Presentation and Design Goals

[Zak Arntson]

Okay, I'm moving this D&D discussion to Game Design from Actual Play because I think it's a design-level issue.

I am going to concentrate on Presentation.  For most games, Presentation can be broken down into:

 
• First Impression
   
• Setup
   
• Record Sheets
   
• Reference
  

I'll use D&D as my first example, seeing as I've been playing it lately with a group ranging from rules-guy to absolute newbie.

First Impression from flipping through the book, is with solo pictures or pictures of combat, a lot of skills, feats, equipment, and spells.
Setup involves a lot of statistics and points (rolling abilities, picking skills, getting hit points, saving throws).
Record Sheets are 2/3 precalculated combat stats, a small-typeface skill table, and a meager portion for name/race/alignment.
Lastly, Reference.  Looking up special rules are tough, unless you know what they are called.  We generally remember the pictures they are by.  "Two-handed fighting?  That's near the red dragon picture."  In fact, looking up any specific rule (that isn't covered by the character sheet) is tough.

Luckily for D&D, it advertises itself as a Dungeon Crawl game.  So people will generally play it that way.

For Vampire (at least 1st ed.  I haven't played it since then), you get:
First Impression: Way cool goth art, creepy quotes all over.  Looks like a good way to experience the strife of vampire-life.
Setup: Lots of skills to be had.  It feels like the emphasis on character creation is skills and cool powers.
Record Sheets: The biggest part is the skill list.  You've also got yer Attributes, Blood stuff and Willpower.
Reference: Not having played in forever, I can't honestly say how tough it was to look up rules, since we generally didn't look things up.

Now Vampire wants to be known as the Storyteller system, where a bunch of people go through a dramatic unlife.  At least, that was the impression I got.  But where's the support for this in it's Presentation?  As far as I can tell, only the First Impression really supports this.  Character Creation & Records were mostly statistics (numbers and dots).

How about a D&D Campaign, Planescape.  The Goal here is a philosophical, weird-mythical fantasy that spans all other campaigns.

First Impression: Art supports the setting.  Text has its own voice, and quick-to-read quotes are littered around.
Setup: Back to generic D&D rules.  With the exception of new races and picking a Faction (something that really backs up the Planescape setting).
Record Sheets: This opportunity was missed by Planescape.  There are no record sheets provided.  You're stuck making your own (most people did this) or using the combat-centric D&D sheets.
Reference: For a setting that was all style, it was frustrating at times to figure out how magic worked (specific rules for EACH plane and possibly each place within a plane).

So Planescape did a good job, as long as you don't mind making a new sheet or dealing with thte generic D&D one.

Mind you, this is all about Presentation, and not actual mechanics or premise or whatever-else.  I have opinions on that, too, but I won't voice 'em in this topic

So my point?

Make sure your Presentation matches your Goals as a Designer!!

_________________
Zak
http://mailto:zak@mimir.net">zak@mimir.net
http://zaknet.tripod.com/hmouse">Harlekin Maus Games

[ This Message was edited by: Zak Arntson on 2001-06-22 19:38 ]

[james_west]

I've also always been a believer in presentation as being a key to setting tone, as a GM as well.

[JSDiamond]

I totally agree.  To me D&D3 is a beautiful line of books, but it seems that the designers were very 'hip' on including all the cutting edge narrative-rpg tweaks they learned about from other game companies in the nineties.  So presentation-wise, D&D3 isn't a success.  It's just too overcrowded with notes and footnotes.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay got it right.  But precious little has gone right since then.

Elfs is simply offensive... got it right there!


Jeff Diamond
http://www.geocities.com/allianceprime/Orbit_HQ.html">6-0 Games