What's your weakness in game design?

[Kobold Catgirl]

I've been thinking lately about homebrew and independent game design, and in particular, how I seem utterly incapable of compressing a magic item description to a single simple paragraph. That got me curious - what kinds of game design challenges do other people struggle with?

I don't know if an open-ended prompt like this will get any bites, but it's really interesting to me as both a point of curiosity and a discussion point. How do you learn to be less voluminously verbose, for example? Does it come easily to anyone here?

[Belabras]

Honestly? Lack of free time. I could punch up my writing more but it’s the lack of hours in the day that hurts most.

As to verbosity - just write as comes natural then ruthless cut back to word count. It’s that second bit that’s hard.

[Kobold Catgirl]

It's so hard to make an explanation flow clearly and concisely and still flow. Good paragraph and sentence design are like city planning, and wordcount limits are like planning a city after building the city walls.

[Wesrolter]

Depends, are we talking about typing or writing?
If its writing, I use my tiny 'font' size to my advantage. If its typing, symbols and not so pretty works. 30ft +5/2 lvl for example. I know what it means so it saves space rather then '30ft plus an additional 5ft per 2 caster levels.'
It also partially depends on who the cut down version is for. If its just for me, then I can cut it in ways my brain can read and understand, if I need it to be understood by others, then it needs more words.

[Steve Geddes]

Nailing down the details. I can construct a subsystem, spell, item, class feature, monster or whatever. But when I take it to the table, inevitably someone asks a question along the lines of "Does this work with <that other thing from the book>?" and I have given it no thought.
I paint with too broad a brush, really.

(I have an entire starship combat subsystem that I was just about to unleash on my players. It's the first time I've ever done a proper three or four "editing" passes and tried to actively look for loopholes and ambiguities. I was looking forward to seeing how my optimisation-loving players were going to take it apart. :p)

[Albatoonoe]

My more free-form, loose style has really led to my skills in intricate design suffer. I'm good at keeping things going at a good pace or having a cool set piece, but having to sit down and write out a mystery, puzzle, maze, or something like that comes up short.

[kadance]

Too comprehensive. Why make a single ritual when you can make a system to create any ritual?

[Metaphysician]

Providing small scale details. I am great at imagining and designing big systems, like the important and influential factions in a city and how their interactions define the city. . . but bad at coming up with specific low level people who work for them and giving them names.

[Wesrolter]

Another issue I have is designing mysteries or puzzles.
Not the actual design of them, just the way I see things seems to be fairly different to my players, what I think is simple, they don't. Not an intelligence principle, its just the line of thought I suppose.
Small details are also a problem. giving rooms a descriptive. Its the old problem of a room being just a room so you give it minimal description and your important room having a description.

[Loreguard]

I think, like Kadance
Comprehensive: Cascading items that clearly (at least in my brain) can be tied in and encapsulating all sorts of options = end product that doesn't get completed.

Some say the biggest Enemy of Good is Perfect. You never finish the Good item right in front of you, because you're aiming for Perfect, whether that was the intend or not.