Get the most out of posting your new game idea to First Thoughts

[Adam Dray]

I have been a Forge member for a long time, with varying degrees of activity. I'm not the forum moderator (Ron Edwards is -- this post is advice, not rules). When I do poke my head in, one of the first things I do is look for posts in First Thoughts that aren't getting much love, and see if I can help. As a result, I notice mistakes that posters commonly make. This thread is meant to advise game designers who want to start a discussion about their new game idea.

You are working on a new game. You're excited about it. You want to share your idea with others, get feedback on it, and make it better. That's why you're posting here. How do you make sure that you engage other designers and get the ideas flowing?

Post in the right forum. If you have a game that you think is more or less finished, you probably don't want to post in First Thoughts. Either post specific questions about publishing it in the Publishing forum or post actual play reports in the Playtesting forum. If you can't find playtesters, post in Connections to get help. Finally, if you have a seed of an idea, a mostly finished game with some loose ends, or something in between, post here in First Thoughts.

Before you post, read the forum rules that are stickied at the top. They not only tell you the law of the land, but they also contain links to useful threads that discuss ways of thinking about design.

Make sure you know what result you want from posting. Why are you posting? The Forge First Thoughts forum is not an advertising board. It's not a place to take polls of what people like and hate. It's a place where people "working through early drafts and posing design questions about the fundamental concepts for new games," as Ron says in the stickied rules post.

Ask questions. Be sure to tell people what problem you are working through. The Forge is a conversation, not a soapbox. You're posting because you want feedback, so be sure to help people know what feedback you want.

Write your post clearly and briefly. Make it easy for people to engage with you. To best engage us, start by telling us what your game is about, who the characters are and what kind of stuff they do in the game. We'll ask questions from there!

Don't reinvent the wheel. Or at least know you're doing it. At some point, we may tell you subtly or bluntly that you're reinventing the wheel. First of all, there's nothing wrong with following in the footsteps of giants (aka stealing great ideas). We all do it. Just realize it. Know what other people have done. Study the field. If your breadth of knowledge is only one or two games, or if you aren't aware of the territory explored by many of the games independently published since the 90's, you're likely designing with a very narrow set of assumptions. We'll challenge those! But that's why you're here.
     You're probably designing a new game because you played some other games and you felt something about them was lacking. Awesome. What if we were to tell you that someone has already written the exact game you want to play (and that you are designing) and have already solved these problems? Sometimes that is the case here. Sometimes people show up, tell us they're inventing a generic role-playing system with plug-in modules for settings, and they've never heard of GURPS or JAGS or Solar System or any of the other great systems that have already solved that problems. And we say, "Hey, go check these out." It's not to be dismissive. Maybe those games don't do what you are trying to do; but maybe they do. If you don't care and just want to design a game for the experience, just tell us that.


What about the Power 19?

The Power 19 is a series of nineteen questions that Troy Costick designed to tease out a game's design. It was meant as a list of questions for people to ask people like you about their games. The idea was that we could ask you these questions one at a time as conversation starters. Over time, people have started using it as a questionnaire: "Go answer the Power 19." Sometimes people post their Power 19 answers as their initial First Thoughts post.

While the verdict is still out on the utility of the Power 19 pretty much every Forge veteran seems to agree that their eyes glaze over when people post that much text about their game. Sometimes people respond to those posts. Sometimes the long, long posts sit there for weeks without responses. More likely than not, a responder might find one thing in the post -- usually in one of the answers to the first two or three questions -- and hammer on that a bit, and it changes the original poster's answers to everything else (invalidating many of the original 19 answers).

In short, don't post 19 questions and answers. It's too much to read all at once. It puts people off. It's a long, one-way conversation that is too late to interrupt. Tell us what your game is about and who the characters are and what the characters do. That's a good start.


What about game mechanics?

You just came up with this cool game mechanic, like a way to roll dice or a new reward system. Can you tell us about it? Sure. But remember that game mechanics are integrally and intimately tied to specific games. That is, they are pretty meaningless out of context.

For example, "Which is better? 2d10 or 1d20?" Out of context, there's no good way to answer that question. If you are posting mechanics ideas outside of the context of a game design, expect us to ask you more about what you're trying to accomplish in the first place.


What about setting ideas?

Setting design is part of game design. We love good settings. As a First Thoughts post, though, we'd want to know if it's a setting for an existing game or for a new game. If it's for your D&D campaign, it probably doesn't even belong here (though we'd welcome a post about playing in it in the Actual Play forum, which is for games that are already published).

