Difficulty

One of the most interesting, and baffling, discussions I have come across in the wider expanse of tabletop gamers is the concept of difficulty. Someone says “the math is too much” or “there is so much reading” or “I am not a math person.” And nearly all of these, and many phrases like them, are said before someone either doesn’t do something, outsources it to someone else, or takes forever to do it for themselves.

This is a problem.

Is math easy? No. No it is not. Normally I would say it is not easy because it is not meant to be easy, but math is not meant for anything. Math is the language that underpins our universe, our very existence, and as we discover more of it we learn just how truly complex and mysterious our universe is.

It is because math is the language of our universe that it is so ripe for the creation of other universes. All of our games that we create, not the writing and the books and the pretty pictures, are universes. If our world exists only within our minds, because our mind is receiving the sensory data and thus manufacturing a world out of all of that data, then when our sensory data is overtaken by the imaginary spaces and people we create, then we have created a new universe.

Math is foundational for all the universes we create. A short story can create a universe, and many of the most interesting universes are the ones that are barely explored, allowing our minds to take the headstart from the fiction and expand upon it in our own way. No two people ever imagined Gandalf in the same way, so there are potentially billions of Gandalfs in their own universes out there.

A short story is defined by its length, which is generally a numerical value. So is a novel, and a book, and all the other publisher friendly definitions for the lengths of stories. I don’t know them, and it is so much reading to look them up.

A lot of people have difficulty with math because they were not taught math well, which also leads to them understating the importance of math. Math is not only figuring out fractions and squaring roots and transferring one pile of numbers to another place on the sheet. Math is our taxes, math is goods on sale, math is the number of people required to impeach a sitting pedophile. Math is also logic. A common phrase, even among those who claim math illiteracy, is “A + B = C.”

Math is logic. This is the most important piece of math and teaching math. Logic allows you to follow the bread crumbs of the universe as we unravel its secrets. At a much smaller scale, it allows us to understand when people are lying because their argument is illogical. You can only know that the statement being made is fallacious on its face if you have exercised the muscle of your brain to better use logic.

The brain is a muscle. And like other muscles, if you stab it with a sword it stops doing its job. As a person I am far from perfect, and I have many failings. Knowing what they are allows me to exercise them, to try and improve them. I was studying to be an engineer years ago, but I am not good at math. Math is hard. So I made an effort to regularly practice math, even if just simple math.

Yes, I engage with it everyday at work, but I earnestly make an effort to improve at math. I wait tables by the way, so not only do I engage with math, I do it while being treated like a wage slave and controlling my urge to burn down the entire restaurant industry for the casual cruelty that comes from everyone when they walk into a restaurant.

Then, people show up to a game that requires math, and reading, and understanding of the interplay of these things plus socializing and fiction, and all the other skills required in our hobby space. And that’s when the comments start; “I’m not good at math.” “That’s so much reading.” “My character can do what?” “Where do I find that stuff?” “There’s a book?!”

I have made this analogy several times in person, and maybe in a few of my articles, but I am going to make it again.

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If you want to play in a pickup game of basketball down at the local park, while we still have public parks, all you have to do is travel down there and you can probably get in to play with the strangers there. But how would you do this? Would you put on your football pads? Strap on your ice skates? Polish your baseball bat? Seriously, would you put on a suit and stuff your paddle in your back pocket?

No. You wouldn’t. Do you know why? Because you know what basketball is before you go. You have to, because if you didn’t know what it was, you likely wouldn’t be seeking it out. So when people know that these games require reading and math and all sorts of other skills, they should bring those skills to this hobby just as they would, and would be expected to, in any other.

There is another scary word; expectation. When you show up to the pickup game of basketball at the imperial park and outdoor recreation center, you are expected to know how to play and to be dressed appropriately. If you aren’t, they won’t let you play. And no one would bat an eye at that situation. But, when someone does the exact same thing at one of our tables, we are expected to have no expectations, to allow them to bring their nonsense to our table and wreck the fun the rest of us were having.

This is not gate keeping.

This. Is. Not. Gate. Keeping.

Tossing out social expectations is a bad thing. Existing social expectations are not always egalitarian and that is a problem, but it is not my job to help a complete stranger learn how to read or perform basic addition just because they came to my table without any understanding of what is going on. This is not the space for that.

Yes. There is going to be some social commentary in this article comrade.

I do my utmost to be accepting and accommodating for the unique and the special and the disturbed at my tables. I have played with several autistic people and I have no problem with anyone that comes to the table and tries. If you fail, I do not care. So long as you try, there is a place for you at my table.

But there are people who are not trying, and they are making it difficult for the rest of us, who wore our athletic shoes, breathable shorts, and brought bottles of water, to have fun. They are making it difficult for us to engage in the play we came to do, prepared to do, to meet the expectations of those around us so that we can engage.

Some of the discussion I am hearing about the state of technology and society is about how our technology is making some things easy enough that it is degrading peoples problem solving skills. This has largely been about children, but there is also discussion of this problem in adults. I run in to this everyday.

Fully grown adults, some with children, coming to my restaurant and having trouble reading the menu. Not just exotic words borrowed from other languages, but long words. And it is disturbing. Then people who can’t do math, again, fully grown adults, telling me the check is wrong until I take them through the prices and taxes on the detailed receipt.

This is a problem. And no, it is not my problem. I am trying. They are not.

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As these kinds of talks have progressed, I have started to hear them in the game design space. This is a much more difficult needle to thread, so I will be putting away my government mandated camel.

