Some Thoughts on Game Design

RuneQuest Clarity
Reading about the work going on over at Chaosium (http://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-3/) on the new RuneQuest project has me thinking about design philosophy and how some games are designed to support one style of play while others are designed with a different style in mind. I have mentioned before how RuneQuest 2nd edition play followed on White Box after some years and became my "second love". RuneQuest was both familiar as a fantasy role-play game and something totally new. It was not class based, made use of an extensive skill list, allowed every character to cast some relatively low powered magic, used a d100 percentile system and was tightly linked to Glorantha (Greg Stafford's creation), which is a myth-based society in which named gods play a significant role.
Coming at RuneQuest in the early 1980's is very different from looking at it now. Our game group had mostly played White Box and its immediate successors, games often directly linked to White Box in terms of game design, games like Gamma World, Boot Hill and of course, AD&D. Steve Jackson's The Fantasy Trip was somewhat different, as was Tunnels & Trolls and we played them as a group for a while (I still play them, mostly solo). RuneQuest felt like a major departure, however. Much like it's cousin, Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest is skill based. At the time we were first grasping this I don't think I had made much out of this fact. Traveler by GDW had introduced the idea of skills and we had played at some Traveler for a time (it never caught on with us). It is only in retrospect that I consider the skill-based approach as radically different from White Box's implied competency.
White Box has no list of skills until one adds in the thief class, and even then the skills are tied to that class, rather as an anomaly in my opinion. Suddenly with RuneQuest the ability to read one's native language and understand it is a skill, with a chance of failure. So is riding, map making, oratory and other activities that we either role-played out or assumed the adventurer knew how to do competently. If there was any doubt about the ability, a roll verses one of the attributes or a saving throw gave an acceptable result. It is interesting to note that looking at the 2nd edition RuneQuest character sheet, several of the listed skills are those very thief abilities which appeared in Supplement I, spot trap, disarm/set trap, hide in cover, move silently, climb, lock picking and pick pockets.
At the time we were learning RuneQuest, we probably gave little thought to game design or why certain choices might be made by the authors. In fact I recall struggling to play RuneQuest just the way we had played White Box; that is to say, dungeon delving. RuneQuest clearly has other goals in mind which today I see.
So what are some of those goals? In their own words:

The RuneQuest percentage skills character sheet elegantly serves non-combat roleplaying through these two important design rules:

• RPG Design Rule a: "If it's not in the rules, it's not in the gameplay." [ie, player knows it's not an important thing to think about]
• RPG Design Rule b: "If, in a scenario crisis, a player can't find problem-solving tools on their character sheet, they won't look elsewhere for them." [ie, When players are flummoxed, they look to their character sheets for inspiration. And they won't be inspired to use any tool they don't find there.]

In the above Design Rules I see evidence of a different "philosophy" than that I usually talk about in connection with White Box. RuneQuest is a different game indeed and it is all making sense after 30 years...hey, I can be a bit slow! The rules define the boundaries of play and look for the solution on the character sheet. It looks a lot more like play inside the box than outside the box.
An "aha" moment here as I adjust to this alternate reality. Suddenly games like Rolemaster, 3rd Edition and Pathfinder make more sense from a designer's perspective. Understanding that is useful for a player perspective.
Logically speaking, the same is true of White Box, just in reverse. The rules of White Box are not the boundaries of play. They merely provide examples and techniques to handle some aspects of play. And the answers to in-game dilemmas are often not on the character sheet...so look elsewhere!