Design approachs.

[triqui]

The problem with your argument is that not one single example from the article being linked to in the OP would qualify for your definition of "subtractive design". Whether you're talking about Portal, Ico, or the iPod, none of them subtracted elements without adding anything new to the equation.

Disagree. Ico removed stages, and left only the castle, without adding anything else into the mix. Portal removed the weapons for the characters, and most of the furniture, without adding a replacement. Apple subtracted the floppy disk, without adding nothing for it.

Yes, maybe they added *other* things, but not as replacements of what they removed. While 3e did not remove the "thief skills", just streamlined them, and the non-weapon proficiencies, into the skill system under a single umbrella. That's Consistency, as per the definition I provided, and not Subtraction.

Repeating myself: Thac0 becoming Base Attack is streamlining, and a Consistent Rule, but not Subtraction design. Eliminating the need to roll to attack, and making damage the only random roll, would be Subtraction Design.

In the same sense, removing one single chair from your barrock style hall becouse it has a broken leg does not make your house minimalist.

 

[RSKennan]

In that Einstein Quote, I'd have placed the emphasis on the "but not simpler" part. The proof of E=mc2 is pages and pages of text that say exactly the same thing, the long way. I think Einstein may have been referring to elegance, which spins the rest of that article in the direction of the argument I and others have been making. I think that minimalist is a subset of the concept, not the superset.

E=mc2 is not minimalist. He cuts nothing out of his idea. It just says a whole hell of a lot in an equation that fits on a T-shirt. Power first, then simplicity... assuming the author was saying what the words he used mean in that particular order.

There are a lot of examples. The minimalist ones don't paint the picture that all of them together do. Had he been extolling minimalism, wouldn't he have given fewer examples?

 

[RSKennan]

Furthermore, combining functionality is Subtractive design according the article.

Google has always had a simple elegance in its products, and the Google Chrome web browser is a great example of subtracting the debris that other browsers have. Why do we need two different fields at the top of a browser (one to search the web, one for the URLs) when they could be combined into one? Google Chrome does this to save space and reduce clutter. There is no chance of confusing the two uses in one field anyway, because search terms have spaces between them while URLs have things like “.com” in them.

 

[Guest 85555]

I think we are getting a little off track with these semantic points. And I do think this is an interesting topic the OP started. What I am really interested in here are how different people approach designing a role playing game.

Personally what approach I take, depends on what my goals are. For example, our game Terror Network is rules light across the board because our aim was a gritty light weight system that fades into the background and facilitates naturalistic (mundane) modern RPG play. To the OPs point about subtraction, we realized in this case attributes weren't something we really needed, so we made everything in the game a skill (and our skill list for TN was about 7 groups of 6 skills each (give or take a couple in each category). That does sound like quite a bit, but there wasn't much else to track aside from wounds and something called clout. Because TN was a counter terrorism game we included some mechanics for interacting with Federal Agencies (called mandates, which allowed PCs to call on resources from within their agency by making a single roll--the Clout Roll).

Recently we started work on a wild west game. This time, we wanted a gritty lightweight system that fades in the background, that supports colorful and in depth characters. So we made the Mechanics of actual play rules light, but created what I would call a rules medium-heavy character creation system. We are still working out the kinks, and haven't yet achieved our aim. But I think this gives others on the board here a sense of how I approach the design process.

 

[RSKennan]

Sorry for pressing the point so hard, but I'm interested in this discussion, and wanted to make sure it wasn't narrowed beyond the point where there would be something to talk about. I may have been overzealous.

Both of your games sound interesting. The skill-centric system in particular.

I might post something about my own system later.

 

[Guest 85555]

Sorry for pressing the point so hard, but I'm interested in this discussion, and wanted to make sure it wasn't narrowed beyond the point where there would be something to talk about. I may have been overzealous.

Both of your games sound interesting. The skill-centric system in particular.

I might post something about my own system later.

I think we are all just passionate about design

I would love to hear about your game. Definitely post something when you are ready.

 

[triqui]

I don't think removing the search box in a browser could equate to using same roll for climbing and craft:armor in 3e instead of two systems in 2e. But I agree we have discussed quite a lot in semantics so far.

Good stuff about your games. I'd be interested about how you do to set your goals for a given game. For example, did you made a list of skills, then started to split them in groups? Or at contrary, you decided several broad sets of skills, then defined which skills to use in each?

 

[Guest 85555]

Good stuff about your games. I'd be interested about how you do to set your goals for a given game. For example, did you made a list of skills, then started to split them in groups? Or at contrary, you decided several broad sets of skills, then defined which skills to use in each?

Usually I think about the kind of game I want to make in flavor terms. With TN the concept was gritty, mundane, real-world stuff, but light enough that you could focus on the characters, drama and RP without having to master a complicated system or look things up too much. So we made a list of all the things counter terrorism agents would need to be able to do, then we created our skill list from there. For example we had on our list that agents needed to be able to re-construct crime scenes, analyze evidence, build criminal profiles. These all became one skill: Forensics. In each group we were also aiming for 6 skills; but were willing to violate this rule if need be (which i think was important). But we kind of developed the skill groups and the skills themselves organically all at once. It just became clear as we made the list that there were about 7 skill groups.

In the end I think we hit a nice middle ground. Not too many skills, but not too few. For groups we settled on Combat, Defense, Physical, Mental, Specialist, Vehicle and Knowledge. In later games we eliminated vehicle and brought those skills into the Physical group.

However I worked on a game many years ago where our goal was to streamline as much as humanly possible, and to have the whole game governed by a simple easy to remember set of guidelines that apply to every situation. In that game we had a total of 6 Combat Skills and 6 Non Combat Skills, with four attributes. It was much leaner and it worked well for what we wanted to achieve. In that case we took a more mechanical path to our skill selection. We knew each skill would be fed by two attributes (so your final score was Skill Rank+Attribute 1+Attribute 2. In the end we knew this meant 12 combinations, so 12 skills.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

...When we set out to make a game, and I say let's streamline, I mean reduce/simplify for efficiency and elegance. However I guess where I diverge from the article is I think the overall goal shouldn't be to remove, but to achieve an efficient and workable design. I can see it becoming reductionism for reductionism's sake. At a certain point you have to be creating things as well.

I agree with you and think the article's example is most certainly at the end of the spectrum. It is like the games creation is a pure exercise in subtractive design as much as it is concerned with an eventual product. All interesting stuff nevertheless.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[triqui]

I agree with you and think the article's example is most certainly at the end of the spectrum. It is like the games creation is a pure exercise in subtractive design as much as it is concerned with an eventual product. All interesting stuff nevertheless.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

Yep, the article is quite unconventional. The author however does not say you should design every game like that. Otherwise all games would look like Portal

which leads to the question: which other methods there are? Is there an Additive Design? Does someone knows a good article about Agile Development, Exception Based Design, Modular design or theory of Game Balance?

Game Theorycrafting is a cool topic. Rule of Consistency, for example, made a huge diference in my mind once I knew the theory about it. Now when I see a game wih different mechanics for similar things, say combat and mass troop combat, I always think "this is a waste" or "this could be solved sooo much more elegantly..."