wrote: ry Notice: This rant has not been standardized by the Bureau of Rants, nor has it been granted an Bureau Official Rant Index Number (BORIN). Use of this rant with other design principles may cause imbalance, confusion, incoherency, sinus headaches, or death.

In short:
Rules Length is not Rules Focus is not Activity Focus.

If you are nodding your head at that, you should go now. There is nothing for you here.

So, there's a general misconception amongst RPG designers here and everywhere, and it has been getting under my skin recently. It has to do with the quantity of rules on a specific topic, and how that relates to the "game focus."

The constant, bitching focus of this is Combat, of course. But it can be about other things.

I'm just going to take an example from the recent "Why Choice Sucks" thread. Callan, I have no real intention to pick on you, here. This is something that a lot of people do. It's just that this was the closest example at hand.
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quot;Noon]
Say I've designed a game that is primarily about combat and only has a tiny section on diplomacy. Then I design in randomness that will often leave some players pushing to use the diplomacy part...obviously not the strong part of my design. If play is going to end up about diplomacy because of my design, it should have a strong diplomacy design focus.

I think it's not useful to talk about if "Rules Length is not Rules Focus is not Activity Focus" is true or not. The only issue that matters is the perception of people who play the game.

Since so many people seem to think (perhaps incorrectly) that Rules Length is Rules Focus is Activity Focus, since "this is something that a lot of people do," I suspect that it doesn't matter if they're right. They believe it so it is true to them. Perhaps you can convince players with a sentence in your text that says, Don't assume that something is important because there are twenty pages dedicated to explaining it, but I somehow doubt it.

I disagree, at least to some extent. I think presentation in the text speaks to focus of play. So if SA's are what TROS is all about (which, they are), they should be presented as a centerpiece. If they aren't (which, they're not, I don't think), you could understand how someone might be confused.

I think the Color of dismemberment is also a very important part of TROS. The pages and pages of detail in the damage tables reflects this. And TROS is, I think, to a fair extent, about combat tactics. Which fighting school does your character specialize in? What cool thing does that let him do?

So I guess what I'm saying is, layout enforces the focus of play. If 25% of the text merely supports 5%, which is the heart of the game, then it should appear later, or possibly, be appendexed.

Another question this rant brings to mind .. Accepting that a greater measure of text supports a more central portion, which are the struts and which are the kitchen sink?

Can I ask how you see this as complementary, or opposed, to Mike's Standard Rant #whatever about huge combat systems and the like automatically indicating that combat (or whatever) is important to the game? I tinkered for a bit, but I couldn't see exactly how the two Rants work together; I don't think they're directly opposed.

Ben:

Interesting POV. I tend to agree with Bill - that the contextual clues given by the game designer - particularly the position and relative length of rules content does send a message to the reader that this is important.

I will say that what a designer/writer has to say with their words should take precedence - such that if the text reads "this is the most important part of the game" - that sould overrule other considerations.

I do have one question, however: what about complexity. Primetime Adventures is a pretty good example of this - where the rules for Issues are short - because, well, they just aren't that complex. It's the complex interplay of the other sets of rules that support Issues as the central part of the game that take the space to explain.

It's certainly a conundrum...

Very thought provoking, Ben - thanks.

I don't get it. I'd like to agree with you but I just don't get it.

It sounds like the whole big combat section of ROS serves two functions:

1) To make ROS look like a really big book. (Even if its filled with stuff you don't really need.)

2) To make combat something that you don't want to do all the time because you really risk death.

If the combat rules aren't really that important to the game than why did the author take up so much space to explain them? If you use combat so infrequently than what is the point of having really indepth rules for them? I can fill the two functions above with two sentences ("When you get in a fight flip a coin. If you lose the flip you die.") and then 30 pages of cookie recipes.

(I don't have ROS and I know a lot of you guys really like it. I don't mean this as a troll or anything.)

If you devote most of your game book to X I will assume that your game is primarily about X. If its not about X then why are you wasting so much paper to print it and my time to read it?

Ben, I gots two things to say:

1)I more-or-less agree with your main point, that what you talk about the most isn't necessarily what's most important, BUT

2)Picking Riddle as your example was, um, unwise.

