Writing and Organization Matter.

[drcpunk]

If a rule is unclear, this is a problem. It is a flaw, probably a flaw in the game, certainly a flaw in the writing, organization, or both.

Currently, I am running a game of Primetime Adventures, a game where players and gm, aka the Producer, create an imaginary television show and play out one or more episodes from it. The published game is 106 digest-sized pages, amazingly tiny for a roleplaying game. No supplements are needed; the game is complete.

Nevertheless, in 3 sessions of play -- one for the show Out There, and two for Keruton -- we hit a number of bumps. First, there were a couple of things I needed to ask about. Matt Wilson, the author was very generous with his time. He asked me to post the questions to the Dog Eared Designs forum on the Forge, and he answered every one of them.

Most of the first batch of answers were a variation of "Yep, that's a typo. Sorry about that."

One had to do with a new way of conflict resolution where the author thought he'd been clear. If I'd been the only one boggled, I would have assumed I'd misread the section, but I was not. So, one general principle I have is this: If a number of people fail to understand your utterly clear rule, maybe it isn't as utterly clear as you think it is.

Matt did explain it quite clearly in his answer to me. But, yes, that clarity should have been in the book as published.

The next batch of questions got more convoluted, as they came after we'd played a couple of sessions. And, not every question pointed to an actual problem. Fr'ex, when I asked about whether one deck of cards or two were used, the book was not unclear. I was confused. This is because I had previously played the game with Ben Lehman, who uses two decks, each with a different back, to distinguish "regular" card flips from card flips due to the fan mail mechanism. I had mistake an individual's house rule for an official rule.

I also verified that, no, Matt did not have a rule that a couple of people were convinced was in the book. I play with this unofficial rule, and I think it should be an official rule, but nothing is actually missing from the book. The rule was never there.

I then hit the heart of my confusion, a combination of a complete misreading of a rule and something that was not spelled out in the rules. The misreading was completely my fault, and mnemex had no problem finding the actual rule. The thing that wasn't spelled out is an important part of conflict resolution. There was a lot of back and forth between various folks as some of us tried really hard to get the concepts involved into our heads, and others tried to help us.

I think I now have that concept. The last session of Keruton we played, I made sure to nail it down, although I failed to do so in a non-annoying way. But, in that session, an off-the-cuff comment intended to help one of the players out sent me back to the Forge asking another question, mostly out of curiosity. The answer I got showed me that I had been misinterpreting another rule. The explanation of how things were supposed to work made sense; however, I would never have figured this out from reading the book. I got the explanation almost by accident, via the forum.

This is why I linked to Jonathan Walton's piece. There are two major concepts that I understand now, but that I do not think I would ever have figured out without going outside the text. In both cases, I did not seem to be the only person confused, so I think the writing needed to be clearer. That is, the rules as they were intended to be work. The game as played by those rules looks like it works -- if we do get in another session of Keruton in December or January, I should be able to verify this. Nevertheless, the writing is flawed.

Currently, mnemex is working on starting up some kind of campaign of Weapons of the Gods. He has read the entire book. I have not, nor has Erik Hansen. Yesterday, the two of us tried to make up characters.

I am hitting a few snarls. Now, most of these are due to my not having read the rules. There I was, with this 380-or-so page book, trying to do character gen as quickly as possible. I'm going to miss things.

mnemex was trying to give me a hand, and this added to some of the confusion. I got such advice as,

"Remember, you need kung fu. That's the heart of the game. Yes, of course, you want to buy more than one kung fu technique!"

"You're spending too much on kung fu -- you have to buy other stuff too, like Secret Arts and Lore."

"You don't have to buy Lore."

"You probably want to buy Lore."

"You should buy Story of the Self. And you really want to buy the Secret Art of Intrigue. That's what your character is all about."

"Drop Story of the Self. You don't need that."

And so on. Well meaning advice, but utterly confusing.

As I looked over one section, trying to figure out what I wanted for my Secret Arts of Intrigue, mnemex explained that he wasn't sure what I got for ten points spend in a particular way. I blinked, and went over a few pages with him.

"So, this comes free, right? But, this stuff I have to buy piece by piece -- I see the costs."

"Right, but you also want either the Passion stuff or the Inspiriation stuff."

"That's 5 points each. So, I can take Inspirations."

"But, you need to spend points on anything you want to do."

"That's not in there!"

"Yes it is."

And indeed it was -- after sections where costs of anything that had costs were clearly set off from the text, these two sections had costs buried inconspicuously within paragraphs. There is no reason for this. The costs should have been at the beginning of the relevant paragraph, in bold face, in parentheses, just like the costs were in the preceding sections.

I have no clear understanding of the rules at this point, so I shall not presume to guess whether or not the rules work. I have barely even skimmed the sections in question, so I do not know whether the writing is clear or not. But, the organization and layout are flawed. For anything that one purchases with Destiny Points, the cost should stand out clearly, throughout the book.

Now, this does not mean that the game doesn't work fine. I have had a lot of fun playing Primetime Adventures, and I hope to have fun playing Weapons of the Gods.

Nevertheless, unclear rules and poor organization are flaws. We have only a limited amount of free time, and there is only so much work we are prepared to do to compensate for a game's shortcomings. If a group can't pick up the game quickly, if the rules confuse and require clarification after clarification, if it is a pain finding anything in the rules -- and here, I would mention again that agrumer really should write his piece on how rpg gamers actually use rulebooks -- there is a real danger that the group will put the game aside and never come back to it.