Worlds of Design: The Simplicity Solution

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” --Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Frenchman, airmail pioneer, World War II pilot, and author of The Little Prince.

Simplify, Don’t Add​

When I'm referencing "simple games" I'm specifically discussing games that are simple, but have some depth to them. I prefer to design simple games - games that are fundamentally simple in rules, though not in strategies.

That said, simple doesn't meant the rules are transparent; that is, games that are easy to see how to play well. A simple game can be deep, and gameplay depth is what I want in most games. Simplification of rules also makes it easier for players to deal with the mechanics, and is usually desirable. But here I’m focused on simplification to solve design problems.

The Complexity Problem​

It's common for designers to start with something simple but keep adding things to it, until (we hope) they realize that they have weighed the game down too much and need to go back to being simpler. When I see a problem in my design, I try to find a simple solution rather than add something to the game, but too many designers end up adding more and more to "fix" a problem. Those additions can eventually make a system rules heavy. You've often heard of the acronym KISS (“Keep it Simple, Stupid!”) and that applies here, though I prefer not to imply designers are stupid for not making things simple.

In role-playing games, a game master has to know the rules often better than the players, and thus complexity means more cognitive load for the GM. The more rules there are, the more the GM has to learn and remember, the more room for “rules lawyers” and squabbles over rules. Mastery of the game becomes much more challenging.

Consider combat in Dungeons & Dragons. What started out as combat highly complicated by weapon modifiers (there was an entire chart dedicated to Speed Factor for each weapon, potentially changing turn order), was gradually changed to a much simpler system: hit points, a to hit roll, and a damage roll. Other systems had even more complicated combat, including hit locations, armor absorption, even defenders rolling to block an attack.

This is not to say that D&D combats are necessarily simple. But the game has streamlined the core mechanics to allow complexity during the game itself, both on behalf of the GM and players with their multitude of options. This spreads out decision-making so a player's proficiency in the game is not solely reliant on understanding the rules; a fighter can just swing to hit, while a wizard can use a mechanically complex spell, and both players hopefully have fun in the same game despite their different understanding of the rules. Core simplicity allows layers of gameplay for players with levels of experience with the rules.

How to Simplify​

So how do you simplify a game? I discuss this at length in my book Game Design.

First you must prioritize the elements of the game in order to decide what’s least important. Make a list of the prominent elements of the game, say about 20 things. By the time you’ve done that, you may realize that there are elements you can leave out, thus simplifying the game. If not, then you need to break them into four priority groups, from top to bottom.

If you have active playtesters you can ask them to do this, or even to make the list of elements in the first place, so that you can see what they think is important. When you finish, you’ll know that the fourth group of rules are the targets for elimination, while the other groups can be considered for simplification less urgently.

If there’s a specific problem to fix, the groupings can help you decide how much or how little you want to change a particular element of the game. Presumably the most important elements are the ones you should be wary about changing, if the game is otherwise in good shape. In any case, harmony should to be one of your guides.

In the next article we’ll discuss some ways of achieving simplicity.

Your Turn: How simple do you prefer your role-playing game systems?

 

[chaoshead87]

Good advice but I have found simplifying an rpg to be far more difficult than it sounds. Obviously there are things that can be removed from almost every game but it may change the game in unforeseen ways, sometimes changing the feel to something unwanted by the creator.

 

[The Soloist]

Creating a simple system is very difficult. If it's too simplistic, I get bored rapidly with it. This has been the problem with creating my own solo RPG. I start with a simple idea and then proceed to complexify it, then remove things until it's too simplistic. My wife gently mocks me when I say, "I found the solution, it's going to work this time!"

Other than that, for the games I play, it varies from Fantasy AGE crunch with the stunt system to Dragonbane, almost on autopilot. Depends on my wargaming level mood.

 

[Ramaster]

Very good article! Spot on conclusions.

Very weird for a couple of reasons that Lewis credited Antoine de Saint-Exupery as, among other things, "Frenchman" (lol) and yet that quote is at the core of what I consider inspired game design.

If your core gameplay loop, mechanic or pilar is truly good, then you should play to its strenghts rather than bog things down with additional bells and whisles.

 

[GMMichael]

Consider combat in Dungeons & Dragons. What started out as combat highly complicated by weapon modifiers (there was an entire chart dedicated to Speed Factor for each weapon, potentially changing turn order), was gradually to a much simpler system: hit points, a to hit roll, and a damage roll.

I didn't play Chainmail, but I recall things like speed factor in early D&D being even more optional than the complications in today's "streamlined" D&D. Weapon tags like Finesse come to mind.

For simplifying though, I remember feeling like I was abandoning my entire game idea when a rule or two had to be pulled out. Just remember, you can add salt to your recipe, but you can't remove it.

 

[overgeeked]

Great article.

For me games become too complex when there’s more than a few pages of rules. The shorter the better. A few paragraphs are great. A few sentences are better. At absolute minimum you need a resolution mechanic. But I would push against any argument that you necessarily need much more than that. Maybe a clock mechanic. But that’s it.

