Elegance and the development of game systems.

[Dausuul]

I think this may have brought almost all my problems with 4E into focus.

4E is the antithesis of elegance. It's streamlined and simpler than 3E, but elegance it has not at all. It has weird, nonintuitive mechanics sticking out all over the place; healing surges, magic item dailies, the masterwork armor rules, powers that stick a random bunch of effects together without rhyme or reason, class features such as Prime Shot which everybody forgets because they make no sense, and so on and on.

To be elegant, a system must fit seamlessly together, every element making intuitive sense. OD&D was extremely inelegant. 1E was better, but not much. BECMI managed a fair degree of elegance and so did 2E.

3E as a written ruleset was extremely elegant - with a few exceptions such as grappling, all the mechanics fit the grand aesthetic, and they were easy in principle to understand - but it was also massively cumbersome in play. Actually applying those well-crafted, elegant rules was a nightmare.

4E got rid of 3E's cumbersomeness, but threw out the elegance along with it. I think another 6-12 months of polishing, refining, and hammering down of proud nails would have helped a lot. As it is, the whole system feels very jury-rigged to me.

 

[Glyfair]

As a follow-up note, I'd like to emphasize that I'm not convinced that "elegance" and "completeness" are entirely opposed, but there are certain games where having one makes it very hard to have the other!

In my opinion, Heroquest comes close to be elegant and complete. I haven't seen the latest version, but it seems like it is as close as you are likely to get in an RPG.

There is a strong GM component, of course. Since players can have any "skill" (and there is no difference between skills and "stats"), the GM does need to decide how appropriate a given skill is for a challenge. "Confuse dumb creature" is very appropriate for fighting a dimwitted ogre, but how about "sewing?" Of course, with superheroic levels of sewing you can be effective with severe penalties by sewing your opponent's clothes together, or render him unable to breathe by sewing his mouth, etc. shut.

Every single challenge uses the same basic system. It only fails at elegance when you get to magic (because every fantasy system needs to have a "magic system" to add flavor in the system).

 

[MerricB]

Throwing out an additional thought: there's also a big difference between elegance in play and elegance in preparation.

Do I think 4E is an elegant set of rules? Not really. As Dausuul mentions, there are some astonishingly inelegant rules there. My personal peeve is the fighter's challenge abilities, which turned the fighter from the class people could play first when they didn't know the game into one of the most difficult to play correctly! (The ranger is much easier!)

I would actually say that a lot of the inelegance in 4e sits on the player's side of things, by the way.

However, elegance means different things to different people. Look at Mark Rosewater's column (I've given the link above): I think it's both elegant and inelegant at the same time!

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

In my opinion, Heroquest comes close to be elegant and complete. I haven't seen the latest version, but it seems like it is as close as you are likely to get in an RPG.

There is a strong GM component, of course. Since players can have any "skill" (and there is no difference between skills and "stats"), the GM does need to decide how appropriate a given skill is for a challenge. "Confuse dumb creature" is very appropriate for fighting a dimwitted ogre, but how about "sewing?" Of course, with superheroic levels of sewing you can be effective with severe penalties by sewing your opponent's clothes together, or render him unable to breathe by sewing his mouth, etc. shut.

Every single challenge uses the same basic system. It only fails at elegance when you get to magic (because every fantasy system needs to have a "magic system" to add flavor in the system).

And what does "complete" mean?

Does it imply verisimilitude? Reality? Or just being able to attempt anything and resolve whether the attempt succeeds?

Cheers!

 

[Glyfair]

To be elegant, a system must fit seamlessly together, every element making intuitive sense.

That's not typically a direct requirement of elegance in this sense. An elegant system is supposed to be simple and effective. Intuitive isn't necessary to be elegant.

Now, having a system be intuitive is desirable in RPGs. However, I find that many RPGs that put a lot of weight on being "intuitive" fail at being either "simple" or being systems.

