Moving Parts

Moving Parts

    A roleplaying game can be described as a 'body' (a body of work, even). As such, it can be broken down into different parts of the body as well.  As an example:

    The bones of a game (the frame): This would be the core mechanic, the rawest part of the game engine.  The simple thing you do to govern all aspects of the game. For example, you would go with d20's "roll 1d20, add modifiers, compare to the number you want to meet or exceed."

    The meat of the game is the setting and lore.  'This is where you are'. For example, with Legend of the Five Rings, you're looking at Rokugan, its history, and the major events of the setting.

    The connective tissue is the mechanics that connect the game engine to the setting and makes them work together. These would be the "moving parts" of the game, the decisions a player makes to build the character and how those choices influence the game itself and present a cohesive 'how things work'.

    And of course, you have the skin.  The game itself, the story, that wraps around the game, and gives it definition.

    My focus right now is on the moving parts, the connective tissue of a game. And the question is, 'how important is this'? 'what is too much'? And the thing is, there's a definite balance involved with this.  This is true, I feel, for roleplaying games, and it is also true for card games. And in fact, I'm going to start by discussing card games.  (CCGs or 'customisable card games').

First, there was Magic

    M:tG is perhaps the best place to start, since that's where it all started.  Let's take a look at the game.  The 'bones' are 'you tap cards to let you play other cards, and the goal is to reduce your opponent's life to 0'.

    The meat of the game is the creatures, and the special abilities on the card:  the mana cost, the attack and defence, the traits, and the text box with any special rules or exceptions.

    The connective tissue is the turn order - how the rules work. And they're pretty simple: untap, upkeep, draw, main phase, combat, second main phase, end phase. The moving parts for this would be things like 'order of resolution' - you cast a creature, I use an Instant to counter it.  You use an Instant to negate my Instant.  It uses the FILO system (first in, last out) - so the most recent action is resolved first, then the one before it, the one before that, etc, to the initial action, which goes last.

    Then there's terminology.  Landwalk.  First Strike. Vigilance. Protection. What these mean, and what they do.

    At the very base, the moving parts of the game are fairly straight forward, and for the most part have changed very little.  (Interrupts were removed. 'Auras' were added, Mana Burn was removed, some terminology was cleaned up, and some abilities were reduced to a single word on the card which was explained in the rulebook.

    At the end of the day, if you came into M:tG in Beta, and someone else came in now, you'd both understand each other, and could play with a bare minimum of discussion.  "What does that do?" might be the extent of it for the most part.  The game's moving parts were streamlined, even if there's now more abilities to keep in mind (though cards often have what those do printed on the card themselves).

    If you want to add complexity - it comes from the cards themselves, and what they're capable of. Which, I feel, it should be. (I'll note one exception that comes to mind:  vehicles. That's going to confuse people who played before and just came back now, I think - but the concept's pretty quick to grasp.)

The King of Games

    So, let's talk about Duel Monsters (Yugioh). This is a game that that did it wrong, as far as I'm concerned.  And here's why -- take someone who played the game when it just came out, and have them walk away after the first expansion, then have them come in now to play the game.

    "What the hell is a Synchro-Summon? Why's there a new zone in the middle of the board? How the hell did you summon six monsters on your first turn?" There's so many new things attached to the game - a whole slew of new moving parts, that the game from when it first came out and the game now are completely different. If I'm not mistaken, Pokemon has also gone through a significant change as well, but the core of the game is more or less the same now as it was then - even if the way the monsters work have changed.

    So, the big question then: are the changes necessary? Do they make the game better, or do they simply add complexity?  My personal opinion is that the core of the game should change as little as possible, and the moving parts should remain as consistent as possible.  Again, if you want to make the game complex - it should be the cards themselves, not a new mechanic.

    Essentially... can you play the game now with the cards that first came out, and still have a viable chance of success?

And Now, RPGs

    So, let's discuss the moving parts of an RPG. For example, I'll use D&D, and L5R, since those were the examples I used before:

    5e D&D's moving parts:  Attributes, Race, Background, Class, Archetype, Class Abilities, Alignment, Feats, Skills, Equipment.

