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This chronological rundown of how I approach RPG design will go over the most universal principles Iâve learned or copied from others.
All rules are bad, but some rules are worth it.
The rest of the ideas here will talk about technical implementation, but the core thought, riding alongside every notion, is that every rule slows down the game, makes demands on peopleâs time, and creates a barrier to crafting a narrative. Therefore, every rule must justify its existence, and the more difficult the rule, the more it has to improve the game in order to be allowed in.
The first question is genre. I donât want to give any precise definitions here - call it âcategoryâ, or âsettingâ, or whatever. The point is to look at what kind of literature or TV you want to reproduce, then make those things have inputs and outputs. Weâre not considering rules just yet - only making a list of what things we care about.
If youâre making a Star Trek game, itâs more important to know that Worf is a warrior, and Data knows everything, than knowing exactly how good Worf is with a batâleth vs a spear.
The outputs for these things are the kinds of resolutions we see, scene by scene. They have no money - characters donât have wealth except for Quark, and heâs really only âpoorâ or ârichâ, which changes nothing for him. Everyone get injured however - in fact everyone gets regularly stunned. âRed-shirtsâ may die, but characters do not, so no need to include it as a possibility. If the players need stakes, then the stakes should be rank, discovery, reputation, or ability (such as science).
So far we have a few properties we care about:
These might end up pure Booleans (ârichâ or ânot-richâ).
We care about weapons, we care about relationships between characters, and we care about how strong someone is. We care about research ability, which needs to result in useful information when itâs used. We also need to ensure side-characters have a part to play, without having any strength. One Buffy RPG included some ability for side-characters called âguys, I think Iâm okayâ, which allowed them to shrug off massive damage by retconning it as dumb luck.
What we donât care about is the difference between an Uzi and an AK-47, or the ability to speak modern languages - all vampires speak English.
Now we have our ins and outs, we need a system which gets us from one to the other as fast as possible. When someone fires a phaser at a klingon, what might the results be?
This process clearly demands too many steps from the player. The âinputsâ are just:
The âoutputâ is
Star Trek officers donât interact with âDexterityâ a lot, so we donât need to make sure that Dextrous characters do certain things well. We can reduce the skill-roll to just âphasersâ. âDodgingâ phasers seems to be mostly a matter of putting oneself behind cover, if any, so weâll leave that for now, and just say whoever fires first, wins. âDamageâ is just whatever you set your phaser to. In a lot of Star Trek, phasers automatically kill, but the best Star Trek is obviously DS9, so Iâm going to go with how they do things and say that phasers can give somewhere between light wounds and death. So the possible results might be:
No we can add some numbers. If we want a really âswingyâ random system, the D20 works well:
Roll | Result -----|----------------------------------------------------------------------- <8 | Miss 9 | Stunned (fall over, lose next action) 16 | Light wound (another light wound will go to the next Damage phase) 17 | Serious wound (penalty to movement) 18 | Awful wound (penalties all round, will die without medical treatment) >19 | Death
Or for more reliable numbers, we roll 2D8, because the D8 seems like a sci-fi-die.
Roll | Result -----|----------------------------------------------------------------------- <6 | Miss 8 | Stunned (fall over, lose next action) 10 | Light wound (another light wound will go to the next Damage phase) 12 | Serious wound (penalty to movement) 14 | Awful wound (penalties all round, will die without medical treatment) >16 | Death
We can add a bonus for people trained in using phasers, and adjust all the numbers to accommodate how lethal we want the game to feel.
Of course we need plenty more rules:
So weâve gone from our âinputâ, to the âoutputâ in a single roll.
Smaller systems are always better. Weâve already added inputs and outputs when constructing the genre - that part has finished. Everything which comes during mapping should draw a line between those two as quickly as possible.
Dice do not need to be assumed - if a system becomes unpredictable without dice, best to remove them (or remove them anyway if a situation should be predictable).
Some kind of âbase-systemâ, is generally required as well. Old D&D games can feel clunky because itâs not clear how to do âstuffâ in general; one roll is for hitting enemies, another for dodging magic wands, and another for searching rooms - all totally unrelated! By and large, this base system will determine how swingy the game is.
Modern D&Dâs reliance on the D20 mean pretty much every roll swings around wildly. Fate Coreâs fudge-dice keep rolls consistent, so the bonus-points from tokens play a big part. White Wolfâs dice can be consistent with a low difficulty, or wildly swingy, with a high difficulty. These rules let snake-vampires look tough when they have their snake-skins on, and let the artsy vampires consistently spot details. They let fights on a moving train give crazy results simply by changing the dice-difficulties.
When systems make outputs that become inputs, it entices players. Consider D&Dâs âPick Pocketsâ Skill; you use the skill and gain gold pieces, then use those gold pieces to buy equipment, and use the equipment to kill monsters, who also have gold pieces. Our options are opening up already!
On the other hand, Vampire: The Dark Ages has a dynamic system which promises to do anything, but when you pick someoneâs pockets, the system just says âokay, I guess you have money or whateverâ. The DM can fill in the details - âthree coins, two from the New Hungarian King, and another which looks like it may be East Romanâ, but the system remains silent. When the system wants to represent money, it does so with the âResourcesâ Trait, which is simply rated 1-5, and picking someoneâs pocket will not influence it, so from the systemâs point-of-view, picking pockets does nothing.