 

[pawsplay]

Basic D&D is not always intuitive, but it's certainly both complete and elegant. The OP did not even mention it, but it is a well-massaged, essentially simple game that mostly gets out of the way. It doesn't do quite everything AD&D does, but it comes close, and it provides general rules for handling just about anything. The OP, by saying OD&D went straight to Greyhawk and then on to ever greater complexity is missing an important and influential part of D&D history.

 

[Ariosto]

What does "elegance" mean?

In the RPG field, it first brings to my mind Call of Cthulhu. The BRP core really is a "system" to my mind -- indeed the first true RPG system. That core involves only a few basic species of things, and they work together pretty darned smoothly even as one adds particular examples. The level of detail expresses and inspires a confident sense of proportion and priority. There are touches of brilliance, as in having dice "do the math" for range modifiers (which are thus proportional rather than absolute).

Above all, it is a very effective harmonization of game mechanics and subject matter.

 

[MerricB]

Basic D&D is not always intuitive, but it's certainly both complete and elegant. The OP did not even mention it, but it is a well-massaged, essentially simple game that mostly gets out of the way. It doesn't do quite everything AD&D does, but it comes close, and it provides general rules for handling just about anything. The OP, by saying OD&D went straight to Greyhawk and then on to ever greater complexity is missing an important and influential part of D&D history.

"The trouble with trying to design a system that will handle anything is that, along the way, you have to make adjustments to cover things that you didn't think of originally. One of my favourite examples of this is in the introduction of monster intelligence scores to BECM D&D. You see, there's one spell that pays attention to how intelligent the creature is. (Maze, I think). Unfortunately, monsters in BECM didn't have those scores, so one of the BECM rulebooks (Companion? Master?) has a list of intelligence scores of every previously printed monster just to make one spell now function. Yes, the system is now more complete, but at a great loss of elegance." - original post.

Personally, I think that the Moldvay/Cook version of D&D is pretty much the most elegant the game has ever been. I delight in that version.

When you get to Mentzer BECM D&D, by the time of Companion and (especially) Master, the elegance is being dissipated by a lot of wonky add-ons, such as the Weapon Mastery system.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

What does "elegance" mean?

In the RPG field, it first brings to my mind Call of Cthulhu. The BRP core really is a "system" to my mind -- indeed the first true RPG system. That core involves only a few basic species of things, and they work together pretty darned smoothly even as one adds particular examples. The level of detail expresses and inspires a confident sense of proportion and priority. There are touches of brilliance, as in having dice "do the math" for range modifiers (which are thus proportional rather than absolute).

Above all, it is a very effective harmonization of game mechanics and subject matter.

It's a great system; alas, I've never DMed it, so I don't know it enough to properly comment on it!

Cheers!

 

[pawsplay]

"The trouble with trying to design a system that will handle anything is that, along the way, you have to make adjustments to cover things that you didn't think of originally. One of my favourite examples of this is in the introduction of monster intelligence scores to BECM D&D. You see, there's one spell that pays attention to how intelligent the creature is. (Maze, I think). Unfortunately, monsters in BECM didn't have those scores, so one of the BECM rulebooks (Companion? Master?) has a list of intelligence scores of every previously printed monster just to make one spell now function. Yes, the system is now more complete, but at a great loss of elegance." - original post.

Personally, I think that the Moldvay/Cook version of D&D is pretty much the most elegant the game has ever been. I delight in that version.

When you get to Mentzer BECM D&D, by the time of Companion and (especially) Master, the elegance is being dissipated by a lot of wonky add-ons, such as the Weapon Mastery system.

Cheers!

Sorry, I missed that in my first read. Well, it must have been the Expert set that introduced intelligence, because my Red Box Basic set already has it. Page 14 of the DMR lists the intelligence of all possible targets of the charm person spell. Plus, since the categories are low, average, or high intelligence, it's pretty easy to peg any given monster as one of those categories. An authoritative list is helpful, but not necessary, and certainly not intrusive. The system was already complete, and since monster Intelligence is not much used, you are free to ignore the list in the name of elegance.

Weapon mastery rules never bothered me. We rarely played high level games, but when it did come up, it involved little more than looking at a chart. Bottom line: without special proficiencies, characters did basic damage anyway.