Because Riddle of Steel is all about the combat. If you take out the fighting, even more so than taking out the Spiritual Attributes, you will eviscerate the game, and make it a hollow dripping shell of it's former self.

What the spiritual attributes do is take that sentence and change it slightly:

Riddle of Steel is all about the combat for the right reasons.

But it's still all about the combat.

James

I'm partly inclined to leave the explanation of TROS to the experts, on the other hand, perhaps the insight of someone who has just a little familiarity with the system is valuable. Of course I have the benefit of a quick demo by Ben.

In a way TROS is about combat, except that it isn't. The detailed rules are there to show you the logic of why you don't want to enter combat unless it really matters to your character. A simple mechanic wouldn't perform the right way. Ok, so you could say flip a coin, except you get to flip an extra coin for each point of Spiritual Attribute that applies, but that mechanic just wouldn't work. As I understand TROS, what it's really about is "what is worth dying for." The detailed combat system is there to ensure that combat is taken seriously. There could even be a fair amount of combat in a TROS game I think, but the key is that it will be worth the character's dying for, and so they will get lots of extra dice from their Spiritual Attributes, which will mean they are likely to kick ass. But in the end, the game isn't actually about all that combat, it's about why you engaged in the combat in the first place.

And it's a cool idea. And one of these days I'll find a group that will dig the game.

Frank

Say I've designed a game that is primarily about combat and only has a tiny section on diplomacy. Then I design in randomness that will often leave some players pushing to use the diplomacy part...obviously not the strong part of my design. If play is going to end up about diplomacy because of my design, it should have a strong diplomacy design focus.

To pre-empt Ben's answer to Chris' question, as was discussed, IIRC, in the original thread of Mike's Standard Rant #3: Combat Systems rules length is just one of many potential qualities of text that might create focus.

I'll stand by the notion, generally - all else being equal, length of text does inform as to focus. Now, given that it's actually just one of many qualities, it may in some cases be more or less important in a given text. A statement to ignore length might work, in fact (although I suspect that it would be disregarded due to it presenting a cognative dissonance).

The point is not that X pages = B amount of focus. Just that it can tend to do so under certain circumstances. Much like you can say that changes in air pressure will tend to go along with certain temperature changes, but it's only a part of the picture.

Another really important consideration is how many rules are actually presented in the length in question. If you have one section, two pages, with ten rules, and another twenty pages, with only one rule, the first will likely create more focus. Again, likely. These are all just predictors.

But it generally is as strong and reliable an effect as air pressure. Take the example of TROS. Consider, Ben, that it may only be our reading here, which having a narrativism bias, sees the SAs as the heart of the system. Which is to say that if you give TROS, as written, to somebody who has not read the criticisms here...I'm betting that they see the combat as strongly the center of the game, with the SAs as ancillary.

In fact, almost everyone who lands on the TROS fora from outside has this opinion of the game. That is, IMO, they play it as written, and it doesn't work as well as the somewhat revisionist version of the game that we present here. Or that you present in demos. Which is why the game doesn't do better, IMO.

This isn't surprising. Ask Jake, and he'll tell you that he threw the SAs in as an afterthought - he almost didn't include them at all. He had no idea that we'd all take to them like fish to water here, or that we'd lead a movement of play of the game into what it's become.

So, no, TROS is not a counterargument to the idea that mass of text creates focus, but rather support of the idea.

Mike

I think it would be more true to say that the length (or, more specifically, the depth) of rules on any one topic correlates to the (perceived) need for quantification on that topic.

The game designer--or the house rules creator--has decided that (as in Ben's example of TROS, which I have not seen) the players must know more precisely what they are getting into when they enter the quantified realm in question.

One of the things I like to say about any RPG is that all RPGs have no rules. Those of you who read Douglas Adams will know what I mean: most of the stuff that goes on in a role-playing game session are not handled by rules. No matter how big the rules set is, there is an infinite number of other things that are not handled by the rules, and a finite ruleset divided by an infinite non-ruleset is, for all practical purposes, zero. To the extent that this is not true (for any attempted action, no matter what it is, flip a coin; heads are success, tails are failure), the game is not an RPG.

