"Game Design: Get It Right the 1st Time!" Topic

Is it too much to expect game designers to work all the bugs out of their designs before publishing them?

Hope rather than expect. I've developed and tested too many IT systems to imagine that you can always eliminate all bugs.

"Bugs" meaning what?

Unclear or ambiguous rules writing, so that you're not sure how to play it?

Rules that are wrong (not what the writer intended), so they have to be errataed?

Rules that give ahistorical results (SJG's fictional example of a game where ACW infantry charging uphill always wins)?

Unbalanced games?

Games with unexplained or ambiguous interactions among special rule? (The bane of WH40K, for example.)

Build-a-thing systems with a single dominant design strategy, so that it can be min-maxed to death and the game is no fun?

Is it too much to expect OPs to write unambiguous questions before publishing them?

;)

The more working parts the greater the chance of a stoppage. Very simple rules should have fewer bugs? Should we then have just simple rules; probably not?
Some stoppages are very minor, some major and some just a problem for particular players.
Perfect (no stoppages) set of war game rules written, not seen them yet in 50 years. If so, they would be the first edition (no need for further editions if they are so good)

Yes

Martin you're comment brings up the question – are there any truly GREAT simple wargame rules?

Yes

Wargamer Dave, post your question separately. But I think you can make a case for a few. One problem is that there is absolutely no money in short, simple, clear rules.

Bill, yes it IS too much to ask, and it's our fault as a body. Good game design takes a lot of time, and we don't pay much. And as a group, we're early adopters: we don't buy a small number of copies, play the thing for six months looking for weak points and ten buy in quantity: we all rush out and buy the new game immediately. In six months we'll be playing another one. We compound this by buying later editions--paying the author to fix his own work. Where is the incentive for a game designer to spend another six months or year in play test phase? So mostly we get what we deserve. Sometimes we get lucky instead.

Hello Dave
This is very subjective. Great can be rubbish to another i suppose. If writers must get it all correct they may then just produce very simple rules rather than experiment with more interesting ideas (just put moves down as 6" per turn rather than difference of 2D6 in increments of 3").
So yes there are great sets of simple game rules, but it is too much to expect gamers to agree which they are. Hence the subjectivity.
So if someone says "these are great" they must accept that it is their opinion only and has limited relevance for many others.
I thought Bill Lamming's Medieval rules were great in their day, but would not play them now. No judgment just how one feels at a particular time.

Also the age issue. Young players often look for different aspects than old players (sorry for generalisation).

HG Wells never had to publish errata or a second edition of 'Little Wars'!

But there have been numerous 'toy soldier' rules produced since 1913, partly because wargamers are disinclined to damage their carefully painted figures by shooting actual projectiles at them, and partly due to a dearth of projectile-shooting toy artillery pieces.

Yes.

Even the big game companies that can afford extensive editing and have a large playtesting cadre still can't cover/discover every eventuality that will occur.

That's to say nothing with their inabiltiy compete with the sheer intensity and number of hours with which competitive players will try to find any loophole or combination of rules that will give them an advantage and potentially "break" the balance of a game.

I rather like the approach that Andrea at Ganesha took with Song of Blades and Heroes. For the first few years, new editions were free to those who had purchased earlier editions. The first game was great, but as it improved exisiting and new players got the benefits of better editions without feeling like they were being taken advantage off. It also allowed a new edition to be released even if it didn't have massive changes.

The result is that you now have a game that -while I'm not sure new editions are free anymore- is clear, concise and very well-tuned.

Robert,
What do you mean by short and simple? It seams that companies like Ganesha, Osprey and even to some extent biggies like Mantic with Kings of War and FFG with Runewars are producing rules that are notably simpler than much of what else tends to be on the market and they are selling well.

As someone who is turned off by complicated, extended rules, I kind of feel like I'm in a golden age of fast-and-fun wargames.

