The Blog
In days past, I didn’t really “get” the appeal of hacking existing games. (A tentative definition of hacking, for anyone who doesn’t already know the term: taking an existing game system and modifying it until it’s a new game.) I thought that it was lazy design that produced incoherent results.
While I still believe that hacking has some big wide pitfalls to avoid, I have seen the light. Hacking is a liberating and accessible design process. It allows people to create based upon their strengths instead of their needs. It lets designers dialogue with one another, and stand on one another’s shoulders. It creates diy communities instead of diy lighthouses. I’m going to unpack each of those statements, and then relate it back to Monsterhearts, my hack of Apocalypse World that tells teen monster drama stories. The post is going to end with a preview of Monsterhearts, if you want to skip the big unpacking.
Hacking Has Some Big Wide Pitfalls to Avoid
Games are designed to accomplish certain things – to create a specific type of story, to have a specific impact on players, to support specific tactics or approaches. And the tricky thing is that not all of those goals are going to be listed on the outside of the tin. When you hack a game, you risk removing the critical element that makes the game fun and magical. The best practice here is that if you’re going to hack, you must do so in a critical and self-examined way. When designing systems from scratch, you need to spend lots of energy making the system do what you want it to do. When designing systems by hacking, you need to spend lots of energy learning why a system does things the way it does them.
I think that it’s only in the past 10 years that people have really wrapped their head around how to make good hacks. It isn’t about creating new weapon lists and character classes, it is about learning how and why a game works, and then getting up to your elbows in that structure so you change it and make it into something new. Simply replicating a system for a new setting or media property is going to lead to either a drab game or an incoherent game.
Now, with the words of warning out of the way, here’s what I’ve learned about the joys of hacking!
Hacking is a Liberating and Accessible Design Process
Glancing up at my menu bar, you can see that I’ve designed a number of games. When you start a game from scratch, you need to make a thousand interrelated decisions. Those decisions are contingent upon one another, meaning that it can be hard to isolate what works and what doesn’t work throughout the design process. If part of the game falls flat in playtesting, you need to ask yourself so many questions: are my design goals valid and appropriate? Do the mechanics I’ve designed here actually uphold my design goals? Is this specific mechanic too complicated or too simple? Do I need to fix the problem at the specific and immediate level, or by overhauling the whole system? Should this game actually be diceless? Because that’s how designing a new game system works, you need to ask yourself all these questions simultaneously.
When you hack a game, you don’t need to ask yourself all of those questions. You’re starting with a complete set of answers, and you’re only changing the ones that matter to you and to your game concept. You’re liberated from having to weigh important decisions that you don’t particularly care about.
Monsterhearts is a hack of Apocalypse World. Anything I didn’t really care about answering for myself, Vincent Baker had already provided me an answer for. I really cared about how relationships were represented and changed via the mechanics, so I spent a lot of time developing those answers for myself. I didn’t really care about how success/failure worked – just that I wanted characters to sometimes get their way and sometimes land themselves in a sticky mess – so I leaned upon Apocalypse World’s existing answers, here. “Roll 2d6 + a stat, with 6- being a failure, 7-9 being a mixed result or hard bargain, and 10+ being a clean success” is simple and fun, and crafting my own mechanics from scratch here would have been arduous and uninteresting to me. Hacking Apocalypse World liberated me from having to craft my own answers when I didn’t have strong feelings one way or another. Though, pleasantly enough, as I continued to work on the design, I found myself continually getting invested in more of the questions. But that process was never forced at gunpoint, the same way it is when you design from scratch.
It Allows People To Create Based on Their Strengths, Not Their Needs
This point is pretty similar to the first one. A game needs a lot of things in order to work and to achieve all of your design goals. As a designer, you have a set of design strengths. Your strengths and your needs aren’t always going to overlap, even if you’re designing a project that’s “just right for you.” There’s a couple different ways to respond to that a-synchronicity. First, you can just work really hard and design through your weaknesses. Sometimes you overcome them and design something brilliant, sometimes your design is generally brilliant but held back in ways. Second, you can outsource the parts of the design process that you don’t excel at. Many of us already do this with editing, layout, and art. You can partner your creative wellspring mind with a big-picture analytical mind, or vice versa, in order to lift one another up. And finally, you can hack an existing game, one that is already successful and strong in the design areas that your strengths aren’t situated.
