In my RPG experiences I have come to believe that all the systems I’ve played in are wholly restricted in their capability, if not fatally flawed, to the point where I think I could create my own superior RPG to both illuminate those flaws, and to have a system people can play in that transcends them. These issues include:

• Steep Learning Curves
• System Balkanization
• Complex and Confusing Rules
• Component Conflict
• Inconsistency
• Scalability
• Lacking Context
• Dice Dictating Story

These issues happen to be listed in rough order of general to specific annoyances, and roughly on interdependence. For example, the problem Lacking Context contributes to the cause of Inconsistent rules, which in turn contributes to the cause of Steep Learning curves. Therefore, I will discuss a summary of each solution from the bottom-up, to give context for the more general problems.

• The dice mechanic is at the heart of most gaming systems, so it is appropriate that the start of design is here. All rules are designed about the capabilities of the dice mechanic, and if that mechanic is lacking in flexibility, rules will need to cater to that weakness. This leads to many problems, such as Scalability, Inconsistency, Complexity, System Balkanization, and Steep Learning Curves. However, if a truly flexible & scalable dice system existed, it would have none of these effects. Therefore, a completely agile dice mechanic needs to be developed to rise to this challenge.
• Similarly, every gaming system represents characters & the environment through some set of stat measures, and some ranking system. However, it is rare to see these stats firmly defined. And if defined, the mapping of ranking to real-world values is nearly missing. Without these contexts, it’s hard to extrapolate how things are supposed to work. Thus more game rules need to be created to dictate these things. This makes for problems with Scalability, Inconsistency, Component Conflict, Complex and Confusing Rules, System Balkanization, and Steep Learning Curves. To cope with this burden, stats need to be explicitly defined, and rankings need to be mapped out clearly and consistently. The closer to players’ intuitive understanding, the better for everyone involved.
• Scalability issues prevent a game system from expanding to cover new scopes of story or environment. This is not desirable, since to compensate, you’ll need add-on Components, or perhaps you’ll design a new Game System to play in. Some scalability issues arise due to poor Dice Mechanics and stats that have a limited context of validity. However, if these Dice and Context issues are solved, it will go a long way to preventing these problems. However, issues of scale need to be addressed and considered at every level of rules design, not considered after the fact, to allow for a fully scalable system.
• Inconsistencies of expectation vs. game execution is another issue that plays part in all the problems above it. These problems can be soothed if there is a flexible dice system, explicit stat definitions, and robust scalability in the rules. However, with all these benefits, it is still possible for various things to get out of sync. That’s why one should try to create one generic set of rules that encompasses a set of design needs; for example if there was a framework for generating weapons, all specific instances of weaponry would be a result of this framework, thus providing a more consistent result. This framework would then need to be tested and tweaked, but constructed correctly, it should prove very capable of generating consistent content.
• Component conflict and redundancy occur when expansions or components are developed separately. Generally they are annoying to players, if not outright confusing. It’s not that these developers intend for it to have that effect, but it’s because they themselves are unclear how to cleanly interact with and extend the existing game system. Again, Inconsistencies, Scaling Issues, ambiguous Context, and restricted Dice Mechanics all play into this designer confusion, spurring them to recreate subcomponents since that is more straightforward for them. Even with all those problems eliminated, a gaming system needs to provide examples and templates to allow future component designers to extend the system cleanly, and encourage said development.
• Akin to the last point, game systems in general tend to have overly complicated rules or rules that seem to lack any real purpose. These are distracting to anyone playing or building off of a game system. Generally, these problems are caused by unfocused game development, or attempting too hard to have a “novel” system by utilizing oblique rules. Overall, they should be avoided, as they add no functional value to my gaming system. Aesthetic enhancements should be considered after the fact, by those that choose to use my gaming framework as a basis to develop their own game.
• Game System Balkanization occurs because developing from existing game systems are difficult if your world & setting differ greatly. This is due to all the points mentioned above, but primarily Dice, Context, and Scalability issues. Additionally, examples and guidelines need to be developed for how one would adapt this framework to the target setting and play style. If all of these issues were correctly addressed in a gaming framework, it would be possible for new game designers to utilize this framework with less effort to create a more consistent gaming environment. Players would have the privilege of already being familiar with mechanics and concepts from other games rooted in the same framework.
• Finally, Steep Learning Curves need to be minimized and designed for. Hopefully the above changes would make rules simple to learn, understand, and keep in mind. Examples and starting out small for new players is key. Setting knowledge can only come through exposure and interaction. All of these other factors are in the control of the GM and players, so any framework should outlines all these approaches and encourage players to engage in them.

