Use of game design notes

[ks13]

By and large I enjoy reading game designer notes. It gives a very nice perspective in terms what the designer was thing, and what they considered to be important when writing a specific bit of their game. In game books these types of notes are best left for side bars or the appendix. If game design notes continuously show up in the bulk of the text, they can be very distracting.

But I'm wondering if for the process of generating to-be-review material, that is game text that is not in its complete form but is made available for review and critique, it might not be useful to have the design notes more front and center (or at least close to the rules that they are explaining). Sort of like software code annotations, it helps to keep things clear and explain what is going on. I see that this could be useful to both the designer and the reviewer. The designer can go back and see the logic behind a particular rule. The reviewer can have a better understanding of what the designer is trying to achieve, and perhaps be able to offer more relevant feed back.

Does anyone else think this could be useful for games that are open for review, provided that the design notes are clearly distinguishable from the "official" game text? Or is it better to approach the material from the viewpoint of the end user, and comment based on the "as is" presentation?

-Al

[Jasper]

I once designed a game (Graal), originally for a professor of mine, and included copious notes explaining design decisions as well as some of the more basic aspects of role-playing, since he of course had never seen one before.  In a sense that game got reviewed, though not by experienced role-players, when that professor graded it.  In the end he liked it, for various reasons which might not be shared by dedicated RPGers, and I think the notes helped a lot in getting my ideas across to him.  I included them only as side-bars, since putting them whithin the text would indeed have been distracting: the text was about what you did, as a player, and designed to be referenced; you wouldn't want to wade through designer's notes everytime you were looking up a rule.

So your audience definitely matters in terms of what kind of design notes  you present, but unless you're ashamed of your own design process, or are inherently secretive, I can't see that you don't benefit by including them.  If your target audience is people who have never played an RPG before, you certainly need to explain everything more clearly, but there's no reason to think they're stupid and won't be willing or able to appreciate your decisions, even if they have nothing to compare them to (hence your need to explain them even better).

But despite the fact that most RPGs have "what is role-playing?" sections, most of our audience is well experienced, and particularly for indie-RPGs:  our audience (speaking as an indie RPG publisher here) probably includes many of the most experienced and most sophisticated role-players our there.  (Not to say that people who haven't much liked the current crop of indie RPGs aren't sophisticated; but those with broad tastes almost by definition are.)  Therefore, I don't think there's much reason to hold back on design notes at all: with just about anything you write, you can be sure that, if interested, your audience will grok it.  Whether they'll be interested is perhaps another matter, but I bet a lot would be.  Giving away "trade secrets" of design is also a non-issue (and quite laughable actually).  

I'd say, however, that you should only include well-crafted, carefully considered design notes.  Something poorly explained may very well confuse even an experienced, sophisticated reader.  The main benefit you can reap from design notes (besides trying to attract a geek fanbase I suppose) is explaining more clearly how your game should be used, at the highest levels, which would include how it could by modified by your readers while still keeping with the original spirit.  If your design notes don't achieve something like this, they may be more time and effort than you want to spend, but I think they'd almost always be appreciated.