I have been writing this blog, and reading other RPG-related blogs and forums, for almost twenty years (!). One thing I have noticed during this time is that there is a species of gamer who sees it as an important part of his (always his) identity that he only uses RPG materials for play and has no other earthly use for them. This type of individual always belittles and pooh-poohs any desire to make a product read well or possess any sort of literary merit; he insists instead that useability is the only valid concern. Everything about a book should serve that end - all of it ruthlessly shaped and focused for efficient use 'at the table'.
This is generally coupled with a derisive attitude to those the RPG Rulebook Spartan percieves to be interested in RPG books for the wrong reasons - the Spartan thinks very poorly of anybody who would want to get such a book 'just' in order to read it and not play it. Reading, he insists, is for fiction. And it is illegitimate for any RPG writer to aspire to create literary art. To do so would be to inculcate in the masses the foolish and corrupting notion that prose style matters. And in any case the RPG Rulebook Spartan strongly believes that only namby-pampby, friendless, introverted girlie men would want to read an RPG rulebook for entertainment in the first place. No: gritting his teeth and staring off into the distance with flinty eyes, the RPG Rulebook Spartan reminds his audience that he has seen things. He is a man of action. He sits down around a table with other men and takes with great seriousness the task of pretending to be an elf. Ideally he would want the rules of whatever game he is playing to be etched in slabs of granite or carved into tree bark. But at the very least those rules should have the decency only to present themselves as rules - and never to try to look or sound nice.
I reject RPG Rulebook Spartanism. I don't think that RPG rulebooks should only be designed with usability in mind. The only ones I have ever read and wanted to play, in fact, are precisely those that prioritise readability over usability. And I am going to out myself. I have played lots of RPGs over the years. But I also - and I am going to shock you, now - going to proudly declare that I own many RPG books that I have absolutely no earthly use for, but which I like because they are enjoyable to read and full of interesting ideas. I do not think it is a sin against God for a designer to prioritise the reading experience over the gaming one. I have no problem with confessing to reading things and enjoying the images they conjure in the mind as an end in itself.
Finally: I reject wholeheartedly the idea that readability and useability are at odds with one another. If something is enjoyable to read then it will inspire you to want to run it, and to make it a success. If something reads like a long list of bullet points, numbered lists, sidebars and the like then its flat and uninspiring nature will work against the desire to make use of it. RPG Rulebook Spartanism is in other word based on a misconceived premise, which is that usefulness can be extracted from aesthetics. It cannot and should not be.
I never said I think *poorly* of people who want an RPG book merely to read, noisms. Some seem to be specifically designed to that end. People may read whatever they like and I'll not judge them for it. Nor am I in any way averse to inspirational prose packaged *with* an adventure, or to the High Gygaxian of the DMG or to florid setting descriptions or many other eclectic and joyful things.
ReplyDeleteMy stance is merely that an adventure - not a setting book, not a rulebook, a keyed adventure - that prioritises readability over usability is not fit for purpose. When faced with such, I'm typically forced to rewrite the entire thing, assuming it's evocative enough to make that worthwhile. At that point, I'd generally rather write my own adventure while cribbing whatever parts of the original inspired me, since that is at least creative writing and so much more enjoyable than doing an editing job on someone else's material.
I don't really agree. Or, at least, I come back to my point that the two things are not at odds. I think most people, when they buy an adventure, read through it first, making notes, don't they? And then run it off their notes? I would doubt whether an adventure that can be played literally 'out of the box' without any prep is achievable.
DeleteSince one has to read the thing to get to grips with it first, isn't it more usable if it is enjoyable to read?
I'm not sure we're on the same page: I almost always use adventures as modules, to be incorporated into a campaign, rather than running them as one-shots. That's also been my usual experience as a player, I assumed it was normal. I don't necessarily know when the players will explore a specific dungeon, or even whether they will explore it at all. (By dungeons, I mean all explorable locales or similar set pieces.) I therefore can't rely on keeping a dungeon in memory, or on a few jotted notes. I will know the general concept of the place and its important aspects, but I must be able to grasp the key immediately in order to run it. The more verbose the key, the more work I have to do in order to make it playable, all the way up to totally rewriting it and discarding the original.
DeleteI like a bit of prose to get a feel for the adventure, separate from the key. Since the digital era means we aren't limited by page count, I wouldn't object to a double key, short and long, side by side. I need an efficient and immediately useable key, though, and if the adventure writer hasn't provided one I must make it myself. If the ambiance can't be compressed into that key, and in tandem into my memory, it will be lost.
As a matter purely of personal taste, I would also like said prose to be short - as you rightly accused me, I'm here to play elfgames, not to read; the purpose of the text for me is to inspire and facilitate play. I don't want chocolate in my peanut butter. That's just a personal preference, though, maybe an obnoxious one. I'm reminded of when a friend asked me to appraise a script she'd written. The stage directions drowned out the dialogue in describing the emotional states of the characters. I asked her where the room was for the actors, and she's not asked my opinion on a script since.
Yes, I tend to design my own dungeons/locations for a campaign (or sketch them out briefly if I need to at the table) and only tend to run adventure modules as one-shots or campaigns in their own right.
DeleteThe idea of a double key is obviously a decent compromise.
I share your distaste for florid prose. But for me the point is inspiration. Really good writing inspires me to want to play. Bad writing (or bland, instruction manual type text) does not. This is what I meant about usability and aesthetics not being at odds.
That might be the strawiest strawman I have seen on this subject. So... well done, I guess?
