The Dilemma of the Simple RPG

In my experience with contemporary college game clubs, there are many younger people who have not yet tried tabletop RPGs. I was also told that many of the players coming to the evening games at a local shop have been new to tabletop RPGs. This is different from my pre-Internet, pre-video gamegeneration (Boomers), where most game-minded people were exposed to D&D because it had so little competition for leisure time.

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Another reason for the difference may be the “crunchiness” of many contemporary RPGs. That is, the fiddliness and time needed to generate a character and start actually playing the game is offputting. Then there is the difficulty of running a character because there are so many details and numbers (such as skills) involved. The rules interfere with the adventure.

Yet we continue to see the most popular RPGs loaded down with vast rulebooks. Unfortunately, the seeds of long-range destruction of any RPG edition are built into the capitalist economy.

You don't need a Ph.D. in history to know a lot can be explained if you "follow the money". To make money you need to sell product. If your primary business is RPGs you have to produce a game that is not only large but very extensible, so that you can sell additional rules. In the long run, that makes the game crunchy and unwieldy, dooms it to become too complex to appeal to the less than hard-core players.

Complexity may be a boon for some players. 3rd Edition D&D (3e) became "find rules somewhere that give me an advantage." This is a complete contrast to my advice to GMs dating back to the 70s: prevent players from gaining unearned advantages. When I GMed 3e I said "core rules only, no add-ons." When the highly-tinkered-by-additional-rules "one man armies" are present in a game, the more casual players are left behind in several ways.

"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstien

Complex games also make the GM's job harder. As there are more rules, there's more work for the GM. The biggest problem of tabletop RPGs, compared with other games, is that GMing is work, not play. We need more GMs to "grow" the hobby, yet complex games with constant rules add-ons lead to fewer GMs available.

The typical course of events is that RPGs get more complex as more rules are added, until the entire edition is abandoned and a new one comes out. While D&D Second Edition wasn't much different than 1e, and many more or less ignored 2e (I did), each succeeding edition has changed the game drastically to help persuade players to buy the new version, coming full circle with 5e. In each case, a new edition led to lots of sales. And each was then subjected to the rising pyramid of additional rules.

Money talks. Unfortunately for RPGs, money argues for complexity, not simplicity.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

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[lewpuls]

Thanks for the comments. Keep in mind, folks, I am editorially constrained to 500 words. If I had a thousand, I’d have more thoroughly addressed/explained many of the points people are making or questioning (or explaining, thanks). Of course.


It would be interesting to know what proportion of, say, D&D revenue comes from additional rules, what proportion from settings, what proportion from adventures. I don’t know enough to say which is the “optimal” one, though one commenter thinks he/she knows. If, as another says, one of the 5e rulebooks is #33 seller on Amazon for all books, I suspect the base rules themselves generate the most income of all.


Yes, a really simple game is more GM dependent. But a complex game causes shrinkage of the GM base. There’s a sweet spot somewhere in there.


The VOCAL players push for complexity. I suspect the average player does not.


In board and card games, we’ve seen significant “dumbing down” of hobby games in the past decade to accommodate the influx of new gamers as the hobby gets larger, who are often from “party game” roots. Games on average are much simpler and considerably shorter.


This is now a world where many people cannot do simple arithmetic in their heads - even college students. Where people want the “Easy Button”. It’s the Age of Convenience as well as the Age of Instant Gratification. You don’t have to read any rules to play video games. The more complexity in a tabletop game, the fewer people will want to play and especially, the fewer who will want to GM.


JeffB, there’s a large college-aged segment who go to game clubs to play tabletop board and card games regularly, but never buy any. Besides a (self-perceived) lack of money, they’re been “trained” in video games to expect games to be free in many cases. I’d say most of them are “naturally” RPGers (the focus on an avatar), but I don’t think they spend on RPGs either.


Lew Pulsipher

 

[TerraDave]

Actually, what was the point again?

There is like a bazillion simpler RPGs out there. Simplification has been a trend for at least 20 years, and there where always simpler games.

RPGs are actually doing well, all kinds of new players are coming in, in a way they have not for years. In fact, thats even in the column!

But I don't think the point was that there are lots of simple games, many free or cheap, for those new players if they want them.

I think there was another point, but neither the OP or long follow up post seems to explain it.

 

[redrick]

This article seems a little out of place with the number 1 RPG currently being D&D 5e, which is definitely simpler than 3e and 4e and probably simpler than AD&D 2e as well. (I've never played 1e, so can't speak to that.) Going through my 2e PHB the other day, I was amazed at how few of the rules in that book I actually used when playing the game, whereas we probably use 90% of the rules in the 5e PHB without much difficulty at our table. Feats, which I think tend to be pretty daunting for first time players, don't come into play until level 4, which takes at least a half dozen sessions if starting from level 1, if not longer. The spell list is a little intimidating, but AD&D had plenty of spells to choose from as well.

