Software Choices

 Home, The Process of Design  2 Responses »
Jan 152012
 

Good software is nearly essential for producing a good roleplaying game book.  Over the years I have made a series of choices between different software packages and I thought I might explain my reasoning. Perhaps this may be useful to some of you.

Brainstorming:  I am currently undecided between using the technical solution (Freemind) or simply resorting to pen and paper for this function. I haven’t quite internalized a separate “brainstorming” step in my game designs, so I tend to use this in an ad-hoc fashion.

Writing the Draft: I started using the very nice open-source program Celtx which is a remarkably versatile media pre-production program. That one is particularly good for screenplays and movies, but I managed to get it working for my game writing. Easy to learn and freely available, it was a good choice.

That was when I found that Literature and Latte had released Scrivner for windows.  I picked up the program and fell absolutely in love. It’s a logical system for organizing and shuffling content without the fiddly bits involved in word processing software. Excellent as an organizational tool alone, it also supports the writing of content.  It comes with a a two-hour long tutorial and costs about $40 USD, but well worth the price. It’s telling that this is one of the few pieces of commercial software I currently use.

Editing: My go-to word processor is the open-source program Libreoffice at the moment. While I have access to MS Word and WordPerfect, I like to support the free program. Despite a few aesthetic disagreements, I have found the program to be robust and it fulfills my needs at the moment.  Some of the technical decisions, such as the use of frames, work quite well.  As a supporter of the open-source movement, I appreciate the use of open standards.

That said, I do fall back to MS Word on occasion.  Turns out that word 2007 has some extremely handy automated tools to point out passive phrasing and a host of similar stylistic problems. It’s also the default file format for writing, so sometimes it must be used.

Art: The open-source domain has continued to treat me well when it comes to art. I use the excellent and intuitive program Inkscape for all of my vector art.  I have replaced the proprietary Adobe Photoshop with the excellent and free program The GIMP.  Both of these are of professional quality and free

That said, I fully realize that some closed-source software can be worthwhile.  One program in particular, Corel Painter, has earned my praises.  I know that it would take me months of continuous practice to learn how to use the program effectively, but the incredible versitility has impressed me.

Layout and Publication:  I have the hardest time in choosing the best programs for layout and pdf production.  Picking an excellent closed-source PDF Editor was easy (PDF-XChange by Tracker Software). The challenge was in picking the ideal layout program for my purposes. I am torn between sticking with the open-source Scribus or invest in the proprietary Adobe InDesign.

Adobe InDesign is aboslutely the industry standard and is objectively the best program of it’s type on the market.  Everyone uses the program, printers expect it and tutorials abound.  It’s also a closed-source program with a price-tag of $699 USD.  That is certainly not a casual purchase, especially for a new publisher.

The open source competition is Scribus, a program with its own challenges.  The consensus within the Forge and Story Games appears to be, avoid the program. There is a significant learning curve and the help files/tutorials are quite poor. Adding to that, several professional graphic designers have mentioned some key deficiencies in the program. I put in days of effort learning the bloody program and the effort paid off; I am now able to do my own rudimentary layout. I used Scribus for “A Sojourn In Alexandria” in Gamechef 2010 and it worked well enough.

 

I hope that someone finds this information worthwhile.  I would love some discussion on the layout programs in the comments, if you kind reader(s) would like to help. Thank you.

 

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 Posted by Jagash at 5:16 pm  Tagged with: ,

Creative Constraints

 The Process of Design  No Responses »
Dec 232011
 

Storytelling demands creativity.  It’s challenging to design a game system that consistently encourages inspiration.  Fortunately, some great minds have found approaches to solve this problem.  Let’s focus on the first of these approaches today; Creative Constraints.

Some games are limited in scope and these constraints can help.  In Vincent Baker’s game “Poisn’d”, players portray rapacious and violent pirates.  The rules tell you what general kinds of things a pirate will do and encourage you do to follow those conventions.  “Dogs in the Vineyard” has the players portraying naïve and faithful youth in a western setting with more power then experience.  Since much of the story is defined, these games let you focus your attention on creating interesting Situations and conflicts.

The limited scope can often show you where the interesting conflicts may be hiding. “How we Came to Live Here” presents a setting with very strict gender roles.  How many of you fine folks reading this considered playing characters which violated that cultural norm?  By telling players what is forbidden, they start to consider how that would impact a character.

Some of these constraints can force us to play outside of our comfort zones. The gender roles in How we Came to Live Here attracts our attention because it clashes with our cultural assumptions.  Other games such as “Grey Ranks” or “Steal Away Jordan” do the same thing, forcing us to consider new perspectives and triggering creativity.

I recommend you check out “Narrative Fenceposts”  by the fine folks at Transneptune Games for some related discussions.

