I used to think that the less comprehensive the rules were to a game system, the better it was. I figured if you could write a good role-playing game in 10 pages instead of a thousand then you had a winner on your hands. To my mind, rules just cluttered up the game system and got in the way of the real fun and role-playing. I also figured that the more ground those sparse rules could cover, the better. Why create just a fantasy role-playing game in ten pages when you could instead create a universal, multi-genre role-playing game in ten pages?
Over the years, my opinion has changed. I still dream of creating a very compact game system with the punch of a much larger set of rules. I think everyone dreams of improving and condensing their favorite games. However, I’m not so opposed to comprehensiveness as I once was. I’d rather have a few redundant pages in a game system than an obvious hole in the rules. I used to view comprehensiveness as a load of useless blather taking up page space. I now view it as absolutely essential material for any game system. If you can include all your essential material in only ten pages, that’s awesome. I also don’t mind a focused game system as much as I used to. I’d prefer a game with a strong setting and sound rules to one that attempts to do everything and ends up doing nothing. It’s cool to have a game system which can do anything, but I’d rather have one with a narrow focus which excels at that focus.
The danger in comprehensiveness is getting too long-winded. It might seem like a great idea to have hundreds of rules to cover everything that could ever possibly happen in the game, but this kind of thing can easily be taken too far. One obvious sign that you’re covering too many bases is when the players start unconsciously skipping segments of your rules. When they ignore half of character creation, or skip 3 steps in their combat round; you should instantly know that something’s up. Chances are the subsystem is too cluttered to be useful to them. You’ll either have to streamline it, or cut out useless elements as best as you can.
The other thing to consider is how ‘game’ orientated your system is. If your game system is made to be about pure role-playing it probably won’t need as many rules as a highly competitive game covering all the nitpicky stuff. Most players approach an RPG from a very competitive slant. They want to build a powerful character, and they want to build it within the rules. They also want to know what they can do to ‘win’ within the rules, as far as winning goes in RPGs. New players especially want to know exactly what they can do. Firm and comprehensive rules on character creation, abilities, and potential acquisitions are almost a must. Players like to know that x ability will do y to z villain. They also like to know that if they get x amount of gold or experience points they can level up or purchase y. In a traditionally very vague form of game, this gives them something firm to grasp onto like a piece of wood in a shipwreck out at sea. No matter how crazy, magical, and bizarre the rest of the game gets—they can always focus on attaining their next goal and they know just how far away they are from that goal. For example, say your game master says you have an adventure to do. You ask what you have to do. He just shrugs his shoulders and says, “Whatever.” Does this inspire you to undertake the quest? On the other hand, what if he said, “Capture the evil sorcerer and save the princess to achieve victory.” Yes, it’s terribly cliché and your character would have no way of knowing the information. However, isn’t it something you could potentially sink your teeth into? Having vague character creation and advancement rules in your game system can be a lot like telling your players, “Just bumble along and it’ll sort of work out. Don’t worry.” If you’re a good enough GM, they’ll take you for your word and go along with it. However, they’ll almost always lose that added competitive energy most good players bring to the table.
One of the neat things RPGs have had in the past were incredibly crunchy rules combined with the obvious unpredictability of having a GM who could pretty much do whatever he wanted to. On the one hand you had every aspect of your character spelled out to the letter complete with massive charts of numbers, and on the other hand the GM could—at any time—throw the book out the window and hit your party with anything he fancied whether it was in the rules or not. You could run into a 20th level opponent at first level, or the GM could make up something absolutely crazy and outside the scope of all the rules. Dealing with this craziness was always a large part of the fun. In the background, you always had your high strength score, pile of gold, and hit points. Most of the time you knew pretty much where you stood in the scheme of things with numbers.
One great contradiction was the fact that if you stuck too closely to the rules you would almost always end up with a messed up campaign. Either all the party would die, or they would become way too rich and unbalanced with powerful magic items. Playing everything by the numbers seems like a sure way to wreck a good RPG. I guess this could be where I got the idea that having too many rules was a bad thing. If following all the rules to the letter was going to ruin your game, why not exclude them and assume all your customers were going to run their games ‘properly’ without the rules. The problem is, the rules give you a reference point to start from. The rules give everyone a good idea of where they stand and give new GMs something to go with when they’re starting out. After a few years, they’ll probably change a couple things which don’t work for them, but in general the rules are still used. A few of us ‘really’ mess up the rules, but I still reckon having them there in the first place is a good idea.
