The Theory and Practice of Game Design: Chunky!

[athelind]

This one's mostly for normanrafferty, since it discusses something I frequently bring up when we descuss game design and character creation.

"How Many Variables Can Humans Process?"
Excerpt:

New research shows why it doesn't take much for a new problem or an unfamiliar task to tax our thinking. According to University of Queensland cognitive science researchers Graeme S. Halford, Rosemary Baker, Julie E. McCredden and John D. Bain of Griffith University, the number of individual variables we can mentally handle while trying to solve a problem (like baking a lemon meringue pie) is relatively small: Four variables are difficult; five are nearly impossible.

(...)

It's difficult to measure the limits of processing capacity because most people automatically use problem solving skills to break down large complex problems into small, manageable "chunks." A baker, for example, will treat "cream butter, sugar and egg together" as a single chunk -- a single step in the process -- rather than thinking of each ingredient separately. Likewise she won't think, "break egg one into bowl, break egg two into bowl." She'll just think, "add all of the eggs."

Over the years, I've found that systems like White Wolf's Storyteller, that "chunk" the creation mechanics into subsections, allow much faster and more balanced character creation than systems like GURPS or Champions, which just hand you a pool of undifferentiated points. (My use of the term "chunk" is no accident; I've heard of this kind of cognitive research before.)

Ironclaw and Jadeclaw already have a fairly well-chunked character creation system. You have specific dice to allocate to Traits; you have your Racial Cost; you have the ten-point cap on personal Gifts; and anything left over goes to Skills. You don't have to spend your full 10 Personal Gift Points, and several Gifts increase, add, or provide situational modifiers to Traits, so characters don't wind up "looking all the same".

Thinking about it, maybe the idea of "chunking" can apply more to just character creation. Designing a combat system with this kind of cognitive science in mind might help make it more playable and streamlined.

Comments

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

The IC combat system as it stands seems to be somewhat chunked:

(1) Roll for initiative and choose maneuvers.
(2) Exchange blows.
(3) Determine damage/reeling/death.

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. I find myself liking 'chunked' systems better. Mostly because I *really* have problems with everyone starting out on uneven ground with 'unchunked' systems.

I *really* dislike D20, but that's a rant for another time.

I've been playing a lot of Whitewolf as of late and I see exactly what you're talking about. The way stats worked bothered me at first but the more and more I used it (and considering what my gaming group is like), the more and more I realized that it was a good thing.

As for IC's system -- yes. It is *really* easy to teach people because the stats are 'chunked' and it's pretty easy to tie up half your points in gifts -- especially in JC thanks to the awesome Martial Arts.

Once people get the system down and they start to think about things, I do find my players making 'tallented' (lots of/high skills) rather than 'gifted' (maxed out gifts) characters. Both of them work equally well, provided you have an idea what your character is *for* when it comes to things on a crunch-scale. Gah, I should not be talking about this -- I'm the 'roleplayer' of the gaming group.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

This is true; one of the big problems with D&D once you get past 5th level or so is that there are too many chunks all flying around at once. Buffs stacked on buffs interacting with feats and spells and items ... gaaah. It's great for a computer game that can keep track of it all, but not so hot for regular ol' hyoomans.

re: HERO, I always found it to be one of the easiest systems precisely because I had a giant pool of points that I could put into my own chunks, instead of arbitrarily being limited to somebody else's. In systems where you have A traits and B skills and C powers, I always find myself wanting to trade some from column C to columns A and B, or whatever.

-TG

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

In education, "chunking" is what we tell the kids to do when they can't understand a segment they're reading all at once. By breaking down a long sentence into smaller, meaningful chunks, each of which can be understood separately, they can make meaning easier.

I agree about Champions vs. Ironclaw character creation, btw. Ironclaw is much, much easier.

Actually, one of the reasons I don't read a lot of nonfiction is because the authors who write it often forget this piece of cognitive theory. They write sentences that are so complex and include so many ideas that chunking each one becomes a huge task. If I'm not in the mood for a brain workout of that magnitude, I drop the book and go on to an author who remembers that a sentence, to use primary terminology, "contains one complete thought." Not six. One.

(This mini-rant inspired by "The Mouse That Roared", which, while very interesting to me, turned out also to be nearly unreadable, for the above reason. Can't remember the author.)