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 Posted by Jagash at 7:05 pm  Tagged with: ,

Who are you designing for?

 The Process of Design  No Responses »
Dec 102011
 

Universal Principles of Design, published by Rockport, has taught me dozens of excellent techniques.  One technique is referred to as “Personas”, where you try to create diverse profiles of potential users so that you can consider each of their needs & preferences.  I suspect that using a technique like that might help improve our presentation of games to a wider variety of audiences. As roleplaying game designers, I feel we have a big advantage when it comes to creating fictional users and anticipating their needs.

Here is my list of different Personas which you can feel free to use for your own designs.  These are in no particular order and any resemblance to individuals living or dead is purely accidental.

1) Richard:  Richard is a middle-aged Caucasian male with a classical education and a long history with the gaming hobby.  He cut his teeth on basic D&D and still considers 2nd edition to be a bad decision.  His experience focuses on the older games such as Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Runequest, Gurps and Champions.  He has a broad experience with telling good and realistic stories as a fair and benevolent dungeon master.

2) Zak: Zak is a well-off Caucasian teenager from the suburbs from a dual-income home. He just started playing Pathfinder over the summer and is having a blast killing monsters and taking their loot. He picked up D&D 4e and it looked interesting, but he considers himself is strictly as a player. His Tuesday and Friday nights are spent drafting magic cards at the local gaming store and he considers himself quite the expert in that game.

3) Gloria: Gloria is an Caucasian woman, just turning 18 and considering college.  She embraced drama class enthusiastically and has tried her hand at improvisational theatre. Unfortunately for Gloria, a genetic condition has set in of late and her eyesight has deteriorated over the last few years.  She has never been exposed to an RPG.

4) Suzanne: Suzanne is a first-nations youth in an isolated community.  She has had some difficulty in schooling due to the poverty gripping her people.  She has been trying hard to improve her reading and writing skills and has gotten into reading fantasy novels of late. She has never played a roleplaying game, though she listens to every story that her elders are willing to tell.

5) Mohammad : Mohammad is a devout Muslim gentleman of Arabic decent, currently living in the middle east.  He is passionate about designing new roleplaying games, particularly those originating from the Forge.  He thinks that his current game will have an impact on his society on a whole and help people explore themselves and their faiths during these turbulent times.

6) Lily: Lily is a mature Chinese woman with a master’s degree in psychology. On her off hours, she plays in a game of Lamentations of the Flame Princess with a few other women from the university she works at. She has embraced the Old School Renaissance movement, enjoying pitting her mind against the pitiless fantasy world. Years ago she had played a number of Vampire: the Masquerade LARP’s as well and she appreciated the experience, but was weirded out by the extent people were playing in character.

 

I hope that some of these persona are of use when examining your own designs and your potential audiences.

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 Posted by Jagash at 12:54 am  Tagged with:

The Master’s Attention

 The Process of Design  1 Response »
Nov 212011
 

Where do you focus your attention when you prepare for a game?  How do you cobble together a convincing and engaging story?  What does your game teach Game Masters to do in the lonely hours of the evening?  Thanks to the Bear Swarm Podcast, and I have noticed three distinct ways that game masters and designers focus their attention.

The first approach is to focus on the characters. The idea is that the GM should focus on creating compelling, dynamic and engaging non-player characters.  You can follow the NPC’s personalities and goals during play, reacting to the players efforts. As a result, the players pay attention to character relationships and motivations.  This is the method of design for the video game “Mass Effect 2″ for example, with the richly detailed team members.

The second approach is to focus on the locations.  This is where the GM draws a detailed map of the setting, describing each place as a uniquely themed gem in a massive world.  You can encourage a sandbox style of gameplay, where the characters choose their own path and explore the game as they see fit. This seems to be the method of design use for “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” for example, where exploration of the rich environment dominates the play experience.

The third approach is to focus on the narrative. This is where the GM spends their time on crafting rich plots, character-testing events and dramatic arcs.  This is where the group story is paramount, where matters of pacing and theme drive the action. An excellent example of this in the video game tradition would be “Dragon Age 2″.

Now, each of these methods clearly has their own place in game design.  You can’t have a character focused game without paying attention to their narrative arc.  Locations are defined by the characters they will interact with.  The story depends on exploring a rich world.  I think it’s worth _considering_ how much of each factor you include in your games.

What roleplaying games do you know which focus on one of those particular approaches?

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 Posted by Jagash at 11:00 pm  Tagged with:

Building the Machine

 Home, The Process of Design  2 Responses »
Nov 092011
 

There is a simple joy in the act of creation.   It doesn’t matter if you optimized a deck of Magic Cards, created a D&D character from scratch or forged a robot with a murderous heart.  Preparing your tools before you play is rewarding because every choice is significant.   I think this is one facet of design that we in the Indie RPG design community tend to overlook.

