Mar

23

[Co-Design!] Subject Matter and Game Prep

Design Diary

Flashback -

It all started with my desire to build a structured-freeform miniatures game, something that combined the spatial/visual tactics of miniatures with the fluidity and fiction-first feel of structured freeform. I invited people to join me in co-designing this game, using this blog to progress through each design decision together. We decided that we wanted a game about horror-exploration, maybe with scavenging elements thrown in. Combat wasn’t to be the focus of the game, but we haven’t yet stricken it from the design palette altogether. Last time, we brainstormed ideas for the game’s subject matter.

And now -

Now it’s time to look at our ideas about subject matter, and decide what the game will be about. We’ve got a genre and a design philosophy in place, now we need the story and the setup. To oversimplify, we’re going to determine what would be written on the “back of the box.” One thing I noticed about each idea proposed in the last post was that each idea implied/demanded a number of things about game prep (who owns minis, who designs scenarios, what gets drafted in advance, what gets drafted at the table, what do people bring with them). So, as a result, each “what the game is about” answer is also a “how do players prep for play” answer.

I’ll summarize the ideas below, synthesizing and filling in blanks were necessary. Then a poll will follow, where you get to vote for your favourite idea(s). Then, you’re invited to post a comment and build on the ideas that you voted for, if you see a gap and have a cool idea on how to fill it.

Scouts in a Hostile Alien World

One person plays a team of scouts (scientists, scavengers, military escorts, surveyors, thrill-seeking explorers, etc) and the other plays an alien community (hostile terrain, weird floating-eye scouts, breeder-drones, hive queens, ooze pits, etc). Players create their teams in advance, before getting together to play. When they get together, they appraise their forces and decide upon a mission. Alternately, the alien player designs the mission in advance as part of prep. Missions can be things like: “Since we’ve got this science officer, maybe we want to steal one of your alien eggs. Victory looks like a successful capture with no casualties.” Combat is always possible, but always a terrible idea. Maybe mission creation includes determining why the sides (or at least one side) don’t want to escalate to violence.

The movie Alien serves as a touchstone here. Daniel Solis created the pitch “It’s like Euro Starcraft,” and I think that pitch applies to this idea.

Surreal Monsters of the Id

One person plays a squad of human explorers, trespassing on spooky terrain. The other person plays a team of surreal monsters and phantasms born from the id of the trespassers. Maybe the human explorers have a leader, and the remaining members of the squad each embody different characteristics of that leader. The monsters are all reflections of the hopes, fears, and darkest secrets of the squad.

One player brings the human squad already assembled. The other player crafts the surreal id monsters on the fly, riffing off the squad composition. Maybe the monsters are built of lego or some other mix-and-match material.

The movie Resident Evil serves as a touchstone here. I’d also argue that The Cell and any haunted house movie ever would qualify. Existing minis games we could raid minis from: Dreamblade.

Alien Scavengers and Human Colonizers

There’s an alien race that’s physiologically, technologically, and intellectually superior to humans. But this race has recently experiences some apocalyptic event that’s all but wiped them out. That’s when the humans show up.

The humans start with an assembled force, and the aliens start in disarray. The humans might have a number of objectives (scavenging for abandoned tech, scouting an area, building an outpost, kidnapping a new alien species). Regardless of what else the aliens are trying to do in a given mission, they’re also trying to rebuild, reassert their control, and defend their homeland. Over time, the humans encounter more resistance and the aliens grow stronger. The human squad is dealing with a fixed set of resources, whereas the aliens have open-ended growth opportunities.

In this idea, it seems like the human squad would be assembled before a game session, but the alien force would mostly be assembled during play. Maybe the alien player determines their initial, in-disarray forces.

 

The Unfurling Television Show

Everyone is responsible for bringing a sampling of miniatures stuff to the table: some good guys, some bad guys, some terrain, some non-tangible ideas to be written on card tents. The game is like a television show, and each scenario is like a new episode. One person “directs” each episode, which means setting up the scenario and determining which minis are in play. The director also serves as referee for any disputes on fictional efficacy (ie, “you think your monsters invade, but I think that I hold them at bay with these flashing lights, so who’s right?”)

Between episodes, people can prep more miniatures stuff to add to the mix. It’s like being a producer, and deciding how budget increases get spent. Each episode should seek to reincorporate old elements while also introducing new ones.

Note that this idea is the least specific on subject matter. If this one emerges triumphant, we’ll have a follow-up poll where we vote on what this “television show” idea is about, in terms of colour and situation. It’s possible to recycle the fictional content of one of the other pitches.

