RPG Writing and Design Needs a Paradigm Shift

[kenada]

TBH, I kind of hate it when RPGs use color and/or symbol coding. My brain jsst doesn't seem to be wired to remember things in relation to colours or symbols. I never know what any of them mean and immediately feel overwhelmed by them. It's one of the reasons I gave up on Warhammer 4.

For me, it depends on the symbols and how they’re used. I think the PF2 action symbols are fine. They’re simple and map intuitively to how many actions you need (one diamond = one action, two = two actions, etc). The icons used for monster powers in 4e? No. They make the layout messy and are sometimes redundant.

For example, consider the Angel of Battle (because it’s in the MM sample on DM’s Guild). It has the following powers: Falchion, Mobile Melee Attack, Storm of Blades, and Chosen Foe. In the stat block, there is plenty of space to include type (“basic melee attack”, “melee attack”, “close burst”) along with each power’s action and recharge. It’s not surprising that 5e moved away from “recharge ” to “recharge 5–6”.

 

[SteveC]

Giant books full of walls of text with important information buried in questionable prose is no longer an acceptable way to present a game to an audience. The industry needs a paradigm shift in design -- both system, and visual. They need to stop paying by the word and start paying by the hour. they need to stop treating games like books and treat them like manuals. They need to leverage technology and techniques from other industries and make accessibility a primary goal in production.

I think I pretty much agree with you, but I have to disagree with the section I've bolded. I think RPG books are treated all too often like manuals, and rarely like books. What do I mean by this? A manual is something I read to get information or learn how to do something. A book is something I read for enjoyment or to generate ideas in my head.

When I write gaming stuff, and when I give people advice on them (which some fools have asked me for!) I tell them to write to the reader. When I'm talking about something that happens in a game, I use you, as in you the person reading the book. Here are the rules for how you should do something, and here's how you should talk to your players about it. Here's a part of a character that you can define, and here's why you might want to do that.

Perhaps this is pedantic (and hey, considering this is a message board, my Eight-ball says "signs point to yes,") but writing something to read and create excitement and wonder in the reader makes for a much more approachable game.

Just my $.02 of course.

 

[kenada]

Well, 4e packs a lot into a few words by virtue of sophisticated design, effects are mostly standard, as are duration, target type, AOE, etc. There's no real need for blocks of text. A few powers require a bit more, but mostly utilities, summons, that sort of thing.

Skimming through my copy of the PHB, there are plenty of attack powers that require more than a few lines. They’re not (usually) more verbose than they need to be, but that’s my point. They say what they need to say and stop. Sometimes that’s a line or two. Sometimes it’s more (e.g., Ripost Strike). Sometimes it involves compound effects (e.g., acid arrow). It’s all fine as long as it’s what’s necessary to explain what the thing does.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This reminds me of Boarderlands 2 and its color rarity for items. Luckily, one of the loading screens gave a helpful nemonic device, "When Grandma burps, Patrick obeys." Now I'll always know which color is which degree of rarity. It's white, green, blue, purple, and then orange if you're curious.

I think HoML is generally a bit more obvious. The only thing that color REALLY signifies is which power source to use with a feat, so red is martial, orange is elemental, purple is spirit, grey is shadow, and green is life. There are some colors on certain other things, but more just for aesthetics. I think afflictions are also color-coded, but it is pretty obvious which are which (and really there's no mechanical significance anyway, it is literally 'just color', a curse and a disease, and a poison, pretty much all the same in the end).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Skimming through my copy of the PHB, there are plenty of attack powers that require more than a few lines. They’re not (usually) more verbose than they need to be, but that’s my point. They say what they need to say and stop. Sometimes that’s a line or two. Sometimes it’s more (e.g., Ripost Strike). Sometimes it involves compound effects (e.g., acid arrow). It’s all fine as long as it’s what’s necessary to explain what the thing does.

Yeah, they are still pretty darn concise:

This is clearly a complex power, with varying effects depending on the Vestige which is active, as well as a somewhat complex core effect AND a level scaling effect (because it is an At-Will). You can still grasp the entire thing in a few seconds. Even some of the MM blocks you used as examples are harder to parse than this. Honestly, Vestige Pact wasn't one of my favorite designs, but 4e Warlocks seem to have been picked as the 'fiddly class'...

 

[Reynard]

Just out of interest what gets cut? If you’re re-writing the PHB what doesn’t need to be in there?

Let's us a simple example: fireball. Here's the SRD entry: Fireball – 5th Edition SRD

That is too wordy on its face. The lines giving range and stuff are fine, but why not an "Area: 20ft radius sphere" line and an "Effect: 8d6 fire damage" line? Then it is done.

Lots of spells, class abilities and other bits are like that: completely unnecessary prose.

But, to be clear, I am not just talking about trimming prose. I am talking about using visual design elements like one look maps to increase utility.

 

[mamba]

Let's us a simple example: fireball. Here's the SRD entry: Fireball – 5th Edition SRD

That is too wordy on its face. The lines giving range and stuff are fine, but why not an "Area: 20ft radius sphere" line and an "Effect: 8d6 fire damage" line? Then it is done.

if you want to remove all flavor to just have a bland technical description, then no thanks, this is still a game of imagination, leave some room for it in the descriptions.

I agree with the general idea of the OP, but that would be taking it too far.

When I read the OP, I was thinking of books that read like they would have wanted to be novels, with paragraphs on end with little to no relevant information. I was thinking of ‘Survivalist’s Guide to Spelunking’, after reading the preview I felt like I had just read 10 pages of text with next to no information.

I am all for concise writing, but it should remain evocative and not become bland because of it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Let's us a simple example: fireball. Here's the SRD entry: Fireball – 5th Edition SRD

That is too wordy on its face. The lines giving range and stuff are fine, but why not an "Area: 20ft radius sphere" line and an "Effect: 8d6 fire damage" line? Then it is done.

Lots of spells, class abilities and other bits are like that: completely unnecessary prose.

But, to be clear, I am not just talking about trimming prose. I am talking about using visual design elements like one look maps to increase utility.

As I said though, part of the whole 'magic' there with 4e was the underlying foundation, you could simply say 'area burst 2 at 10; all creatures'. You need that infrastructure to really do it best. 5e doesn't even, technically, describe a battle map, let alone allow for this (though it would be easy enough).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

if you want to remove all flavor to just have a bland technical description, then no thanks, this is still a game of imagination, leave some room for it in the descriptions.

I agree with the general idea of the OP, but that would be taking it too far.

When I read the OP, I was thinking of books that read like they would have wanted to be novels, with paragraphs on end with little to no relevant information. I was thinking of ‘Survivalist’s Guide to Spelunking’, after reading the preview I felt like I had just read 10 pages of text with next to no information.

I am all for concise writing, but it should remain evocative and not become bland because of it.

Where is the lack of flavor in any of this? 4e, for example, has just as much flavor as any other edition. Nor am I against any specific amount of flavor, I just want it somewhere where I don't have read through 7 paragraphs of it to use the power/spell.

 

[aramis erak]

I agree with EN, they and Paizo are the most open. I believe the YZE and 2d20 SRDs are along the lines of what WotC offers, i.e. a baseline, not the full game (there are several games on top of either engine). I have not looked into them however.

For Kobold we have yet to see what they release under ORC, the full text or an excerpt like WotC.

Either way, yes, Paizo and EN show it can work, I would not expect WotC to do so however and find out how much it affects their sales of books and VTT modules

The YZE SRD, last I checked, had all the custom core mechanics from all the games in it, but not the full talents list, and it doesn't clearly tell you which was in which.