Wow, this is quite allot to take in. I realize that I’m likely missing pieces, and have rough edges throughout the logic here, but it’s my first draft; deal. Anyway, the point is that there is a method to the madness, and a path of progression for me to follow. And, if anyone has any interest in these subjects, it’s something to ponder and comment on.

To illustrate, imagine that the game was originally designed to deal with heroic characters who are Hominoids in a medieval setting. Combat was worked out to work very well for characters of a similar experience level and size, but problems could arise when we try to add in much larger creatures like trolls or dragons. Are the trolls as strong as our initial expectations inform us? Or can one warrior with a sword somehow slay a magical, fire-breathing, 3000 year old, 50 ton & 120 ft long dragon? Many existing games have this issue with size not scaling proportionally to expected effectiveness in the game.

Additionally, some games will later create add-on rules to address this deficiency, but usually end up creating a huge set of exceptions rules, making the game quite large, and likely will lead to inconsistencies in rules. This is also detrimental because we don’t want to learn an excessive amount of rules, and we don’t want rules that are contradictory.

The solution to scalability is deliberate system design with these issues in mind. Most games focus solely on the “average” case, and get into trouble when they start expanding the possibilities. One needs to consider the breadth of scaling issues from the beginning, because this will require the core of your game to be designed in a fundamentally different way. And if this is done, there will be no need for encyclopedia-sized expansion compendiums when new content of different scales is added.

Dice mechanics are at the very core of most RPGs. (And if not dice, some other form of randomization.) Randomization is used to add a sense of uncertainty and of the story unfolding in time. However, the details of the randomization tend to have characteristics that are not appropriate for all story styles. This is what I think causes people to create their own games, to create a new mechanic that will allow them to tell the story they want.

For example, compare a system that relies on 1d20, vs. 3d6. The former is a uniform distribution (all numbers are equally likely) while the latter is a rough approximation of the bell-curve (values in the middle occur more frequently.) Their numerical range is different: 1 through 20 vs. 3 through 18. There are many other characteristics to look at, such as standard deviation (the spread) and mean (average numerical result.) For this example, the 3d6 is less spread out, thus will comparatively produce more consistent numbers.

The point is that, if a game has a fixed set of dice mechanics, it is very likely that you will be locked into the limitations that come along with those. The wild variability of d20 is fine for a hack & slash fantasy story, but not really appropriate for meticulous spy story. The story requires different results from the underlying dice mechanics, yet most RPGs do not have this flexibility.

(There are many other aspects of a game that must be designed around the dice mechanics, but this is not the point of this article.)

The solution is for a gaming system to provide a flexible dice system. This might sound obvious to those green to RPGs, and laughable to those familiar with them. This is because of history, and an erroneous assumption about what the history implies. No gaming system has had a truly flexible dice system that can conform to changing demands such as numerical range, mean, spread, etc. Thus many people would conclude that this goal is impossible. I simply assert that you don’t know until you really try.

My assertion is that this obstacle can be overcome by design, and the result will be a flexible dice system. It will free RPG designers from needing to design rules around the dice. It will enable GMs and storytellers the freedom to create whatever mood they wish. And most importantly, it will allow dice to transparently serve the game, instead of being in the forefront of the game.

