Is the Juice Worth The Squeeze?

Two weeks ago I celebrated a pretty awesome one year milestone, and this summer I'll be hitting the big 3-0 ~ This all still feels surreal given there was a time it was looking like I wouldn't even make it to 20 (and that was if I was lucky). Getting told my days may be numbered at 9 definitely reframed how I look at the time I have (had?) left and the things that ate it up. It's a reason I have a pretty low tolerance for games that actively exist to pass the time rather than to enrich that time in a meaningful way. It's also why I'm so harsh on tabletop games, games which by and large take a lot of time and planning to play (even in the scope of a one-shot). It raises a question I often ask, for which it felt appropriate to finally have a blog post for:

IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE?

Or to put it another way: Does the effort and energy required to play out a given mechanic (or game) result in a unique and interesting enough experience to be worth that effort. While ultimately what's "worth it" is a matter of taste, it's still something we as designers, game runners and theoryslop writers should be mindful of - Does this dice system that takes 3 minutes to resolve really smooth the experience of running a grand ball? Does every step of friction I add to this combat system add far more depth and intrigue as a result?

Another key component here is unlatching the "squeeze" from the "juice" - A complex games with lots of steps and resources can be ultimately quite shallow, while a light game packed with intention and direction can be doubly effective. This isn't to say those complex games are bad by nature, but rather that if they're asking the player to squeeze so much harder that juice better be worth it.

Some people say they want the rules to "get out of their way," but often I think when people cite the ways in which the rules do "get in their way," they're experiencing heavy rules squeeze for barely any juice -"Why am I rolling all these dice and spending all this time for something not even that interesting?" I wonder if these folks really can't enjoy a rules-heavy game, or if they just haven't experienced a rules-squeeze that feels worth it. And this is to say nothing of intentionally obstructive squeeze to give an intentionally soured and nuanced juice (see also: Rules Are A Cage).

Every mechanic you add should be weighed in time and friction. Every design choice measured against how much it engages a player, challenges them, provokes them to think, vs just padding the time of a campaign. Every choice in layout and writing can be measured in the time and energy to read, reference and release an adventure from the page. When you make compromises with Human Centric Design is it for a good reason? Even with heavy optimization, a degree of cognitive load is inevitable - Will you make that load worth it?

A pitfall to avoid here is what I call "smart ideas"; Something that design-wise on paper is quite clever and neatly fits your goals, but in practice has the momentum of a cinderblock under a pile of smaller cinderblocks due to the nature of the medium of tabletop games. A huge reason I haven't touched my own game Steel Hearts in a while is because it was full of "smart ideas" that I do quite like in theory, but which combined (even after years of playtesting) created a lot of dice calculation for not enough pay-off. Synergy (a variable resource generated by your allies) is a smart idea, but in execution that resource scaling off of evens on dice rolls caused a LOT more friction than it did moments of "oh I just generated a bunch of synergy for my team!" When I revisit Steel Hearts it'll probably be by going back to the drawing board through the lens of "how do I evoke the feeling of energizing your team with every hit while keeping resolution snappy and kinetic" rather than just "how do I make Synergy not suck to calculate."

Consider your design's goals (whether it be a game or adventure) - That's not rhetorical, this is a hands on! Write down 3 goals of your design that have to do with the way a player should feel when playing ~ Throw away the genre emulation and replace it with the good abstract "hard-to-define-but-you-know-it-when-you-see-it"s; Instead of "The adventure feels like an episode Serial Experiments: Lain" say it "envelops the player in techno-melancholy." Now does every point of friction, every ask from player/GM/reader, every box to fill, every rule to learn serve at minimum 2 of these 3 goals sans compromise? Because if so, that juice might be worth the squeeze!