 

3… 2… 1… Judgement!
You can vote for up to two of these ideas. What grabs your fancy?

Which idea should we move forward with?

View Results

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Jan

29

The Joy of Hacking

Design Diary / Promotion
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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.

Click Here For a Monsterhearts Preview

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Jan

03

Perfecting It

Design Diary / Promotion

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.

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Jul

22

Things That Have Changed

Design Diary / Promotion

Brian Peters asked me:

“Can you tell me some about what’s sweeter and tastier about this new edition [of Perfect]? Game-wise, I mean.”

Brian, I’d absolutely love to tell you about some of the changes I’ve made from the first edition book and the upcoming one. Right now, I’ll focus on two: I’ve changed how Aspects work, and I’ve added Holds.

In the first version, a large part of character creation was creating Aspects. You’d give them a name, and then spend time fiddling with balancing out levels and numbers and strategizing, all before knowing how the game played out or what your choices really meant. The system for building your Aspects was broken – there were a few winning combinations that you’d be silly not to take. Some of the decisions you were making at this pre-game stage (specifically, choosing Fallouts) would have mechanical significance that as a new player would be extremely hard to predict – Fallouts are dangerous across multiple rounds or even sessions of play, not so much in an immediate, concrete moment. Before play, Aspects were complicated and hard to get a grip on.

During play, Aspects were tedious. Since your only way to get ahead in the game was to constantly rely on your small number of Aspects, you are struggling to work “Scent of My Mother’s Perfume” and “Vicious Like a Caged Animal” into every single scene. So the system was leading you down a stale and contrived path.

That whole system has been cleaned up, in a major way. You have a Resources score. In a given scene, you decide what your Resources are in that scene, and invoke those numbers that way. During character creation, your choices are dead easy: you can have Resources 6, or you can have Resources 5 and take 2 points worth of Contacts (a slightly more volatile option). The named-traits-called-Aspects thing still exists, in a different role. You create 3 Aspects, which are phrases that demonstrate things you rely on: Sharp Wit, Flawless Liar, My Father Taught Me a Code, Unremarkable Face, etc. You can invoke 1 per cycle, for a re-roll (a BIG deal in Perfect). So, now almost all of the mechanical strategizing has been taking out of character creation, and getting started with the game takes about fifteen minutes less. Play is much more about manipulating immediate resources, and much less about rely on fallback strengths.

The other new thing is Holds. I saved it for last because it’s best. In the old version of Perfect, the inspectors were always after you, once you’d committed a crime. There were lots of chases and interrogations and invasive home searches, even when it didn’t fit a character’s narrative, because that’s how the game was structured.

There was no, “Jacob, you don’t know me. My name is Inspector Raleigh. I’ve been watching you for quite some time. I’m glad you managed to make it.”

There was no Inspector looming in the shadows, collecting evidence and building a repertoire of perfect emotional weapons, biding his time. And mechanically, there wasn’t any way for the antagonist to build up resources without just intentionally losing a bunch of times, which really weakened the authority of the inspectors! Now, when you’re the antagonist, you have two choices: do you attempt to capture the criminal, or do you establish a Hold?

Holds are things that will come back to haunt the protagonist character later. They come in two flavours: Minor Holds (evidence, witness testimonies, etc – things that help the antagonist win a test), and Major Holds (secret fears, emotional weaponry, hopes and dreams, the names of loved ones – things that both help the antagonist win a test, and double the stakes). Holds change the pacing of the game. They lend it “quiet, too quiet” moments, and then they bring the hammer down and smash everything to pieces.

Source material where Holds are ruthlessly accumulated and then dropped all at once: A Clockwork Orange. Source material where the antagonist is focused on constantly weedling down a character: Quills. Holds in A Clockwork Orange might be stuff like: He loved the music of Beethoven; “Singing in the Rain”.

So, those are two changes I’m really excited about with the new system. Mechanical resources that don’t require a lot of forehead-scratching during character creation, and that lend themselves to dynamic and fluid stories; and, a way for the antagonist to bide their time, to get their dirty little strings deeper into your head before they start tugging.

Hopefully that stuff excites you too!

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Jul

04

Simple, Single-Purpose Elegance

Design Diary / Telling Stories Together

I hate Facebook.

There’s lots of reasons to hate it, but I hate it for the reason that it is obtuse and sprawling. The worst part is that I used to love it. And back then, when we were starry-eyed for one another, I swear that it was a different creature altogether. I swear that it changed, more than I did.

