I wanted to respond to it at the time, but I got busy and time marches on. Also, Justin Achilli posted a fairly concise response that largely corresponds to the thing I'm about to say:Me: *designs game*— Cam Banks (@boymonster) February 5, 2019
Internet: “It’s too hard to learn a new system.”
*D&D5e comes out*
*outperforms all previous sales records*
Me: “OK how about now?”
Internet: “It’s too hard to learn a new system."
I want to delve into this in a bit more detail, so here we go.I think “it’s too hard to learn a new system” is shorthand for not immediately seeing the merits of choosing to invest time in an unfamiliar title.— ⚰️ justin achilli ⚰️ (@jachilli) February 6, 2019
Myself, I will readily admit that my willingness to actually learn a new system is situational.
I'm guessing there are roughly two broad clades of RPG people: those who have maybe one or two systems they stick to using, and those who like to tinker and maybe like to look at a bunch of systems to see what's happening in the field and what interesting mechanics are out there. I'm also going to guess that, by-and-large, the former are predominantly players and the latter are predominantly GMs. If you're selling reams of splatbooks, you're probably appealing to players taking a deep dive into their preferred system; if you're selling new systems, you're probably appealing to GMs.
Generalizations, but that all seems pretty reasonable to me. But that explains part of your problem: you're only targeting a subset of the entire RPG-consuming public, and at that, you're only targeting people who have actually heard of you. With a field dominated by D&D and a handful of other systems, largely older ones, I'm sure it's difficult to get your tiny little system noticed.
I nominally fall into the latter category, but of the wide variety of games I consume, I only tend to play a few of them. I've been thinking about this very subject because, after collecting a glut of retroclones for D&D, why do I need another one? Likewise, most of the other indie systems floating around are variations on a theme. Why do I need a new one?
What, precisely, am I looking for?
There are, maybe, four things that will get me to try a new system. Keep in mind: this isn't a conscious effort. I'm not sitting there with a checklist investigating RPG stuff. This is an intuitive, sub rosa process, probably very similar to how I suspect most people consume advertising. But I daresay I'm looking for these things:
- Originality: Does it do something new?
- Familiarity: Is it comparable to another system to merit easy comparison? (Not necessarily incompatible with originality.) Keep in mind that this will also be more useful to long-time gamers who like to tinker with systems.
- Simplicity: Are the rules short and robust?
- Setting: Does it have a unique or engaging setting?
I think part of the widespread success of D&D 5e — in addition to being D&D — is that it hits many of these notes simultaneously.
When I started with RPGs, I initially read World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, and D&D 3e (of which I regularly played World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu), so I'm sure the wet computer of my brain is subconsciously checking all systems against that basic database.
Note that a system can do only one of these things and potentially pique my interest, but it's no doubt more effective the more things it does.
Originality
Your system doesn't have to reinvent the wheel — familiarity suggests it shouldn't — but it's more likely to pique my interest if it's somehow unique. D&D 5e introduces advantage and disadvantage, eliminating the endlessly stacked modifiers of 3e and 4e. Unknown Armies takes the simplicity of Call of Cthulhu's percentile system, but adds a bunch of dice tricks to make the system a little more robust and flavorful. Powered by the Apocalypse games reduce everything down to the B/X D&D reaction roll as their base dice rolling mechanic to make everything consistent and lightning fast.
If it doesn't do something new, then why am I not using a game I already own?
Familiarity
However, your game system is way easier to understand if it has some grounding in what has come before. If you make a game about robot butterflies that uses laser pointers and interpretive dance as a mechanic, I'm definitely going to be intrigued (because it ranks high on originality), but I doubt I'll understand and use your system, so I might pass on it. It helps if it's grounded in something that's come before. (I dig some of the stuff coming out of the indie scene, but they like to introduce new terms and mechanics with abandon. After months of Dungeon World, I still didn't feel comfortable that I was monitoring move triggers correctly. Many of the smaller indie games feel like they'd be a lot smoother as the first game you ever learn, before you have preconceived notions. Then again, I'm sure that's a deliberate design choice.) I understood Call of Cthulhu when coming from World of Darkness, because it had the basis of stats and skills, albeit with a different resolution mechanic. Deadlands was straightforward because it used dice pools and had a similar separation but relationship between stats and skills. D&D had stats and skills, and the leveling system is pretty ubiquitous in gaming. Each system was different, but they had enough similarities for me to understand what they were trying to do.
If it doesn't have some familiar elements, then how will I understand it? (Introducing a bunch of new terms can also break simplicity.)