Follow the rules and all my advice for any other First Thoughts post. Post in the right forum. Read the rules. Know what you want from others. Write clearly. Write briefly. Don't reinvent the wheel.

Also tell us how you want the setting to be used. What are your goals? A setting design is best evaluated as part of a game design. If it's an existing game, tell us what the game is and how you're using it. If it's a new game, it's better to back off the long setting post until we've had a discussion about what the game is about and stuff. Setting will tie tightly to character and situation.

In general, you'll find that a lot of Forge veterans feel that giant books full of setting material don't necessarily produce fun play. Most of it goes unused during play. Focus your setting material on the stuff that players can (and will) readily use.

[MacLeod]

All of this makes good sense. =D

My biggest problem is that a lot of my posts about my own ideas often turn out to be giant walls of text that no one wants to slog through. I don't know how to correct this either... I'm not even sure if I should bother trying to correct it either.

[markhaselb]

Very informative post, thank you! It seems very familiar though, I thought I had read something like this before with some parts missing. Anyway, I hope it becomes a sticky soon.

[Adam Dray]

MacLeod,

I just took a look at one of your recent posts, Several Minor Ideas, Thoughts Please? [somewhat lengthy]. At first blush, I'd say that it's not too long! However, there are some things you could do to get more love.

First, give your posts a catchy subject. Your subject doesn't give the reader any indication about the topic's material. For starters, consider using your game's name in the title. You have a cool name, "Intergalactic League of Brawlers," so that's a plus. One thing people do is put the game name in [square brackets] and then the topic afterwards: "[Intergalactic League of Brawlers] Handling techniques."

Second, break up your post into discrete topics, either in separate posts if they each deserve love, or using bolded subject headers. That way people can quickly tell what your post is about and what you want them to address.

Third, if you're referring to older posts, link them. You do refer back to posts about your game and presume people have read them. If they haven't, they aren't gonna go do a search for them. They might just assume they aren't your audience and stop reading. Either give them the information they need right there in the post, or give them a link to a post that has it. Make it easy for people to help you.

Last, I want to point out that you might be at the point where maybe the only way to answer your questions is playtesting. Round up some friends and give the game a whirl. Warn them that it probably won't be fun, the way playing usually is. Playtesting is often not fun. If you tell your friends you have this awesome fun game and it sucks, they will be disappointed and won't be willing to help playtest later. If you tell them that it probably will suck but they can take part in something that will eventually be awesome fun, they might say no, but they'll be prepared for the actual process.

[Lance D. Allen]

MacLeod,

If you are satisfied with the results of your posts, do not correct anything.

If you are not, and you believe the wall-of-words may be to blame, then here's what I've been trying (with varying degrees of success) to do.

Determine a specific thing you want feedback on, and limit your first post to the basics needed for people to help you address that thing. Err on the side of saying too little, as people need only ask specific questions to draw the extra information out.

Determine ONE thing. Don't try to group various concerns into a single thread. Concentrate on that one thing. If it turns out that another thing needs to be addressed in the course of the one thing, bring it in. Otherwise, wait until you have a satisfactory result with the one thing before starting in on another thing.

When replying to others posts, be specific in what you're replying to. Keep your reply on topic. (In practice, this ends up with me doing a lot of short quote-and-responds; I don't know if this bothers people, but it appears to be working)

So far, I've done this with character generation and spellcasting for my game, and I am in the process of doing it with spellbuilding. The results have been very productive, but standard disclaimer, YMMV.

Also, Adam is on a roll with his useful advice tonight. Do all that, too.

[MacLeod]

Awesome. =D
Thank you both for the insightful comments!I'm going to have to keep all of this in mind for future reference.

When I first created that topic, I was doing it after having wanted to create a little topic about a single question... but I figured a simple question wouldn't be worth a full-on topic. I suppose that is the wrong approach altogether!

@Adam: If the edit feature was available I'd recommend adding those suggestions to your initial list.
This thread should be stickied for containing Win^© brand content. =)

[Adam Dray]

Editing posts is overrated and promotes a lack of posting discipline. I post a lot on other sites, too. Many have unlimited editing capability. On those sites, I tend to fire without aiming. Here, I slow down, think about what I'm about to say, and double-check stuff. As a result, I post better stuff here.

Click the Preview button. Proofread your post. If you have follow-up thoughts, post follow-up responses.

[Librabys]

Wow! I was just so wrong! Awesome!

