In our previous discussion I explained my perspective on harmony in game design. Now it’s time for the opposite, but sometimes complementary, game design technique, the Kludge. It’s something of an ugly word itself, and that’s not an accident.
What’s the Opposite of Harmony?
I borrow the term “Kludge” from software (“kludgy” is the adjective that’s used). A kKudge is a tacked-on solution to a particular problem, or a solution that works, but isn’t consistent with the rest of the program. In software (though not in games) a kludge can also be difficult to understand and modify.
The Kludge is hard to define in game design because one man’s Kludge is another man’s “nothing wrong with that.” How do you notice the Kludges if the game is a model of something, as RPGs always are? The Kludge will usually be inconsistent with the rest of the model, and may have nothing at all to do with what’s being modeled. It may be there to fix some design flaw.
When I play games, I sometimes ask: “Why am I doing this particular thing?” If the only answer I can come up with is “because it fixes a design flaw,” or “because the designer liked it,” or “I have no clue why it’s here,” then it is probably a Kludge.
Kludges in Abstract Games
A Kludge is less obvious in abstract games because the game doesn’t represent anything (other than “a game”). Abstract games are collections of mechanics where there’s no attempt to model anything. This is different from a model where the context should help people play the game and the mechanics are expected to represent something that happens in a real or fictional world. Nonetheless, in abstract games you can have a mechanic that doesn’t fit with the rest, that doesn’t seem to have a useful function, clearly should’ve been replaced with something else, or simply should have been removed from the game.
You’ll often see this in early games that developed over time. Dungeons & Dragons is a prime example: role-playing mechanics were, at best, loose. There were hints here and there of how to role-play, but there weren’t a lot of rules to that effect. D&D originated from Chainmail after all, and didn’t even have a skill system at first. You could role-play all you wanted, and many groups did, but any rules that game masters came up with were a Kludge.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons includes rules for training characters before they can level up. I’ve discussed at length why these rules make no sense to me. I think they were added to provide a way to syphon off the otherwise vast treasures characters collected. But the end result was that training turned adventurers into money-grubbers. Which is probably why those rules were deprecated in later editions.
There are those who feel today that D&D still doesn’t support other styles of play and any rules to that effect are Kludges; but clearly, given the success of Critical Role and other streamers telling stories using D&D rules and variants thereof, it’s possible. Whether or not it feels right to a game group likely determines how kludgy those rules feel.
The Land of Kludges
Kludges are often added to games to solve a problem that appeared in testing. Most of the time it’s added to fix a demonstrated flaw, but at other times, it’s in the game because the designer liked it, even though it doesn’t fit what he ended up with. (Remember, games often end up some “distance” from where the designer originally intended.) It could be the original idea itself, yet the game has developed in another direction. At that point, the designer should remove the original rule, get it out of there, but it’s emotionally hard for a designer to do so.
For a board game example, there’s Catan. Catan is very popular, although I believe it has its own Kludges: the Robber card. Keep in mind there’s not a lot of interaction in Catan between the players except for the trading, and there’s little you can do to actually hinder another player after the initial setup. I think the designer saw the lack of hindrance, and decided to add the Robber, which has nothing to do with the rest of the game (it restricts/prevents some resource acquisition). It feels to me like it was added to provide the potential to hinder other players without really integrating it into the game itself. If it represented mere bandits, a player’s soldiers should be able to do something about it.
Consider the online video games World of Tanks and World of Warships. In World of Tanks the entire idea of 15 versus 15 randomly assigned teams is a Kludge, in the sense that it has nothing to do with real warfare, but it’s necessary to make the online game practical for a very large audience. In World of Warships the overall Kludge is to play in a small area, usually amongst lots of islands, places where real world battleships and aircraft carriers virtually never went. In both games we have the bizarre mix of nationalities of equipment: German and French and English and Russian tanks or ships on the same side, and possibly 15 individually different tanks or 12 different ships on a team, where military reality is uniformity. It’s also a necessary Kludge but has nothing to do with reality. Both games break down as models of reality, and the Kludges are obvious.
It’s Not a Kludge!
When is a Kludge no longer a Kludge? When almost everyone accepts it as necessary. In big video games, both Harmony and the Kludge become obscured. Kludges viewed as downgrades to curb player power are often called “nerfs” to represent a sword that looks like a real sword but is just a foam weapon that does less damage.
It’s easier to find things you think are Kludges in a game you don’t like. Also, we have the limitation that some designers of puzzle-like games, whether they’re single player video games or solo tabletop games or cooperative games, tend to add things to make the puzzle solution more difficult.
Kludges are tricky to define. It doesn’t matter what specific mechanics you use, whether already very popular or brand new (the latter are increasingly rare). What matters is how they work together as a whole. I come in heavily on the side of this motto: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
By far the best way to find a Kludge is to see a game through someone else’s eyes. Playtesting is key in this regard. Kludge is best found by people who are objective, or frankly don’t even like your game. It’s tough for designers to hear, but critics will find Kludges you can’t see, and it’s worth taking any criticism at face value and playtesting to find if your rules don’t match the game you intended. Designers need to recognize the inharmonious, and excise it!
Your Turn: We all know kludges in games we love to play. What’s yours?
Read more at this site