    2e Legend of the Five Rings: Clan, Family, School, Rings (Attributes), Skills, Advantages (Ancestor), Disadvantages, Kata, Sub-School, Techniques (Spells, Kiho), Heritage, Equipment, Honour, Glory, Insight, Rank.

    Some of these things -- the ones in italics -- came out later.

    Now, from my perspective, 5e did a lot right. Characters are really easy to make. You have a few decisions along the way, and the way a character is made is pretty straightforward. Legend of the Five Rings started easily (Clan, Family, School, Skills, Ads/Disads, Techniques, Equipment). Less choices than 5e requires. When the Way of the Clan Books came out, it added more moving parts:  Ancestors, Heritages.  When Way of the Monk came out, you got Kiho. Way of the Samurai gave you Kata, and sub-schools.

    Here's the thing though.

    With D&D, they can add a new archetype, a new class, a new spell, a new Feat, a new race - and this doesn't really add complexity to the game. The moving parts are the same, you just have more options for each part.

    With L5R, each new moving part had its own rules. New rules added to the game, which the player and game master hard to learn. When it originally came out, you were told Shugenja (Mages) and Bushi (Warriors) could not cross-class. A shugenja casts spells, a bushi uses techniques.  Done. A shugenja could go to a new shugenja school, a bushi could go to a new bushi school, that was fine.

    Then you got courtiers.  Were courtiers warriors? They didn't cast spells, and they had techniques. But rules were added... you could totally mix a shugenja and a courtier.  Or bushi and courtier.  But bushi and shugenja weren't allowed to touch.

    How about kiho? These new 'sort of spells'?  Oh, well, bushi could learn one, a shugenja could learn a few, and monks could learn a lot.

    Oh, and ninja?  Warrior? Shugenja?  As with courtier, the answer was 'both' - but again, warrior and shugenja couldn't touch.

    Magistrate? Merchant? Actor?

    As the game introduced new classes, they added more complex rules for how these classes interacted.

    Then they added 'alternate techniques'.  You met a requirement, you could go into this other mini-school, pick up a technique, then exit it and return to your original school or to a different school entirely.

    So... you could go "Shugenja, goes into that school's Shugenja Sub-School to get a special ability, then go into Ninja, before switching to Courtier, then into another Shugenja school."

    Then kata came along.  "If you meet the requirement and spend so much XP, you can learn this semi-technique, where you have to spend X time to prepare at the beginning of the day to use once."

    They could have, instead, done this:

    "You spend time at the beginning of the day to prepare yourself. Until you next rest, you can use this special ability as if it were a school technique." or "as a passive effect" or ... whatever.  Hell, could even go, "spend a Void Point to..."

    Make it a school technique add-on, and reduce the amount of clutter.

    By the time we got into 3rd Edition L5R ... the game felt too cluttered.  There were simply too many moving parts to keep track of, and it felt overwhelming.

So Here's the Thing

    How many moving parts should a game have?

    My answer:  The amount needed to connect the core engine to the setting. In other words, enough that the character can do what you feel they should be able to do in the game, no more, no less.

    Cantrips in 1st Edition AD&D? Unneeded complexity.

    Comeliness?  Unneeded complexity.

    Kata in L5R? Unneeded complexity.

    Sub-schools?  Unneeded complexity. They were cool, but... yeah.

   Simpler?  'Alternate Techniques for School X'.  "When you become Rank 3 in the Bayushi Bushi School, you can choose one of these two paths." That's really all that was needed.

    Could even throw in the clause:  "When you next gain an Insight Rank, you can choose to begin with Rank X in this other Clan School."  Throw that onto the technique itself and call it a day. Remove the 'you must have this Attribute at X' or 'you must have your Honour Rank at Y' or whatever.  Keep it simple.

    Now, don't get me wrong.  I like options. Give me many, many options, so I can build the character I want to play. But making more moving parts to get those options starts causing problems.