 

[chaoshead87]

I am sort of the opposite, I want rules for everything. Then I can use what I want and abandon the rest. My group enjoys crunchy games with rules and options.

 

[Theory of Games]

If you have active playtesters you can ask them to do this, or even to make the list of elements in the first place, so that you can see what they think is important. When you finish, you’ll know that the fourth group of rules are the targets for elimination, while the other groups can be considered for simplification less urgently.

This suggests all your playtesyers have the exact same playstyles, thus providing you with a consensus of what's good and bad regarding the ruleset. Which is possible but highly unlikely.

Some players enjoy a good degree of genre simulation and historically this has been achieved in ttrpgs using a higher degree of rules complexity. GURPS is a system that leans into genre simulation and thus has a higher degree of rules complexity than most ttrpgs. For those who enjoy complexity, GURPS gameplay is very satisfying, compared to other less complex ttrpgs.

One of the keys of game design is understanding who the game is for and why. All games aren't for everyone because we all have our preferences. Calling complex games aimed at genre simulation "clunky" is telling of your own preferences (probably for Rules-Lite ttrpgs).

More rules isn't objectively problematic.

 

[Emberashh]

When it comes to simplifying games, I wonder how many have really tried to understand how the hobby as a whole remains so niche and apparently inaccessible, despite having plenty of examples of simplifying and minimalizing down to practically nothing.

Fundamentally I think the hobby is still too married to the oral tradition that has to be conveyed to new players, even with the simplest of games, the simplicity of which only serves to remove frictions but not add any accessibility.

One could blame a lot of different things for that. My consistent take has been that fundamentally TTRPGs, every single one to date, are hybrid improv games, where all of the focus is placed on whatever the hybrid is, and virtually none on the improv game itself. People will "recognize" that improv is a part of RPGs, but most if not all will seldom consider just how deep that goes, and just how very much it affects how accessible the hobby is. The hobby has all these idiosyncratic cultural artifacts to it that, as I argue, all stem from Improv and can be rapidly understood from that perspective, and yet nobody seemingly wants to really take it seriously.

Improv isn't taught by any of these games in any serious, transparent way, and most end up having to learn via that idiosyncratic oral tradition, which itself isn't often taught directly by the game either.

And its not just a matter of actually making these games more inclusive to people who don't get taken in by, or simply never receive that oral tradition. It actually affects the design of the games too, with the slavish chasing of minimalism and simplicity, for very little gain to the hobby, being an example.

But it also holds back designing the games to avoid all these idiosyncratic problems, which are all just variations of common improv problems at the end of the day, caused by the game not being treated as an improv partner, and its mechanics and systems (if there even are any) being designed to work with the improv dynamic.

But to go further, Improv is also a useful way to simplify not by substraction but simply by interface. In other words, Improv can make a complex system very simple to engage with, and you end up with the best of both worlds. Painless engagement with depth.

Obviously tooting my own horn, but thats what I've been doing with my own game, and while its no longer an RPG in any conventional sense (i was apparently reinventing gamebooks, so I'm leaning towards describing it that way nowadays), it does accomplish that, providing an immensely complex "Engine" comprised of multiple interlocking subsystems that simply are not complex at all to actually play with.

You still have to learn to play of course, and that is part and parcel to the whole "its not an rpg anymore" bit, but once you do its smooth to play, and what you receive in return is a game that plays like an amalgamation of Dwarf Fortress, the Sims, Shadow of Mordor, and Morrowind, whilst being built into a single book with ~10 pages of rules to learn, which the book will teach you step by step as you play. A book which, as an emergent property of playing it, will generate a genuine Living World that can cause and solve its own problems, even if you're charging your character into the fray.

The complexity of building a game like this is in doing what RPGs generally don't do, or largely do poorly, and that involves not just subtracting elements expecting it to be easier or smoother to play. There's more to what produces clunky or complex gamefeel than how many mechanics or systems you have.

 

[Hussar]

I know this sounds snarky but what exactly do we mean by complex vs simple?

To me, rules complexity is defined by the number of places where rules need to be applied in order to resolve the task. Adnd combat is a great example. You need to go through about ten or so steps to resolve each character’s action in combat. Initiative, weapon vs armor, number of attackers vs a defender, terrain effects, ranged vs melee, space requirements, etc.

Granted we probably skipped most of those back in the day. But that kinda proves the point. We skip the steps because they are too complicated.

Sticking with DnD, 4e combat quickly became very complex. Each combatant could impose status effects of varying durations nearly every round. Very hard to track. It’s largely why 5e backed away from that model in a big way.

One thing newer games I think are leaning heavily on is putting complexity in the player’s hands. Take the finesse example. The dm doesn’t need to know anything about finesse. The player needs to know that. So the cognitive load on the dm gets reduced by spreading it out among the group.