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Mandatory 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.

[quote="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.
[/quote]

Note the language here:  A tiny section implies something that is not important to the game.  Likewise, one imagines (and is often stated) a massive section with a lot of rules exceptions naturally means something that the game is "all about," and thus will happen all the time in that game, or it is being played "wrong."

This is, quite simply, not true.

Let me take, as one example, Riddle of Steel.  Riddle of Steel has a big, honking, giant-fuck-off rules exception of a combat system, where all the games attributes are used in ways that they aren't elsewhere, the dice mechanics fundamentally change (they do, trust me), and it takes up a good 60-some pages of rules text, more than anything else in the game (with the possible exception of the magic rules, which have a lot of example text.)

So, by the logic above, combat should clearly be what Riddle of Steel is "all about."  We should be having fights, like, multiple times a session.  The entire game should be about how to win your next fight.  Right?

You might think that.  But, then again, you might think any number of wrong things.  In truth, the heart of the Riddle of Steel system is Spiritual attributes.  The entire SA rules weigh in at about 4 pages, mostly devoted to examples, but they cast their influence throughout the entire game.  When you get in a fight, or pick a lock, or lift something, or walk across the world with only a knife to survive with, it is about your spiritual attributes.  Further, they are coming up all the time.

"But wait," you say, "isn't it bad design to have all those rules exceptions and all that rules text if you aren't going to use it a lot?"  And you would be wrong again.  Because the combat text in the Riddle of Steel -- even if it is never used -- is not wasted.  It still occupies some of the space of the game, and what it means is this: Do not fight if you do not care, else you will die.  Note that this statement is mostly about spiritual attributes.  Combat is secondary, despite being nearly 15x the length in terms of rules text.

"Okay Ben," you say, "I can see that just because the rules are there doesn't mean they should come up all the time.  But combat is still important to Riddle of Steel -- you can't argue that.  So rules length is still  a measure of rules importance."  And I would reply that no, I can't argue that with Riddle of Steel.  But you're still wrong.

Let's take another game that all of you should have read:  Primetime Adventures.  What is the heart of Primetime Adventures?  What is the game -- by which I mean the game you play, not the game text -- really about?

The Issues.

All the other rules -- screen presence, edges, fan mail, and so on -- are pretty clearly all helping rules to get the Issues to the forefront.  And yet (My copy is on loan so I don't have exact figures), the rules for Issues themselves take up a fraction of the game's space, which is largely devoted to more complicated issues like fan-mail or screen presence.  And this, I argue, is as it should be.  But yet, the issues totally dominate the game.

So here we have -- twice, actually -- the case of tiny little rules as the focus of the entire game, and larger rules existing mostly in support of them.  It is my contention that most games are like this, or at least that there are enough of them that we should stop confusing the length of rules in the text with the focus of the game's play.

So, what is rules-text length indicative of, anyway?
I would say rules-complexity, and that only.  But that's kind of a gimme.

yrs--
--Ben

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

QuoteSay 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.

It might help to think of 'section' meaning the meaty effect the rules have on play, rather than word count. I was actually going to mention TROS myself as an example.

Think of a 'tiny section' to mean a flimsy effect on play. I admit when I wrote it, I was thinking some by line on a page somewhere and not well designed and I admit, short in word count. I grant word count doesn't matter, but some other poster (forget the name) gave a great quote "I'm sorry I wrote such a long letter...I didn't have enough time to write a shorter one". Powerful rules can be concise...but it can be quite hard to design them that way. So although one should see any sized rule as powerful (like the nar stuff in TROS), typically you will find 'em to be more than a byline on a page somewhere amongst everything else.

Additionally, market wise think of fantasy heartbreakers. All of these games have great gems hidden in them, often not as big as the combat sections. This doesn't help them to sell. The rule can be powerful, but if its not pimped it gets dwarfed despite its power.

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

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

Two things. From one POV, called the Lumpley Principle, nothing is outside the rules in a RPG, because the system extends to cover it all, even if the rule in question is smething like "GM makes something up."

But I agree with you in some ways. In fact, the definition of RPG that I work with deals with the idea of having infinite sets of things that are operated on. That said, it also counts on the idea of limited infinities. Familiar with the math concept?

Mike

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

Quote from: Mike HolmesWell, 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.

By what's in it, yes. But that doesn't really answer any questions. To do that, I think we need to answer *how* does what's in it define "what it's about"?

I'd argue that it does so by defining boundaries, and those boundaries are created for different reasons. Defining boundaries does not by itself define, even in the reader's mind imo, an area as more important than other areas that have different boundaries or are outside the boundaries. (And if it does, part of the OP's point seemed to me that we need to stop saying things that make the reader think that.)

Rules set up a boundary and say that, within this sandbox, these things apply. Some boundaries will be stronger than others, and some will contain more rules. The rules inside the boundary can be simple or complex; they can be designed to keep players out or to draw them in; they can be designed to take what would otherwise become a time-consuming part of play and resolve it in a single step. There are many things that the boundaries can be designed to do. It doesn't have to, nor should it be perceived as, making the things that could happen in that boundary more important. Sometimes the designer will make what they think are the most important rules shorter than other rules, specifically because they expect those rules to show up more often. (And, of course, sometimes they won't.)

I think that one of the reasons combat is so often set up in its own separate sandbox is not so much that it's more important, but that it has more potential for taking characters out of the story. Players want to know more precisely the process in such a situation. So, a boundary is set up: within these walls, this is the process. Players know, basically, what their characters need to do to survive, and the risks that their characters "face" if they enter such situations.

But rules, by defining boundaries, can also be the negative space that defines what's left over, what must be handled by extrapolation or simply by the common sense of the table. What is handled by specific rules also defines what is handled without rules. This, I think, is also a very important part of how the rules define what a game is about.

Jerry