RPGs use concepts of attributes, skills, powers, etc., yet oftentimes provide no context or mapping to “real world” ideas. For example, allot of games will have an Intelligence attributes, but many games differ on what this attributes means and affects in game. Part of the problem is that intelligence has many connotations, and it probably needs to be clarified which connotation is meant by each game. One game may say intelligence affects how quickly you can assess your environment. Others might say it’s how challenging of a problem you can think about. But if they are not specified outright how is one to know what the game means?

Additionally, all of these measures have numerical ranks associated with each. Assuming that the intent of the attribute is clear, it is still a question how these numbers map onto the real-world equivalent of them. The most trivial, Strength, generally should map onto how much force one can exert. The simplest example is how much weight can one hold? The higher the number, the more one can hold. But how much? Each Strength point leads to +N more pounds or is it xN more pounds? Or is it arbitrary, requiring a numerical mapping and a table lookup to discover the answer to?

Unfortunately, one can only know what these are by amassing how the game acts on each attribute and numerical values. Yet, add-on designers and GMs later could have their own take on what attributes mean and how to utilize them, thus causing conflicting, inconsistent, and generally confusing rules. And therein lies several of the things I wish to avoid.

These two aspect could be each addressed quite simply. For attributes, make it explicit what each attribute means. Give real-life examples when possible. Give clear definitions, and disambiguations for terms like Intelligence that require them. Provide examples of their usage in game. If players initial guess about their meaning is wrong, or if players cannot quickly learn the correct meaning, you have failed, and mis-understandings will invariably arise.

For numerical measures, provide the simplest analogy possible. Most novices expect a linear scale, yet many RPGs use exponential ones. If that is needed, make that very very explicit. And for the love of keeping one’s sanity, don’t do arbitrary mappings if it can’t be helped. (If it cannot be avoided because it has some integral use in the story, then by all means use it.) People are not hear to learn totally arbitrary constructs to play, they are here to play.

Because attributes and numerical scales are not well defined, problems arise for players to learn a system, as well as for GMs creating and running sessions. By being explicit and straightforward, these errors in understanding a system would be mitigated.

Inconsistency arises in games due to internal and external conflicts. Internal problems arise when two similar components produce results that are contradictory to each other. For example, imagine that there are different rules for how bashing weapons like clubs and maces work. Now, one would expect the mace to be more versatile compared to the club, but if the rules are poorly designed (not well thought out), it is very possible for clubs to actually be more useful to players, despite the fact that maces should be better. Experienced players would have learned this quirk of “game balance”, and some players (a.k.a. “power gamers”) would strive to own a club, even if it is wholly inconsistent with the world setting.

External problems arise when the rules do not produce results that are in keeping with the story, setting & world. Imagine that you are playing a zombie character, and being shot by a .22 bullet in the leg incapacitated you. Now, this is not in keeping with one’s expectations of what physical damage a zombie should be able to take. Since this is a system / world inconsistency, it is very unlikely any experienced player would choose to play zombie at all.

So, what is to be done? Internal consistency could be partially addressed if there was one common “construct” rules for all weapons; any result of this construction should be internally consistent… if the construct rules are themselves correct. This simply pushes the problem down a level, but it also pushes many problems into one, so when that problem is correctly implemented, all rules based off of it will benefit.

External consistency can be aided by ensuring that the gaming rules match the context of the setting. If you’re gonna have zombies and guns, you had best consider how the “setting expectations” translates into implications for rules design. In the example above, a zombie should feel no pain, nor suffer blood loss, thus changing how damage is usually handled for characters.

Outside of specific design choices going in, there is always beta-testing and iterative tweaking. However, if the underlying rules are flawed, no amount of tweaking will help.

You may note that these inconsistencies play into my first post about new players having a steep learning curve, and how unintuitive consequences of rules make learning a system unnecessarily difficult. By tackling inconsistencies, players will have an easier time learning the game.

