Subtractive Game Dessign

[triqui]

Reading a bit of this excelent blog from a link someone provided in the Legends and Lore: Balance thread, I found myself quite intrigued and loving this approach to game design. Bassically it's just overdoing the KISS premise, but I like it quite a lot.

Someone else find it intriguing? Someone find it flawed in ways I'm just unaware of?

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Just read it, and it is interesting...

Though, I disagree with its example with magic cards - now, I haven't played magic in years, but I don't think the decrasee of language on the card in question indicates a removal of elements - but rather a shifting of them. So, instead of having all the rules for the card on the card, it uses key words/concepts that are explained elsewhere - but that doens't mean those rules have disappeared and made the card "simpler", they've just been offloaded to another place.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Just read it, and it is interesting...

Though, I disagree with its example with magic cards - now, I haven't played magic in years, but I don't think the decrasee of language on the card in question indicates a removal of elements - but rather a shifting of them. So, instead of having all the rules for the card on the card, it uses key words/concepts that are explained elsewhere - but that doens't mean those rules have disappeared and made the card "simpler", they've just been offloaded to another place.

The example they used at the very least is more an indication that, as the game has added more and more cards and sets, they have established more general rules. In terms of exception based design ... the newer version of the card was less "exceptional". With taking control of opponent's creatures more common, there were general rules put into place on what happens. (i.e. the summoning sickness was expanded to include creatures moving from one side to the other, etc)

In 4e terms, it would be the difference between using the word "dominate", or putting the definition of dominate into the words of the power itself. It just moves the complexity elsewhere, instead of actually eliminating it.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Yeah, that's what I meant by "off loading" - the dense language on the first card was because it was the first card of its type and had to explain explicitly how it interacted with such rules as "tapping" and "untapping" cards.

Presumably for the second card, those types of questions are now answered in some general rule about taking control of enemy cards.

My point was that although the second card looks simpler, it may not actually be - one still needs to know the rules for taking control of things, they just simply aren't on the card. So, using the second card may not be any simpler than the first - if really depends on how complicated the rules are that have been off loaded into the general rule set.

That said, the very process of standardization (ie - having similar cards use the same set of rules) has a tendency to simplify things as well, but that's across options rather than within the one card itself. On the other hand, having all the rules you need in one place could be considered a kind of simplicity as well.

 

[Mapache]

My point was that although the second card looks simpler, it may not actually be - one still needs to know the rules for taking control of things, they just simply aren't on the card. So, using the second card may not be any simpler than the first - if really depends on how complicated the rules are that have been off loaded into the general rule set.

That said, the very process of standardization (ie - having similar cards use the same set of rules) has a tendency to simplify things as well, but that's across options rather than within the one card itself. On the other hand, having all the rules you need in one place could be considered a kind of simplicity as well.

The individual card isn't simpler, but the game as a whole is. The simplicity comes about from standardizing effects. Back in the day, they used to make all sorts of creatures that auto-killed enemies in combat. Some of them did it immediately upon being blocked, some of them did it after combat to any creature that had blocked them, some of them did it when they dealt combat damage, and some of them did it when they dealt any damage. The conceptual space represented by all these abilities has now been condensed down to a single word, Deathtouch, which works the same every time. It's still as complicated as one of the previous cases, but now it's the only case. Near-identical options have been pruned down to a single one, so you can quickly and easily identify how it works on new cards that use it without having to puzzle through the exact nuances of this particular case. Giving it a simple one-word name makes it explicitly clear to the reader that this sort of consolidation has taken place without any need to compare and determine that, yes, this card works just like most of the seemingly-similar cards you've seen recently.