There seems to be a desirable balance between complexity and accessibility that the makers of current D&D are going for, and that a lot of players enjoy.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

My Little Pony as 6E test-run

Good article. As people have pointed out, there are some promising simple RPGs out there: Dagger! and One Die come to mind.

I started to sketch out a super-streamlined version of 5e here: https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/my-own-fifth-edition

As a test run for 6e, I think Mike Mearls ought to take WotC's new My Little Pony RPG system, and strip it of its setting, and repackage it as totally complete game--I mean totally complete.

Design goals for this Simply D&D, The Storytelling Game:

•Be able to advertise on the box: "We will never publish a rules expansion for this game. We will only publish Storytelling Adventures and new Storytelling Worlds."
•Explain that the Simply D&D game world is a different version of the D&D Multiverse than the 5E version. In the SD&D Reality, there are only four classes: Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard--all PCs and classed NPCs in the whole Multiverse are represented by those four classes. And only the spells listed in the rulebook actually exist. BECMI officially used this "game reality" concept--see the old DRAGON magazine article: https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/d-d-realities
•Make world-hopping (perhaps via the World Serpent Inn) the default framework for a Simply D&D campaign.
•As one Storytelling World, present the entire D&D Multiverse as a single setting, in a nutshell.
•Make sure the SD&D set covers every single rule or key rule expansion ever published for any addition of D&D--mass combat, underwater, planar. How? By boiling it all down into ultra-streamlined, OD&D-style, hand-wave-based, but "official" rules. Make sure it's all covered: but "covered" could be a single chart, paragraph, or sentence.
•Give conversion guidelines for using Adventures from any edition. The goal is to Adventure, not to buy more rulebooks.
•Quickly release SD&D Worlds for all of Hasbro's key lines:
SD&D Magic: The Gathering, The Storytelling Game
SD&D Transformers, The Storytelling Game
SD&D GI Joe, The Storytelling Game
SD&D Candy Land
SD&D Monopoly. Hey, if you look at all of the spin-offs of Monopoly (Monopoly, Jr. etc) there is a story and setting behind it.
SD&D Clue
SD&D Mr. Potato Head
etc.

And for as many other IPs as feasible.
•Release the rules as an Open Game or Public Domain (Free Culture).
•Open the SD&D Hasbro settings to DM's Guild.

Voila! A blossoming new generation of RPGers.

 

[Jester David]

OTOH, rules light games, while significantly easier in the sense that you can learn the game in a much shorter period of time, are often much, much more difficult to run at the table and the experience will vary much more because of the DM.

All games will vary greatly depending on the DM and their experience at telling a story and managing a table. That's largely independent of the system. A good DM will always be able to make things fun and engaging.

IOW, a more extensive ruleset, run by an average DM will give a better result than a less extensive ruleset run by the same DM. The less extensive ruleset doesn't allow the DM to rely on the system, and makes it that much easier for the DM to make mistakes.

I've played in enough Living Greyhawk and Pathfinder Society games to know that an average or inexperienced DM being given a crunch heavy system is not a good thing, as they do not know the rules, make a lot of mistakes, slow the game down consulting the books, and cannot properly adjudicate at the table.

I'd argue that the Rules Light games are less DM friendly than the rules heavy ones. Sure, you can learn the game faster, but, because so much of the game relies on you, the DM, to make it run at the table, rules light games force DM's to play amateur game designer at the same time as they are trying to run the game.

I don't think being an amateur game designer is always necessary, not in really rules lite games. Medium rules games maybe, as not all actions are designed so you need to make up rules. Really rules lite games tend to be much more storytelling focused, so game design is unnecessary as there are no rules to design.

If playing something like the Tearable RPG (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/202680/Tearable-RPG) there's only really one type of action resolution, so either it applies or it doesn't.

Think of it this way. Which would more likely to be an enjoyable 3 hour session - a 3 hour 5e session with a completely new DM running some module, or a 3 hour session of Dread with a completely new DM? Yup, that Dread game might be fun. It might also be absolutely horrible. Presuming our 5e DM actually follows the rules to a reasonable degree, it's unlikely that his game will go completely wahoonie shaped.

Dread.
Zero hesitation. Dread.

Emphasis added to your post. You add the huge caveat that the rules have to be known. Because you can't follow rules you don't know.
Both games require the DM to tell the story, keep the action moving, describe the setting and situations, and present the NPCs. But with Dread they need to know almost zero rules. They can just focus on the story. In the 5e game, said new DM also has to learn all the 5e rules at the exact same time and answer rules questions. Suddenly there are two points of failure: telling the story and managing the rules. If the DM isn't skilled at either, the game will not be fun.

A crunchy system can be a story crutch, as you can just "play" the mechanics: having combat encounters and relying on the inherent fun of the game system to have a good time. But that presumes some system mastery, otherwise a combat encounter can be too easy or hard. I played in a game with an experienced 2nd Edition DM who was new to 3e and it was a disaster because he had no idea how CR or EL worked. To say nothing of sloooooow combats as the DM tries to figure out what their monsters can do, checks rules, makes poor tactical choices, and the like.


