Codification: Just Say No

[Solomoriah]

I've been noticing a tendency among contributors to codify things. To write things down. In another thread, I said it's not always a good thing to write things down; I'm going to elaborate. I'm not busting anyone's chops here, but I will have to mention some things others have posted that are examples of what I intend to avoid. If I call out something you've championed, please, don't take it personally.

As Admiral Ackbar said, "It's a trap!"

One recent poster stated that he'd like to see the habitat of each monster in the monster statblock or description. This is codification. Among supplements, the Equipment Emporium has some possibly excessive codification in it. (I like the Equipment Emporium in some ways, and there's a time I'd have snapped it up, but I doubt now that I'll use it at all in my game.) There are other examples; these are just recent ones.

Codification Limits Creativity

Imagine for a moment that we provide the habitat with every monster. Or perhaps cultural notes with every sentient creature; that hasn't been suggested yet, but in the 2E era it was a major "feature" of the monster books. This is seen as helpful, since now the GM can easily see which monsters are appropriate to an area.

A few years back, as I was first writing The Lost Pyramid, I needed desert monsters. Someone (and I've forgotten who, which is a sad commentary on my memory) suggested desert bugbears: ordinary bugbears culturally adapted to desert living. It was a beautiful thing in play. If the monster stats had said "bugbears live in forests" it would have placed a small but noticeable resistance in his mind and in mine to the concept.

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet, but which is a major "feature" of the 3E era, is magic item codification. Look at the magic items in the treasure section of the Core Rules, then compare them to the magic item creation rules; obviously, there is a lot more flexibility available in the latter than in the former. Someone might think, wow, we should describe more of the possible magic items. Maybe we need to figure out the prices of all these items we've already created. And hey, for that matter, there are magic items that produce effects we don't have spells for, so maybe we need to make up those spells.

Once you have costs figured out and more magic items created and more spells nailed down in the Core Rules, you'll find that many GMs won't bother to create their own items, especially items with unusual powers. They think, hey, if I want this item, I need to design the spell that it produces first... which is unneeded work, but it looks like you need to do it.

A secondary effect is that all game worlds end up looking more alike. Everyone knows that bugbears are found in forests (since that's what the monster stat block says) and sure enough, in all those worlds that's where you find them. The game rules shouldn't set out all the details of the GMs campaign world before he's even created it.

Codification Reduces Mystery

If we write down the cultural, habitat, or biological features of monsters, or provide more magic item details, or perform other sorts of codification, then the player characters walk into the game world knowing more than they should... since, after all, the players can read the books too. The more you write down, the more you give away.

Codification Bloats the Rules

Add just the habitat to all the monsters, and you add materially to the size of the book. Add cultural information, while you're at it, and look, it gets bigger again. Throw in the Equipment Emporium, and hey, it's gained more weight. Detail all those magic items, and look how big it gets... and while we were at it we added a bunch of spells too. Wow, three hundred pages! More pages are better, right?

No.

A major charm of Basic Fantasy RPG, in my eyes at least as the shepherd who guided its development, is simplicity. Codification, in bloating the rules, also makes things more complicated... which leads to:

Codification Slows the Game

The more you codify, the more the GM has to refer back to the rulebook(s) for information. Some GMs are naturally geniuses with huge brains; I'm not one of those, and I don't want to hold any more in my head than I have to. More material not only means more to remember, it also means more pages to flip through looking for that one piece of information I actually need. Any time I have to crack the book open in the middle of play, it slows things down.

I'm not blameless

Some codification is necessary, obviously, and some more has crept into the rules against my better judgment. And I have accepted supplements that I didn't like on that basis; as long as they are supplements and not "official" rules, I don't think there's much harm in it. Some really do like codification. I'd like to hope that most who really, really want everything written down will find another game system that suits them... because I really want to hold down the level of codification in BFRPG as much as possible, so those people will probably never be happy here.

Not codifying everything is a design feature of Basic Fantasy RPG, not an oversight or an error. I firmly plan to keep it that way.

[lucky64]

This is why this is the only game system I play.