It Lets Designers Dialogue with One Another, and Stand On One Another’s Shoulders
A hack is more than just a method for producing a game. It’s also a method for interacting with a game you really like (or, in some cases, a game you really want to like but identify problems with). It’s a dialogue between designers. Whether it’s your goal or not, you’re creating a community of exploration, each of you proving new applications to a core set of ideas. They show you a cool idea, you respond with your own cool idea that builds on it. Yes, And.
What I like about Apocalypse World is the sense of desperation and the messy and transitory relationship webs. I like that the only constant is a lack of constancy. When I look at those things, my mind leaps to a different place than post-apocalyptica, though. It leaps to the volatile emotional journey that is adolescence. Monsterhearts is a big “Yes, and” statement to Apocalypse World. It’s a way for me to do more than just buy Vincent’s art, but to instead engage it and reply to it.
It Creates DIY Communities Instead of DIY Lighthouses
Let me tell you about a really motivating force that I had behind me while I was publishing Monsterhearts: I was not alone. This design path that I was walking, it wasn’t lonely. I was walking a path that Vincent had carved, and there were other pilgrims sharing the road with me. I might be doing things that didn’t apply to those other pilgrims – like designing the Strings mechanic or Darkest Selves – but I still felt the symbolic support of a community.
Hacking creates diy communities, whereas independent from-scratch design often creates diy lighthouses.
So, Monsterhearts
It started as a joke (most of my games do). I was playing around with the idea of using Apocalypse World to run Twilight, and then I sort of realized that I’d struck gold. Melodramatic teenage monster drama makes for fantastic storytelling, because it has a strong genre formula to lean upon as well as rewarding us for playing volatile characters involved in intense-and-immediate situations.
This is the first hack that I’ve seen through to publication, and it was a really rewarding design experience. Being able to stand upon the shoulders of a giant helped me reach the mountaintop in one piece. Having a hyper-focused design community around me gave me support and critical eyes whenever I needed it.
The game’s currently available for preorder on IndieGoGo. To give people a taste of the game, and to thank those who have backed the game so far, I’m releasing a little excerpt from the game: the long play example that will be located in the back of the book. As the final text is still with the editor, this is a draft version that might be changed or revised before printing.
Perfect, Unrevised is for sale. This is one of the most exciting announcements of my life. Folks can pick up the PDF for $10, and preorder the book for $22 + s&h.
This moment has been a long time coming. I’d like to share with you how I got here, and link you to some reviews and AP along the way.
In late 2005, I started reading The Forge. I participated in one or two little design contests, before stumbling upon my big RPG idea in early 2006. Imagine a game where your character sheet only told you about the things you can’t do? Imagine if play was about finding out how to work around that?
That idea in and of itself didn’t prove to be very exciting, but it did lead to Perfect. Impatient and seventeen, I rushed to design and release the game as soon as was humanly possible. I was at Gencon with the game in hand that very same year – about 6 months after my initial idea.
That’s, uh, a stupid way to design a game. In May of this year, I blogged about some of the lessons I learned in that experience.
I published the game, and was initially really excited about it. I heard some really lovely compliments from Paul Czege, who was my game design idol. Ron Edwards played it, and then played it some more. He encountered some glaring hiccups, but generally liked it. Malcolm Craig played it too. He encountered some glaring hiccups, but generally liked it.
Over time, the glaring hiccups came to occupy more and more of my mental real estate, and reports of people having “generally liked it” were less exciting. Some time in 2007, I pulled the game off the market. I was determined to refine it and re-release it once it had been, well, perfected.
I assume this process will take about three months. It takes over three years. The game receives about 100 playtests over this period, some led by me and some blind. I posted about one session here.
I almost abandoned the game several times, because the work of editing and refining turned out to be hard. Gasp! What a surprise!
It’s then that fans and supporters came out of the woodwork, to help push me to keep going. Gary Breinholt is one of those people. He playtested every iteration of the game I put out, for years, and always came back with critique and encouragement. I shared some of that process here, in 2008.
Finally, in the early Summer of 2010, I had something that felt complete, that told the kinds of stories I wanted it to, that was easy and compelling. Playtests started to soar. Feeling immensely confident – cocky even, I put the game up as a Kickstarter project, asking for $7,000 in funds to publish the game. I managed to raise an exciting $2,660… and am ultimately glad that I failed to raise more. The game design was done, but the physical product was still far from complete.
I worked with editor Josh Roby, who was fantastic. And then I spent months slaving away in inDesign. I learned a lot about graphic design in the process, predominantly that it is a much slower craft than you would think it is.
Come to think of it, I’ve learned something about all crafts: they take much longer than you’d think. Artistry isn’t something you can just vomit onto a page. It takes years of training, honing, doing, refining, re-examining, doubting, and trusting.