This is going to get around to talking about story games in a minute, but give me time to bitch about Facebook first, okay? See, Facebook is now a mess of Walls, status updates, pages, groups, events, apps, social network games, ads, albums, chat windows and boxes. I have a hard time looking at a Facebook page and establishing a clear vision of what it’s supposed to do.

Facebook used to have a vision, right? College students and alumni could sign up with a college email, and then they’d be able to find their friends, write on walls, and view people’s pictures. It was a time magnet for people wanting to creep the hundreds of photos that their ex Courtney has up. Excellent. A simple and elegant social site. Now, it has traded in that vision for extra tools. It’s become a big, sprawling box of tools, something unwieldy.

Perhaps I’m weird, but I want everything in the world to have a clear and immediate purpose, to have a clear and immediate big picture. I don’t care if it’s important or not, I just want it to know what it is.

And now, I want to take a moment and share with you some of my favourite stuff on the internet, and unpack why it’s my favourite.

Twitter
Twitter is the perfect example of what I wish Facebook was comfortable being: a site with a clear role. A simple, single-purpose elegance. Twitter is a place where you can talk to yourself about what you’re doing, name-drop the people you’re hanging out with, and watch other people do the same. It’s like a perpetual, narcissistic chatroom. You can reply and retweet, follow people and whatever. Or not. You can just spit out little 140-character tidbits about what you are doing on your day off.

Now, Twitter is constantly adding new features, just like Facebook. So, how are they different? First of all, Twitter’s features are unobtuse and unobtrusive. Some (hashtags, @replies, new search options) are an increase in functionality without an increase in visible stuff. Others (lists, retweet button) are quiet & available, obvious in their purpose. In all cases, Twitter’s features increase functionality without detracting from core elegance, and reinforce what Twitter is supposed to be about: dropping little updates, and watching your friends do the same.

750Words
I’m absolutely in love with this site right now. It’s a beautiful middle-ground between Livejournal and Nanowrimo and Twitter. Here’s how it works: you log onto a private journal. Along the top of the page, there’s a very-sleek simple calendar showing you which days this month you’ve written and which you’ve missed. On the bottom of the page, there’s a word counter. Write until you have 750 words or more.

It’s inspired by an exercise called morning pages, wherein a writer starts their day by writing three pages. Usually journals and untidy thoughts. So, a really simple purpose. What does 750 Words bring to the table? Well, first of all, the main journaling page is simple and tidy. There are no distractions in your virtual workspace. The calendar along the top (just a series of thirty checkboxes, with completed days filled in) is a powerful, powerful motivator – seeing a skipped box isn’t fun, and there’s a drive to fill today’s. The real-time word count along the bottom is another powerful motivator. So, the main workspace is motivating and uncluttered, a perfect environment in which to write. It’s also accessible from anywhere, a bonus over real-world journals that you need to lug around with you if you want them handy.

But here’s the cool bit! Once you’ve hit your goal, click the little word count link. It takes you to an analysis page, which breaks down your words-per-minute, total time, number of distractions and total words written. It graphs that in comparison to your record best. And then it analyzes your post and tells you about your mood, your writing topics, and your common words. It’s not always right, but it’s a fun feature. FINALLY! You can earn badges for writing a certain number of days in a row (badges at 1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 100).

So, there are all these features. But, here’s the cool thing: they don’t cloud the site’s functionality. They support the core vision (daily writing and self analysis). The badges motivate, the analysis tools invite you to take a look at what you’re writing. Everything about the site supports its core vision, and every feature is unobtrusive and purposeful.

Canabalt
Perhaps the best video game I’ve ever played. Canabalt follows a man in a tuxedo, only a couple pixels tall, as he makes a “daring escape” from a crumbling city. He runs along rooftops automatically, and you click your one button to make him jump. Jump from rooftop to rooftop!

The game is super, super slick. Great music, great graphics, great pacing. And it’s simple: your only control is jump. He’ll run progressively faster and faster, and the only way to slow him down is to crash into some obstacles (there are crates and garbage cans scattered across these roofs). Some buildings are covered in cracks, and start collapsing the moment you land on them. Sometimes, you need to jump through a “window” and run through a building. Finally, there are two types of bombs: little ones, that land on top of a building and that you shouldn’t hit; big ones, that obliterate a building upon contact, that you need to jump on top of to make it through the level. There’s a “tweet your score” button, and you can tweet how many meters you ran before falling. That’s it. On the ipod version, you have two different soundtrack options.

