Musings on Game Design

I'm feeling in a Game Design-ey mood tonight, so I figured I might as well write a few lines on what makes a good game. Admittedly, I've written only a few games, the most recent of which would be Crack Kung Fu Fighting Bunnies, Go!, and Yakuza Armageddon. I'd like to think that I did a passable effort of them, considering that each one was made in the span of 24 real time hours. I'm sure if I had more time, I could have polished them up to something even greater.

Anyway, enough of plugging my games, I'm joining Alex in putting together a solid effort of a game. Can't discuss too much about the details yes as we're still pretty much in the nebulous planning phase, but having talked about it, we've come up with a list of things to take note of in making a good rpg.

Important considerations for Game Design:

Evocative setting – An evocative setting promotes a sense of wonder in the people reading about it, or playing in the setting. A sufficiently deep (though not necessarily complex) setting encourages players to explore and find out more about it.

Easy and flexible rules – Rules must be complete enough to give GMs a basis for their rulings, yet not too complicated as to drive away those who don't consider looking up a dozen tables for calculating hit locations, shock, bleeding and infection from a single hit to be fun.

Genre emulation – The rules should tie in to the setting mechanics in some way that fulfills the “feel” of the game. This is a little vague, but it's something that is crucial to giving a game it's personality. I suppose the best example of this is the Sanity system of Call of Cthulhu. Investigators can and will lose their sanity no matter what they do, it's just a matter of when, and how much. Contrary to what it might seem like, this actually promotes better play as players watch their characters change with the loss of sanity.

Open for expansion – Primarily from a business standpoint, it would be a good idea to make a game open to further expansion, either from Rules or Setting. While this is not necessary for all games (my two 24 Hour RPGs are self-contained, for example) truly large settings may encourage further development as the designers pay attention to geographic regions, specific character groups, or even the technology or magic of the setting.

Sense of Purpose – RPGs require a sense of direction for the players. While this is partially the job of the GM, the game also holds half of the equation. If the game is unable to give a good reason to strike out and get stuff done, then the game fails to encourage people to play it. A game about being office furniture in a Marketing Firm could be written extremely well, but without any sort of direction, players would just shrug and decide to play something else.

Things are still percolating in my head right now for ideas in the game we're making, and once we've got something on paper, I might post a thing or two here.

Oh, by the way, there's this really good PDF about the patterns fo RPG game design that I'm currently reading. It's a monster of a book... over 200+ pages or so, but it's fascinating. If you want to check it out, you can grab it over at Legendary Quest's downloads section. Just scroll to the bottom and download the only pdf under "Rpg Design"

Well, that's it for now, I'm going back to reading this thing and see if I can learn a thing or two.