Components of a RPG can be either subsystems within a compendium or rules, or it can be later add-ons to the system. Either way, these components are designed to address a specific unique aspect of the game, be it rules for types of action, or expanded setting & world info. The two major problems that can creep in are redundancy, and conflicting implications.

Redundancy can come in a few ways. From a rules point-of-view, this could be an add-on that sets up rules for a new type of reality. Imagine that one component addresses how your spirit can leave your body and interact in the spiritual world. This obviously would need many concepts defined, yet many of the interactions would have real-world analogies, such as physical interaction, conflict, travel, etc. If all of these interactions were totally redefined without recourse to other similar rules that apply to the physical plane-of-existence, there would be a very high amount of duplication of rules.

Conflicting rules can arise in similar ways that redundancy above does. Imagine that the spiritual world had entirely different rules to conduct an analogous action one would take in the real world. What is the reason for such dramatically different rules? I posit that if it is not immediately obvious why such rules are necessary, it could very likely be an oversight on the designer, and not because of some fundamental difference in that type of interaction. Additionally, how the rules are structured might have dependencies or make assumptions about other parts of the “core rules” that seem to contradict what the core rules actually mean. For example, if an “Intelligence” attribute were used in the spiritual realm to dictate how imposing your visage is, and the core rules for the physical realm used another attribute for the same effect, this would make one question how each component is interpreting those attributes and action.

Again, each point has several ways to conteract those unwanted qualities.

Redundancy requires that common types of actions be generic enough to apply to new situations, or easily translate well with minimal changes. It also requires those creating addons to think about which components that already exist that they can reuse. Both of these actions takes patience and some critical thinking. Both of these people need to understand what the other was trying / will be trying to do, and design accordingly. If there is opportunity for these two entities to discuss their designs and hash it out, a better overall system will follow.

Conflicting rules come about in a similar way to the above, but they tend to be because people adding onto a system don’t truly understand the system they are augmenting. This is either out of lazyness or inability to clearly distill the design of the system they are using. The latter can be addressed by designing a system to be clear, explicit, and with plenty of examples. In fact, this problem is nearly identical to players learning “the ropes” of a new system. However, for this task, some of the motivations and design decisions need to be the focus of the new content creators needed knowledge to build onto the core system successfully.

Rules that seem too complicated can be a problem for players. What that really means is that players perceive that the rules are beyond the scope of what the player expects. This in turn implies that players do not have a fundamental understanding for how the game system is intended to work; if they did, the “complex” rules would be understood as a necessity. The real point is that “complex” rules are either a poorly explained rule-set, or are legitimately overtly complex.

Then there are rules that are seem wholly unrelated to the intent of the rules. This again could imply the player does not understand the intent of the rules, albeit more severe in this case. It could also mean that the game system is so far off that players painfully notice it.

The remedy to both possible symptoms seems fairly obvious.

• Make sure players understand the intent of the rules. If explained properly, rules will “make sense” and not be perceived as unnecessary.
• Only create rules that minimally and explicitly address whatever aspect of the game. If they meet both of these requirements, and are decently demonstrated, players should immediately understand their design and usage.
• Finally, rules that seem completely disconnected from the scenario / situation should be completely avoided. (This may seem obvious or redundant, yet there are plenty of game systems out there containing rules that cross this line.)

My major contention with this point is fairly straightforward: there are many similar tasks that one will need to perform in game, yet the mechanics of every game will vary widely, meaning that one will have to learn a whole new set of rules just to participate in another game system setting. I see no compelling reason why this needs to be the case, and I believe that there are many potential benefits to be gained should such systems be compatible with each other.

