Presentation and Design Goals

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 ]