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Advice for Designers
Amazing things are happening at the Forge today. Here is my little contribution:
Lessons for Designers
It's okay GM advice, too.
If you've wanted to know what the heck I do over there, but didn't want to wade through 5+ years of crufty theory development, this is me saying "This is what I have learned about games." It's less than a page.
Since people recently have been talking about massive changes on the Forge (good! good!), I wanted to take the time to look back at some of the things that I have learned here, as they apply directly to game design. These are old hat topics, but I'm phrasing them in new ways, the way I talk about them with myself or with friends who think that "Narrativist" means "Director Stance."
So here are a few guidelines for a game designer and the game player.
1) Every act of resolution must have meaningful stakes.
What does the roll (I'm going to use the term "roll," here, but it applies equally to comparisons, point expenditures, card draws, and other methods) actually mean? What does it mean if you win, what does it mean if you lose? You need to know that before you roll.
And whatever it is, it has to be meaningful. A win has to be a real victory, a lose has to be a real loss. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time.
Doesn't mean that one roll has to be the whole story. What it means is that you need to be able to trust your mechanics to run things for you. Can't trust your mechanics? Make new ones.
2) Understand who can say what.
When a player says "I punch him in the jaw," what does it mean? Can someone else at the table (like a GM) just veto that? At what point does success and failure come into it? If I roll to punch him in the jaw, what have I done up until that point?
3) Know what your game is for.
Have a clear, defined, idea of what the experience of your game is like. What is the absolutely the one most important thing to the game? When someone sits down to play your game, what are they going to get out of it?
You have to know this, and guide your design by it. Compromises will get you an unpleasant mud.
3a) If "realism" isn't what your game is for, why do you care about it?
4) Trust the players
Every single person sitting at the table in an RPG wants to have a good time. Don't worry about "what if there is a bad player who wants to wreck the game?" If there is a bad player who wants to wreck the game, the game will be wrecked no matter what you do about it.
Assume that you are writing for a group of people who like each other, get along, and want to cooperate in having a good time, even if they get in each other's faces a little bit while playing it.
Trust that they want to have a good time.
Anyone who lets you down wasn't going to like your game, anyway.
5) Don't be afraid to innovate. Don't feel you have to innovate.
RPGs are a new thing in the world. We haven't really figured out what they are yet, or what they do. You shouldn't feel that your game has to look like any other game that has come before it.
Likewise, RPGs have been around for 30 years now. A lot of thought and energy has gone into their design. Don't be afraid to take and use old bits when they will serve you better than the new.
6) Write for you.
Don't worry about if your game is going to be popular, or familiar enough, or if other gamers will hate it. Designing to try to please some imaginary other person is only going to lead to a mediocre game full of comprimises and broken hearts. Design the game that you have always wanted to play, so then you can play it. I guarantee you other people will love it, too.
If you don't love your game, every last scrap of it, by the time you are done, you have failed.
Good luck, and godspeed.
Lessons for Designers
It's okay GM advice, too.
If you've wanted to know what the heck I do over there, but didn't want to wade through 5+ years of crufty theory development, this is me saying "This is what I have learned about games." It's less than a page.
Since people recently have been talking about massive changes on the Forge (good! good!), I wanted to take the time to look back at some of the things that I have learned here, as they apply directly to game design. These are old hat topics, but I'm phrasing them in new ways, the way I talk about them with myself or with friends who think that "Narrativist" means "Director Stance."
So here are a few guidelines for a game designer and the game player.
1) Every act of resolution must have meaningful stakes.
What does the roll (I'm going to use the term "roll," here, but it applies equally to comparisons, point expenditures, card draws, and other methods) actually mean? What does it mean if you win, what does it mean if you lose? You need to know that before you roll.
And whatever it is, it has to be meaningful. A win has to be a real victory, a lose has to be a real loss. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time.
Doesn't mean that one roll has to be the whole story. What it means is that you need to be able to trust your mechanics to run things for you. Can't trust your mechanics? Make new ones.
2) Understand who can say what.
When a player says "I punch him in the jaw," what does it mean? Can someone else at the table (like a GM) just veto that? At what point does success and failure come into it? If I roll to punch him in the jaw, what have I done up until that point?
3) Know what your game is for.
Have a clear, defined, idea of what the experience of your game is like. What is the absolutely the one most important thing to the game? When someone sits down to play your game, what are they going to get out of it?
You have to know this, and guide your design by it. Compromises will get you an unpleasant mud.
3a) If "realism" isn't what your game is for, why do you care about it?
4) Trust the players
Every single person sitting at the table in an RPG wants to have a good time. Don't worry about "what if there is a bad player who wants to wreck the game?" If there is a bad player who wants to wreck the game, the game will be wrecked no matter what you do about it.
Assume that you are writing for a group of people who like each other, get along, and want to cooperate in having a good time, even if they get in each other's faces a little bit while playing it.
Trust that they want to have a good time.
Anyone who lets you down wasn't going to like your game, anyway.
5) Don't be afraid to innovate. Don't feel you have to innovate.
RPGs are a new thing in the world. We haven't really figured out what they are yet, or what they do. You shouldn't feel that your game has to look like any other game that has come before it.
Likewise, RPGs have been around for 30 years now. A lot of thought and energy has gone into their design. Don't be afraid to take and use old bits when they will serve you better than the new.
6) Write for you.
