Elegance and the development of game systems.

[Celebrim]

I would suggest that 'complete' is not 'versimlitude'.

I can come up with a system that is complete.

Rule #1 : Whenever the player makes a proposition that has a chance of failure, flip a coin. If it is 'heads', the proposition succeeds. If not, the proposition fails.

Now we have the heart of a complete system. It can handle anything that we throw at it and provide a means of resolution. We can expand on the base rule infinitely, to describe tanks, dragons, spaceships and fireballs.

The problem with our complete system though is that it will have no versimlitude because there is no correlation between the task at hand and the likelihood of the outcome and we very much expect there to be one. Under our system, we might have rules for jumping:

Jump Rules: The player proposes that he jumps some obstacle. Resolve using rule #1 .

But under this system, the player is equally likely to jump a 2' puddle and the Atlantic Ocean. To get some versimlitude, so that the jump rules give us something like the expected outcome, we might write 'Advanced Jump Rules'

Advanced Jump Rules: The player proposes that he jumps some obstacle. If the distance is less than his height, he succeeds. If the distance is more than than twice his height, he fails. Otherwise, resolve using rule #1 .

This is an improvement in terms of versimlitude, but it comes at the cost of elegance for now we must begin tracking a new attribute ('height') and pretty soon if we proceed along this path we will find ourselves tracking all sorts of things. Moreover our advanced rules will not share nearly as much in common as our basic rules did (which all said basically, 'see rule #1 ') and so we are very much less likely to remember the particulars of them off the top of our head.

My absolute favorite RPG subsystem is the experience rules for the original Chaosium Call of Cthullu. Taken by itself, it's an absolute masterpeice of design that is at the same time both elegant, complete, and provides a very degree of versimlitude. It also character progression in any number of skills using a very simple mechanic that has the very elegant and 'realistic' attribute of only allowing progression in those skills that the character has actually used. The system as a whole may be inelegant and some of the other subsystems (thrown weapons, for example) are really ugly from a realism standpoint (its easy to do more damage with certain thrown weapons than with high caliber hand guns), but the experience system itself ought to be front in center in the RPG design hall of fame.

My problem with 4e is that it is neither elegant, nor complete, nor does it provide a lot of versimlitude. What the 4e designers seem to have been going for is something that I think has hitherto seldom been considered in RPG design - depth. This is the reason that to me it doesn't feel very much like an RPG because its salient features aren't the things that have marked RPG design in the past, but the sort of things that have marked wargame and board game design. It's undoubtable an RPG, but its definately not 'your father's RPG'.

 

[pawsplay]

I would suggest that 'complete' is not 'versimlitude'.

I can come up with a system that is complete.

Now we have the heart of a complete system. It can handle anything that we throw at it and provide a means of resolution. We can expand on the base rule infinitely, to describe tanks, dragons, spaceships and fireballs.

Indeed. And simply adding more rules won't escape the basic problem.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/pawsplay/1433-hat-d02.html

The new rules must actually make the simulated space smaller rather than larger if you want resolution to become faster and more discrete rather than more complicated and generalized. That is why there is no such thing as a truly universal game; emphasis is necessary and neglect is inevitible. But a game can still be complete if it gives you an elegant solution for what to do when you go "off the map."

 

[Ariosto]

When the focus is more on the "role-playing" aspect than on the "game" aspect (in terms of formal rules) as an object of interest in itself, RPG design comes down to providing tools for answering the question,

"How likely is outcome X?"

The original D&D game left a lot strictly up to the DM, defining things more in areas of particular interest. That's an example of how focus can be a characteristic of elegance; an elegant design is streamlined by cutting away irrelevancies and trivia in terms of the particular design goals. D&D was a game "about" certain things and not others, and not even all of those things were thought to require special rules.

The BRP system provides a standard basic set of characteristics (essentially the D&D set, with Power in place of Wisdom and the addition of Size). CoC adds Education, and derives basic Sanity from Power. Then there are skills with % ratings.

All that has familiar echoes in d20 System, but a lot more is laid on top. First, there's the business of skill points (and classes and levels and feats) turning the rating of skills into a whole sub-game. A key feature is how rigidly it is a "zero-sum" game: you can have this, but only by giving up that.

