What is an elegant system?

[Leviatham]

The word elegance has been thrown around recently a lot to refer to game mechanics and games systems. For some reason, "elegant" is the thing to be.

Considering that the definition of Elegant by the dictionary is "Pleasingly graceful and stylish in appearance or manner" or also "(of a scientific theory or solution to a problem) Pleasingly ingenious and simple." I think it can't be argued that game mechanics and mechanisms can be elegant.

Games mechanics can be made out of many elements. For example a game can be designed to be more orientated towards combat than storytelling. Or vice-versa. Thus the first one could have mechanics that will handle combat very elegantly, while the ones to resolve diplomacy or stealth might lack somewhat. These are just examples, of course.

In my gaming experience I find Gumshoe to be a very elegant system. It helps keep the flow of the story going easily and provides with plenty of opportunities to shine, specially if you get to know the character ad the system well, though I have tried it at conventions with complete neofites and it went down very well. However some of my friends have commented that it doesn't handle combat or complex manoeuvres very well. Yet I love it.

What other systems would you consider to be elegant? What makes them elegant?

 

[scruffygrognard]

I think that Savage Worlds is an elegant system. The rules are not complicated but allow for all sorts of character/campaign options. It has a solid foundation, a not-too-complicated combat/task resolution system, and is easy to tweak.

 

[ahayford]

An elegant system is one that satisfies your requirements with the least amount of complexity.

 

[Stormonu]

An elegant system gives you the most options with the least rules. There's enough mechanics to resolve any action with an unknown quality (Do I succeed or fail? By how much?) and then it gets out of the way so play can continue.

I consider Savage Worlds, Cortex, World of Darkness, Star Wars D6 and B/X D&D to be examples of elegant systems.

To my eyes Rolemaster, Palladium system and d20/d20 modern/SAGA are inelegant systems that could all benefit from a healthy dose of streamlining.

 

[Ahnehnois]

An elegant system is one that I can understand after skimming it once.

 

[Yora]

An elegant system is one that satisfies your requirements with the least amount of complexity.

Yes. And I would add to that, that you need to explain most rules only once or twice and the reasoning behind it is so apparent, that you don't forget it. Because under ideal circumstance, anyone who faces the situation would come up with just that resolution mechanic as a first attempt.

I'm a 6th level wizard and cast fireball, and it deals 6d6 points of fire damage.
As a 9th level wizard I learn cone of cold. What damage would it do? How about 9d6 points of cold damage?
And lightning bolt at 5th level? It's consistent and the answer is obvious. That's elegant.

 

[Desdichado]

An elegant system gives you the most options with the least rules. There's enough mechanics to resolve any action with an unknown quality (Do I succeed or fail? By how much?) and then it gets out of the way so play can continue.

I consider Savage Worlds, Cortex, World of Darkness, Star Wars D6 and B/X D&D to be examples of elegant systems.

To my eyes Rolemaster, Palladium system and d20/d20 modern/SAGA are inelegant systems that could all benefit from a healthy dose of streamlining.

I think rules that make sense because they tend to follow the same patterns is a major part of it. Therefore, games in the d20 family tend to be much more elegant than AD&D--even though they have more rules--because the rules are mostly all intuitive and follow the same pattern. In other words, you don't actually need to know them to use them. You can at a glance at a character sheet make a quick and dirty ruling on a skill DC, for example, and be close enough to "right" that there's no reason to look up all of the sample variables that the rules actually have spelled out.

To me, that's elegance. Pre-3e D&D--of any stripe, although AD&D was the worst in this regard--absolutely lacked this kind of elegance. The system had all kinds of unrelated subsystems and subsets that you had to just know individually.

d20 kinda lost its way a bit, though, as the system got older and more and more options were layered onto it. And frankly, as I got more and more used to the system, simple elegance wasn't enough for me anymore; I actually wanted simplicity too, which d20 did not really provide, without simply ignoring vast swaths of the rules. Which, granted, I did (and do) but more and more I find the solution to be less desireable.

This is hardly a recent development, as the OP infers, though. I've been hearing about elegance in RPG design for decades. It was a major discussion item in 1999-2000 or so as 3e was debuting, and it was already old hat back then.

 

[kitsune9]

Elegance is going to be what you think it is. I think Pathfinder is elegant and I know I'm going to get disagreement on it, but that's how it is.

 

[Umbran]

Elegance is going to be what you think it is.

Well, yes. Because elegance is, in part, an artistic thing.

I think Pathfinder is elegant and I know I'm going to get disagreement on it, but that's how it is.

Pathfinder is not any more elegant than anything else in the 3.x branch of the D&D rules tree - while there are many changes in details, the fundamental structure is the same.

I say this to demonstrate something about elegance - it is found mostly in the basic structure of the game, not in the fiddly-bit details. If you're arguing about differences between a small number of feats to tell if one game is more elegant than another, you've missed the point of elegance.

 

[ComradeGnull]

Elegant systems are:
-Consistent: Core mechanics are the same in every regime. If you are rolling a d20 vs. a target number to establish success in combat, you aren't rolling under fixed percentiles to establish success while driving a boat or building a shed.
-Compact: Flows naturally from being consistent. You don't need pages and pages of special cases and modifications to handle different situations. The core mechanisms are robust enough to extend to new areas without lots of new rules.
-Intuitive: If bigger scores are better in one area, they are better in every area. You can easily improvise on the fly and have things still "just work".
-Easily extensible: Mechanical effects don't interact in unpredictable ways, and the core mechanisms are robust enough that adding something- a skill, a race, a class, a technology, etc.- doesn't require a lot of numerical fiddling or playtesting to get "right".

I'd repeat the nomination of West End Games d6 Star Wars game as an elegant system. You can explain the rules to anyone without a lot of work, the resolution mechanisms are consistent across every type of activity, it's easy to add skills, alien races, vehicles, or anything else that you want, and it's quite easy to run most of the game on the fly without needing to look up rules.