Rounding the Square Wheel
Work and hobby often show parallels in a manner which are almost frightening. Like someone's trying to hammer in some point they think I'm missing. Well, fine then, damn it. I'll wax philosophical about something to an audience of 5.
They say that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
"I was having major issues with this problem, but I came up with a solution that seems to work. What do you think about it?" my colleague asks me as I stare in horror at some code. Yeah, it technically does solve the problem he was having. It's also slow, inefficient, and entirely illegible if you don't know what the problem is it's trying to solve. Meanwhile, if this guy had had some more historical knowledge of software architecture and patterns he might've solved it in less time, in a more efficient way, and a structure that'd be familiar to everyone.
"I needed some mechanism that'd force people to go back to their home base once in a while instead of just keeping on exploring indefinitely, so I deviced a remedy for a curse that starts affecting you when you leave the civilized lands" had that same energy.
They reinvented the wheel, but made it square
What do these two statements have in common? Both of these had solutions that have already been thought up, have been battletested and shown to work under a wide range of circumstances. The issue is is that the writers didn't known about these historical systems. In case you haven't figured it out: in the case of the second, it would've been Experience for Gold. This necessitates the players going home after an expedition, since that's the only point they get experience for it, and since they're limited in how much they can carry they can't just go on indefinitely.
Now, did what they do work? Probably, in most cases. Did they work as well? Well, no. They break down in ways that aren't obvious, or require extra leaps of thought.
We're chasing our own tail instead of moving forwards
Now let me say this up front: this in no way a them issue. It's an issue in the hobby orthogonal to one I've complained about before. Incessantly, on multiple platforms and on many occassions. This hobby has a massive knowledge problem, on both ends. The writers who did have the knowledge didn't write it down clearly, if at all. The readers don't read the old works intently looking for these lessons either, or if they do: they keep them to themselves and don't share them. This is a massive issue. This means that the hobby is in effect never making any real good steps forward towards something better. Instead of moving directionally towards something good the hobby is stuck in place, moving only by brownian motion, because every lesson of the past is effectively lost each time.
Rod Hampton, writer of the excellent Dragons Beyond, as well as a recent Braunstein module,recently posted a fragment written in 1975 on twitter:
Another hard-learned lesson. A grim monster guarding the only path into the interior of an indoor area crocks the game. Design your dungeon, cave, or whatever so as to provide lots of movement options at most points.
This was written four years before Jaquais ever wrote the Caverns of Thracia. 35 years before Justing Alexander named the concept Jaquaying the Dungeon. We're now nearly 15 years after that article, and it's still common game advice I have to give whenever someone asks on feedback on some dungeon they create. That's 5 decades of gamers who all have to keep rediscovering the same advice.
We can only write what we know
You can even see it in the design of modern games. Many, or even most of, the current writers have no experience with games beyond whatever the last two editions of whatever they're writing is. Is it any wonder that these systems are often missing vast swathes which made the original games function, and that many of the new systems they include are kludges put in place in order to fix the missing rules that have been cut in the mean time?
Whatever we do, we do based on our own experiences and knowledge. If you've never played those old games, if you have never read the literature on those subjects, is it any wonder that they create dysfunctional systems, direly missing those features that made those old games work?
I recently had a discussion with the excellent Purple Druid about scaling (to be released on his channel soon), in which we also tangentially touched on this subject: many people struggle with mass combat in their games, because they don't understand concepts of scaling. Even if they don't just push it to the background as some kind of backdrop for individual PC action, they try to invent all of these new sytems and mechanics for it. Hell, I've even see people try to use skill challenges as a way to handle them. These mechanics don't fit, and there are quick, easy and simple ways to add these sorts of combat into your game. But if you don't know they exist, you won't think of them.
How do we break free of this spiral?
With great difficulty, but knowing that the problem is there is the first step.
One doing this is to post your receipts and your results. If something works for you, post it. Keep a blog, put it on twitter. Get your wins and losses out there. Any experimentation you do doesn't have to be done by the next person. Every blogpost, article, or chapter in a book you can find which describes a solution to a problem you're having saves you experimentation. If everyone keeps to their own little islands, keeps their results to themselves, every table individually will have to keep on figuring out the same things in parallel.
Secondly is to read broadly. Read systems of all kinds. Old, new, across genres. Read works on wargaming. These will already contain solutions for 99 out of 100 problems you weren't facing, and for just as many problems you didn't know you were facing, but actually were, besides.
Lastly, and this is a call to anyone creating new content and systems specifically: post your thinking. I know even the old writers were terrible at it. Keep notes on why which rules you write exist, what made them tick. Make notes on second order effects and why they are important. Any writing you can do on this subject makes it easier for those that come after you. This means next time we won't have to figure out that Exp for Gold and encumbrance have domain play as a second order effect for the who knows how manieth time.
Are you happy now, whoever keeps pushing these talking points in my face?
I'm basically screaming into the void, but I'd love to hear the thoughts of people about this on whatever platform people find me. When did you guys make this exact mistake? Are there any other things you guys see people reinventing which drive you crazy? Let me know.
And until next time, count your torches and keep mapping.