RPG Tools & Tech could kill Streamlined Mechanics

Posted on Sep 3, 2010 | 3 comments

Today I listened to a Podcast by the entire Pulp Gamer Media Network at GenCon. Near the end of the segment they started talking about new technology in RPGs: D&DI, Smart phone Apps, iPad Apps, and the amazing, but cost prohibitive Microsoft Surface. These tools are awesome!

Even now, I am putting together plans for virtual tools for Free Spacer, why not? Currently Free Spacer Character Creation takes around 45min plus any disagreement on the type of Crew the group wants to play, but still, an interactive guide to move players through that and allows them to share the Crew/Ship sheet all on the ultimate character sheet (otherwise known as the iPad), would so sweet. It’s been done for D&D4e, I want it too.

During the podcast, one of the guys, I’m not sure who, mentioned how much he loved transparent (streamlined?) mechanics and how technology did that for him. I defiantly agree about the Streamlined mechanics. A smoothly flowing game in which everyone understands the rules and there is little need to look stuff up is a worthy goal for all designers. Working in the Video Game industry though, I can tell you the rules and calculations behind the scene in any game are anything but streamlined or transparent. If you looked behind the curtain of most Video Games you would find a great swath of Spreadsheets, dangling modifiers, and a different mechanic, from physics simulation to dialogue trees, for every task in the game. The result is a huge team of designers and programmers creating unique mechanics and a mammoth task of testing every little thing as it all works differently.

So I must say as we race forward to embrace technology, we must be careful; these marvellous tools could kill the wonderful new trend in design of simple consistent and streamlined mechanics. If you play D&D 4e you know that it is nearly unthinkable to make up a character without the D&DI Character builder. With D&DI it takes a couple of hours without it many hours especially if you’re not sure what you want to make. The trend requiring the use of such tools is a bit alarming; will you be unable to play without one? What will it do to the rules of our games? My concern is that Game designers will allow the tools to make them less rigorous about their game mechanics and that games will become unplayable offline. Game mechanics will use more and more spreadsheet data, dissimilar mechanics, and systems with little regard for streamlining or ease of use. This can happen if players stop worrying about the ease of use in their games and instead just say… grab that tool it will calculate the millions of dangling modifiers and swaths of data. Now yes I am being alarmist, but I have seen this happen before; in film school, when film students switched from shooting their projects on film to shooting on video, they lost all their shooting discipline and shot hours of footage instead of just what they needed. The stopped planning and the project got worse. In any creative endeavour, rigour is important it makes for better project and in this case better games.

I believe though, the community can have a fun with the awesome new tools and still demand rigorous and streamlined mechanics from all the game designers out there. Do not let companies require you to use a tool just to play your favourite Roleplaying Game.