Specificity is Your Friend

Today I’m going to write about time management and the importance of timeliness in game design—

Okay, no. Of course I’m not writing about that. The guy who hasn’t posted a new article here for two months shouldn’t write about that.

I’m sorry it’s been a minute since I’ve written anything here. I’ve been focused on big projects lately. Specifically, the books involved in a crowdfunding campaign we are calling The Weird. It’s pretty cool and even though funding is over you can still get in on a late pledge.

This isn’t an ad for that campaign. Nevertheless, what I want to write about today relates to that product in a fundamental way. It’s a simple concept with a lot of implications. It’s all about specificity.

The Weird is a book of various weird ideas anyone can add to any character or campaign, organized into lists related by theme. So there’s a list of weird magic items, a list of weird starships, a list of weird PC backgrounds, a list of weird wilderness locations, and so on. There’s dozens and dozens of lists, most well over a hundred entries long. They’re subdivided into types of weirdness and presented so you can roll randomly or simply choose.

When creating the entries on these lists, one of the most important aspects is specificity. What I mean by that is, a list of weird fantasy locations could have an entry that is, “a tower made of unconventional materials.” It could, but frankly that would be terrible. Why? Two reasons.

One, it’s not interesting or thought-provoking. Yes, it might be “weird,” but it’s not going to spark any interest in being added to a campaign.

Two, it’s forcing the GM or player to do the work. They get that entry and now they have to imagine what the unconventional material is. They might be able to come up with some great ideas (never underestimate the GM or players), but they paid for this book and they paid me to do the work. They don’t want homework, they want cool stuff for their game. Yes, it’s fun to come up with weird ideas, but people will turn to a book like this when they don’t have time or the inclination to do so. (They might also be looking for inspiration, but we’ll get to that in a minute.)

So a far better entry on a list like that would be “a tower made of red glass.” It’s specific, (hopefully) interesting, and ready to be dropped right into the game. It’s easy to imagine it getting used in a campaign.

A Digression on Things Getting Used

As an aside, let me just state how important that last statement is. If you’re designing material for an RPG you need to think about how every aspect of that material will specifically get used in a game. A rule is there to be used, as is an NPC, a creature, a character ability, and so on. If you can’t come up with a good answer for how something will actually get used at the table, you either need to rework it or get rid of it.

There’s a temptation to include things for completeness. You might provide the combat stats for an NPC because you’re doing so for all the other NPCs in an adventure, but this person in specific is never going to get into combat. Those combat stats are a waste of space in the product. Worse, they send an erroneous message. Combat stats tell the GM that the NPC can be fought, and so maybe the PCs should fight them. If it’s got hit points, some player is going to want to kill it. That’s why I prefer to never give stats to children, for example. That’s just a personal preference, but there’s solid design logic behind it. If they’ve got no stats, they can’t be killed—and if the GM is searching fruitlessly for those stats, it sends a nice message that maybe it was never the intention for anyone to try to fight them. It’s like an artist using negative space. The literal absence of a thing conveys information.

This thought process should go into every aspect of your design. If you’re writing up a long, interesting backstory for a location, but there’s absolutely no chance that backstory is ever going to make its way to the actual game table, it’s not needed. There’s a reason that kind of material is called fluff. True fluff is useless. (Before fluff fans come after me with pitchforks, let me just say that “fluff” that conveys context, mood, or actual useful information that only gets used indirectly in the game isn’t, in fact, useless. It’s not really true fluff in this definition.)

It’s not a terrible idea to go through your design—regardless of if it’s rules, stats, background, or whatever—and ask yourself how each bit is going to actually get used. That doesn’t mean that every aspect will get used. PCs will bypass encounters, ignore one character option in lieu of another, and so on. But the potential needs to be there.

Specificity Inspires

But let’s get back to that tower of red glass. It’s specific, in that it’s both glass and red. You could say “colored glass” but once again, you’re making the GM do your job. And if you might say, “I prefer to give the GM the freedom to choose on their own,” as if you’re doing the GM a favor, well, there are two things wrong with that.

First, the GM always has the freedom to choose. You aren’t granting them anything new. Frankly, that’s not something you have the power to take away, so it’s not anything you need to give.

Second—and this is related, but worth being its own point—by saying “red” there’s an implication of choice. Any grade schooler knows that mention of a color suggests the other colors. Writing “a tower of red glass” conjures the image of the tower in the reader’s mind, but if they’ve any inkling at all to change it, the image changes in their mind’s eye. If they think green is cooler, or blue has a special meaning in their setting, or they already had a red tower in a previous adventure, “red glass” codes as “glass tower of some color you like.” In other words, it’s the same thing as saying “a tower of colored glass” but it’s more interesting and useful. And it’s the same with “glass.” Glass is also easily replaced, and an even moderately creative reader will suddenly think of other materials the tower might be made from. So “a tower of red glass” is really code for “a tower of blue glass,” “a tower of red steel,” “a tower of green ceramic” or for that matter, even “a dome of red glass.” Et cetera.

Hopefully, it goes without saying then that none of those other options are needed. The choice doesn’t need to be offered, because it’s implied. “Tower of red glass” encodes all of them at once. Better still, the specificity of the example inspires the reader to take it in directions you never even imagined. The specificity makes the end user’s creativity more empowered, not less.

In the end, then, when you present an idea, make it a specific one. If it’s a new character option, “psychic crusader of the umber moon” is always going to be a better design than “psionic warrior.” (Or, at the very least if you must give psionic warrior as the option, make it clear how to take that option and make it the psychic crusader of the umber moon. Because if you do, you’re enabling all the various ideas the GM and players will have.) “The ring of Torden Faal the Unseen” is better than “magic ring,” (or even “ring of invisibility,”) and “trollkin terror bringer” is better than “brutish soldier.”

Good design inspires—don’t worry about limiting the GM and players. You couldn’t if you tried.