It’s been exciting to actually go through that process, and give every step its due attention. At the height of my wit, I named this second edition Perfect, Unrevised – a nod at the dystopian, history-erasing setting it exists within. But truth be told, this is the project that’s taught me the value of revising – the value of hard work.
I talk about some of the important mechanical changes here. The folks at the tremendously good Ninja Vs Pirates podcast explore the mechanics and the structure of the game, with me, here.
And now, finally, it’s ready. You can buy it if you want to. Wilper did, and he reviewed it the very next day. The review is really good and comprehensive, albeit short.
So, maybe I’m a big hippie. Let’s see: I live in a log cabin in the mountains, in the forest. Half of the contents of my fridge were retrieved by a recent dumpster dive. I’m unemployed, and spend all my time doing art. My girlfriend and I practice free love. Being a minimalist consumer matters deeply to me. I am working every day to rewild my heart and soul. Yep, big hippie.
So, these are the words of a big hippie. Take them with a grain of salt (or a dash of nutritional yeast, if you’re also a big hippie).
I started selling Ribbon Drive on a sliding-scale/pay-what-you-want model a few months ago. It’s led to more happiness. Also, more money.
When I had the game set at a fixed retail price ($30 originally, $24 after sales had declined), people would often complain that it was priced too steeply. It’s a gorgeous product, but it’s also a really minimal design and a short book. People were forced to interact with it as a $30 (or $24) product, and some people felt bummed out about that. In turn, I felt bummed out about that.
Buying the game was a yes/no switch. You either forked over the specified amount, or you didn’t. And so, if you felt like the game was innovative and you liked it, but felt uncomfortable paying $30 for it, you had two losing situations to choose between: buy it and feel bummed out; don’t buy it and still feel bummed out.
Now, here’s how it works: I tell you how much it costs. I need at least that much money, because I’m running a business and that’s serious stuff. Beyond that, though, you pay what you want to pay. And so, if you feel like the game is innovative and you like it, and you feel comfortable paying like $22 for it, then you do that. I’m delighted to sell you something at a comfortable price. You’re delighted to get it at a comfortable price. Everyone feels good.
Now, here’s the other cool thing that’s going on here: since making this switch, I’ve sold more copies and made more money. Lots of people, given the choice, decided that the game was worth $30 to them.
I’ve sold a single copy at $18, a handful of copies at $20, lots between $22 and $28, and then a handful of copies at $30.
When I set a fixed price at $30, people were uncomfortable with that exchange. It was a troubling decision that I was asking them to make. When I freely explain my costs, and invite them into a dialogue about what they want to pay, suddenly lots of people are happy to pay that same $30.
I think that:
1.) People are generous and beautiful when you give them a chance to be and trust that they will be.
2.) People are happiest when they’re given the power to define their own experiences, even in simple and small ways. For most people, this applies to consumer experiences, too. Choice adds value to the experience, which might account for some of the reason that people are happy to pay more when given the option to.
Now, my friend Ben Lehman is doing something similar. He’s selling eBooks of two of his games (Polaris and Bliss Stage) at whatever price you want to pay. Excluding a few vocal detractors on the Story Games forums, people have been really excited about this. He’s sold over $400 worth of eBooks in a scant 5 days. These aren’t new products, either – they’ve been steadily available for a long time, now.
He’s received donations that well exceeded his previous fixed price. He’s received a huge amount of traffic and generosity. If you haven’t bought those games yet, now’s a great time to do so. Ben’s at the top of the game design craft. Polaris is one of the most beautiful games ever, one that I still return to regularly, 4.5 years after buying it.
But, I digress. I want to bring this back to the lesson I’m taking from this experiment:
People crave simple dialogue, and the ability to shape their own experiences in little ways. Bringing this dialogue to a retail experience not only makes everybody happy, it also makes you more money. People are generous and beautiful when you give them the opportunity to prove it.
Thus spoke a hippie, from his writing studio way up in the mountains.
[Soul-searching post edited and replaced with decision-making post.]
Alright, on this, the 15th of June, I’ve verified my desire to keep blogging. Thanks for the comments, Willem & Joe & d7.
I’ve also restored all of my previous posts. Though, I scrapped their previous categories and tags, and rebuilt those components from scratch. Because if I’m on board, I’m manic and obsessive.
I’m hoping to get back to what I’m good at: talking about communication and experience and what games mean to us.
Stay tuned, y’all. I’ll be writing more.