[breimh.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I never really knew how to word it before, but yes... "chunking" the character creation and also the combat are just what I have always liked about White Wolf, and at least Traveller's Character Creation process if not their combat system.

This is something Albedo (by Sanguine), D20 games, Gurps, Silhouette and Alderac games all sadly lack. They get too complex, or mix in too many elements by trying to be more complete, and have so many of the various feats, powers, gifts, flaws, et. al. all interconnected in more ways than a "normal mind" can cope with.

Thanks for putting it into simple terms that can be conveyed, Athelind. }:=*)

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

I've been a big fan of "selective complexity." For example, games like Rolemaster and Champions have twenty stats for every character. (Did you know a VIPER Agent has a Presence of 11? I did!) ALBEDO boiled all attributes down to 3, and we've even considered RPG design with ZERO attributes.

The essential theory of the attribute/statistic is "a number that measures what everyone has." Most Old-Skool RPGs got a little crazy about this kind of thing ("Let's have stats like Presence and Self-Discipline!"). Others would have long arguments about what they really mean. ("Wisdom can be many factors...")

I'm a big fan of "selective chunking". For example, D&D3 has "Feats" -- you get one to start, and one every 3 levels, give or take a few special abilities. World of Darkness 2.0 says that everyone gets EXACTLY seven Merit Points. Everyone gets a few special abilities, but no so many that it's an accounting nightmare, and not so few that they're homogenous.

Compare this to GURPS, which gives you 100 points to spend freely (and GURPS v4 added a *lot* of 1- and 2-point Advantages). Or Champions, where every other character has a Multipower with Every Darn Power We Could Think Of as a Multi-slot.

Ryan Dancey referred to a "knowledge tax" -- the complexity required to learn a game to actually play it can "reduce" the value of the game. In other words, most people want to play. But "chunks" are relative. For example, Everquest has some serious number-crunching going on, but the computer does most of the work; if I bash on enough skeletons and goblins, my stats will go up, regardless of whether I understand how they did.

Despite that computer games have complexity that makes Space Opera look like Teengaers from Outer Space ... it all goes into the chunk of "stuff the computer does". Tabletop RPGs of the future have to compete with Computer RPGs by reducing the chunk of boring left-brained accounting and by increasing the chunk of right-exciting brained creativity.

The idea of "zero attributes -- just skills" made some gamers very sad. ("You ... you HAVE to have attributes -- Gary said so!"). ALBEDO had "skill groups" that could be bought up wholesale ... but trying to explain those to old-skool gamers as "if you're good at a group of something, just buy up that group" met with dissatisfaction.

I've personally mocked "Dieties and Demigods v3" for chunking dieties down into things you could fight. ("Hey, the halfling goddess of the harvest only has a Strength of 12 -- let's grapple her!") Why were these numbers necessary? Wouldn't what a god does and represents be more important than its Hit Point total and Armor Class?

This chunking-theory might explain why folks who carry around hammers look at everything like they're nails. When presented with a problem, the first thing someone tries to do is break it into chunks they can deal with -- whether those chunks are appropriate to solving the problem or not. For example, one "solves" the problem of how to put dieties in an RPG by chunking them down into attributes, skills, feats, etc.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

I've personally mocked "Dieties and Demigods v3" for chunking dieties down into things you could fight. ("Hey, the halfling goddess of the harvest only has a Strength of 12 -- let's grapple her!") Why were these numbers necessary? Wouldn't what a god does and represents be more important than its Hit Point total and Armor Class?

As one of the folks in jirris_midvale's gaming group opined: If you don't want us to kill the NPCs, don't give them stats.

But I agree that expressing dieties in terms of conventional stats is a case of approaching new problems with old tools. Speaking as a semi-old-shule programmer, the best technique is still to tackle the elephant one bite at a time, using whatever tools are appropriate. If there are no functions to perform a specific task, then you MAKE one; you don't futz about with a function or macro that kinda, sorta, maybe does what you want, after a fashion.

[iridium-wolf.livejournal.com]

Timely. I've been thinking about how to arrange more traditional RPG playing over the computer, either through chat software, IM clients, mucking environments or a BBS system. The whole cognitive thing working on the RPG problem from a different angle. :)

*gives the snark a treat* good dwaggin.