Thank to show me the right path lol

[Simon C]

Would it be a good idea to put together a good list of games that are freely available online that might be informative to designers who haven't played much outside a certain range of games?  Not in a "Don't post here until you've read all these" kind of a way, but more like "You might find some ideas amongst these that spark new ideas."

When I first started posting here, the thing that helped more than anything else was a) Reading Actual Play threads, and b) hunting down every free game I could find on the web and reading it.  That took a lot of time though.  It would be cool to have a standard list, maybe with brief description, to point to.

I can put together a list of some games that I found really useful (basic stuff like TSoY and the Pool and so on), but it would be cool to make it more representative, and include GURPS lite and some heartbreakers (especially really good heartbreakers). I don't know those others so well though.

[Ben Lehman]

Simon: I think having a canonical list is a bad idea. I think pointing people to games is a good idea.

Different designers are going to have different needs. I think a "big list of games, read these games" would just result in a lot of frustration, wasted time and (worst possible result) lots of similar looking games.

yrs--
--Ben

[Simon C]

Sure, a canonical list is a bad idea.  But pointing people to games is a good idea.  And pointing people to games is easier if you have a list of free games of various genres and types that you can pick from to recommend.  Right? So not "Read these games", but rather "here are some ideas in a similar field to you".

How about this.  I'm going to make a list of games that I'm going to use to point people to when they need help.  If you want to suggest free games that will be useful to someone that aren't already represented, you are welcome to do so.

[Adam Dray]

I think John Kim already maintains a List of free RPGs available on the web. I don't want to point first-time posters there, but it's a helpful list for them to find a game or two that people recommend as helpful to someone's endeavor.

[7VII7]

Yeah, I have a question, WHEN THE HELL HAS POINTING OUT A GAME HELPED ANYONE!? At best it gives you some inspiration, at worse you could slog through search hell only to get to a picture to a cover of the book that you have to shell out money that might, just might, be put to better use, then wait weeks for the book to actually arrive, which you still have to read, OR you get to some PDF where you have to slog through a dozen pages until you find what you're looking for, oh sure, you might be "inspired" but you could also get inspired by a thousands other ways including the poster actually posting something worthwhile instead of some glorified advertising and thinking they helped! ARRRRRRRRGGHHHHH!!!!
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Ok, sorry about that, went into a rant mostly fulled of my hate of people not answering simple question but seriously, somebody pointed out a list of games to me and I just "uh-huh, that helps me sooooo much" sarcasm fully intended, and there's more then a small chance that the person asked had never heard of the game before that day! That said, I'm the type of person who likes to slog through the manual to a game I'm never going to play so yeah. . . but really, has it ever helped anybody to point a game out?

[Luke]

Hey L7,

It's called "research." You might have heard of this: digging through what has been written before to see how it's been presented. Gathering information to see if the ideas you're exploring have been pushed in another incarnation.

I think you'd be surprised to know how much research many of the published designers undertake -- novels, histories, comics, games, movies and music are all thoroughly mined for ideas for each of the best designs.

So ideally, one would take a poster's recommendation on good faith and even PLAY said game -- since games cannot be fully understood unless played. Playing the recommended games might even actively challenge one's neolithic assumptions about game design. One hopes that this will have two positive outcomes: to markedly evolve said neolithic ideas or encourage the erstwhile designer to give up, since it's been done better before.

-L
-L

[greyorm]

...but really, has it ever helped anybody to point a game out?

Definitely. There's a number of times when I've been working on rules for something, come up against a wall, and been pointed towards something that was similar to what I was doing that got me over that hump, or even completely changed the direction I was heading. Don't just take my word for it, I've got concrete examples:

My newest 3E product was built from the examination of at least three different sources and how they handled similar material and rules. And a number of 3E bits I never finished, or had up on my site for free, were built the same way: by researching how other people had handled the same or similar mechanics or game elements.

Or when I was working on eXpendable last year, I was pointed towards Space Rat, which I'd never heard of before, and so gave it a read through for the way it handled equipment. I was already doing something a bit similar, so I didn't think much about it, but it eventually helped me realize what part of the problem I was having with equipment in my design was and develop a workable fix for it.

ORX came about originally because of the Window, but was kind of just "orcs are funny, ha-ha, and you use different sided dice", and then Maelstrom Storytelling fixed a number of ideas about narrative and mechanics in my head that led to an inventive re-purposing of the system and the dice into something completely original (IMO).