So,
This all relates to story games and game design. You can already see how, right?

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Jun

27

What are story games? And why?

Telling Stories Together

Let this post act as a primer, for anyone who’s interested in story games. Too few people know what story games are. There is a huge wealth of amazing, creative, social people in the world. People I’d love to play games and tell stories with.

This post is an attempt to paint a picture for those people. If you’re one of them, welcome. Here’s this thing I do:

Stories are vital. They’re the reasons our hearts beat. They’re how we make sense of emotions, and fortunes, and the days of our lives. When we don’t take time to honor and cherish stories, we fall back upon only the necessary ones. The ones that help us cope, that reinforce our pre-made choices. We fall back upon the belabored and uncontested stories.

When we step outside of ourselves, and seek stories out on purpose, we hit a great diversity. There are things we hate, and love, and things that change us. We change some things in return. Exploring a story can fill us with awe. It can also be tiring.

Games are vital. They are playful, and engaging. They give us a chance to succeed, but also the freedom not to fret over our success. If you don’t win at a game, your life is still OK afterwards. When something takes the form of a game, it becomes instantly lighter and more playful.

So, marrying these two things, that’s a pretty obvious first step, right?

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May

28

[Design Diary] Cheap: Design The Game, Not Its Reviews

Design Diary

This is the second post in a series I’m calling Design Diary, where I revisit past game design efforts and unpack some of the lessons that I’ve learned from them. The game in question this time around is cheap, which requires participants to dive headlong into a nightmarish world where they are trapped in someone else’s story, exploited by some unseen narrator. Only by noticing and exploiting the patterns and symbols of the narrator’s story can they ever earn a chance to take down their dark master.

It was a game about exploitation, victimization, manipulation, strangeness, absurdity, and revenge. And it had potential. It was messy and intense, but it had potential. But I crashed that potential into the ground, by trying to design cheap‘s reviews rather than cheap itself. Allow me to unpack that.

Design The Game, Not Its Reviews

I decided, pretty early on, that cheap was going to be a cutting edge game, an intense game, an avant garde game.  I dreamed of its potential, and how it might be received. While I didn’t realize it at the time so much, I made bad design decisions in an attempt to manufacture those dreamed-of reviews. I didn’t make the design decisions that best expressed the game, or my goals for the game, or that achieved any certain effect on play. I made the design decisions that I thought would get excited, shocked, anxious reactions.

I dreamed of various bizarre distribution schemes for the game. One being that only those who had beaten the game and killed their narrator were allowed to learn the rules of the game. And, if they wanted to be “certified” to re-teach the game to others, they could pay a licensing fee to do so. Like, really bizarre ideas. 100% gimmick. Oh, context: you’re never told the rules of the game. You figure them out through playing.

To design a game from intended reaction upward… is to be self-indulgent, conceited, to disservice your game. Design the game, not its reviews.

That’s it, the one lesson learned from this one. The game has the potential to be awesome. All I have to do is stop trying to make it awesome, and start trying to actually make it.

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Oct

05

Reporting Back: Game Design In 48 Minutes

Design Diary

This Saturday, I ran a game design panel with Brad Murray, one of the authors of Diaspora. We were surprised and delighted to fill every chair in the room. Granted, there were 15 chairs in the room. I’d like to share my outline and discuss how the conversation unfolded, because I think it worked really well. The text in italics is the stuff on the outline we handed out, and the plain-face text is my post-panel thoughts.

1.) Designs Should Have A Guiding Vision (2 minutes)

The plan: In general, discuss the idea of designing a game to deliver a certain set of goals. What does your game do, in terms of… stories, characters, setting, situation, mechanics, play experience?

After opening with some introductions, we dived into the idea that a game should have a guiding vision, that it should seek to deliver something specific. Although this might be a Forge-centric idea, we didn’t discuss it in a Forge-centric way – Vampire: the Requiem has a guiding vision, and that is a major boon to the game. Introducing this idea not as revolutionary, but as something intrinsic to all design work, was helpful in unifying our audience.

2.) Take An Audience Game Pitch, Answer “The Big 3″ (7 minutes)

Audience Pitch: What is your game about? Now, what is it really about?
What is your game about? What do the characters do? What do the players do?

We asked the audience members to share a game idea that someone was working on, that we could workshop throughout the discussion. One guy put forward an idea that he said “wasn’t really a roleplaying game, but more of a baseball simulation exercise”. We took that and ran with it. The guy’s game was a two-player game: pitcher vs batting line-up.