Don't worry about if your game is going to be popular, or familiar enough, or if other gamers will hate it. Designing to try to please some imaginary other person is only going to lead to a mediocre game full of comprimises and broken hearts. Design the game that you have always wanted to play, so then you can play it. I guarantee you other people will love it, too.
If you don't love your game, every last scrap of it, by the time you are done, you have failed.
Good luck, and godspeed.
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Do you think of a neat setting or story you wish to tell, then come up with a system that captures that feel, or do you think of cool mechanics first, then let them suggest settings or themes?
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In terms of GMing: I come up with the idea first, system second, definitely.
In terms of Game Design: I have bits and pieces. Fragments of the Polaris setting have existed since the mid-90s (when I was cleaning in my room I found an old map of "Crateria," which is what the setting used to be called. Crazy.) Several key system elements, especially the whole player roles thing, came out of theory discussions, with no immediate application. Other aspects, such as the Zeal/Weariness track, came only when I squished the two together. So it's a big mess.
Tactics, on the other hand, was a pure system that was birthed nearly fully formed in one afternoon. The setting is a mild afterthought.
That's my answer, of course. It isn't a "you have to do things this way" like the stuff above. Just the way that my process works.
What about you?
yrs--
--Ben
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Then I got through puberty and went to college. :)
Now it's setting first, all the time. But my take on story is different - I think of a story that'd be neat but I'm too lazy to write. So I make it into a game. Less work for me, and PCs will think of things I hadn't thought of, and my ideas for the story will evolve over the course of the game (fortunately, my plots are usually so twistie that I can ret-con anything major without the PCs noticing). Both Utterdark and Star Wars Done Right have been like this.
Design-wise, I'm lazy. I've started campaigns with no system at all, just to get going, then introduced stuff as it seemed appropriate. Or I've just used off-the-shelf stuff that was kinda-appropriate, then tweaked it as necessary . I don't think I've ever run a game (outside of a LARP) with an entirely home-brew system. In fact, I can tell you that in the last five years I have fully completed exactly one system - and that was the card-based combat resolution for D U N E.
I guess I see the system as a crutch - something to get players thinking the right way about the feel of the game, and to give them something familiar to hang on to for when things go batshit crazy.
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Have you are Vincent's Blog (http://www.lumpley.com/opine.html)? He has a whole series of recent articles, starting here (http://www.lumpley.com/anycomment.php?entry=138) which go into the hows, whys, and wherefores of system. There is an index of all these posts on the frontpage of his blog right now.
If you are bothering to read the poop that I write, you might as well read the good stuff.
yrs--
--Ben
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Yes, but it can still make for a great game.
UtterDark v2, for example ('96-'98), had no system at all. But I dare you to find a player who has bad things to say about that game. Even Treska, who got blown up.
...OK, so maybe they're all too scared to say anything bad about that game. But still. :)
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yrs--
--Ben
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It's all pre-ordained, dude. Free the dice, and your mind will follow.
/trippy
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and sometimes it bites you in the ass when your system lets a party member *accidentally* bind the Great Evil Lord of the game by rolling a string of open-ended d100. :)
...yes, that happened to me, once. I learned my lesson and moved on.
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See #1 above. If y'all aren't prepared for one of the possible results of the roll, why are you rolling?
yrs--
--Ben
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I mean, really? :)
Conversely, in the same game, the Grand Final Battle on the Mountaintop devolved into a mad scramble in the mud for Ye Sacred Dagger as *both* Hero and Villain rolled fumbles and dropped their weapons.
...yeah, it was funny, even at the time, but it was a rather modernist take on the Epic Climax.
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yrs--
--Ben
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I did have a kick-ass shamanistic magic system, though.
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yrs--
--Ben
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I don't know if there's a name for 'what one is going for with a good RPG design', but it's not necessarily plot. My Life with Master assumes plot, but most don't. GURPS assumes that you want to generate all the quantitative factors of a character, Dogs in the Vineyard requires you to build a character from hir history and form a moral stance over multiple plots.
I think it's a bigger question: what is the game about, not as in, it's about blowing up the Death Star and defeating the Empire, but as in, it's about learning to use calm observation and iron will, and decisive action to bring peace within families, friends, and society. Figure that out, and you have a skeleton to hang muscles and organs on.
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Star Wars Done Right had an eponymous theme, a bunch of tools (NPCs with familiar names but different histories and motives from the movies) and some new characters (the PCs) as the protagonists. There really wasn't a hard-and-fast plot written before the game began, but there was a general idea of where the story would probably go, if the PCs didn't manage to significantly influence events.
But I certainly didn't think "Oh, I want to explore the relationship between democracies and tyrannies, and how one can become the other through the misguided actions of good men". SWDR certainly explores these, and draws parallels to current events, but it wasn't the driving force behind me wanting to run the game.
I wanted to run it because George Lucas is an ass who has pooped all over my childhood. :)
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I don't think it has to be conscious. Like you said, you didn't realize that SWDR was about Democracy vs. Tyranny. It just has to be there. You can discover it later on.
yrs--
--Ben
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Cuz you don't think that Luke defeated Vader because he had a higher Lightsaber roll, do you?
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What's even more fascinating, though, is how everyone, with their private versions of how things should have gone, is pretty much on the same thematic page. It amplifies my sense of Lucas' taste being monumentally poor, and not merely different from mine.
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