Worlds of Design: The Simplifier's Toolkit

Now that we’ve established the basics of simplifying a game, let’s work through how to make a game simple.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

The Simplification Checklist​

Simplicity in games consists of several tenets, which we’ll discuss in order.

• Remove trivial decisions: Trivial doesn’t mean small, it’s about what matters. Why make players decide something that doesn’t make a significant difference? Shouldn’t they focus on things that matter? RPGs are different from most other games insofar as they depict a life that could exist (but does not), so there may be some parts of life depicted in the game that are trivial.
• Eliminate unnecessary work: Why make players keep records, keep track of things, that make little difference, or that could be tracked in other ways?
• Eliminate other trivialities: There may be trivial occurrences in the game that don’t requite a player decision, but still add practically nothing to the game. Yes, there’s a theme here, isn’t there, and that is: let the players focus on what’s important in the game (or story).
• Combine two things together: Much of the decision-making in game design amounts to deciding to combine two things into one, or dividing one thing into two. Perhaps more than you might think. A way of simplifying is to combine two into one, where you can.
• Make something more abstract: This is related to combining two things together, since the result is usually more abstract. Abstraction, that is “remove a more accurate and detailed version of that aspect or function and replace it with a less accurate and detailed version or no version at all” (Adams and Rollings, Fundamentals of Game Design). D&D does this with hit points, which are an abstraction of various indicators of health and survivability. You lose some “realism” in such cases, but we have to remember that a game is a model of a reality, and as George Box is quoted as saying, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." Our game-model may be “wrong”, but if it’s entertaining it will be useful.
• “Automate” if you can: Automate as in find a way for the game to deal with something, rather than the players. Automation is often a means of simplification in video games. While we cannot exactly automate anything in a purely tabletop game, we can take something onerous for the players, and turn it into something that happens in the background or automatically, from their point of view. Simple example from games using cards: set the size of the deck so that the game ends when the deck is exhausted. No need for players to keep track.

Modeling and Harmony​

Some games, including virtually all RPGs, are models of some situation, even if it’s a fictional situation. When you’re modeling something it’s a little easier to simplify, because when you take something out of the game you can try to judge how that affects the correspondence of the model to the “real” situation. When you’re simplifying an abstract game, and that includes a game with a tacked on theme such as many Eurostyle board and card games, then you don’t have that guide. Sometimes a game's interface will get in the way, much more often true with video games than with tabletop games. Is there a way to make the interface simpler, to provide information in more accessible ways or to make it easier to manipulate the game?

Harmony is important in simplification. Games are not just collections of mechanics, not just data, not just metrics. Games make intellectual and emotional impressions on players, and lack of harmony is noticeable, sometimes clearly, sometimes in subtle ways.

So the question is, what can be removed because it is inharmonious with the rest of the game? Or when you’re going to remove something, what will that do to the harmony of the game? And that question is important whether the game is abstract or a model.

But Be Careful​

It's the accumulation of simplification that helps polish the game and get from the 80% point (“well, it works”) closer to the 100% point (“it's a good game”). Always beware that you don't take something out that's essential to the game. While you can simplify a game into oblivion (a bagatelle), it's much more likely you will complicate a game into oblivion (a train-wreck). And always keep harmony in mind.

Your Turn: How do you simplify your games?

 

[Emberashh]

Good constraints are a really good tool. Particularly ones that might intuitively be contradictory, as meeting those constraints will require you to get creative to satisfy them simultaneously.

In my game, figuring out a genuine, semi-autonomous living world system that runs out of a book is already like a contradictory constraint on its own. Putting that up against a constraint that its rules have to fit on one page is what really drove its development over time, as was making it inclusive to people who don't want to track background events and goings on.

And granted I ended up cheating because the overall system needs two pages, but thats only because its two systems in parallel, which is how the third constraint was satisfied. Good example of how Addition is worthwhile over Reduction. Sometimes what a system needs is more support to be accessible, not less functionality or components.

 

[Croesus]

Some possibiliities off the top of my head:

Eliminate unnecessary work, Combine two things together:
One area of 5E that can quickly become burdensome is tracking different pools of uses for special abilities. Sorcery points, ki points, use this ability stat mod number of times, use another ability proficiency bonus number of times, etc. Some refresh on short rest, some on long rest. Then you have items that each have separate pools of uses, as well as consequences if you use the last charge. This all reminds me of tracking arrows, torches and rations in 1E.

What I would love to see is a much simpler system utilizing a single pool for most of these things. Each time a character adds an ability that would use a pool, just add one to the existing pool and have all abilities use the one pool. Balancing could be tricky, as certain functions might be significantly more powerful or useful than others, but that's doable if one starts with the idea of a single pool.

Make something more abstract:
I know Gygax had a real fetish for polearms and other weapons, but honestly, do long lists of specific weapons really add to the game? How about a system where weapons fall into very broad categories - ranged, melee 1H, melee 2H, etc. - then damage is determined by class and level? Let the player define a main and a couple secondary weapons and done. No more finding a magical weapon and thinking "Well, darn, I specialize in swords and this is an axe..."

With this as a baseline, seems to me one could create some relatively simple rules for resistance/vulnerability. Special combat maneuvers could be broken out into very broad categories - possibly just melee and ranged - further simplifying things.