We asked him what his game was about (baseball simulation), then dove into what interested him about baseball simulation to get at what the game was really about (the tension and the psychological mind games at work between the batter and pitcher). We presented the “big three” (what is your game about? what do the characters do? what do the players do?), and learned that both character & player are locked in the mind game component. We probed to find out what else the players do, and learned that they managed resources (batting line-ups, fan support, mechanical resources).

3.) Mechanics Should Support What The Game Is About (10 minutes)


Discuss the notion that mechanics support what the game is about, and structure an intended experience. Talk about things that the designer could do to facilitate their goals. Be sure to question the necessity of given mechanics: Do you need a GM? How about stats? Do you need dice? If so, why? Audience Pitch: What system/mechanics will support this design?

Here, we had about a 15-minute round-table, exploring mechanics that would supporting the evolving game. The discussion came around to the use of decks of playing cards, with suits representing different tactics and the number representing effectiveness. We introduced the idea that the players would take the deck of cards and from it build a deck of ~30 cards (so that if I want to throw lots of curveballs, I take all the clubs and widdle down on the other suits) – this would be part of the resource management aspect.

We had a boon in this game in that we were STARTING OUT with a GMless design, built for only two players. We were miles ahead of the curve to begin with. However, that let us focus on even more interesting questions: do you need a random element in your game to simulate how random the situation in the fiction is? In the end, we ditched the necessity for dice in determining whether batting was successful, though we integrated a secret card-bidding element.

At the tail end of this conversation, I tossed out a question: would there be a “you can’t focus because your wife is having an affair” card? The audience cheered that idea on, and the idea that hearts would correspond to out-of-game dramas was introduced.

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Aug

25

Plugging in Scenes and System

Telling Stories Together

I swore that I would never do this. That I would never make a story games theory post.

But this feels different, and somehow allowable. I’m going to explore some theory, tie it directly into play techniques, and offer some diagnoses of play. This post aims to explore the idea of sockets, why we should pay attention to them during scene framing, and how game systems should support us in engaging sockets and framing scenes.

I’ve created a new category to place this post in: Practical Theory. If the conversation goes well, there might be additional Practical Theory posts in the future. If the conversation crashes and burns, I’ll destroy the category. Alright, enough preamble.

Term: Sockets

We engage stories, and especially story games, in different ways. Some of us latch onto the characters involved in the fiction, and their decisions and viewpoints are paramount. For others, the story and the plot are most important. For others, the descriptions of setting and surrounding are most important. Some of us care most about the other people at the table, and the social element of play. These different modalities of engagement are known as sockets: they’re how we “plug into” the game and our enjoyment of it. To quote directly from Mo (linked in the last sentence), sockets are where people “give and take their focus and energy to and from“.

Term: Aggressive Scene Framing

To quote, scene framing is “the technique of skimming through time in the game to a particular time and place of interest. ” Scene framing is when you cut from the previous scene and move into a new scene, establishing details of setting and situation that unfold and develop through play. Aggressive scene framing is when your use of scene framing is intentional, purposeful and focused – framing to moments of high engagement and involvement (in other worlds, moments that demand immediate and meaningful participation). Note that I intentionally avoided saying “frame to the moment of conflict”, and I’ll talk about why in a minute.

Drive Toward Meaningful Engagement (Sockets & Scene Framing)

It’s a common misconception that the way you do aggressive scene framing well is to frame to the moment of pregnant conflict, that you open with an opposed situation that must be diffused. I’m going to take a step back from this idea and offer a suggestion: scene framing should work to engage our sockets in a meaningful way, skipping that which doesn’t satisfy our engagement and energy. In other words, if we all have Conflict/Plot/Choice sockets, then and only then is it appropriate to frame to moments of intense conflict. If we all have Setting/Aesthetic sockets, then we should be framing with interesting and evocative images, and use scene framing to move us to those images.

Example A: The Spelunkers. Imagine a group of D&D players whose primary sockets are Tactical, System and Choice. Good scene framing will meaningfully engage these sockets above others. The GM uses aggressive scene framing by saying, “Alright, your trip back out of the Cavern of Doom is uneventful. When you return to the hamlet you last stayed at, you see several buildings in flames. Two pairs of guards patrol the perimeter of the hamlet, sticking to lit paths. I’ve got a map of the village here. Note that it’ll take a skill roll of 20 to put out a torch from afar, and a skill roll of 15 to sneak up on the guards.” This immediately engages their tactical socket (by asking them to choose the best and most effecient entry point), and their Choice socket (by framing the moment of planning). It would be bad scene framing to fast forward past this point, because it is here that tactics and choice have the highest level of engagement.

