Keeping It Simple

Throughout my many years of playing various tabletop games I’ve come across my share of good and bad rule sets, and I’ve also come across my share of rules that are easy to learn and others that are complicated for reasons beyond my simple mortal understanding it seems.

It’s a trend I’ve noticed in some games that ties back to my discussion involving tables a few weeks back as well as other things, and it’s really starting to confuse me. Game companies that make games complicated and difficult to learn for no explainable reason. They use any number of things to make the learning process more difficult than it really needs to be: bad wording, horrible layout, stupid pointless rules that lead to stupid situations like running d6 inches and the aforementioned tables. What ever happened to “keep it simple; stupid?” That golden rule of, really, any interactive medium? Why do game companies, and indeed even their fans, seem to decry such a thing? We saw it with D&D 4th edition with everyone complaining that it didn’t take them 6 weeks to make a character or learn how many dice they roll to attack or what-have-you. Why are people so opposed to things being easier to learn?

Chess is one of the oldest, and the most well known, tabletop game in existence, and its rules are pretty damn simple. Yes different pieces move in different ways, but it only takes a single game before you’ve memorized them all. Chess is the perfect example of good game design; easy to learn, difficult to master. That’s how a game should work. The basic rules should be simple enough that anyone with an IQ over 12 can pick them up in a single game(maybe two games if I’m feeling generous), but should offer enough depth and tactical flexibility that it takes a while to master it.

The basic rules of any game should be simple and, as the title implies; basic. They should cover the common things and set up how a game plays, and then the real challenge should be left to the players. The game shouldn’t beat you over the head with complexities, and I feel like we see that in a few too many games. Battletech is well known for not being 100% friendly to newer players because it has a fairly steep learning curve, but at least they were kind enough to include a basic rules set in the starter box so new players could get the hang of things like moving and shooting before the crazy stuff showed up. Malifaux is another game with piles of complexity since every model seems to have a dozen or so special rules and abilities(the stat cards are huge and they still have to print in a tiny font to fit everything on them). Infinity can be the same way if you try and read the rule book cover-to-cover, but the actual basics are pretty simple to learn(it gets complicated when you start adding in different ammos, special equipment, camo and the likes).

I just wonder, sometimes, why people shy away from anything that might be considered simple. Heroscape was an amazing game, and it had fairly simple rules that were easy to learn. Where the complexity laid was how you, as an individual, played the game. That’s how it should be; complexity and difficulty should lay in the hands of the players. If your game is too complex for people to learn then who’s going to bother playing it? Simple doesn’t mean easy, and it certainly doesn’t mean a game is bad. Look at checkers; simplest rules around and yet it can still take years to master. That’s doing a game right.

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