How much is too comprehensive? How much is too vague? I like to try and include at least some rules on all of the basics which crop up in the game and make sure there are very firm rules concerning combat and character creation and powers. As a player, even I like to know what exactly my character can do. After that, I wait to see what’s missing in the rules when something occurs in play. Anything that happens over and over again probably deserves at least a token rule to address it. After that, it becomes more a matter of taste and playability. The tighter and more specific the rules, the better. However, at any point that the rules become confusing, waste time, or kill the fun of the game—it’s usually time to step back and ask yourself if they really need to be there or to be that complicated. Since the dawn of role-playing games, designers have been trying to create a perfectly balanced game system. I’m not sure if that’s even achievable, but it’s something almost everyone tries to do. I think balance is great, but not at the expense of fun. Even highly balanced RPGs tend to have loopholes which can be exploited. As long as you can keep the element of fun, you can make your game as balanced as you want. I’ve seen game systems where all the classes have identical bonuses and modifiers for the sake of balance and all their powers do almost the same thing with different special effects. This might be greatly balanced, but it’s extremely frustrating to run into as a player. I’d rather have a little imbalance and a lot of different flavor in a game.
While I like comprehensiveness, I also know that a game which is too long-winded can quickly lose its appeal. I’ve been interested in a number of games over the years which just turned out to be way too complicated and long-winded to bother trying out. In that time it’d take to explain the rules to a new player, we could be done creating character sheets for another system. This applies especially to games where I can’t see the purpose of the rule, let alone how complicated it is. If there’s a good game system with a couple funny but simple rules, I’ll probably try it out. If there’s a good game system with dozens of rules which take forever to understand and make no sense to me—I’m going to have a hard time trying it out. Sometimes I’ll even hate a rule or two in a game system, but it’ll be so simple and clear that I’ll try it out anyway just to see if I like it. Obvious and broken is usually better than convoluted and broken. If everyone agrees with all of your rules 100% of the time, it probably won’t matter how complicated or simple they are.
A simple test is to imagine teaching the basics of the game to a relative or friend who has no clue what role-playing games are. Would you be hesitant to do so, or sure that the basics make enough sense that they could grasp the game quickly? If your game is too vague, you’ll probably be worried they won’t ‘get it’. If your game is too complicated, you’ll probably be worried you won’t have the time to explain it to them ‘properly’. If you’re in the sweet spot, you’ve probably already tried to get them to play it, but they turned you down because they think you’re crazy.
Remember, half the battle is just explaining your cool game idea properly. People who never figure out how to play your game won’t be able to enjoy it. There are many great ideas out there, but only a few people willing to put in the work to bring them to light.
Over the years, my opinion has changed. I still dream of creating a very compact game system with the punch of a much larger set of rules. I think everyone dreams of improving and condensing their favorite games. However, I’m not so opposed to comprehensiveness as I once was. I’d rather have a few redundant pages in a game system than an obvious hole in the rules. I used to view comprehensiveness as a load of useless blather taking up page space. I now view it as absolutely essential material for any game system. If you can include all your essential material in only ten pages, that’s awesome. I also don’t mind a focused game system as much as I used to. I’d prefer a game with a strong setting and sound rules to one that attempts to do everything and ends up doing nothing. It’s cool to have a game system which can do anything, but I’d rather have one with a narrow focus which excels at that focus.
The danger in comprehensiveness is getting too long-winded. It might seem like a great idea to have hundreds of rules to cover everything that could ever possibly happen in the game, but this kind of thing can easily be taken too far. One obvious sign that you’re covering too many bases is when the players start unconsciously skipping segments of your rules. When they ignore half of character creation, or skip 3 steps in their combat round; you should instantly know that something’s up. Chances are the subsystem is too cluttered to be useful to them. You’ll either have to streamline it, or cut out useless elements as best as you can.
The other thing to consider is how ‘game’ orientated your system is. If your game system is made to be about pure role-playing it probably won’t need as many rules as a highly competitive game covering all the nitpicky stuff. Most players approach an RPG from a very competitive slant. They want to build a powerful character, and they want to build it within the rules. They also want to know what they can do to ‘win’ within the rules, as far as winning goes in RPGs. New players especially want to know exactly what they can do. Firm and comprehensive rules on character creation, abilities, and potential acquisitions are almost a must. Players like to know that x ability will do y to z villain. They also like to know that if they get x amount of gold or experience points they can level up or purchase y. In a traditionally very vague form of game, this gives them something firm to grasp onto like a piece of wood in a shipwreck out at sea. No matter how crazy, magical, and bizarre the rest of the game gets—they can always focus on attaining their next goal and they know just how far away they are from that goal. For example, say your game master says you have an adventure to do. You ask what you have to do. He just shrugs his shoulders and says, “Whatever.” Does this inspire you to undertake the quest? On the other hand, what if he said, “Capture the evil sorcerer and save the princess to achieve victory.” Yes, it’s terribly cliché and your character would have no way of knowing the information. However, isn’t it something you could potentially sink your teeth into? Having vague character creation and advancement rules in your game system can be a lot like telling your players, “Just bumble along and it’ll sort of work out. Don’t worry.” If you’re a good enough GM, they’ll take you for your word and go along with it. However, they’ll almost always lose that added competitive energy most good players bring to the table.