My personal rule of thumb for writing my own games is 2 pages front-and-back; legibile and on 8 1/2 by 11" paper. If it doesn't fit on that, it is too complicated. This makes it much easier to playtest and "get it right."

Part of the problem is that people want battalion- or higher-level games where they can select ammunition being fired by an individual tank or cannon. Select a command level and only model the decisions being made by that commander. Personal taste, perhaps, but it certainly makes things cleaner.

Is it too much to ask that publications are done competently? i.e. edited and play tested well?

Obviously, the more complicated a game system, the easier it is to have glitches and overlooked problems… but that isn't unexpected or some mystery that should surprise designer/developers.

Many designers are at the mercy of publishers. I just read a new book by a veteran history author from an experienced publisher. The book was full of typos and organized with a Mix Master. A rushed job, to say the least.

I think well-done rules get rewarded in the market place and badly done rules don't.

I'd like the same to apply to my car, my computer and my phone, too.

No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, or in this case the customers.

Game designers and authors aren't nearly as nefarious as most of the grognards on TMP imply.

I'm not sure that all second editions are to fix errors in previous editions or to nerf old armies to make you buy mores stuff. In some cases, the customers want to take the game in an unexpected direction, and the author can keep up with customer demands or not.

For instance, after we published GASLIGHT we found that some players wanted to play larger games than we designed the rules to handle, so we created Big Battles by GASLIGHT. Then some customers wanted to play pulp games with the rules, so we published To Be Continued… by GASLIGHT. Then folks wanted to do fleet actions, so we added those rules. Very few changes have been made to the core rules, but the game evolved and expanded based on customer input.

Considering most news published by the press is erroneous in part or full, why should wargame rules be perfect?

But then people would complain that the rules aren't being supported by the writers….

Lose/lose

@martingoddard

You need an effective IA drill.

Suggest 1D6: 1,2,3 – oh no you can't, 4,5,6 – oh yes you can.

It depends on the authors. As a rough estimate ours, Maneouver Group, took us 2000 hr to get it in the current form. We will NEVER get paid what it actually cost. Yes we did play test it a lot but like the man says some folk may read it differently to us or our play testers. We have put out a couple of free changes, some are errata, one is a change of heart, but minor. And some are enhancements after years of our own play testing and some are matched to games we would not have anticipated it would cover when we started.

So yes you expect it to be play tested but like cars there may need to be some fixes. They aught to be free. Our are, but it's not our lively hood. Writing a game for profit massively reduces the time available before it becomes uneconomic.

Stoppage

I may copy that idea. A bit too complex though??

Ordinarybass, I've played about any length, but I have trouble calling anything short and simple which can't be summarized in Desertbox's two pages both sides.

And I'll grant anyone that what we are trying to do varies so widely that it's hard to get a clear fix on great. One obvious guide is longevity. If people are still playing it after 20+ years, it's a contender whether I like it or not. If it drops like a rock in three, not so much. But that gives us no way to call recent rules great even if some are.

I'd certainly say Bill's initial complaint has merit if the rules turn out to be
1. ambiguous--you can legitimately read the English more than one way.
2. contradictory--page 17 does not agree with page 25 Or
3. wrong in the sense that the overall result is not what the author intended. There are ACW rules under which it would be perfectly sound tactics for Lee to launch Stuart's cavalry in place of infantry for Pickett's Charge, and WWII naval rules with firepower so anemic that battleship duels are settled by boarding parties.

We can disagree about level of detail, speed of play and preferred mechanisms. Those are matters of taste. But any of the above three are just plain wrong, and all are preventable if the author works at it.

'cause that's the main thing
woah oh oh oh
can't afford to let it pass

… anyone?

Nope!

ambiguous--you can legitimately read the English more than one way.

Very true. Compound that with our own bias for a period AND a rules lawyer mentality, and miniatures rules are just asking for trouble. :)

The particular mechanism may work in a designer's head, with his buddies around a table because they've come to an agreement on how it works, or even around a convention table because the designer/umpire is there to explain all. It may seem OK when he writes the rule, but when someone not part of that group reads it, it raises questions.