Example B: The Crazy Folk. Imagine a group of Don’t Rest Your Head players whose primary sockets are Aesthetic (“not necessarily caring if a narrative is created or if character development makes sense, as long as play creates something beautiful / interesting”) and Character. The GM uses aggressive scene framing by saying, “So, you’ve got the soldiers cornered. Great! With some prodding, they’ll agree to lead you to the Wax King. You are led through rank, disgusting sewer line. Along the walls of the sewer, you start to notice… wax. Hot wax seems to be bubbling out of every possible crack in the wall. One of the soldiers turns to you and asks if you’ve ever met an immortal before.” Note that there is no conflict inherent in this scene, no decision that needs to be made. There is a description/scene that the GM thinks is evocative and interesting, and there is a conversation for the characters to join into. The players are given a chance to narrate their characters’ thoughts and interactions. The GM skipped over negotiations/conflict to get to meaningful engagement – in this case, aesthetic and character.

Term: System

One compelling summary of system: System (including but not limited to ‘the rules’) is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play (Lumpley Principle). I’m not going to extrapolate on this idea much: system is the wedding of hard rules (like when you roll dice) and soft procedures (like who has the authority to introduce setting descriptions).

At its best, system makes your participation more meaningful. These next two sections will explore that.

The Right Game Will Support Your Engagement (Sockets & Game System)

One of the reasons that RIFTS is not a good game for me is because the system doesn’t support shifting character priorities, and it doesn’t mechanically reward beautiful or interesting description. I’d be “plugging in” to stuff that is irrelevant to the mechanics/system of the game. When looking to a game, see where and how your sockets are supported and integrated in. If you have a choice socket, ask “does the game make choices meaningful”?

Why does it matter if your sockets are supported by the system? Because sockets are where you put your energy in and expect to get your energy out of. If the system doesn’t support your sockets (and your sockets don’t support the system), then you’re dividing your energy and forced to choose between two reward sets (mechanical/system, and personal).

Example C: The Spelunkers. Having decided to ambush the patrolling guards and slip into the shadows afterwards, this group of D&D players looks to the system. Does their game support and reward making tactically advantageous decisions that are based on system knowledge? If so, their sockets are integrated and supported well by their chosen system. If not, they should probably switch games. In this case, I’d say “yes”.

Example D: The Minions. A group sits down to play My Life With Master. If the players have a strong aesthetic or setting socket, they will be richly supported by the system, which provides lots of meaningful interactions across those sockets. If they have a strong choice or tactical socket, they will be unsupported by the system. Their GM and group might work to provide meaningful engagement of their socket (ie, by engineering the fiction and situation to a place where choice is relevant), but these efforts will be unsupported by system.

The Right Game Will Engage Your Best Material (Scene Framing & System)

This steps away from sockets, and offers something similar to “The Right Game Will Support Your Engagement”.

When you play, you make decisions, create new situations and details and advance the story. This content/material will take creative energy to create, and some of it will be quite amazing. Seeing that material engaged, reincorporated or integrated into an ongoing story/game/plot arc/situation equates to seeing a return on investment.

You can manage that engagement, reincorporation and integration on your own, but it takes a lot of effort. A system is right for you to the degree that it re-integrates your best material easily and meaningfully.

The Disconnects

When there’s a disconnect between sockets & scene framing, you either skip the meaningful engagement or need to wade through unmeaningful content in order to reach it. In the first case, you’ll see decreased trust and people challenging where a scene starts (“no, my character wouldn’t have done that!”). Frustration will likely build over time, as people are being denied key chances to invest and see return on their creative energy. In the second case, you’ll see boredom and mixed participation levels. People may start engaging scenes in inauthentic ways (rushing to conflict, making uncharacteristic decisions, disrespecting genre) in an attempt to move more quickly to what excites them.

When there’s a disconnect between sockets & system, players will either pursue their sockets and drift play away from engagement with the mechanics, or they will engage the mechanics with disinterest, seeing little return for their energy. In the first case, you’ll have expectation clash and a deprioritization of system (which might have been the unifying factor of play interests). In the second case, you’ll see unenthusiastic participation.

When there’s a disconnect between scene framing & system, you’ll see great material that fails to become integral to your game, or at the very least, a lack of reincorporation of great material.
This is already 300 words over my self-imposed post limit, so now I’m signing off.

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