KISS is the Best

Yes, I’m going to say it. KISS is the best.

Oh, you think I’m talking about the music group. Yeah, I like them too, but the best would actually be Iron Maiden.

No, I learned the philosophy of KISS in sales. It’s an acronym that means “Keep It Simple, Stupid” (with Stupid referring to the salesman. This was a common philosophy to avoid talking your customer out of a sale by overwhelming them with details of minor relevance). It’s also just plain good advice when it comes to game design.

As a game designer, I’ve specialized in D&D 5E and derivations of it (such as Apocalyp5e, Last Fleet to Vega, and the Daring & Dread RPG) since it was originally released in 2014. I would describe most versions of D&D as Medium-Complex. First edition had a lot of rules that didn’t conform to any kind of a standard, but it was super easy to learn and to play. Second edition and Basic were also pretty much the same. It wasn’t until third edition came along that the rules became significantly more complicated, with hundreds of different character options, and rules elements that tried to accommodate every possible other rules interaction that might occur, especially corner-cases where you combine rules and weird things happen. Third edition was complex enough that Ryan Dancey (then the Business Head of Wizards of the Coast and the guy who dreamed up the Open Gaming License) described the game as half an hour of fun condensed into four hours. By comparison, 5th edition is streamlined, it plays faster, and the rules are easier to digest.

By comparison, E. Gary Gygax, one of the two men who originally created Dungeons and Dragons (and arguably roleplaying games themselves) created a game called Dangerous Journeys: Mythus after being ousted from the top spot at TSR. I know a lot of people who owned Mythus. I owned all five of the core books that were released before TSR acquired the company, effectively killing the game line. Mythus was an interesting case because the system was so incredibly complex that I don’t know of anyone who ever figured out how to actually play the game (if you were the one who did, it’s important that you drop that in the comments so we can take proper note of it… for historical purposes).

And therein lies the problem. Yes, there is an audience for rules-crunchy roleplaying games. However, the vast majority of people who play are more interested in their character’s back stories, their motivations, their voice, and the action happening on the table than they are in sitting around the table doing repetitive math problems for four or five hours.

As a designer, KISS means that after you’ve come up with your brilliant rules addition, you take the time not just to playtest it, but to look at it for the following elements:

·Are the rules stated in the simplest terms possible? Nobody wants to read a paragraph worth of rules when one or two simple and concise sentences will do.

·Can you achieve the desired effect by creating rules that are easier to learn and remember?

·Are the edge case scenarios your rules discuss really important to gameplay, balance, or comprehension by using existing rules guidelines?

 For example, modifiers used to be all the rage in RPGs. Your character’s opponent is partially hidden behind a wall on a foggy day, on lower ground than you, and is distracted by a mime pointing at him thirty feet away. This particular set of circumstances are likely to affect the attack roll against the target. There’s probably going to be at least three modifiers you need to take into account before you make the actual attack roll. Alternatively, rather than arguing about each modifier you should be entitled to, and taking the time out of the game to do the repetitive math to figure out what each of the modifiers actually is before you resolve the roll, you can just give the character Advantage. They roll two dice, take the highest result, and the game moves on.

You might also ask why you would want to sacrifice detailed accuracy? After all, taking the time to add every modifier to your roll could significantly improve your chances of hitting the target. The answer is that adding a bunch of mathematical modifiers to a single roll can burn on average of a minute for each a single roll. This can expand dramatically if people don’t have all the modifiers committed to memory, there’s a rules disagreement, the rulebook needs to be consulted, or if the math gets complicated enough that you can’t do it in your head in two seconds. The result of the time drain is that you get less done in the same amount of time, or less adventure per session.

Accessibility is another major factor. If your rules aren’t as clearly and concisely written as you can possibly make them, actual players are likely to either become confused by them, possibly giving up on your game system entirely, or they condense the meaning of the rules down themselves, which often leads to misinterpretations becoming standard play. As a side note, during first and second edition D&D, no two tables ever played by the exact same set of rules because of this.

So if you’re a game designer and you want your system to be as easy to play, and with the least amount of unintended friction as possible, KISS is a game design philosophy you might want to put sme serious thought into.

Image Attribution: This photo is an alternate version of the cover of KISS Alive II and was taken from their official website.