The Forge Archives

I find it interesting that numerous people have seen the Fantasy Heartbreakers essay to be a sort of call-to-arms to create their own, as a learning exercise.  I'm guessing this wasn't originally the intent, or part of the intent, of the article.

So I'll explicitly ask for one.  Oh learned brethern amongst us: could you recommend some exercises for the fledgling game designer?

I suppose I'm expecting things like "Write a fantasy heartbreaker" or "Write an rpg that uses a randomization element other than dice or standard cards" or "Deconstruct your favourite rpg into its underlying structural elements."  But I'm happy to be surprised.



Cheers,
Roger

Quote from: RogerSo I'll explicitly ask for one.  Oh learned brethern amongst us: could you recommend some exercises for the fledgling game designer?

Another enthousiastic person, right here waiting for tips :D

Pick some number of atomic actions, between two and five, that are the only important things in the lives of your characters (e.g. "Express love", "Do terrible things", "Get ordered around")

Make a game having rules only for those actions and their outcomes (e.g. "My Life with Master")  What narrative color do you need?  How do the actions need to provide tension against each other?  How is that represented mechanically?

Finish a game.

yrs--
--Ben

1. Compete in Iron Game Chef. Or if the ingredients don't inspire you (as with me), pick random words from the dictionary. Dictionary.com has words of the day you could use.

2. Come up with an idea for an ordinary sounding game but break every assumption in the book.

In neither case should feel the need to finish the whole project, though it probably wouldn't hurt -- just get the juices flowing.

I don't know, Jasper:  Every repetition of "begin, get to the hard frustrating part, quit" is training bad habits.

I suspect a beginning designer would be better served by playtesting, refining and finishing one flawed game than they would by abandoning five projects part-way through.

Hm, good point. But is it abandonment if you never meant to complete it? I'm thinking of some potentially off-the-wall ideas here, which may not really make something you want to devote a big chunk of your life to. But just to tackle them in an initial, preparatory way, may be useful. And regardless, the ideas can get filed away for later, used on some later project.

I have dozens of unfinished projects that I stopped developping not because they got hard, but because the idea just wasn't compelling enough. But they'll all get recycled somehow. I know a lot of people work the same way. And it may also be dangerous (or at least a waste) to force yourself to finish a project just for the sake of finishing.

Start somewhere new.
Many RPG Making Processes start with people being dissatisfied with other RPGs they've played. I find this to be bad practice because half the time, players will just take the bulk of another system and tweak their RPG so that it is very similar, but different in a detail a few people will overlook.
The biggest example is D&D. Many games where rolling of dice is required, a scheme that is similar to the D20 scheme is adopted for task resolution. It is very boring to look at an RPG and notice it is virtually D20 except on a D10, half the time I will have dismissed the game unless another element redeemed it.
New RPGs should be new.

If your RPG ends up still borrowing elements from other games, then atleast name them something unique. Thats always entertaining.

The setting is always unique, so don't worry too much about that. Even within the same genre, people view things differently. So, don't say "Oh I have a new RPG, its kind of like D&D but its in Middle School!" heh.

Interestingly Vincent talked about this very thing just a couple of months ago on anyway

QuoteNormally I have 3-5 practice game designs going. These aren't real game designs. These are like, let's see, the skiffy game, the Labyrinth of doors, Until Today, the Robin Hood game, Quiet, No Kings' Men, Blood and Wolves, Fearless, Bullet Proof... many others whose names and premises I've forgotten. Nothing ever comes of them - if one's lucky, I'll swipe its title for a real project someday, but that hasn't happened yet so they shouldn't hold their breaths.

Some of them would make good games, if I cared about them, but I don't, and maybe that's a little bit tragic.

Anyway no, they're for practice. What I do with them is push mechanics, rules and concepts around and around, fitting them together this way and that, over and over. I generally spend something like an hour a day doing this. I fill steno pads with notes and diagrams and text. I keep it all in a drawer in the lumpley games office, and a couple of times a year I read through it and throw the oldest stuff away.

Kill puppies for satan, Otherkind, Matchmaker and Dogs in the Vineyard were never practice designs. What happened with them was: here I am, pushing rules around in my notebooks, practice practice practice, and something happens in my real life that sparks me. A bad day, a theory argument with Emily, a dream and a put-up-to-it, respectively. I drop the practice games like they don't matter - they don't - and I throw myself wholeheartedly into this new project.

That's what I've been practicing for, right?

(And when I finish it, I always look at it worried that inspiration will never strike again. "Is this all the game design I have in me?" I say.)

Anyhow I'll add it to "design to expose yourself" as my advice to aspiring game designers: design at least three games you won't finish for every game you will.

I'll second that recommendation.  Just design.  