    Like, imagine going into this for D&D 5e:

Attributes

-- Sub Attributes

Race

-- Sub Race

-- Alternate Sub Race Options

Class

-- Sub Class

-- Archetype

-- Sub-Archetype

Background

-- Sub-Background (Profession)

Alignment

-- Stress Point

-- Break Point

Class Ability

-- Path A, Path B

-- Archetype Ability Path A, Path B

-- Spell, Miracle, or Mystic Sword Technique?

-- Synergistic Abilities

Feats

-- Class Feat, choose one per even level

-- Race Feat, choose one per odd level

-- General Feat, choose one every three levels

-- Knowledge Feat, choose one per alternate three levels

Skills

-- Subskills

-- Specialties

-- Synergised Skills

-- Talents

Equipment

-- Bonded Equipment

-- Equipment Slots

-- Container Slots

-- Provision Slots

-- Ammunition Slots

-- Magic Slots

    Imagine doing that at Level 1.  Then every time you Level you need to go through the entire checklist again to see what changed.  The big question I'd have is 'how do all these mechanics explain how the setting works?'  Followed by 'can't you streamline this?'

    Like, with Feats: Each Level, you gain 2 Feats. These must be from different categories. One Feat must be from a different category than you took last Level. Just make it simple.

    By the way, it's stuff like this which makes me believe Anima: Beyond Fantasy, and Exalted are effectively unplayable without significant handwavium.

    Essentially, the moving parts of a game should reflect how the world functions, the options a character should have access to, and meld the core engine to the world and setting you want to present. Adding anything else to it is detracting from the game.

Too Few Moving Parts

    A cardinal sin in game design, I feel, is providing not enough option -- where the moving parts of the game are so generic, that the only difference between Choice A and Choice B is the letters of the alphabet - everything else is the same.

    Champions, for example, had something like this:

    Feral Claws:  2d6 Melee Killing Attack

    Sword:  2d6 Melee Killing Attack.

    Bone Spur:  2d6 Melee Killing Attack

    Lightsaber:  2d6 Melee Killing Attack

   Yep.  You can build an 'Xd6 Melee/Ranged Killing Attack', slap on any name you want for it, and run with it. It literally doesn't matter, the name of it is 100% a descriptive tool to add flavour to the mechanic which is the same as every other attack out there with the same numbers.

    It annoyed me.

    What annoys me more?

  You have 4 attributes with X points split between them.  Add one flavour specialty to each attribute.  Add one thing you're good at.  Add one thing you're bad at.  Okay, you can play now.

    Okay, sure, you got your character out the door fast. How do the ... 'moving' parts blend your character into the setting in a significant way?  How do you get your character to do something another character is not capable of doing - specifically, providing a tweak to the mechanics that nobody else has?

    By which I mean, each character might have 'roll 3d6, add 1 for your speciality or for your 'one thing I'm good at', and beat TN X'. And if they choose the same traits, they get the same mechanic and same results.

    I find that boring as hell.

    At the very least I look for 'if you chose X as your bloodline, you can do Y (mechanic) that non-Xs can't do', 'if you chose Z as your profession, you get access to abilities 1, 2, 3, 4 as you progress, setting you apart from anyone else'.  Possibly with a 'your 1, 2, 3, 4 may be completely different from someone in the same profession'.

    Thus, you can say, 'I'm an Elf Ranger, focussed on the Bow' and someone else can say 'I'm a Human Ranger, focussed on my animal companion'. And, mechanically, these would be different.  The archer has ranged attacks and may be able to attack multiple foes at a distance, while the animal companion gives the character an additional 'pool of HP' that can attack on its own, and be augmented on its own, separate from the character.  The elf might have 'unhindered by terrain' while the human might have 'survive anything' and have a few more HP.  So, when you get the characters written up to play... they're distinctly different beyond just the words on the paper.

    And hey, don't get me wrong - if you do like ultralight games, have fun. It might not be my cup of tea, but that doesn't mean it's a bad cup of tea.