I think that in a very real sense an RPG's soul is in these things that are left over, outside the rules.

That there are some points that are likely to come up in a game that the designer thinks need quantification does not mean that designer or even the players consider them relatively important because of their existence.

Sometimes (and it sounds like Ben thinks TROS is like this) those rules are set up as fences to keep the game away from that thing, not to focus the game on that thing. Or they're sandboxes where the game enters a more quantitative level and players have a more concrete idea of the consequences of their characters' actions.

Sometimes, rules may be there to restrict the referee (whether it be an individual or the majority) from going there. In a sense, rules take control away from the referee. Where there are no rules, the referee "is" the rule. With the rule, players know more precisely what the process is without regard to the referee.

Jerry

jerry wrote: I think that in a very real sense an RPG's soul is in these things that are left over, outside the rules.

A few things (I agreed with the premise but read on anyway):

1. The Lumpley principle applies to System (and Forge defined System, specifically)--which is different, I think, than 'rules' which would seem to be printed text in the rule-book defining algorithms for determining resolution. This is, by LP, part of system--but not all of System is 'rules.'

2. I completely agree that neither length nor presence of a system in a traditional RPG determines focus. I think TROS is a primary example of the phenomena by which a person's paradigm is mapped into the rules.

Consider this: playing from the printed single-book edition of TROS that I have, every player is performing drift and selective editing in their mind. If you decide that SA's are to be all important then you apply them to split-pools. If you define that SA's aren't the driving engine of the game but only part of that engine then you add them to the base CP.

The text supports adding SA's to split pools ("all rolls")--but a decent swath of 'common sense' applies to adding them only to the base CP. I'm not following the message board, but I think this is the 'canonical' answer (add to base CP, not to split pools).

In short: there's no way to play by the book and 'play it right' (and I don't mean some nebulous 'play it right' I mean 'correctly'*).

Why is this gray area important?

It's important for the same reason that Over The Edge was listed in lists of Narrativists games but is as solidly a Simulationist system as GURPS is: because the reader's interpertation of the rules is what defines System.

It isn't the rules themselves. It's the fusion of rules and basic play priorities and expectation of the role of rules in the reader/group. That's what makes system.**

SA's in TROS get a handful of pages. The game designer's text talks about AD&D leaps from cliffs--not the need for soulful exposition of story by means of mechanics. The how-to-make-adventures tells you use SA's to guide adventures but it also talks about character-action-controlling Flaws. Pretty much in the same sentence.

The fact that people (here) zoned in directly on the importance of SA's in play is (I think) a clear sign that even with two pages of text and a smattering of other mentions, what matters is System--not mechanics, and not rules.

Which means the book itself is secondary to the people who use it.

-Marco
* You can argue that adding to split pools is playing it correctly. If you want to argue, okay, go and look up the TN for the named Research skill. IIRC, it's not in there either even though several classes have it listed. Above a certain level of simplicity most game texts are going to have incomplete or gray areas (or areas where the designer may have correctly estimated that people will find their own way and adding more expository text, while making the rule clearer is not doing most readers any real service).

** This is why I don't think 'simulationist' mechanics and Narrativist situation is incoherent (despite the suggestions that that's what the Vampire games suffer from). If those are going to be incoherent for those reasons, then I think you have to conclude that TROS is incoherent.

What happens is that if people want mechanics (reward systems and in-game effectiveness especially) to push, say, a Gamist or Narrativist agenda then they'll be disastified with a GURPS approach to premise.

If they are using the rules as a reality-modeling system (I'd say Simulationist but that'd be confusing) then they want the rules to model the world and will be less satisfied if they model the agenda.

Both of these paradigms fall pretty distinctly into the technique layer of the Big Model. But using reality-modeling technique in your play is at no way at odds with a Narrativist Agenda.

I don't disagree with any of that. Of course the players as readers and interpreters of the text are key. But we're only talking about what effect the text has here.

You wouldn't argue that the game played doesn't have anything to do with the agreed to text, would you? That is, if I decide to play D&D, or JAGS, and read the appropriate text, then having read that text and decided to play that game, the text has some effect right?