Weâve come full-circle back to genre once again. A loop helps focus player attention, without being âgrabbyâ. If killing Klingons in Star Trek gives you XP, thatâs bad, because players will see the output âdead Klingonâ results in the input âXPâ, and killing Klingons. On the other hand, if the output âresolve a conflictâ, results in âmore Star Fleet buttonsâ, then they will most definitely want to resolve conflicts. And of course anyone playing a Buffy RPG should be interested in uncovering lore, so every enemy should have some kind of lore which helps defeat it, and every enemy slain can help build skills.
Hopefully the idea of mapping inputs to outputs feels fairly clear by now, because I want to start again. The best way to understand any RPG is removing the dice[a]. Take the bare inputs and outputs, and look at how many steps a player has to take. Every step is bad, because it creates more work, so every step has to be justified because:
Notice that with A,D&D fighters make no decisions except whom to hit, while mages make new decision every round. Note also that a lot of decisions are pointless when you stop to think about them. If a fighter has a special âfighting surgeâ which they can use once per combat, then the best time to use it is immediately, assuming all enemies are the same. In White Wolfâs World of Darkness rules, the ability to âtake aimâ should never be used when rolling with 4 or more dice, but should always be used with 3 or fewer, due to the average damage expected. These illusory decisions are cheap shots, and even when players canât do the Maths by hand, they will eventually gain a feel for the system, and uncover the systemâs foetid banality.
This is something best done right, or not at all. If some Skill uses an Ability (e.g. Academics always gets a bonus from Intelligence), then we may as well just have âAcademicsâ on its own. The only thin âIntelligenceâ does here is make busy-work for the players, and set a minimum to their Academic ability (since someone with Intelligence +2 cannot start their learning with an Academics roll at +1: it must be +3 to begin with). Such a system may as well just use the Skills, and nothing else.
On the other hand, Ability + Skill pairs can save everyone a lot of time, if use correctly.
(Skill/ Abilities) | Strength (2) | Intelligence (3) | Charisma (-1) -------------------|----------------------------|-----------------------------|----------------------------------- Academics (2) | Shouting a tale to a crowd | Recalling facts | Telling an entrancing story Deceit (1) | Threatening someone | Conceiving of a devious lie | Looking remorseful Survival (3) | Sleeping in the cold | Navigation | Convincing someone they will live
This chart shows only 3 Attributes, with 3 Abilities, but with only 6 stats written down, we have distinguished 9 different abilities, each of which could have their own rating, and a clear reason why. Now âshouting a tale to a crowdâ may not come up very often, but this misses the point - any time a character does something theyâve never done before, and which nobody could have guessed they would do, we still get a good measure of their overall ability to do that thing in a way that makes sense. It makes sense that this person can spin a good tale and navigate, but cannot make fake apologies or tell very good stories.
Many games have no systems for the DM. This seems like freedom, but it creates a lot of responsibility.
This is a good time to return to the genre and for more inputs and outputs. What do the enemies want? The DM will never gain XP for killing players, but an enemyâs âwinâ might turn into another encounter, a problematic situation for the players, or might be a good time to reveal an enemyâs hidden base.
Having some rules (or at last procedures) for the DM can really help, especially if the system seems like it could answer the question âwhat the hell do I do now?â.
Reusing rules reduces mechanics, and all mechanics are bad, therefore recycling is good.
If your cowboys game needs rules for chases on horseback, do the quick-fire rules cover the same thing? Could you count âjammed gunâ, as âbucked offâ, or something, then pull them all into a single system with different applications?
If the dead-space pirates need a system for asking questions on the streets, can you re-use the system for scavenging wreckages, and just plug in different stats?
Recycled rules donât have to call upon the same rule explicitly - they may simply use the same patterns repeatedly. Suppose youâve made specialist rules for crafting poisons, chatting to courtiers, and finding traps in dungeons, then you have three irritating little thorns in your system. But if commonalities between them can help suggest more unified systems. Each one of these activities may come in steps, and reveal clues - perhaps traps will yield information to be given to the players slowly, such as âthis room has some suspicious disturbances around the floor in the centreâ. Poison may not seem to fit this mould, but perhaps poison-rolls can involve less poison-brewing, and more steps for the PC to discover how to slip the brew into the targetâs food. And of course, a failed roll to find traps results in springing a trap, but what about the poisons and courtiers? Well, they could add their own dangers, so a failed roll means the PC gets some bad outcome. Or they could become threatening, so the GM informs the player that some unknown danger looms, and gives them the chance to give upâŚor to make one last roll.
Crafting these little patterns in the rules presents a serious hazard - the âuncanny valleyâ. If players read that rules A, and B start with steps â1, 2, and 3â, then everything which looks similar must follow the same pattern. If hunting for clues during a murder investigation suddenly presents rules â1, 3, Gammaâ, this wonât just shock people, but irritate them.
These little similarities mean players never have to feel surprised by the rules. They can skim the book, find specialized rules for spreading disgusting rumours about nobles among the peasants, and instantly think âyea, okay - that makes senseâ, because they remember the core of the idea. And similarly, youâre going to stop reading this, and forget these last few paragraphs. But hopefully youâll still feel the core of the idea, that âall rules are badâ.