There is talk about DnD being too much math, or having too much crunch. This same talk happens about Pathfinder, or GURPS, or other games. The easily grabbed solution is often some “rules-light” non-game, of which there are millions, because they are easy to create.

My contention is that DnD, Pathfinder, and even the eponymous GURPS, are very easy when it comes to the math. This is especially in the most recent editions, where the math has been smoothed so much as to transform a polished gem into a smooth sphere. The math is very easy, and watching adults struggle adding the results of three dice together is embarrassing.

The problem lies in the language, which is born from math and tainted by the legal system. Were the original designers lawyers and physicists? No, of course not. But when you look at the language in a complex gaming book, it resembles both math laid out in language, and not numbers, and legal documentation. Your character can do X but only when Y for Z number of times. You must remain X number of yards from Y for Z length of time. An object with mass X acts on another object of mass Y from Z distance.

In order to describe a universe, you must use a universal language, written in laws.

I think the problem is less in the math, though certainly too many people cannot perform addition, and more in the language.

The language of a game must communicate the intent of the game while limiting misinterpretation and potential exploitation. At least, it used to be. That sentence alone has many implications, just as each sentence that is written potentially does. Every sentence is built upon an implied framework that both the writer and the reader have some fundamental shared understanding of their universe.

The language of a game. This implies that a game requires language, and I don’t mean in the absolutely nth-degree pedantic of “we’re just less hairy apes making noises at each other.” I mean that gaming, as setting up a shared imaginary space, requires its own language, just as physics and law are separate languages within english or whatever language they are explored in. A sub-language, if you will.

Must communicate the intent of the game. This is obvious. Each game has an intent, there is an intention to the way the game will be played, which requires an understanding of how the rules will be read and interpreted by the majority, not all, of the players. The intent of DnD is to engage in regular combat to acquire rewards and increase in power. The intent of Vampire: the Masquerade is to engage in immortal politics in an attempt to gain political power.

While limiting misinterpretation and potential exploitation. The first part of this section of the sentence seems like it may not even need to be present. Good communication minimizes misinterpretation, but for a game, it may be important and in fact prudent to redouble the effort to ensure clarity of rules between players.

And potential exploitation. This last little section holds a lot of implications, and speaks to the very adversarial origins of this hobby. Potential exploitation says that some will try, and others will not, or many will try and fail to exploit the rules for their benefit. To some this speaks to all the players who read and speculate until they have a powerhouse of a character build to take on whatever challenges may come. To others, like me, it speaks to the impressions given to the GM and the ease with which they can take the power of the game and use it to shoehorn their story and abuse the other players as observers rather than participants.

But the worst part of that is the adversarial implications. Even though both teams of basketball players cleared by the state for a few hours of recreation are intending to beat one another, they know that if the other team doesn’t show up there is no game, and punishments will be had all around. Which ultimately leads to the conclusion that this is a cooperative hobby, not an adversarial one.

So if our hobby is cooperative, requiring everyone to be working together, why would it be acceptable for people to come to this hobby without the skills required? Notice how I haven’t once questioned social skills, which we all have varying degrees of skill with. That is a different discussion that this space is absolutely not ready for, even though some of us are.

From the social discussions of technology degrading our problem solving skills, and the fact that most people do not need to engage with these skills regularly, and that many people see no use for them or that these skills come from liberal brainwashing institutions, how do we navigate this hobby when the foundational capabilities of the hobbyists are in jeopardy?

For some, it is to make simpler games. Rules-light is a term that popped up for pamphlets with little to no rules, a guidebook for group storytelling. Not gaming, group storytelling. If that is what you are looking for, by all means you have a plethora to choose from. But those rules-light offerings are not games.

For others, it is a modification to an existing chassis, regular videos or discussions about how to simplify the math or the language, or some other fix to keep what they want but make it more ‘approachable.’ If you have to modify something, you are not making it more approachable, you are changing it into something new and different, so all those that approach the new thing will not understand the old thing you were trying to get them to experience. If people don’t want to drink a soda because it is too complex, watering it down will not give them an idea of what it is like.

My solution is make an effort to understand the math, the language, or whatever it is that is difficult and making the whole thing unapproachable.

These games, this hobby, it not for everyone, and that is acceptable. Basketball is not for everyone, it is not for me. Football is not for me, I like being alive because I didn’t mention the brain injuries that make the biggest cult in america akin to gladiator matches in ancient Rome. Soccer is not for me. Ping-pong, darts, hacky-sack, so many things are not for me.

This hobby, these games, however, are for me. I love them. So I make the effort to improve the skills that are required, and I also take these concepts into my design, and my conversations, and my considerations of what this hobby is and what it means.

I will not be simplifying my game, but I will also not be arbitrarily making it more complex. I’m not looking at these talks and thinking “what weak people! I will show them by making a game so complex no one will want to play it!” That would be stupid and reactive.

I want my game to accurately represent the increase in skill, so I have a dice system that represents that. In order to determine which die you will roll, there is some math involved. For my first iteration I worried about the math a lot, and recently I even stopped development because I thought it was too complex for the hobby space. It isn’t too complicated for me, I am not an engineer, a mathematician, a physicist, I am just a server.

I stopped worrying, and I am going to start asking questions. I am also going to make it clear that this game includes and requires basic math skills. Maybe some people won’t play it, and that’s okay. Not every game is for every player. Just like not every hobby is for every person.

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