Stross's Law of RPG Design

I absolutely agree with the "two paragraphs" requirement. It's one of those elements that generally is prefered in all writing. "Brevity is the soul of wit", and all that... I sometimes lament that it has lost its cachet in design circles.

It should be remembered that there is an importance difference between "explain it in full", and "describe it in full".


Regards,
Eric Anondson (Still no Blogger account)

I love the Githyanki. Not really sure why, even. They've featured prominently in my soon-to-be-finished campaign.

I have to say, though, that I've found the supplemental material in Dungeon and Dragon to be very inspirational.

Maybe this one won't generate 50+ posts and flame wars on three different RPG message boards.

   Losing the passion?   :P
   

This reminds me a lot of this post by Vince Baker (the whole thing is cool, but the specific bit I mean starts with "Then he told me how he'd done it.")

I'd like to hear what you mean by "setting element", though. Like, I consider the big list o' magic items to be a setting element of D&D. I don't need to see more than two paragraphs (or even more than a sentence or three) about the Ring of Chameleon Power, Cloak of Arachnida, or Apparatus of Kwalish, but I still want a long listing that has all of those and dozens more.

Charlie has also just won a Hugo for his short story The Concrete Jungle (it's packaged with the Atrocity Archive).

I think a corrolary to the law is that anything that takes more than two paragraphs is overspecified. You need to leave that kind of space for players and GMs to add their own to it.

Man. That 1st Fiend Folio was great.. but I seem to remember there being a couple of pages on the Githyanki.

Referring to the book itself...

The Githyanki have about a page (most of 2 columns worth of text) plus a full page illustration, and the Githzerai have a bit over 1 column of text.

Charles Stross is also credited for the Death Knight.

The mindflayer was the first creature I was introduced to before I ever played D&D. I was at camp, and one of my cabin mates had the books. On one of the modules there was a picture of a mindflayer eating someones brain. This was way before I even knew about HP Lovecraft. It was the most horrific thing my 12 year old brain could handle. It was the art more than the write-up that hooked me.

I always found the image of the Lizard King fighting the Lava Children to be very evocative. . .

Note to self: Use Lava Children in my current campaign before it ends. . .

Why do you think that happened?

I came to D&D during college, during 2e; there are some conventions I didn't appreciate at the time, and still don't quite get (e.g., nostaglia for 1e or the old boxed sets). Why did some monsters become iconic (such as the ones you've described), and not others? The aboleth is a D&D creation too, I believe, as are the modrons and shambling mounds...

Also, had TSR/WotC/Hasbro done studies of monster manual use, and looked at it what kinds of monsters tend to get the most use in the "average" DM's game? And how do new monster manuals get created, anyway? Do you specifically create new monsters for the manual, or do you just collect manuals from existing sources and compile them into a new book (and release it as a monster manual)?

About setting design, if you use a small amount of paragraphs to describe a setting element, should you have first worked out a more larger treatment and then reduce it to a couple of paragraphs? And if you elect not to work out a substantial treatment first, should you as a designer bother going back after the fact to come up with an expanded treatment? As designer, my concern about releasing a handful of paragraphs on a subject, without including pointers to an expanded sourcebook on the same subject, would be that I would be "trampling" on the creativity of other DMs who may have found more satisfactory interpretations of my "hook".

Specifically, does WotC typically have ideas for expanded treatments of certain subjects before or after they've released a core supplement? For example, the expanded treatments on dragons, aberrations, undead, and races: when D&D 3.x was a gleam in Wizards's eye, had they planned on coming back to popular monsters or classes and giving them a broader treatment as they were releasing the core books, or did time pass before the D&D team decided to create their race- or monster-specific books? And was there any discussion about whether or not the "official" stance on subjects with expanded treatment was going to override a DM's homebrew creations? (My intention is not to criticize or accuse, but from a customer relations POV, this seems like a question which would be a legitimate concern at some level...)

(I guess a larger question would be, should a new game be designed with most, if not all, of the supporting material worked out ahead of time, or should a new game be more organic, with the core rules released first and new supporting material designed and released after the core books?)

Eric

Re: Why do you think that happened?

I totally doubt they do, but then again, the designers and writers in question might have thought about it somewhat. It seems more likely that they throw a few hooks and teasers in there and forget about it, moving onto the next monster.

Re: Why do you think that happened?

Also, had TSR/WotC/Hasbro done studies of monster manual use, and looked at it what kinds of monsters tend to get the most use in the "average" DM's game?

This would be interesting to see. I know that despite more than two decades of gaming, there are many classic creatures that I have never used in a game (e.g. gnolls, cloud giants, shaugin, mind flayers (this may need to be corrected)).

As golden boys of the current new historicist D&D movement, I'm sure you guys are tight, but for reference, there's a post over at Erik Mona's blog about himself, James Jacobs and a few others trying to recreate the appeal of the Githyanki in new monsters for the 3E Fiend Folio.

My two cents? I think the Stross monsters have a feeling of "living in" the D&D world (as opposed to being part of the generic fantasy wallpaper) just like the PCs do, which naturalises the very mechanics-inspired aspects of their society (i.e. psionics, multiclassing, riding dragons), meaning that they come across as equals or at least legit challenges to the PCs. In other words, the Stross creatures are like cunningly rules-lawyered *monsters* to fight similarly PCs, and for some reason that makes them cool. There's a parralel to the Borg from ST:TNG here, I think.

Githyanki as 3E drow

I had hoped at some point that the Githynaki would become the "drow" of 3rd edition - the iconic bad guys who can be counted on to be more "uber" than the PCs, with an organized network of support making them far more dangerous than a bunch of wandering monsters, and a culture that could be developed to allow "play the monster" games to make sense.