Its the same advice aspiring writers are given.  Make sure you write something every day.  Write anything.  Little vignettes, a journal entry, random musings and observations, a short essay on a topic of interest, a critique of a recent movie or novel...anything.  Just write.

Same with design.  Design anything.  A neat mechanic for handling encomberance, an idea for representing characters on a character sheet without using lists of numbers and fill in the blank stats, a method for determining what player gets to speak at any given time, an analysis on the statistical probability of a certain dice combination...anything.  Just design.

As with the writing exercises these aren't done with the expectation that you'll be able to scoop up everything you've written and discover its a finished product.  They're just for practice.  Maybe one or two of them will find there way into something eventually but until then just design.

Want a good challenge?  Go outside to a public place, observe people doing something (a couple having an arguement, construction workers on break, window washers riding up the side of a building...whatever)  Then go home and design a game about THAT.  Roleplaying game, board game, whatever.  

Design a game about a couple argueing.  Think about what constitutes "winning" an arguement...what tactics are used to "win" an arguement.  How can you express that in a game mechanic.  

Design a game about construction workers on break.  What do construction workers DO when they're on break, what do they talk about, what insight do those unguarded off the job moments give about their lives...how would you write a game...just about that...a half an hour slice of time which is potentially a window into their entire lives.

Like that.  Just pick something and start designing.  If you can design a game about a couple's arguement or construction workers on break I guarentee you'll find sword swinging barbarians and super spies to be a piece of cake.

Quote from: RogerI find it interesting that numerous people have seen the Fantasy Heartbreakers essay to be a sort of call-to-arms to create their own, as a learning exercise.  I'm guessing this wasn't originally the intent, or part of the intent, of the article.

Quote from the article More Fantasy Heartbreakers:

QuoteAn interesting proposal
Mike Holmes once suggested that "Everyone should write a Heartbreaker." What does he mean?

Notice, he says, "write," not "publish." The benefit, as far as I can tell, is as a form of personal therapy. People apparently have issues that arise from their play of D&D fantasy games, and from their grappling with broken Social Contracts and mismatched GNS stuff. A lot of the time, game design seems to be a form of coping with these issues. If I'm understanding Mike correctly, writing one's own Fantasy Heartbreaker constitutes working through a phase of development as a role-player - in some cases, it might remove the need to design games further, in favor of settling down actually to enjoy play, and in other cases, it might open the door to ground-up genuinely-innovative designs.

My first suggestion, read the two heartbreaker articles.  They're two of my favorite and are dense with good publishing advice and good game design thoughts without being a difficult read.

Play, play and play.

Think about said play.

Vincent's Blog, Ben's Blog and  Shining Doddecahedron are good places along with the Forge to get some theory.

Write, write and write.

Have fun.

Do the 24 hour game challenge. Seriously.

Take some ideas that you think are interesting and are not sure if they will fly. Put asside all life concerns for 24 hours. Write the bugger as best you can.

This is what got me into the right frame of mind to begin publishing my own ideas. Its working for me so far. :)

Warm regards,
Evan

THanks all... When I have the time, I'll design a 24 hour game and show it to all of you...

Perhaps it'll be a long laugh and then silence and perhaps I'll realise it isn't something I could do. Or perhaps it seems I do have some skill here, who knows:)

I like the "write something every day" suggestion. It is incredibly true.
A powerful game that you will feel overwhelmed with pride for making will take months. Everyday you should design a detail so that you can add it all together.

Thanks though, because I really needed the charge to get back into finishing my game. Design is all done, now I need to make it work. :D

As for 24 Hours. Thats hard. And painful. And freak'n awesome. My favorite 24 hour game I've read is still "StickRPG" Holy Cow. It seethes all things a 24 hour game should. Its awesome.

Heya,

The Irond Game Chef might indeed be a good place to start or at least read up on as people finish their games for it.  Here's the link: http://www.game-chef.com/index.shtml

Another suggestion I employed a long time ago was to find a game I liked, then write a chapter-for-chapter house rules version of it.  This will give you some idea on all the things you have to consider for a game to be complete.  I wouldn't recomend that game for publication, but as an exercise to learn the thought process of game design it should be helpful.

Peace,

-Troy

I think that before you design you should clear your own decks with something like a ritual purification.

Look at the games you run and the scenarios you write. Look at the characters and NPCs you create.

What common elements reoccur in what you write or how you play?
Why do you want to play them?
What could you remove to get to the essence of why you like them?
What's left?

You might end up with a "core story" such as "Kill them and take their stuff", or a key plot such as "hero and villain both want the same thing for different reasons" or a premise such as "how far would you go to keep love alive" (not as far as George Lucas I hope!). You'll probably end up with several things.

So take what's left and design a game that recognises and rewards the kind of play that you like. Then run that game and get feedback. Maybe even publish it. Love your game.

Then write a game for someone else to play.