Brevity is the soul of wit … and game design.
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”— Thomas Jefferson
Brevity
Write with brevity. Your readers will thank you for it.
By “brevity” I mean in a sense of not wasting words; that is, not using words that are unnecessary. Another way to describe this is being concise, though the two are not quite synonymous.
This is not just “make it short” because if you just make rules short for the sake of being short, people may not understand them. It’s more “use all the words you need, but not more.” If you want to be brief, then you keep the words that are important and get rid of ones that are not.
Here’s an example. Robert Heinlein, who was a very famous science fiction author in his time, began his writing career in pulp magazines, where he was paid by the word. Then he wrote the very famous novel Stranger in a Strange Land (in 2012, the Library of Congress named it one of 88 ‘Books that Shaped America’). His submitted draft was 220,000 words (average novel length is 90-100 thousand). He was asked to cut it down to 160,000 words. That brevity would not change his royalties because royalties typically are based on the book, not on the number of words. He cut it down and Heinlein himself remarked in a letter he wrote to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart in 1972 that “he thought his shorter, edited version was better.” He had not thought that brevity was a virtue when he was writing for the pulps because he was paid by the word.
Because you may have to rewrite an entire sentence or more in order to achieve brevity, this isn’t something that will be immediately obvious. You’ll need to work at it. In this respect it’s like getting ideas for games; some may just come to you, but you’ll get a lot more ideas if you work at it.
The Benefits of Brevity in RPG Writing
Unless you’re self-publishing, most role-playing game writing assignments are paid by the word. I think brevity is a better way to write rather than just putting in words for the sake of having more words, and I’ve seen that in my own “Worlds of Design” columns that I’ve written since 2017. I have a word limit and try to stick to it, but it’s an art; when I started out, I worked at brevity by eliminating unnecessary phrases. This has the added bonus of making the columns a lot easier to understand. Nowadays, I work with the editor to keep the article concise, and worry less about word limits—but it’s still a good exercise to make yourself easily understood.
If you’re self-publishing RPG material, striving for brevity will let you price your item for less (lower production cost), which by the law of supply and demand ought to result in higher sales. In board games you are not paid by the word, so it’s easy to be brief because it improves what you’re doing, harms no one, and makes your product better.
Brevity in writing differs from speaking, although being concise in your speech is helpful too. There’s more word repetition when you speak extemporaneously, partly because the listener cannot (easily) go back to re-hear something. People also typically speak less concisely than they write. I have considerable experience transcribing my videos (see my “Game Design” channel on YouTube) and then turning them into writing. When you transcribe and edit a video you reduce/eliminate repetition. And you reduce some of the “artefacts of speaking.” I certainly do, though it takes quite a while.
The Balance
When it comes to rules, cutting out too much isn’t desirable either. Better to have too many words rather than so few that they will be misunderstood. Experience helps you achieve this balance between brevity and much too brief.
There are books about board game publishing that have useful advice for RPG publishers. Eric Hanuise recently wrote the book Board Game Publisher. He writes from experience of his company Flatlined Games (his first game was a new edition of my game Dragon Rage (2011), now long out of print). Geoff Englestein has written Game Production: Prototyping and Producing Your Board Game.
This is why having other people read your rules is desirable, especially if you’re self-publishing. They will see lack of clarity sometimes when you think you’ve been clear.
Sharing your thoughts concisely pays dividends not just because your rules will be easier to read, but because your game will be easier to understand. It’s not easy—if it was, no game would ever need errata.
Your Turn: How do you ensure your rules are clear and concise?
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