Well, how does it do that? By what's in it. All I'm saying is that if there's more stuff to intereret in one section than another, if the game says to do more of one thing than another in terms of steps...then that's going to inform the player as to what it's about.

Will it inform every player the same way? No, hardly. Again, I've not said that there will be a strict one to one relationship here. But I can say that there will be a correllation between these things. And other things as well. Like between what dice the book says to use, and what dice the players use. Not one to one, but a correllation, nonetheless.

It's not really all that controversial, is it?

I'm not saying that everyone who reads TROS gets the idea that combat is the central concept. Only that most do, IME. In fact, I'd say that the idea of how to use SAs as central comes from Ron Edwards review of the game, and not the text itself, except if a very, very few cases. I know that's where I get my reading of the game from.

Further, in play, even amongst "narrativists" combat is still the primary focus of play.

Moreover, even if that were not true, even if it were true that most people find SAs to be the focus of the game, that wouldn't void this principle. It would merely mean that in this one case that other considerations over-rode the length consideration. Again, the length consideration only being one of many.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Well, how does it do that? By what's in it. All I'm saying is that if there's more stuff to intereret in one section than another, if the game says to do more of one thing than another in terms of steps...then that's going to inform the player as to what it's about.

I don't have TROS, and can't comment on it. I do have Prime Time Adventures, and to me Screen Presence seems at least as important as Issues. (Caveat: I haven't had a chance to play yet.)

Another example, not indie: every White Wolf game published has a meaty middle section chock full of powers. Specific crunchy rules for powers, different ones for each game, often multiple levels of powers. Of course, some people will say that Vampire is just "superheroes with fangs" and that the powers are the point.

I have to agree pretty much 100% with Mike's comments above. Its not as simple as saying 20 pages of X, 5 pages of Y, therefor X is 4x more important than Y. But quantity does give a good indication of where the designer focused their design efforts.

Now some types of rules just generally take more space to describe. Lists of spell or skill descriptions are going to take up space by the very fact that they're a list. But the fact that the game even HAS a list of spells and skill descriptions definitely says something about where the designer focused their attention.

D&D3 is a perfect example of this. Take a look at how much space character creation takes. Its no surprise than that much of the purpose / enjoyment / and focus of the game is centered on crafting and improving ones character. Look at the amount of space dedicated to Feats relative to racial / cultural background. Its pretty clear that for straight up by the book D&D play that whether your character can perform a Great Cleave is more important than where he was born or what his childhood was like.

On the other hand take a game like Pendragon with its life path approach to determine the fame of your ancestors or its focus on cultures and religion to assemble your knight and you can see that the focus of that game is much more about who your kin is then what sort of armor you wear.

So a straight page count, no.

But as a general indication of what the designers of the game felt was important enough to spend time and space on...absolutely. There is no better indication of what the designers were thinking than what they felt was important enough to write rules about.

Valamir wrote: I have to agree pretty much 100% with Mike's comments above. Its not as simple as saying 20 pages of X, 5 pages of Y, therefor X is 4x more important than Y. But quantity does give a good indication of where the designer focused their design efforts.

Now some types of rules just generally take more space to describe. Lists of spell or skill descriptions are going to take up space by the very fact that they're a list. But the fact that the game even HAS a list of spells and skill descriptions definitely says something about where the designer focused their attention.

D&D3 is a perfect example of this. Take a look at how much space character creation takes. Its no surprise than that much of the purpose / enjoyment / and focus of the game is centered on crafting and improving ones character.

I think that the "page count" approach to importance is deceptive.

Most people familiar with the game would say that bias is absolutely central to Multiverser. It is everywhere and does so much it's difficult to list in a short space. Yet the eleven pages (including picture page) its chapter occupies of the four hundred ten pages that comprise the thirteen chapters make it about one third the length of the average chapter, and the shortest chapter excepting only the nine-page introduction and three-page afterword. The four skills chapters, ranging from fifty-seven to eighty-three pages each, dwarf it.

On the other hand, bias shows up everywhere. The introduction includes a couple paragraphs on it. In the general skills chapter it is part both of learning skills and using them. Every skill listed includes two numbers that establish its bias, and character creation includes determining the biases of the character. World design includes how bias is established for the world. It is connected to everything. It really is very much central to the game--it just doesn't appear so based on page count or word count, because there is so much else in the rules.

