Get There From Here

If there are four words which describe a game design philosophy succinctly, for us, they have to be "Get there from here."

Back in Maine, they had a saying, "You can't get there from here." Maine's coast is a maze of inlets, islands, rivers, and confusing roads. You can have two towns 10 miles apart, and it takes 50 miles of driving to get from one to the other. Tourists asking for directions would often be told, "You can't get there from here" in such situations, where they were hopelessly lost, and needed to backtrack a long way to get where they were going.

"Get there from here" is the opposite, and in game design means, "You can get the same or similar play experience easier, faster, and with less hassle using another game." Take basic dungeoneering, for example. If I were to play a simple "explore the dungeon and take the treasure game" with a new group of players, would I use full-featured game such as Pathfinder or d20 SRD, or a simpler retro-clone such as Labyrinth Lord? For me, the answer is simple, I would use Labyrinth Lord. The game is simple to understand, fast to roll characters up in, and simple to play. More importantly, it simulates 90% of the "dungeon action" I am looking for with this group, without going into complicated areas like skill points, thousands of spells to read, and a huge framework of character creation rules. Labyrinth Lord "gets there from here" a lot easier than other games, when all I am looking for is the basic dungeon experience.

We will often break a game down into its core activities, and then separate out all the rules and fluff. You isolate the core of why you are playing, and then contrast that with other games that do the same thing. If the other game is simpler, and gets you to the fun faster, that game does a better job at delivering the fun. Of course, if you are a fan of a rule set, "get there from here" does not change that, but it is important to understand the complexity you pay to reach the fun you desire. A lot of games don't understand this math, or it gets lost in a sea of expansions and options.

"Get there from here" can also be applied to rule design. Does the rule system you are building for a game deliver the intended outcome simply and without too much trouble? Or does the rules subsystem require a huge complicated procedure that could be optimized and streamlined? If the point is the complexity, that is one thing; but if the fun of the game is elsewhere, why spend the time when a simple rule will suffice?