One of the neat things RPGs have had in the past were incredibly crunchy rules combined with the obvious unpredictability of having a GM who could pretty much do whatever he wanted to. On the one hand you had every aspect of your character spelled out to the letter complete with massive charts of numbers, and on the other hand the GM could—at any time—throw the book out the window and hit your party with anything he fancied whether it was in the rules or not. You could run into a 20th level opponent at first level, or the GM could make up something absolutely crazy and outside the scope of all the rules. Dealing with this craziness was always a large part of the fun. In the background, you always had your high strength score, pile of gold, and hit points. Most of the time you knew pretty much where you stood in the scheme of things with numbers.
One great contradiction was the fact that if you stuck too closely to the rules you would almost always end up with a messed up campaign. Either all the party would die, or they would become way too rich and unbalanced with powerful magic items. Playing everything by the numbers seems like a sure way to wreck a good RPG. I guess this could be where I got the idea that having too many rules was a bad thing. If following all the rules to the letter was going to ruin your game, why not exclude them and assume all your customers were going to run their games ‘properly’ without the rules. The problem is, the rules give you a reference point to start from. The rules give everyone a good idea of where they stand and give new GMs something to go with when they’re starting out. After a few years, they’ll probably change a couple things which don’t work for them, but in general the rules are still used. A few of us ‘really’ mess up the rules, but I still reckon having them there in the first place is a good idea.
How much is too comprehensive? How much is too vague? I like to try and include at least some rules on all of the basics which crop up in the game and make sure there are very firm rules concerning combat and character creation and powers. As a player, even I like to know what exactly my character can do. After that, I wait to see what’s missing in the rules when something occurs in play. Anything that happens over and over again probably deserves at least a token rule to address it. After that, it becomes more a matter of taste and playability. The tighter and more specific the rules, the better. However, at any point that the rules become confusing, waste time, or kill the fun of the game—it’s usually time to step back and ask yourself if they really need to be there or to be that complicated. Since the dawn of role-playing games, designers have been trying to create a perfectly balanced game system. I’m not sure if that’s even achievable, but it’s something almost everyone tries to do. I think balance is great, but not at the expense of fun. Even highly balanced RPGs tend to have loopholes which can be exploited. As long as you can keep the element of fun, you can make your game as balanced as you want. I’ve seen game systems where all the classes have identical bonuses and modifiers for the sake of balance and all their powers do almost the same thing with different special effects. This might be greatly balanced, but it’s extremely frustrating to run into as a player. I’d rather have a little imbalance and a lot of different flavor in a game.
While I like comprehensiveness, I also know that a game which is too long-winded can quickly lose its appeal. I’ve been interested in a number of games over the years which just turned out to be way too complicated and long-winded to bother trying out. In that time it’d take to explain the rules to a new player, we could be done creating character sheets for another system. This applies especially to games where I can’t see the purpose of the rule, let alone how complicated it is. If there’s a good game system with a couple funny but simple rules, I’ll probably try it out. If there’s a good game system with dozens of rules which take forever to understand and make no sense to me—I’m going to have a hard time trying it out. Sometimes I’ll even hate a rule or two in a game system, but it’ll be so simple and clear that I’ll try it out anyway just to see if I like it. Obvious and broken is usually better than convoluted and broken. If everyone agrees with all of your rules 100% of the time, it probably won’t matter how complicated or simple they are.
A simple test is to imagine teaching the basics of the game to a relative or friend who has no clue what role-playing games are. Would you be hesitant to do so, or sure that the basics make enough sense that they could grasp the game quickly? If your game is too vague, you’ll probably be worried they won’t ‘get it’. If your game is too complicated, you’ll probably be worried you won’t have the time to explain it to them ‘properly’. If you’re in the sweet spot, you’ve probably already tried to get them to play it, but they turned you down because they think you’re crazy.
Remember, half the battle is just explaining your cool game idea properly. People who never figure out how to play your game won’t be able to enjoy it. There are many great ideas out there, but only a few people willing to put in the work to bring them to light.