I also thought of OAD&D. The number of pages actually devoted to combat information is very small compared to the number of pages given to spell information, even if you include all the hardcover books. Probably more pages are given over to gods than to combat, if you count the Deities & Demigods book plus the pages in Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk that provide such information. Yet the game is not about these things as much as it is about combat, in the reported experience of most players. There are many things covered in the rule books, some quite extensively, and some in more detail than combat.

Yes, these fit in Ralph's category of "lists of things", or at least many of them do. I recognize the validity in saying that lists create abundant detail that requires space to present. On the other hand, complexity is also detail requiring space to present. It's a different kind of detail, but all it says is that this part of the rules is bulky because it is complex in the detail required to make it work and that part of the rules is bulky because it is expansive in the detail required to convey the full volume of information.

So we're left with the idea that longer sections of text indicate parts of the game which are more important except when they aren't, and shorter sections of text indicate parts of the game that not important except when they are.

Sure, if you're writing a game and you find yourself adding a rather large amount of text about some aspect of play, it's worth it to ask yourself why this needs this much detail. You could provide extensive rules about character efforts to do needlepoint, but you need to ask whether such rules enhance or obscure what you're trying to communicate to the players. It may be that you're writing rules that are unnecessarily complicated or expansive because that stuff really should not matter in your game; it could be that you do need it, because it is going to be part of play and has to be covered. But the number of pages devoted to a particular subject indicates nothing other than the amount of detail the designer thought needed to be provided on that subject.

Ben is right.

--M. J. Young

Mike Holmes wrote:
You wouldn't argue that the game played doesn't have anything to do with the agreed to text, would you? That is, if I decide to play D&D, or JAGS, and read the appropriate text, then having read that text and decided to play that game, the text has some effect right?

Well, how does it do that? By what's in it. All I'm saying is that if there's more stuff to intereret in one section than another, if the game says to do more of one thing than another in terms of steps...then that's going to inform the player as to what it's about.

Let me weigh in with another take on it.

Rules length helps dictate activity focus, but obviously does not correlate to it in a 1:1 manner, because some things are simple yet pervasive. Their influence on activity focus could be referred to as emergent... emergent behaviour comes when a set of simple rules produces unexpectedly complex or substantial results.

I would say simply that this whole thread can be summed up by saying that emergent behaviour trumps the nonemergent behaviour of complex (lengthy) rulesets. Thus, where this is present, rules length devoted to a subject is not a good guide to that subject's influence over the focus of play. Ben's nonrant shows here.

When emergent behaviour is not present (or is damped), rules length, rules complexity, example text and other contextual cues exert a strong influence over activity focus; Mike's rant over combat systems shows here.

Both forms, incidentally, trump short/simple-and-nonemergent in terms of focus. So Mike's Rant holds water because it attacks the relationship between long/complex combat rules, and short/simple rules for other acts. And even where emergent behaviour is present (trumping the complex combat system), complexity still costs you in focus, even if it is not dominant.

- Eric

I don't see how anyone is arguing against anything that I've said.

Ben's claim was that there was some priniciple that was incorrect about length = focus. Since noboby thinks that there's such an absolute correllation, I'm not sure what anyone's debating about.

Now, if somebody wants to actually say that there's never any correllation between mass of rules and focus, then I'll have somebody to argue against.

Marco, I completely agree with you that people have their own biases, and that this will affect how a text informs individuals. And yes, this can change the focus from one thing to another for a given group. Is your claim that the text has no effect on what the focus ends up being ever? That there is no tendency at all for the designers intent to come across in play at all? If so, then we have something to talk about. Otherwise this is all part of my point.

Length might turn out to be, on an empirical examination, only 30% of what determines focus - I have no idea. All I've said is that it's one factor that tends to correllate with focus.

Everyone here understands the word correllate, right? That a trend in one thing is associated with a trend in another? That there are exceptions to these trends in the population examined (unless the correllation is said to be 100%)?

Again, the supposition seems so non-controversial that I'm sorta astonished that it's generated a thread at all, much less any response. And, again, we covered this all the first time around.