Then, there's all the all the apparatus of modifiers and procedures for a great many specific situations. There's a line in at least one edition of CoC about not needing to look up a "dropped oil lamp table" because there isn't one. In the old RPG design paradigm, such "incompleteness" is often seen as a good thing! The GM's judgment and ability to improvise is considered a key asset of the game form.

There's a curious case in Castles & Crusades, which slaps of coat of d20 System paint on old D&D. The whitewash is really just an illusion, though, of giving players precisely predefined probabilities. In the end, it's really left to the referee to apply ad hoc situational bonuses and penalties and thus determine the effective chance.

 

[MerricB]

When the focus is more on the "role-playing" aspect than on the "game" aspect (in terms of formal rules) as an object of interest in itself, RPG design comes down to providing tools for answering the question,

"How likely is outcome X?"

The original D&D game left a lot strictly up to the DM, defining things more in areas of particular interest. That's an example of how focus can be a characteristic of elegance; an elegant design is streamlined by cutting away irrelevancies and trivia in terms of the particular design goals. D&D was a game "about" certain things and not others, and not even all of those things were thought to require special rules.

Nicely stated. (XP for you!)

One of the things that is interesting about game design is that the focus in the rules may not directly relate to the focus in game play! Consider Chinatown, where the focus in game is on the trading, but the focus in the rules is on everything around it!

So, although the focus in the rules for D&D is mostly on combat, it does not necessarily follow from such that the focus of a D&D game is on combat (although it often is!) This is as opposed to a game like BattleTech, where the focus on combat rules is also matched by the game being primarily about combat.

The goal of the game, the focus of the rules: there are additional elements of game design and development to consider.

Cheers!

 

[Primal]

Interesting... yet I find this discussion of 4e and rules a little misleading. I mean honestly, everytime you are looking at a powercard... you are referencing and looking up a specific rule with alot of minutae (this has actually made me wonder, with the ever increasing aray of powers, whether 4e actually has more rules than 3e did at this point in it's lifecycle).

I honestly feel like the only thing that makes this games rules even remotely elegant is that the rules are usually on a card for easy reference. IMO, a test of 4e's rules elegance (in the way I feel you are using it here Merrick) would be how easy is it to play the game without referencing the rules at all (on cards or in the actual books).

However, the 4E power format actually *is*, in my opinion, more elegant than spell or feat descriptions in any other edition of the game. The keywords, plus trigger and effect entries explicitly define what happens (damage + effects), when it can be used, which feats apply, and so on. For example, if a power has keywords 'Fire, Weapon, Reliable', it already pretty much tells me how it works, and I know that my feat saying "You gain +2 to damage rolls with any power with the keyword 'Fire' in it" applies to this power (compare this to the half-hearted attempts at using keywords in the previous editions, e.g. 'Negative Energy' or 'Death' spells). I think WoTC should be applauded for the work done on power formatting and consistent, exact wording (in fact, the powers read like bibliographic records to me).

While I personally prefer PF RPG over 4E, I'm kind of frustrated with the amount of vague wording in the rules (just take a look at the Paizo boards; they will have their hands full with errata and FAQ entries). PF RPG does not even define action types for some of the feats (e.g. Spring Attack, Vital Strike and so on), even if this issue was brought up already during the playtest process.

 

[wedgeski]

I remember my brief flirtation with ASL at Uni. Normally I strongly dislike such heavily ruled battlefield simulacra, but the guy I played with (a pro) regularly destroyed me with ease and I must say, the prospect of drowning myself in that rule-book, honing my tactical skills, and giving him an actual challenge was an enticing prospect. Unfortunately it didn't really happen, what with all the actual *work* involved in getting a degree and all.

These days I wouldn't even contemplate mastering such a complex set of rules, although I might enjoy a 'lite' version of the game once in a while. Contemporary board games such as Vinci are right on my sweet spot: stop playing for a few months and you will lose, but it only takes a game or two to get yourself right back into contention.