Let’s say that you start out learning D&D mechanics, as most people that I know who role-play learned starting out. There are a fair number of arbitrary rules in that system for different types of actions, like physical combat and magic. But once they are learned, it becomes just a part of the game. Now, should you try to transfer to another game such as Whitewolf, you will quickly discover that those game mechanics are using wholly different operating paradigms. This learning process can take as long to as it did to learn the D&D rules… which is to say little from your first gaming experiences are transferable (on the mechanics level) to subsequent games.

I believe that this is a waste, because if the games shared common paradigms or rulesets even, one could more quickly learn new games, and get to enjoy the wide breadth of gaming opportunities that RPGs have to offer. But, by and large this is not the case. And what is the cause? Intentional Balkanization between gaming companies, fighting over a small player base? Dubious; they’d all be better served by better interoperability. Unique flavor? Possible, although this is part of one of the later points that I’ll address later. No, I really think the reason is intellectual laziness. I’m not saying game designers are lazy, on the contrary RPG games can be quite challenging to design. However, generally they are concerned first and foremost about their system facilitating the type of experience & story they wish to share and tell. It has never been a huge win historically for anyone who’s tried to make a “universal” game system, thus they feel it is untenable.

In defiance against historical trend, I perceive the goal not only possible, but highly desirable. If there were one set of rules / resources / framework that all game designers worked from, that allowed their works to be compatible and interchangeable, it would be a huge win for everyone. Designers would spend little time designing the nuances of the mechanics of the system, but instead on the setting and quality of the experience they are creating for players. Players would win, since they would feel no trepidation at experiencing a new system, because there would be little overhead in learning the mechanics and most of their efforts would instead be on absorbing the content of the game.

I shall not get into the details of how such a thing would be possible here. But suffice it to say, there are practical engineering principles that could be applied to RPG mechanics to allow for interoperability and compatibility between systems. Such concepts include common interfaces and language terminology, as well as decent design practices such as decoupling and cohesiveness that should be applied to design a common RPG framework.

• Game rules can be complicated. Most RPG books I’ve seen are easily several hundred pages long, and of that I’d bet a third is devoted simply to rules, be it overall mechanics, character creation, or to appendices of skill/powers/equipment. This is allot for anyone to take in. I think it is a hindrance that scares people away, or makes for a miserable first gaming experience.
• Akin to the previous point, the world setting can take allot of time to learn and master.
• When players feel uncertain of either the way rules or story work, they may be hesitant in making decisions, as their understanding of the game doesn’t allow them to bring their ideas to fruition. Alternatively, there may be some players that gregariously explore what their characters are capable of doing in the game system. Both of these prevent players from accomplishing their envisioned goals, and will likely negatively impact the storytelling experience.
• Another problem is differing experience levels between players. Players who understand the rules and setting more will likely have different expectations of players, and novice players will feel overwhelmed by the proficiency of those veteran players.
• Finally, if there any gaming situations where there is competitive actions between players, the newbie will be at a severe disadvantage.

Tackling each of those individual problems, I can come up with some solutions:

• The amount of rules a player needs to start playing should be absolutely minimum. This either needs to be done by reducing the number of rules in a gaming system, or by providing a “ramping up process” for the players to go through. The former rules reduction would be part of the game design process, aiming for small numbers of rules to learn. The latter “ramping up process” would require gameplay where they only need a subset or rules to play, learn those, master them, then move onto another subset of rules.
• As for setting, a similar tactic can be used as for rules above. Now, it’s harder to reduce “story” overhead, but perhaps the incremental introduction process would be more applicable here. Start out in one small region, learn it’s nuances, start to strike out into foreign lands, etc. Although this process is more storyteller driven.
• There are many ways to enable players to more quickly assimilate rules and content. One is reducing the amount they have to act on. Another is to provide some very explicit examples of them in the game, through sample gameplay snippets. The best way though is for new players to actually watch a live gaming session. This is not always possible, but is the best way to go. The final thing is that players need an ability to play around and not fear failure, which normally would have huge negative consequences in a critical storytelling session. One suggestion is that new players play skirmishes that don’t have long term consequences for their characters should they fail. Other suggestions would be for the “lethality” level to slowly increase as the game goes on, so that players can cope with the consequences without having to create new characters.
• Differing experience levels can be dealt with in a few ways. One is simply to marginalize it by not allowing the two to mix. Another requires that the new player along with everyone else, but the GM and veteran players need to take extra steps to ensure the newbie comes up to speed quickly. This may also require some specialized content for this player to gain this experience. Another idea I have is that newbie players could be observers and casual players in the game. My idea is that they’d play NPCs for the GM, instead of the GM playing all the NPCs. The easiest scenario is a generic thug in a fight. This could escalate up to a recurring villain, at which point the player could easily switch over to play a protagonist PC.
• In the competitive situation, there may be little one can do to balance out the experience level differences. Perhaps some systematic handicap of some kind for the newbie, such as more hit points, reduced reaction times, better gear, etc. Alternatively, the GM could provide some other perks to the newbie in game, but this seems like it would be allot to balance out correctly.