Simplicity
Anymore, this is probably the biggest thing I want out of a new game system. Is it easy to use? Your core system should be easily summarized in a sentence or two, and I should be able to draft a rules summary in a page. Maybe two at best. (Unknown Armies 2e had all the rules on one page near the front of the book; the summary makes little sense when you first read it, but once you've read the rules section, you basically only need that one page. I loved that design.) If your system is really complicated, there had better be a reason for all that complexity, and it should probably be an obvious part of your game design. (War simulation RPGs from the '80s tended to have high complexity, and given that they were trying to delineate the differences among different kinds of equipment and tactics, that makes a lot of sense. Not my cup of tea, but I see why the complexity is there which gives me more buy-in.) Complication can also be okay if it's intuitive — Deadlands uses a ton of different dice and deals in a ton of different modifiers, but the dice map to characters' skill level, and the modifiers are there to provide a realistic Western experience on the off-chance that you want to simulate intricate gunfights or Oregon Trail with it.
If it's not simple, why not? I'm only going to invest in learning a complicated system if it's that way for a reason.
Setting
This is simultaneously the least and most important part of the package, because it might get me to overlook various other game design sins, but I might just use the back matter of the book to run my own game if it seems like too much of a pain to learn. If you have a cool setting that engages me, I might not use your rules, but I'll at least buy your setting, which is a win for you. (If I don't use your rules, but there are some cool ones lurking in there, I might very well steal them and tell people, "Oh, yeah, I swiped the swimming minigame from SCUBA Quest. Worth checking out for the swimming rules and the dolphin-men culture I used this session. It's rad.") If you tie your rules into the setting, then I'm more likely to use them, even if there's a learning curve. (Full disclosure: if I were running my own occult conspiracy game from scratch, I could see me using a variation of the Unknown Armies system while ditching the magick rules. But I will never drop or even really alter the magick system in a standard UA game, because it's so intimately tied to the setting. You can't change one without altering the other. You know why I'm so gung-ho about the sanity rules and magick rules from UA? That's why.)
If your setting isn't terribly engaging, then why don't I run something else or make up my own thing? Why do I need to learn your system at all?
So?
I'm just one datapoint on a graph, but the basic gist is the same with any advertising: you have to grab me with something. If there's a game with a lot of hype, or a game that seems like it does something very specific that I want to do, I'll probably give it a look. Mothership probably would have flown under my radar if it hadn't gotten all the good press in OSR circles, but it seems a robust little system for running sci-fi horror and I'm glad to have it in my back pocket. Powered by the Apocalypse stuff largely hasn't grabbed me the way it's seemed to grab a lot of the indie scene, but I knew the quick resolution mechanics and low learning curve in Dungeon World were exactly what I wanted for the gladiator game. I don't think I need another fantasy adventure system, but Belly of the Beast had such an engaging setting that I had to get it.
At this point, I have a ton of games, more than I'm likely to play or run in my life. If a new game crosses my vision, it's competing with all the other games on my shelf or hard drive. I don't want to learn a lot of new mechanics or terminology, but there also has to be a good reason for me to read it and not just use the games I already own to run something similar. If you're just writing an adventure or a collection of monsters or even a handful of cool ideas, I'm going to be much more interested in using a system I already own unless you can simultaneously prove that your idea warrants a new gaming approach. (Bluebeard's Bride is an excellent example. I can run Bluebeard's haunted mansion in any game system, but that game delivers several tools to run that specific scenario, and is so engagingly written as to make me keen to play it. Plus, it's a gorgeous piece of art in its own right.)
So new systems aren't hard to learn, but there has to be some immediate hook to convince me that it's worth my time to learn them when I have [redacted] games on my shelves. I have to hear about it and see some merit as to why I can't do the damn thing with the games already available. Good press helps, as does being from a game designer whose work I know and consistently like, but those are potentially secondary concerns to the need for it to either do something new or present its information in a concise way.
When I started with RPGs, I initially read World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, and D&D 3e (of which I regularly played World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu), so I'm sure the wet computer of my brain is subconsciously checking all systems against that basic database.
Note that a system can do only one of these things and potentially pique my interest, but it's no doubt more effective the more things it does.
Originality
Your system doesn't have to reinvent the wheel — familiarity suggests it shouldn't — but it's more likely to pique my interest if it's somehow unique. D&D 5e introduces advantage and disadvantage, eliminating the endlessly stacked modifiers of 3e and 4e. Unknown Armies takes the simplicity of Call of Cthulhu's percentile system, but adds a bunch of dice tricks to make the system a little more robust and flavorful. Powered by the Apocalypse games reduce everything down to the B/X D&D reaction roll as their base dice rolling mechanic to make everything consistent and lightning fast.
If it doesn't do something new, then why am I not using a game I already own?