By the end of the 3.5 era, we were playing quite irregularly (once every couple of months) and every single time I got back behind the screen, I felt like a rank amateur (this was the inspiration for my blog, orginally). With 4E, a few weeks' break in the action only strips the most esoteric of rules from our minds, allowing the campaign to pick up where it left off at almost full speed, and this is definitely a point in its favour as far as I'm concerned.

 

[MerricB]

I remember my brief flirtation with ASL at Uni. Normally I strongly dislike such heavily ruled battlefield simulacra, but the guy I played with (a pro) regularly destroyed me with ease and I must say, the prospect of drowning myself in that rule-book, honing my tactical skills, and giving him an actual challenge was an enticing prospect. Unfortunately it didn't really happen, what with all the actual *work* involved in getting a degree and all.

These days I wouldn't even contemplate mastering such a complex set of rules, although I might enjoy a 'lite' version of the game once in a while. Contemporary board games such as Vinci are right on my sweet spot: stop playing for a few months and you will lose, but it only takes a game or two to get yourself right back into contention.

I wouldn't have gotten into ASL at all, but they produced three Starter Kits which gradually introduced me to the rules.

But I play a wide range of boardgames (and very few different RPGs...)

Cheers!

 

[Umbran]

In the realm of the sciences - mathematics and physics, specifically - there is a concept to "elegance" that is a bit difficult to define. You know it when you see it, but it roughly goes, "beauty and simplicity in basic formulation".

Maxwell's Equations, Schrödinger's Equation, Newton's Laws of Motion, are all of the "elegant" class. They have symmetries, and say things such that some fundamental basic truths just flow out of them. If you pick up Maxwell's equations, the wave nature of light just sort of falls into your lap with no work to speak of

Are they complete? Well, each of them is complete at what it sets out to do, yes. Newton's laws fully cover the motion of objects in flat, non-relativistic space, for example. And they're all pretty clear on what realms they do cover.

Are they flexible? Well, here's where we learn something important - "elegance" does not mean, "is always easy to use in practice". Newton's laws of motion are complete, but if you try to solve the three-body gravitational problem (like, three planets in orbit around one another) the math is generally insoluble. And any grad student that has tried to derive the electric potential field around an array of current-carrying wires can tell you that in practice the math is a vicious critter.

I think this is carried out into other realms. A woman may have a beautiful, elegant gown. As soon as I say that, though, you know I am talking about a dress that she would not wear to work in the garden, cook dinner in, or to swing-dance. Elegance in no way implies practicality or functionality. Often quite the opposite is true. Typically, the way to get solid, day to day functionality out of a thing is to veer away from elegance.

As an aside - To my my way of thinking, appeals to DM fiat are not elegant. That's like the physicist writing, "and then a miracle occurs," on the blackboard. Maybe what happens in that section is smooth, and maybe it isn't - whatever it is, it certainly isn't attributable to merits of the system.

 

[ggroy]

In the realm of the sciences - mathematics and physics, specifically - there is a concept to "elegance" that is a bit difficult to define. You know it when you see it, but it roughly goes, "beauty and simplicity in basic formulation".

The extreme extrapolation of the notion of "elegance" is in unified field theories, such as string theory. As time went on, the smartest people in the world have found out that string theory is very messy and inelegant.

 

[TerraDave]

Good stuff.

I wonder if we are missing a dimension? (beyond Depth, just added).

Hero/Champions is potentially a very complete, elegant, and flexible game.
3E also does seem to be more complete, elegant, and flexible then 4E.

But I am not looking to play either any time soon.

CoC has some truly elegant mechanics, and can feel quite complete and flexible. A huge advnance for its time. But its not perfect: it really only works for certain types of campaings and scenarios, the % skill system doesn't work that well for variable challenges (though I like it) and as noted it does have some pretty quirky combat rules (which I think we normally ignore), You could even start the big argument that the d20 version, in part by cleaning up combat, adding more options, etc, comes closer to completeness and elegence.

But I am always up for a game of (BRP) CoC.

Why? It really works in play. The play experience is a little narrow, but very successfull.

This playability is why I like 4E over past editions. I can critique the game all day long in my head (or online). It doesn't feel as elegant, complete, or flexible as past editions. But it just seems to do better what we where trying to do before. I am not sure if this can be embeded in these other concepts, or is something else.