Reading Level?

I brought this subject up on my SBRPG blog, and YouTube content creators are now picking up on it. This was initially targeted at D&D and how the reading comprehension level of that book drops with every edition. The game seems almost too simple at this point, not in its rules, but in the language it uses to present them.

Shadowdark requires even less reading comprehension to understand, and is far better situated than over a thousand pages of D&D 2024 reading. I saw videos on YouTube where 3rd-graders were reading and playing Shadowdark far better than many 50-year-olds. It is not just the level, but the amount you require players to read that will take your game from being "for everyone" to "the 2% that could read through a thousand pages and grasp it."

Even I, with ACKS II, a game I got recently, find myself struggling to read over a thousand pages of stuff in that game. The game is beautiful and one of the best OSR games ever written, but I find myself intimidated by it and prefer the easier dungeon-style games that don't require much of me. There is another factor in this equation of "people rarely have the time" - even among those with the level of reading needed to enjoy your game, today's world takes so much time from us, we seek the easier games, just because playing something is far better than playing nothing.

Given my time, I will always give GURPS the most of it, because the time I spend with this game gives me the most enjoyment per minute I put into it. This is another factor to consider. I rarely have time for other games unless they are so simple I can play them with a few core concepts. Dungeon Crawl Classics and its simplified 3.5E rules are a far better side game for me than Pathfinder 2, AD&D, or even 5E.

This is a tangential point, but I would opt for an easier game that doesn't take as much time to learn over a harder one. Part of the target market who can read your game will opt for the easier one, just due to modern societal time pressures.

Are all classic RPGs doomed because of America's dropping reading level?

Now, when I say "all," I am explicitly referring to GURPS in this context and this space. GURPS is written for a higher level of math and reading comprehension than most games; it is (by my best guess) at the 8th to 10th grade level in terms of writing and math skills required to play the game, which encompasses less than half of the population. Math skills are likely higher at the end of that range. While GURPS does not require calculus, a grasp of algebra makes the game a lot easier.

Approximately 54% of the US population reads at a 6th-grade level or below, and math skills are likely to be similarly low. For most of them, GURPS is out of reach, and a thousand pages of D&D, even at a 6th-grade reading level, are also pushing your player base to a fraction of what it could be.

Growing up in the 1980s, these numbers are shocking to me. Then again, I have a sister who is a teacher at these grade levels, and she says that school systems will fail students up to the next grade without the basic required skills, just so the school districts can look good and meet their quotas.

The school systems no longer care.

Society doesn't care that they don't, either.

Nobody has the time to.

The educational system in the US is failing, and year after year, the skills in reading, math, and comprehension are dropping. Fewer and fewer will play the old games because fewer and fewer will understand them.

I am not talking about current players or anyone on the GURPS Discord! We have already invested, we love the game, and we know how it works. We had friends to teach us, or we loved the game so much we figured it out for ourselves. Even if we had a lower comprehension level, we used the game to teach ourselves what we needed to know and forged ahead. We did this in the 1980s as kids with AD&D. We looked up Gygax's words in the dictionary to figure them out.

It is the next generation, and the one after that, and future players of the game that I worry about.

It is the direction of the next version of GURPS, if it ever happens. We won't have a choice; the game will most likely be written for a very low reading comprehension level, and the math will be simplified to such an extent that today's players will be shocked at how "dumbed down" our favorite game has become.

But don't blame the game publishers; this is pure survival we are talking about. As the country forgets what education is, it fails to hold high standards and excellence in education as an ideal that we should all strive for.

This may sound political, but it really isn't, and it shouldn't be. It is a scary statistic that we can see in new games, and how simple they seem to be getting, versus the older games our community cherishes, which we find mentally stimulating. This is why many classic gamers tend to be older; the games were written at an educational level that we grew up with.

Everyone wants education to be held to a gold standard, and we should require more of our students than the levels we were held to. Sadly, even discussing this issue can evoke anger and divisiveness, and people often give up because no one has the time to dedicate to fixing it, and there will be too many who will exploit the system to benefit themselves.

This is one of those moments that makes me fear for the future of my favorite games. It is a sort of "change or die" moment, not caused by the game, but by a larger societal issue outside of our control. It makes me feel helpless, and like the things I love will be enjoyed by fewer and fewer people as time goes on.