Errata has been around on all wargames (mini and board) because they are, compared to a family board game like Chutes & Ladders, Risk, Monopoly, Sorry or even Stratego, "complicated." It's unlikely ambiguity will ever be eradicated, but we can try. The larger the game, the more likely the ambiguity.

The key here is that you need to playtest a game with fresh eyes. If the same four people playtest, you're going to catch 1/2 of the problems, but you need four more to catch 1/2 of the rest, and four more to catch 1/2 of the 1/2 of the rest, and so on until you narrow it down to a minimum. That's why no game survives contact with gamers -- they outnumber your playtesters!

contradictory--page 17 does not agree with page 25

That is indeed annoying. A good copy editor with no knowledge of the game can spot these, but you need to pay for a copy editor because your gaming buddies who have played this a dozen times will likely skip over it.

Same goes for typos. As any writer (rules or otherwise) knows, after multiple readings, you read as you expect it to read, not as it's written, which is why editors exist.

wrong in the sense that the overall result is not what the author intended.

That may be the "exception" process. If it happened once, it should be allowed to happen -- along the lines of: if a P-51 sank a naval destroyer once in WWII, then it should be allowed to happen any time a P-51 attacks a destroyer. Of course, if you don't put such a rule in, complaints soon arise.

Given that we often play with "what-if" in mind, the lone designer is often outnumbered by the ingenuity of the gamers.

I'd add one more rules bug-a-boo: Error by Omission. I am guilty of this in my Snappy Nappy rules. Someone in the Yahoo forum asked how far a command stand moved. After 15 years of running games, my simple answer is immediate: same as light cavalry. Is that tidbit of information in the rules? Why, sure. On the quick reference sheet. Huh, no it isn't. Well, then it's on page, ah, flip, flip, flip…er, flip, flip, flip…um, &^%@#*%^@*!

Happens…

Writing wargame rules is, I think, akin to writing software code. Both require de-bugging.

B

Bug – a failure in the way the system was supposed to work

Emergent Requirement – a system doesn't work the way it wasn't designed, but enough people want it to, so it's with the effort to implement

Example – Electrocuting people when used in the shower is not a bug in hair dryer design.

So … no. It's not too much to ask. The game should play well in the way it was intended. The text should be comprehensible in a reasonable way for the target audience.

Unfortunately Bill it seems to be. After all God couldn't do it with the world so how can you expect game designers to do it.

In many ways though it's God's own fault. The world seems to have suffered from a critical lack of playtests. However, it works well enough as is that we can have war games.

There is less justification for designers to do so because they CAN playtest their rules. That they choose not to do so to the rigor I use as stated on my post on Playtesting, and their dismissive comments of them is clear testimony that they are no smarter then God, which they dearly believe themselves to be.

which by their usual comments they think they are.

Blutarski

Of Course! They're both rules. They are both iterations of doing things in a certain order. They are versions of the same thing.

Blutarski:

Game rules are a set of instructions for how to do something, basically technical writing. Instructions are difficult to write and does need to be 'beta tested' for understanding. [we've all struggled with instructions about how to put together children's toys or lawn chair.] It is an added complication when the writing is for something that is supposed to be entertaining.

The Op question is about whether the game works well with the first publication. How well the rules are written is critical for that reason. I know of more than one wargame, board game or miniatures, solid game systems, that failed to sell because of how the rules were written and organized.

McLaddie – I fully agree with your comments. Designing good game mechanics takes "software skills"; writing the "user manual" requires good expository/communication skills; attracting the gamer to your period or your particular take on the period requires good creative writing skills.

All that having been said, it is evident that not all rule authors are created equal. The better they are, the better (more cogent/understandable)the first effort.

All that having been said, it is evident that not all rule authors are created equal. The better they are, the better (more cogent/understandable)the first effort.

Oh, yeah. One reason I have a lot of respect for designers who write well and clearly.