The thing is, people learn to tell stories long before they can play RPGs. My 6yo son knows how to tell a story. New DMs can come into the game with amazing table management and storytelling skills. That's easy.

 

[thzero]

The more complexity in a tabletop game, the fewer people will want to play and especially, the fewer who will want to GM.

So just because people are lazy we need to dumb down a game? Maybe RPGs don't need to be mass-market, maybe they are, and should be, just a niche game. Not everything needs to have mass appeal.

 

[Staccat0]

Certainly too few rules can lead to confusion... that would fall into Einstein's "not simpler" addendum though.

 

[martinlochsen]

Those casual, "lazy" players who don't want to put in any effort can't be GMs in a game using simpler rules either. It takes a great deal of effort to GM no matter what. Playing with teens, who are supposedly more convenience-oriented and less literate than the last generation (I'm not even sure that's true), I've seen almost the opposite of this sometimes. I've talked to a 15 year old's puzzled teacher who tells me that this boy has spent the last couple of years moaning about how much he hates books and how he would never read anything if he wasn't forced to at school, but now suddenly sits poring over this book, reading closely and taking notes, and the book isn't even in his first language. It was the 5e PHB, as you may have guessed. And that's just one example.
Also, I think the reason why boardgames' rules are getting simpler is because they are more enjoyable that way. The designs are more focused and streamlined, making for faster play and more focus on in-game choices rather than rules minutea. At least that's what people seem to be saying in the reviews.
This is a very subjective observation of course, but still... It seems to me that all this "people don't want to make the effort" is the sort of thing that seems intuitively true, or is a sort of truism that people agree to, but it's not necessarily tha way things actually are. People get bored with shallow, easy experiences too, and might want more depth. I don't know.

 

[Xethreau]

I like systems that offer a variety of character options, but not necessarily a vast array of complex moving parts. D&D 5e is simpler than Pathfinder, storytelling is just as robust. FATE Core has robust storytelling and simple mechanics, but people who are uncomfortable with storytelling don't like it as much. I think that is a reaction to the type of player who insists that they want to somehow "win" at RPG.

 

[Mercurius]

It seems like there are two separate, but related issues raised in the article:

One, whether or not complex or simple games are good entry points for new players, in today's context, and
Two, how to expand a game financially.

Those may not be the exact points raised by the article, but I think they are two related issues that can be teased out.

As for the first, I am reminded of something I heard once, that that there is a difference between complex and complicated. The latter is like a nest of wires underneath your desk - it is messy and, hopefully, will eventually be done away with by advancing technologies. Complexity is different, though. The organic systems of nature are complex, but not complicated. They work together, seamlessly, organically. In a way,a complex game system would be one that isn't as much complicated (messy, with lots of fiddly bits) but one that can handle complex situations, through being tightly designed.

As for the second, the basic problem remains the same: you have two general types of D&D players: serious/hardcore ones, who tend to DM and buy tons of stuff, and casual players, who only buy what is necessary - maybe a PHB (and perhaps not even that), a set of dice, and perhaps a miniature. There isn't a lot in-between, just degrees of the former: serious-to-hardcore gamers (and consumers). TSR and WotC have tried different ways to get casual players to buy more, mainly through player options books, the complete handbooks of 2E days, etc. But the problem is that these invariably complicate the game, and lead to edition bloat.

Now WotC has taken a quite different approach to 5E: less is more. The idea has been to produce so few books, that the serious-to-hardcore gamers buy everything. There is probably less of a spectrum than before, and most of us DM types will buy everything that comes out because it is less daunting investment. Think about it: Three books per year is $150 (and that's MSRP, not Amazon), which ends up being about $12 a month. This is affordable to just about everyone, even 12-year old kids.

Now I don't think that WotC necessarily thought, "What is the most we could publish that every serious player would buy everything of?" I think it was more about finding that tipping point, where they weren't going to glut the market, and they could keep a small enough staff to keep overhead low.

But back to the article, I think there is a middle ground where a company (WotC) can be financially successful without making the game overly complicated. In fact, WotC is doing it right now. Their secret? Less is more: produce fewer books, but sell more of them. And don't glut the market or system with countless splats! They've got the right formula, but I think they're also eventually going to need to tweak it, expand just a bit - diversify the approach. This is why it makes sense to do a rules expansion now, or within the next year. One major rules expansion is easy enough to integrate into the game and diversify but not over-complicate. People can say, "Do you play just core rules or advanced?" Or "Do you use Unveiled Esoterica or not?" (Or whatever it will be called).

I think WotC is playing it very smart by being conservative, but at the same time they should be wary of things getting stale and should be prepared to diversify their approach, throw in a rules expansion or theme book (e.g. planes), a new setting, etc.