG-like games that can have short, clear rules... things like HeroQuest (the old board game, not the new RPG), the old TSR Dungeon game, some of the old Dragon games (e.g., "Search for the Emperor's Treasure), and Dungeoneer.

(And note as well that in a true RPG, players are not limited by/to whatever scenario the GM might have in mind.  To quote Robert Plamandon's Through Dungeons Deep, "if you want to, you can have your characters stay home and paint wallpaper."

[Christopher Kubasik]

I don't know about the "scope" arguement anymore.

Games like The Pool, and even Sorcerer and HeroQuest tend to handle all things in pretty much a simple, direct and uniform way.  It requires a healthy shaker of common sense to run them well though.  

The questions become then:

Are the rules of The Pool clear enough for anyone to pick up and get them?

Do people "experienced" with RPGs read rules differently than other folks.  (In other words, would someone reading The Pool's rules be baffled *because* he'd played a lot of RPGs, whereas someone without RPG experienece would read the Pool's rules without thinking, "where did all the rules go?"

Using discussions and thoughts on the preceding question, could the actual writing/text of Sorcerere and HQ (to use two great examples), be simpler than the published versions if the authors had not been catering to an audience with a lot of front-loaded expectations of what an RPG is?  (Since of these authors tends to hang out around here *ahem* I hope he'll comment.)

What I'm getting at it this might be purely rule/mechanical issue.  It might also be in how we approach what the rules are *supposed* to read like, be like.  

Certainly whatever the game was, it would have to be more of a "focused" game, the kind we find around here.  But given that there might be a tight design premise, ("You're making a story to decide how far your character will go to get what he wants,") how much can we strip away in term of both rules *and* text to reach a point of clarity for all to understand.

Christopher

[jdagna]

1) I think it's a focus issue as well.  A board limits the number of possibilities.  Even a board game with an infinite number of possibilities still has fewer possibilities than a simple RPG.  

I think of it like good software design.  If you restrict the allowable inputs, then you can very easily write code to handle each and every one very specifically.  The more allowable inputs, the more complex your code must be.  Computers get better every day, but they still deal with a finite, definable set of inputs and ignore everything else.

In an RPG, we're told that good GMs will bend or make up rules to cover weird situations.  Thus, we're not limiting the input, and we're inevitably going to come up with weird situations.  Even in good old Basic D&D, there are such issues - what happens to a magic missile (or fireball) if you cast it while using a spell of breathe water?  And if a power can be used once per day, does it reset after 24 hours or sunrise or what?  Most of the questions I get on my game have to do with people tweaking the system or setting.  "Your game doesn't tell me how to make cat people!"  "There aren't any cat people in this setting."  "Right, but I want to add them and you don't tell me how."

2) Anecdotally, I taught myself to RP without any outside influence using Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, so it can be done with games other than Basic D&D.  Prior to WFRP, the closest to role-playing I'd done was Choose Your Own Adventure books.

3)  I know for a fact that experienced gamers have more questions on my system than newbies do.  Usually the questions are generated by paradigm shifts (like spending experience to buy benefits instead of hoarding it for level gain).  I liken these questions to someone playing Risk asking if they can morgage North America since that's how Monopoly worked.  

Many questions I get are also about the why behind the mechanic.  For example, in my game you spend 10 XP for a new skill.  That's clear enough for anyone to follow procedurally.  But experienced roleplayers keep asking "Well, is that learning process from training or experience?  Can I spend 5 and get half the skill?  How good is my character if he's halfway through learning the skill?  What does the experience represent before I spend it?"  All of these questions are a bit like a Monopoly player asking "Why am I moving around the board in the first place?  Is the Monopoly city really a squared circle?  Why can't I buy Free Parking, if its free?"  You just wouldn't see that asked in a board.

Board gamers expect to follow an arbitrary procedure and they don't ask these questions. Newbie gamers have no problem with this either (as long as the procedure is clearly explained).  But experienced gamers hold the game's procedural elements up to some higher standard - be it games they've played in the past or their own concept of real life.  Perhaps they simply realize how arbitrary mechanics are?  Or perhaps they really want the System of Life, with no arbitrariness at all?

[C. Edwards]

Well, had a post, but Justin just took the words right out of my mouth. Particularly with the arbitrary rules issue. So yeah, what he said. :)

-Chris

[M. J. Young]

I was getting all ready to post my story, and then Rafiel posted it for me.

