There's an effect I've found with a few of my games, and it's most evident whenit shows itself in an abstract. Whereas Advanced Squad Leader can boggle the mind with charts, tables, modifiers, chits, stacks, and reams of options, special cases, and exceptions, getting this same effect out of a 300-word rules set is something else again.
I've seen this effect more than once, when I have a playtest session where the game is functional, technically, but unplayable because of the limits of human cognition. The game simply requires more than the human brain will willingly give in the guise of fun. Such rules are almost immediately evident, when, instead of being intruiged by the tactical possabilities, the mind rebels, unable to do more than slog from turn to turn.
Needless to say, this is no fun, but, strangely, the effect usually only shows itself in full playtest. During solo testing, I seem, as the designer, able to put myself into a state of semi-play, acting as if I'm considering potentials, when, in fact, I'm only walking through rules that I know work. There will be few surprises, since I control both sides.
In playtest, though, the game is suddenly, painfully unplayable. I've written off working rules sets becasue of this effect, after only a turn or two, and my usual playtesters have all seen this happen.
Has anyone else designed a game that strains the outer limits of what a player can process? I'm not looking for hopelessly complex rules sets. I'm talking about rules that are crystal clear, and yield a game that cannot be played with anything resembling fun.
It would be interesting to hear about some of your examples.
Any of these can be the problem. In general, I'm looking for examples of "lack of clarity" in play, that are somehow eveked by rule sets taht, on paper, are totally unambiguous.
for example, in an Icehouse game I created, called Logique, the players placed Icehouse pieces onto a chessboard. The pieces had no assigned player, and could be placed facing any adjascent non-diagonal square. The pieces on the four outer corners showed what colors could attack each other: a piece could attack another adjascent to it if one of the four outer corner pieces was of the attacking color and pointing to a piece of the target color in one of the other corners (so the corners pieces skip over the board and point directly to the other corners for purposes of setting color dominance). A simple diagam illustrates this easily.
Similarly, the four innermost squares dictate which size piece can attack another.
The details of winning and losing the game are unimportant. It problem was immediately evident, since humans can't seem to smoothly hold this two-part attack condition in their heads. The game is a total neural meltdown to play. Two diagrams show the rules over capture conditions, and the rules are about half a page. In in those 250 words... disaster!
Perhaps this is most easy to achieve in abstracts?