Load-Bearing Design, OR What If Jeremy Bentham Ran Games, OR Utilitarianism In Gaming

This is going to be a short post, simply to define a rule that I intend to refer to many times in the future. It is so blindingly obvious one may wonder why I bother to say it at all, but I do think that there is value in saying it, so that we can make a more conscious attempt to follow it and, hopefully, grok it. I will make my thesis statement in just one sentence.

 "Everything in your game should actively support the goal of making your game enjoyable."

When I say "everything", I mean "everything": whether designing or modifying systems, worldbuilding, designing monsters, constructing an adventure or employing pre-written content, populating dungeon rooms, managing the activities of major factions or any individual, describing places and situations and people, resolving each action and process, running a conventional combat encounter, interacting with the people at your table, and the act of just being a player. The rule is so all-encompassing that I can't help but see it as more of a guiding philosophy.

We already collectively know that it this is true. GMs that do not follow it tend to lose their players. Systems that do not obey it are not popular. Games evolve as pieces are replaced with new parts that serve it better. That's why we write, research, test, and share houserules, after all.

Nothing is sacred enough in gaming to justify it remaining if a better alternative can be identified; life is short and playing no game at all is better than playing a bad one. This does not mean that we should all throw out our D&D 5e books and exclusively run our own beloved heartbreaker systems - there is enjoyment in being able to just sit down and play without spending the energy to learn a new system, to draw in players that want to be able to say that they're playing D&D, and to easily transfer content between editions.

For myself, I somewhat dislike that every game uses str/dex/con/int/wis/cha (try: strength/agility/wits/willpower, as strength covers normal str/con, agility more explicitly covers mobility, and the lines between the "mental stats" have been redrawn entirely), but I still decided that my own GLOG offshoot would use those same six, for familiarity reasons. While I regard it as a necessary evil, I also went over the definitions of these attributes and rewrote them to be more coherent and useful, trying to make the most of what I had, trying to make this structure serve common player expectations and my own expectations equally well.

If I follow this philosophy, I can easily find three things that I can actually do.

1. Go over my games (after the event) and analyse what went wrong. Try to work out why, and what could be altered to fix it.
2. Keep my eyes and ears open on forums that share their modifications to game structures and consider whether these would improve my own game.
3. Listen to my players and try to meet their expectations on what they want to do.

None of this is particularly insightful or groundbreaking. I rather think I am preaching to the choir: I believe that the true rallying cry of the thing calling itself the "OSR community" is not to resurrect the most ancient game structures of our hobby - it's just to play better games.

Good luck in your perpetual self-improvement!