The problem with too many options...

One of the things I've struggled with in the SNAFU system has been the balance...

This might be a balance between restricting character choices along specific narrative or mechanical paths (much like "Powered by the Apocalypse" games do), or offering complete freedom of choice to players (like "Freeform Universal" games do). It might be a balance between complex rules (like "Rolemaster"), or simple ones (like "Honey Heist").

Knowing a variety of games and how they handle things can be a mixed blessing. It's really good to see how different designers have handled situation that they see their players getting involved in... it's just as important to see the gaps they've left and whether these gaps are deliberate elements of "fruitful void" or whether they just haven't been noticed because they didn't consider that players might be doing these within within narratives driven by their systems.  

Within this all, there are a few critical points that have been regularly problematic since the earliest incarnation of the system under the "FUBAR" title (assorted posts where I've worked through this can be found in this listing). Two of the key interconnected elements are level of skill and degree of success, and while I've basically resolved the idea in the SNAFU evolution of the game, there are still a few bugbears. Notably, how weapons might apply damage...actually, the whole system runs really smoothly when dealing with abstracts, investigations, and big picture narrative, but fiddly little details like individual combat strikes and other conflict actions start to push its boundaries (often beyond breaking ;point, unless a careful GM/Narrator can rein in the excesses, or use the flexibility of the system on the fly). That's where the too many options bit comes in. 

I've generally overcome this by allowing anything, but offering templates as an easy path to certain goals...with the idea that most people will take the path of least resistance if it's presented to them, while some will always want to take the path less travelled, or even forge their own path across the wilderness. 

After examining a whole heap of different SRDs, I can see how other people have done things, I can see clever solutions that might work within the framework of SNAFU, but I don't want to run the risk of "Design by Exception" (which I've clearly wondered about for more than a decade). The reason I've been thinking about this is the fact that the "SNAFU SRD and Cookbook" is probably getting a bit to unwieldy to properly be called an SRD. It's got a whole lot of explanation and behinds the scenes comments about why certain effects were put in place, how to modify them, and what might happen when you do modify them. A "proper" SRD seems to be just the facts, just the system, just what you need to play in a simple concise form. So I'm trying to boil down the essentials of SNAFU, and even though I could put the core die rolling conventions on a single page, conflict gets mechanically (and non-diegetically) messy....when I  only want it to get narratively (and diegetically) messy. Players should be fearing for their characters lives and livelihood when they go into conflict, not fearig that they are going to get bored as the game grinds to a halt.

Just what I'm thinking about at the moment...