ReplyDeleteIt's my fault. I came across as unnecessarily pugnacious - to bite back is human. This post was clearly prompted by my comment, I regret my original phrasing, and the ensuing conversation is probably now more heated than is necessary or than it would be otherwise, due to how I spoke. I apologise.
DeleteHow is it a strawman?
DeleteNo, come on John, it's all in good fun. I'm not biting back, really - just using the opportunity to make the point with some humour.
DeleteI'm not at all offended either, just to set your mind at ease.
DeleteCan I 'Like' this or is that for Facebook only?
ReplyDeleteHa!
DeleteThis post reminds me of Mork Borg. People complained it was incomprehensible to use at the table but really those rules were all repeated in the last 2 pages. The book gave you a ton of 'color' to set the mood while telling you the rules, then repeated the important ones. That's good design if you ask me (even if I really didn't like the art).
ReplyDeleteI would tend to agree!
DeleteMay I ask you a different question?
ReplyDeleteAnd another after that:
Is the worst version of a thing just not that thing?
For example: If someone sold you a baseball, but it was clearly just an egg, would you not complain?
Don't get me wrong, an egg has value, nutritional value in fact, but it will get smashed to bits as soon as it hits the bat, or the ground if the batter sucks.
Art has value, but I cannot run a game using the Mona Lisa.
Sure, but there are two responses to this:
Deletea) I don't actually think there is anything wrong with buying an RPG book as art/entertainment without ever intending to use it to run a game. Things can have more than one use.
b) It is a mistake to think that what matters in a 'thing' is how useful it is. We care about the way our cars drive and how reliable they are, etc., but we also care about how they look. The idea that you can separate usefulness and aesthetics is not really feasible in practice, as far as I can see. We want both. And actually the two feed off each other - the more pleasing on the eye a car is, the more you want to drive it.
There is nothing wrong with buying an RPG book as art or entertainment without ever intending to use it to run a game. There's something wrong with SELLING an RPG book with no intention of making it useful to run a game. That's not an impersonal stand on pure principle, I'm out a significant amount of money over the years.
DeleteSince I mostly skipped the d20 glut I've rarely bought books that are flooded with bad fiction to the point of being unplayable - but there are plenty of times in recent memory where I've bought books speculatively that turned out to be all layout and vibes rather than playable content, or bullet points and iconography trying to disguise unedited logorrhea, or terse phrases that might have meant something to the author but aren't actually useful to any other reader.
DeleteEntirely agree, Tom. I too have encountered exactly this. 'All layout and vibes' describes way too many products.
DeleteI want to reiterate that being a pleasure to read is not mutually exclusive with usability - and enhances it, since usability is so reliant on inspiration. The opulence of Planescape's presentation (to me, at the time) made me really want to play it, despite the less-than-ideal presentation of the info on its face.
Planescape is a pretty devastating counterpoint against me, because I love it and none of it was at all "table-useful". But I will cling to this much: In the Cage, Monstrous Compendium, Planes of Conflict, other setting books? All great. Fires of Dis, Harbinger House, other adventures? If it hadn't been my own fault then I'd like a refund.
DeleteYes, that's fair. The thing about Planescape is that even as a setting book, it's terrible (on its face) in terms of usability. But it is still a pleasure to have and read - and very inspiring to play.
DeleteWell, I'm from Sparta. Role-playing games are for playing, first and foremost, and everything else you want to do can come later. My time is valuable, and I prefer to spend it on games that work for me on the tabletop.
ReplyDeleteEhhh, call me a spartan, though for me I do rather want to play my rpgs than just read my rpgs, and believe that having it good to run at the table is more important than just reading by itself. However, though I find that statement true, it's oxymoronic because if it is good to run at the table, you'll probably enjoy reading it.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I am fighting is the attitude of "well, no one is going to run it as written, so who cares how it plays?" I don't agree with that because yes mostly likely people are going to change the stuff in it, if it can't work out of the box, then it's not working right.
And I've always been a guy for balance between having a good game and art and flavour. Not exactly crunch and fluff, but a similar idea. I'm not a fan of vermis, or the borg games because they feel more like art books than games, vermis being just an art book.
This is why I like Yoon-Suin because it has a incredibly good balance of game and flavour.
Well, I cannot disagree about Yoon-Suin. ;) Thanks.
DeleteThere's certain reviewers who think that an RPG supplement should be usable if your first time reading it is at a busy table and 1-2 beers in. For them "unusability" is anything they have a skill issue or attention span issue with. I might sound like I agree with those people if I said the gameability should be the sole priority of an RPG book, but I want walls of text and full page spreads of art or cute poems as long as they don't get in the way. (For an example of "getting in the way," Shadowrun will have multiple page short stories literally in the middle of rules explanations).
ReplyDeleteI bought Vermis 1 and 2 because I appreciate the art behind them and they convinced me very well that the opposite of the 'spartan' mindset makes for worse books than if you just made a graphic novel or ordinary artbook. If someone less charitable than me looked at such a project, I wouldn't be surprised if he were to assume that they're for lazy fools who could have made better work if they tried (which is not the case with Vermis, where the point is that it's unusable).
No doubt there is a fine line which Shadowrun crosses. A lot of the oWoD stuff was like that too. Just way to much extraneous stuff (although I remain a giant fan of the original Changeling rulebook).
DeleteI cannot disagree. While it has not been the same hill for me, I have derided rules that read like VCR instructions.
ReplyDeleteSome books I do enjoy reading for their content. Mage from White Wolf, some of the ShadowRun books, almost all of the WitchCraft books from Eden.
Others are...well, less enjoyable.