Re: Githyanki as 3E drow

So did they? Or did the drow remain the drow of 3E?

I'm actually curious to know which 3e monsters (not used prior to 3e) have become so iconic as to be worthy of inclusion in the same group as githyanki, drow, mind flayers, etc. I'm sure people were trying to make some new creatures iconic, but so often this seems to be a result of the gaming audience, not the designers.

Re: Githyanki as 3E drow

To the best of my knowledge, the Githyanki are still just a curiosity, and the drow are still very popular.

I am a 1E player. I remember the feeling of (pardon the term) shock & awe when we met drow for the first time in the Giants series. How they kicked our asses, and seemed >way< cooler than anything else we'd seen in the whole game up to that point. Evil elves with a spider fixation who live underground? Holy Cow!

The combination of Drizzt and "Drow of the Underdark" solidified drow as near the pinnacle of coolness for 2E - (in addition to great backstory, as demihumans they were easy to apply PC classes too (something that Just Wasn't Done with your average Shambling Mound or Aboleth)).

I know that Bruce Cordell had kicked around some ideas regarding the Githyanki at one point for 3E adventures, and they show up in all their glory in the little seen Dark Sun Megaadventure "Black Spine". Other than a few odds and ends here and there, that's the only place I know of where the Githyanki are given center stage (for at least part of the time).

I think 3E needed/needs a new drow, because I think drow have become trite, overused, and boring. All things that are deadly for a game based on speculation and fantasy.

If there is a breakout monster in the 3E books, I'd guess its the demons/devils, which seem to be extremely popular, very alien, morphable into virtually any scenario, and serve a wide range of story needs from combat fodder to Kill the Foozle to Mr. Smith.

I've advocated in the past for the idea that 4E, when it comes, should come equipped with a monster manual where every monster is new and designed from scratch - no repeats. No centaurs, no pixies, no Red Dragons, no stirges, etc. That would serve two purposes: 1) It would give WotC an IP that it owned outright as opposed to the current situation where the provenance of most monsters is lost in the mists of time, and 2) It would give DMs a toolbox of surprises vs. jaded players, and shoot some badly needed imagination and creativity back into the game.

Wemics Too

The brevity point is a key one. The original wemic was designed to fit on the back of a card, including game stats. But that terse description contained the basic elements that define wemics to this day: nomadic, low-tech, organized in prides, etc.

Here it is for you to look at.

http://www.geocities.com/cayzle/DnD/1Eanalysis.html

Re: Wemics Too

   I have that card! It’s quite a nice illustration.
   

This seems like an unnecessary addendum to a key writing rule: omit needless words. The presence of a symptomatic problem in game writing (over-writing) is not cause for another highfaluting "rule of game design."

I had never put two and two together and realized that both the SF writer and the RPG writer are the same... maybe this explains why I like Cory Doctorrow so much...

Applying Stross's Law

I like this idea! Assuming that "explain it in full" means "sum it up," I'd like to propose a method of applying Stross's Law to the setting elements in your game.

The basic concept comes from "The Seven-Sentence NPC," a fabulous article from Dragon #184: as a framework, cover the following 8 areas in your description, in one (or two) sentences apiece, and in this order:

1. The most important thing about it (the core idea).
2. What it looks like.
3. How it fits into the setting.
4. Why it matters in the setting.
5. Something memorable or unique about it.
6. Why player characters should care about it.
7. Connections to other setting elements.
8. Ways to use it in the game.

(My reasoning behind this list is a bit long to include here, so I've posted it on Treasure Tables, my weblog for GMs.)

wookies

You know what's cool? Wookies are cool. The reason people have turned orcs into wookies is that there aren't any wookies in D&D. Gamers like me like wookies and want to play wookie-like characters. If you want orc to be orcs, give us some damn wookies.

Speaking of what gamers think is cool and why.

All in all I agree with Mike, keep it to the basics. But, when space allows expand on the information. 2 paragraphs for a basic description is fine. The average player or GM should get enough information to present the monster well, and get a decent idea of what the creature is like. When space is available provide additional information on the subject, enough to allow for more in depth use of the monster and for variations on the theme.

In short, the first 2 paragraphs should provide enough information for use, with any additional information adding to usability.

Actually, I disagree :)

While it's a good idea -- especially in the context of gaming -- to keep each element in a game (or story, or whatever) terse, sticking over-rigidly to this rule ends in the abandonment of anything that aspires to more complexity than you can cram into such a short description. Which is sad. Not everything can be decomposed into just two paragraphs, and I don't think you should necessarily ditch ideas just because they don't fit the procrustean bed.

(Having said that, you should take what I say with a pinch of salt: I pretty much stopped gaming back in 1983 or thereabouts, so I've got zero experience of anything post-AD&D, post-Gygax. Except Neverwinter Nights, of course. Getting twatted by a bunch of Red Slaadi was a very strange experience after all those years ...)

!

If you ever have any desire to check out the current state of D&D (or RPGs in general) drop me a line at my work email address: user name mike.mearls, domain wizards.com. I'm sure we can put together a package of game books and stuff from around the office. You have a number of fans here, and not just for your Fiend Folio work.

Anyway, my next journal entry goes into my thought process behind the idea of Stross's Law of RPGs. The essence of it is that a DM wants to create her own world and stories. At some point, the volume of data that we provide on a game element (such as a monster) crosses the line between enough information to inspire the DM's creativity and too much information, to the point that the DM is forced to shoehorn her creative vision into the material we provide. The trend over the past few decades has been towards more detail - I'm not sure if that's the right way to go.

Oh, and if naming this law after you is a bit strange, just let me know and I'll change it. I never considered you'd actually see this journal.