The overall point here is that each of these problems can be reduced and made manageable by: rules simplification, incremental rules & content exploration, incremental severity of play, and by GM and player mindfulness and guideance. All of these things could be promoted through traditional RPG manual formats.

• The first is that RPGs take a decent amount of time to learn all the rules. The problem comes in when this handicap gets in the way of gameplay, such as it detrimentally affecting the decisions and actions you undertake. Also, when one player is a novice playing with many seasoned players, the novice will feel out-of-place and holding things back. And if there is any competitive aspects to player-player gameplay, it’ll be that much worse.
• An associated point is that, once you’ve learned one game system, moving into another game system will likely be confusing as well. Many of the rules will be different, even to do similar types of tasks as you were doing in your first game. Issues like this prevent people from exploring many game systems, and “artificially encourage” players to stay in one game system.
• Also vaguely relating to the first two, RPGs in general seem to enjoy having esoteric rules. I’m not sure if they’re there for flavor or for “vendor lock-in”, but sometimes I think this also adds to the overhead of learning a game. It can also be distracting when players are in a game systems where the rules don’t make much sense, or the rules seem overly complicated for what they set out to emulate / accomplish.
• In the same vein, sometime game systems have subsystems or addons that appear to contradict each other. For example, there might be an add-on for virtual-reality interactions, and there is a whole slew of different rules for navigating in that space, even though those actions are nearly identical to ones that already have rules laid out and everyone knows.
• Sometimes the implications of rules are not well thought-out, and “game balance” issues arise. For example, set 1 weapon rules are actually totally ineffectual when compared to set 2, essentially obviating the practical desire to use those weapons, even if set 1 weapons would be more in character and appropriate to the story… (i.e. it breaks the immersion.) Other times, the implications of one aspect of the rules has unexpected or unbelievable consequences in the setting, yet the rules allow it. (Internal and external consistency.)
• Many times the rules lack context. For example, small numerical values are used to rank skills and attributues, but what do those numbers actually represent? To figure it out, you have to understand the nuances of all the rules that rely on those numbers. Not very easy to learn or predict.
• Many times the rules for rolling & probability dictate a certain character or atmosphere to the game, and these rules are not easy to change. For example, a D20 system generally has more variability in the output compared to a system using 3d6. These mechanics are usually very coupled to all other rules, making it night impossible to change. This restricts the storytelling capabilities of that system.

This just highlights the major points that immediately come to mind.

Perhaps I’m naive, but I believe that all of these things could be avoided. I’ve played in several gaming systems, and each system has it’s strengths and weaknesses. As far as I know, none of these features are exclusive; in fact, I think they would compliment each other very well.

Anyway, this is my starting point for discussing my many ideas on creating my own RPG. I’ve several concrete things done, and many conceptual thoughts on many other aspects. But, I hope first to explore each of these bulleted points in more detail to make it clear what the annoyance is, and how one would create a game that avoids those pitfalls.