Familiarity
However, your game system is way easier to understand if it has some grounding in what has come before. If you make a game about robot butterflies that uses laser pointers and interpretive dance as a mechanic, I'm definitely going to be intrigued (because it ranks high on originality), but I doubt I'll understand and use your system, so I might pass on it. It helps if it's grounded in something that's come before. (I dig some of the stuff coming out of the indie scene, but they like to introduce new terms and mechanics with abandon. After months of Dungeon World, I still didn't feel comfortable that I was monitoring move triggers correctly. Many of the smaller indie games feel like they'd be a lot smoother as the first game you ever learn, before you have preconceived notions. Then again, I'm sure that's a deliberate design choice.) I understood Call of Cthulhu when coming from World of Darkness, because it had the basis of stats and skills, albeit with a different resolution mechanic. Deadlands was straightforward because it used dice pools and had a similar separation but relationship between stats and skills. D&D had stats and skills, and the leveling system is pretty ubiquitous in gaming. Each system was different, but they had enough similarities for me to understand what they were trying to do.
If it doesn't have some familiar elements, then how will I understand it? (Introducing a bunch of new terms can also break simplicity.)
Simplicity
Anymore, this is probably the biggest thing I want out of a new game system. Is it easy to use? Your core system should be easily summarized in a sentence or two, and I should be able to draft a rules summary in a page. Maybe two at best. (Unknown Armies 2e had all the rules on one page near the front of the book; the summary makes little sense when you first read it, but once you've read the rules section, you basically only need that one page. I loved that design.) If your system is really complicated, there had better be a reason for all that complexity, and it should probably be an obvious part of your game design. (War simulation RPGs from the '80s tended to have high complexity, and given that they were trying to delineate the differences among different kinds of equipment and tactics, that makes a lot of sense. Not my cup of tea, but I see why the complexity is there which gives me more buy-in.) Complication can also be okay if it's intuitive — Deadlands uses a ton of different dice and deals in a ton of different modifiers, but the dice map to characters' skill level, and the modifiers are there to provide a realistic Western experience on the off-chance that you want to simulate intricate gunfights or Oregon Trail with it.
If it's not simple, why not? I'm only going to invest in learning a complicated system if it's that way for a reason.
Setting
This is simultaneously the least and most important part of the package, because it might get me to overlook various other game design sins, but I might just use the back matter of the book to run my own game if it seems like too much of a pain to learn. If you have a cool setting that engages me, I might not use your rules, but I'll at least buy your setting, which is a win for you. (If I don't use your rules, but there are some cool ones lurking in there, I might very well steal them and tell people, "Oh, yeah, I swiped the swimming minigame from SCUBA Quest. Worth checking out for the swimming rules and the dolphin-men culture I used this session. It's rad.") If you tie your rules into the setting, then I'm more likely to use them, even if there's a learning curve. (Full disclosure: if I were running my own occult conspiracy game from scratch, I could see me using a variation of the Unknown Armies system while ditching the magick rules. But I will never drop or even really alter the magick system in a standard UA game, because it's so intimately tied to the setting. You can't change one without altering the other. You know why I'm so gung-ho about the sanity rules and magick rules from UA? That's why.)
If your setting isn't terribly engaging, then why don't I run something else or make up my own thing? Why do I need to learn your system at all?
So?
I'm just one datapoint on a graph, but the basic gist is the same with any advertising: you have to grab me with something. If there's a game with a lot of hype, or a game that seems like it does something very specific that I want to do, I'll probably give it a look. Mothership probably would have flown under my radar if it hadn't gotten all the good press in OSR circles, but it seems a robust little system for running sci-fi horror and I'm glad to have it in my back pocket. Powered by the Apocalypse stuff largely hasn't grabbed me the way it's seemed to grab a lot of the indie scene, but I knew the quick resolution mechanics and low learning curve in Dungeon World were exactly what I wanted for the gladiator game. I don't think I need another fantasy adventure system, but Belly of the Beast had such an engaging setting that I had to get it.
At this point, I have a ton of games, more than I'm likely to play or run in my life. If a new game crosses my vision, it's competing with all the other games on my shelf or hard drive. I don't want to learn a lot of new mechanics or terminology, but there also has to be a good reason for me to read it and not just use the games I already own to run something similar. If you're just writing an adventure or a collection of monsters or even a handful of cool ideas, I'm going to be much more interested in using a system I already own unless you can simultaneously prove that your idea warrants a new gaming approach. (Bluebeard's Bride is an excellent example. I can run Bluebeard's haunted mansion in any game system, but that game delivers several tools to run that specific scenario, and is so engagingly written as to make me keen to play it. Plus, it's a gorgeous piece of art in its own right.)
So new systems aren't hard to learn, but there has to be some immediate hook to convince me that it's worth my time to learn them when I have [redacted] games on my shelves. I have to hear about it and see some merit as to why I can't do the damn thing with the games already available. Good press helps, as does being from a game designer whose work I know and consistently like, but those are potentially secondary concerns to the need for it to either do something new or present its information in a concise way.
No comments:
Post a Comment