On Simplicity

There's a problem, in that because we're playing a game about adventurers - people living in a fantasy world - we lose focus too easily and get bogged down in things that are not the game.

One of the most interesting things about the Community episode where they play dungeons and dragons was that when Abed started the game he said 'Your goal is to go recover this treasure'. No dicking around with how do you know each other, why are we working together, or how did you meet.

One of my least favorite things about my recent old school play was the 'paperwork sessions' where we spent way too much time trying to figure everything out. Where are you staying? What did you do for 2 weeks? How are you paying for everyone? Where are you keeping your stuff?
Things like that work very well for a game like Shadowrun or Vampire, where the drama is in your single character, and themes can be created and dealt with from the resulting situations. But in a traditional fantasy adventure, it just eats up time and adds nothing.

Here's what I'm going to do about it - in the future, all my out of adventure time will be hand-waved away or dealt with outside of the table. Items will be identified and sold at a flat rate, and the specifics of where people are staying will be left out of the action. Everything that does not have to do with gameplay (adventure or exploration) will be abstracted as much as possible. Skill systems will be simple. You may have henchmen or dogs or whatever, but other then stats, and possibly a name and their bill, no game time will be spent on figuring out how they interact with the party outside of the adventure.

Like in a story, the end will be in a fade to black, and everything will be worked out before we hit the table next week.