Overdesigning Restrictions. Safety net not required

Reddit Crosspost, because I always forget this place exists, but the feedback and discussion here is generally better.

I just published a big update to Chronomutants, trying to put the last 2 years of playtest feedback into change. I have been playing regularly, but haven’t really looked at the rules very closely in awhile.

I went in to clean-up some stuff (I overcorrect on a nerf to skill, after a player ran away with a game during a playtest) and I found a lot of things (mostly hold overs from very early versions, but also not) that were explicitly designed to be levers to limit players. For example I had an encumbrance mechanic, in what is explicitly a storytelling game.

Encumbrance was simple and not hard to keep track of, but I don’t really know what I thought it was adding. Actually, I do know what I thought I was getting: Control. I thought I needed a lever to reign in player power (laughable given the players are timetravelers with godlike powers) and I had a few of these kinds of things. Mostly you can do this, but there is a consequence so steep why bother. Stuff running directly contrary to the ethos of player experimenting I was aiming for. I guess I was afraid of too much freedom? that restrictions would help the players be creative?

A lot of players (even me) ignored these rules when it felt better to just roll with it. The problems I imagined turned out to not really be problems. I had kind of assumed the guardrails were working, because they had always been there, but in reality they were just there, taking up space.

Lesson learned: Instead of building guardrails I should have been pushing the players into traffic.

Correcting the other direction would have been easier, and I shouldn’t be afraid of the game exploding. Exploding is fun.

“Restrictions breed creativity” does tend to be true, but in this case, you may have been putting a “you should care about this” flag on something you weren’t actually interested in exploring. Extra definition on something like encumberance tells readers they should expect that to be a relevant dimension of play, not that they should play it safe and ignore it.

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“Restrictions breed creativity” was the ethos for putting these little things in. I think there are games that use that directive effectively. Like how making hard choices about what to take. Part of me ending up where I did was me letting this project be what it was.

Once it gets onto the tables of others it gets to live it’s own life to an extent. I think empowering the styles of play of what is happening, instead of what might happen is a way of empowering GMs.

but you are 100% on relevence.