Doctor Futurity
Hero
I have discovered I really like a level of utility and brevity in my games, especially modules, and as a result have become obsessed with RPGs like Mothership and Old-School Essentials. The designs for modules here are amazing....I got three nights of gaming out of Mothership's The Haunting of Ypsilon-14, a module which fits on a single double-sided sheet of paper with a few audio files.
This discussion about a level of prose is nothing terribly new, though. Gaming text has long suffered from a mixture of mediocrity in writing and a sense that one's game must contain enough fluff to give it some sort of artistic street cred. But I think generationally a lot of game design today, in the indie scene right now for sure, is blending an economy of design with a brevity of exposition, aimed at getting to the point and enabling the GM and players to do what they want with the barest minimum of fuss. The most extreme end of this design is found in the likes of Mork Borg, which lets the art speak for 90% of the setting, and provides a rule system that is, outside of its artistic presentation, almost indistinct from a rough round outline.
This discussion about a level of prose is nothing terribly new, though. Gaming text has long suffered from a mixture of mediocrity in writing and a sense that one's game must contain enough fluff to give it some sort of artistic street cred. But I think generationally a lot of game design today, in the indie scene right now for sure, is blending an economy of design with a brevity of exposition, aimed at getting to the point and enabling the GM and players to do what they want with the barest minimum of fuss. The most extreme end of this design is found in the likes of Mork Borg, which lets the art speak for 90% of the setting, and provides a rule system that is, outside of its artistic presentation, almost indistinct from a rough round outline.