Well, a few tweaks. Yes, it was the blue box Basic D&D first edition (pre-dice--it had chits in the box, remember those?). I knew no one who played--didn't meet any such person for about a decade, during which time our group learned, quite on our own, BD&D1, MetAlpha, GammaWorld (3&4, I think, but Bob had those books), StarFrontiers, Traveler, and OAD&D. The biggest problem was OAD&D, because it was not at all clear that this was a different game from BD&D1--it seemed as if it should be "the rest of the game", and it's actually got a lot of compatibility problems that had to be resolved to keep play going. But once we figured out that this was actually not the same game, it all fell into place.

Of course, I was already out of college and playing with college graduates, in the main. I thought we were the target audience, really (and maybe originally we were, as mostly college students, young adults, and military people seemed to be in the original groups). So maybe part of the problem is figuring out what the target audience is, and writing something within their grasp.

Has anyone here seen/played Vincent Baker's Matchmaker? I'd bet it's on his website. It seems to me like a wonderful entry-level game, although I'll confess to not having had a chance to play it yet.

--M. J. Young

[Paul Czege]

Hey M.J.,

We http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=68915">played Matchmaker.

Paul

[Callan S.]

1. Board gamers don't try and get in to a state of suspension of disbelief. If they did, you would get questions like "Why am I moving around the board in the first place? Is the Monopoly city really a squared circle? Why can't I buy Free Parking, if its free?"

2. Also, older roleplayers think its their god given right to question rule implementation. "The game only works if I believe and I don't believe in this/this isn't letting me believe. Therefore I have a legitimate beef!!" being their motive. Of course, game designers don't have the magical ability to brainwash the gamers into believing, no matter how good their writing.

3. Rules tend to make a threesome from what would otherwise just be the GM and the Player. This third party is the influence of a writer who is far far away and will never meet the group. It's sort of like having a second GM to operate through, who is always pretty consistant. Of course the real GM can overide the rules to various extents, but social contract, written or implimented through dirty looks, tends to dissuade that. In fact I hypothesize the reason behind there being so many rules is to help avoid the real GM overriding them, including through casual mistakes (GM Nah, you could never run that far P: But you let joe do that the other day...man I wish my speed was written down...perhaps in rules and stuff).
The fewer the rules, the more the GM can override them (for better made rules, he just needs to be smarter). What's so bad about GM override? Well a large segment of gamers, IMO, don't sit down to play 'please the GM most'.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Of course, game designers don't have the magical ability to brainwash the gamers into believing, no matter how good their writing.

They don't? Maybe it's because many say things like "do what you like with the rules" instead of "See here, now. This is how the game is played"

What's so bad about GM override? Well a large segment of gamers, IMO, don't sit down to play 'please the GM most'.

Perhaps it would work if everyone played "please everyone else most?"

[rafial]

Are the rules of The Pool clear enough for anyone to pick up and get them?

Almost, I think.  I just went and reviewed them, and with a little more explanation of "this is what a GM does, this is what a player does" (probably as an example of play) the Pool could be handed to a group of people who had no experience with RPGs, and they could do something successful with it.

Do people "experienced" with RPGs read rules differently than other folks.  (In other words, would someone reading The Pool's rules be baffled *because* he'd played a lot of RPGs, whereas someone without RPG experienece would read the Pool's rules without thinking, "where did all the rules go?"

I think some "experienced" folk come to the games with certain expectations for what is supposed to be in an RPG.  "Hey, there's no rules for falling damage!  This sucks!"  A true novice would not have these expectations, and so would not be negatively influenced.

Interestingly, novices would come with a different set of expectations that might confuse them "Hey, there's no board"  "Do I roll to move?"

how much can we strip away in term of both rules *and* text to reach a point of clarity for all to understand.

Christopher, I'm curious if you can explain in more detail the purpose of the clarity you are seeking.  Is the idea that lack of clarity in rules writing is a barrier to people entering the hobby?  Why is more clarity needed?

[Callan S.]

Of course, game designers don't have the magical ability to brainwash the gamers into believing, no matter how good their writing.

They don't? Maybe it's because many say things like "do what you like with the rules" instead of "See here, now. This is how the game is played"

What's so bad about GM override? Well a large segment of gamers, IMO, don't sit down to play 'please the GM most'.

Perhaps it would work if everyone played "please everyone else most?"

Nope, got no idea of where your going except its a pretty curt place. Bit more info? :)