The point of the combat rant was not that length = focus. It was merely that many games have more focus on combat than maybe they should, due to design habit. However that focus is created.

John, the "literary critique" method of determining focus by subtext is absolutely one of those "other things" that might also affect focus. The differences in your reading of Champions and others here would be a result of the phenomenon Marco is pointing out. That is, I completely agree with the whole deconstructionism-bias-interpretation angle. Again, length is only one factor amongst many.

Why do I feel like I'm repeating myself? Is there somthing about the opposition viewpoint that I'm failing to understand? That makes it an opposition viewpoint?

Mike

Personally, while I'm finding all this interesting, I'm still wondering what Ben thinks about the relationship between his and Mike's Rants.

Mike Holmes wrote:
Marco, I completely agree with you that people have their own biases, and that this will affect how a text informs individuals. And yes, this can change the focus from one thing to another for a given group. Is your claim that the text has no effect on what the focus ends up being ever? That there is no tendency at all for the designers intent to come across in play at all? If so, then we have something to talk about. Otherwise this is all part of my point.

Mike

I see. And you have a valid point, generally. What I think we might need is a thread that discusses what all of the factors are, overall, that create focus in design. I'm sure the list is rather long, actually.

That said, what I'm pretty sure won't be profitable is trying to decide what's more important than what. This is one of those things that everyone has only lots of personal data on, and which is so complex that we likely will never know an answer. It's better to speak in terms of trends.

For example, it's best to say that if you want to make more of a focus of something, add more rules and text about it. Also, ensure that the mechanisms are of a sort that come into play often. And keep in mind how the reader's bias might afffect his reading. And how the gestalt of the game creates a focus (instead of looking at the elements atomically). Etc, etc.

That is, these are all valid factors in determining focus - we just aren't ever likely to come to a consensus on what's most important or anything.

Other than going to another thread to look at all of these factors, I too would like to hear from Ben.

Mike

Very small point: Ben's right, but... if the Crucial Little Rule is too small, you can read right over it and not realize it's crucial -- maybe even not realize it's in the game at all and go play without it. Lord knows I've done this.

(Possible connection to everyone's more sophisticated points: If even one person around the table are aware of the C.L.R., s/he can convey that knowledge to the rest of the group. Thus the "rules" do indeed include the informal, unwritten knowledge transmitted orally among players. Which is fine, but nothing to count on as a designer).

So if your Crucial Little Rule is really crucial, better put have your layout put the equivalent of flashing neon lights around it.

Okay, I'm not going to try to respond to each of these replies individually. In general, I am not particularly interested in arguing the nitty gritty details of this. I am more inclined to let the rant stand on its own.

That said, I will offer some clarifications--

1) This rant is regarding the (often mistaken) interpretation of game rules, yes. Saying "but how else other than page length can we determine importance?" is a little sad, really. It goes to show how little understanding of how to write RPG texts we really have that the only way we can determine if something is important is sheer weight. Yes, this is the way a lot of people interpret RPG texts. It is also dumb.

2) As for Chris's question about how this fits in with Mike's Combat Rant -- Didn't you read the disclaimer? ;-) But, in all seriousness, I think that these rants are about different things. Mike's is saying "don't have complexity that you don't need" and mine is saying "don't mistake rules length for importance or screen time."

3) Sydney's last post about "the Crucial Important Rule" is right on the money.

4) The biggest error that this is combatting is one that designers can make -- "Boy, this is really important, but it can be described elegantly in a paragraph. I guess I'd better make the rule more complex, because it is so important." No! No! I propose that rules ought to be only as complex (and thus, textually long) as they need to be, and that anything else is detrimental to game design.

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?

yrs--
--Ben

Yes, Ben, that seems reasonable to me.

One thing that occurs to me is some sort of text-structuring to put a big neon sign on the #1 Crucial Rule. For example, give it its own chapter, even if that chapter is only one page long. That tells you, right away, that this is important.

Of course, as you know, I haven't really been practicing what I preach here....

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?

Ben Lehman wrote: I propose that rules ought to be only as complex (and thus, textually long) as they need to be, and that anything else is detrimental to game design.

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?

Jason E Leigh wrote:
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.

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.

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