Tone and the SRD

It's a tough thing re-editing a game, coming back and revisiting your work. The original SBRPG had a conversational, easygoing tone not terribly appropriate for a SRD. I am finding myself editing out a lot of the more conversational parts of the document, and taking out mechanical constructs such as chapter references.

It is a tough task, since I like the conversational parts. They sorely need to be updated though, because the conversation has changed over the years. When SBRPG was written, it solved the problem of generic RPGs by attacking the generic premise itself. The battle was not about what system was better to simulate everything, it was what system did we need to solve our storytelling problem - factions, story threads, and designed powers and classes.

The problem now is the storytelling problem, crossed with a new requirement - lightweight, portable, and thin. SBRPG 1.0 was a full-featured, 12 pound monster of a laptop, with ports for everything, two hard disks, etc. What we want now is something more like an iPad or even a MacBook Air, something that does 90% of the old 12-pound monster, but is lightweight and fun to play with.

Why? The future is not in 12-book volumes of role-playing rules intimidating for new players. The original Paranoia got it right when they said with less time and more competition for players' time available (and this was in 1984), the future was in smaller, more focused bookcase games that provide a complete experience in one night's play. It runs counter to the DnD3 thru 5 and Pathfinder mantra of encyclopedias of rules and add-ons being the ideal. They are great games, and wonderful creations, but they do a specific thing, and not what we are trying to do.

Simplification. With SBRPG, it means losing a couple systems, and simplifying a lot. Engineers say simplifying and lessening is a harder task than adding more, and it is true. It is always easy to add another rule, another section, and another chapter of rules to cover something else you forgot. What is more difficult, is coming up with a universal rule that handles many cases and situations with a simple, unified system.