This realization came to me after leveling up in a D&D 4E game that I am playing in. Each time I got to tinker with my character, I was presented with a puzzle of which new feat or power I was going to choose. I knew that I was stuck with whatever decision I made until I earned my level, always feeling like my choices were meaningful.  Looking back, it was the same thrill that I had gotten each time I started altering one of my decks of Magic cards.  The very act of altering and customizing something for a game was enormous fun.

If you look back at the changes to D&D, you can see that the fun of preparation was taken into account.  In classical D&D, the sum total of your creative input consisted of a few trivial decisions at character creation.  2nd edition introduced Kits, giving you more choice for differentiation at character creation. 3rd edition gave us Feats and Prestige Classes which allowed the players to alter their characters in significant ways whenever they earned certain levels.  When 4E came around, the advancement system was altered so that the players would be able to make small but important decisions every time they leveled up by changing feats, power selection and/or attributes.

Changing my character helps me feel as if I gain a little more agency.  In turn, I find myself more and more engaged with the game.  I know that many great story games include preparation, but I think that it’s still an aspect of design that is far too often overlooked.   I’m not saying that we should start including detailed encumbrance rules in every new game, but I think that _some_ level of preparation can improve a game and keep the players wanting more.

 

What do you think?


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 Posted by Jagash at 10:50 pm

We must Organize!

 Home, Spark, The Process of Design  4 Responses »
Oct 082011
 

I thought I knew what I was doing last year.   My plan had been to write up the text of the game, then simply make a _few_ revisions based on the playtesting.   I thought that my design _must_ have been advanced enough that I could commission art.  I expected that I could finish off playtesting in 6-9 months, max and have my book in public Beta by early 2012.

I have learned a great deal over the last year.   I tore out 50% of the system and abandoned the text which I _had_ been writing.  I changed my approach and decided that I really needed to get the core system solidified before I tried anything else.   This led to me creating and heavily revising of a 2-page rules summary, just so that I had something to work from.

This is almost all I had ready by the time the convention season began.  Each playtest taught me a different lesson.  CanGames taught me that the game itself had the potential to be fun and compelling.  The Grand Roludothon taught me to simplify the mechanics and adopt a more improvisational style.  GenCon gave me 2-3 pages worth of astounding feedback which I am only now starting to digest.

Now I am organizing all of the rules for the Spark RPG.   I have Google Docs open and I am populating it with a series of one-line statements.  Each statement corresponds to an individual rule, concept, explanation or piece of advice for the game.  When I finish that up, I will be able to organize the content and turn that into a solid outline for my next attempt at writing the rule.  My hope is that through outlining, I ought to be able to write the game in the most concise manner possible without losing clarity.

Are there any readers in the audience who outline this way?  If not, how do you organize your RPG content?


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 Posted by Jagash at 9:53 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Not because they are easy…

 Spark, The Process of Design  No Responses »
Oct 012011
 

The Spark RPG is a “generic” game, flexible of setting while still encouraging a certain style of play. The challenge is that generic games often come across as flavourless, dull and derivative. It’s hard to design a good generic and almost impossible to market them in my experience.  This made it the perfect challenge.

I chose to design generic games games like these not because they are easy, but because they are hard.  The only way to learn quality RPG design is through practice.  Rather than release a series of smaller titles, I wanted to throw myself into the deep end and tackle a large and difficult project.  For my first major commercially-published product, I needed to be exposed to every step in the development process. I needed to teach myself the design philosophies, writing tricks, editing skills, layout, production and marketing. I view this ambitious project as a self-funded undergraduate degree in roleplaying game design.

I have made almost every mistake in the textbook.  I have tried publishing a fan supplement for a White Wolf game without a license.  I have discovered the folly of commissioning art assets prematurely.   I have written a draft text for my game before bringing it to playtesting.  I have spent hours fiddling with formatting when I could have better spent that time cleaning up the writing.  Right now, the beginners mistake I am making is focusing on marketing.   It is so very tempting to market myself and network over social media instead of putting in the hard work of writing.  Paradoxically, the infrequent updates on my website are a sign that I am actually writing the game.
I am designing games to learn and I think that generics are the best teachers.  What are your thoughts?

 

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 Posted by Jagash at 1:47 pm

GenCon 2011 Seminar Recordings

 Downloads, Links, Seminars, Spark, The Process of Design  13 Responses »
Aug 112011
 

One of my guilty pleasures at GenCon is to attend a variety of interesting game design panels with digital recorder in hand.  I was quite successful this year with 5 distinct seminar recordings.  I have done some rudimentary audio clean-up on the recordings but I currently lack the skill to properly polish them.   They are definitely worth a listen though, in my opinion I present the seminars in chronological order as I attended them.  I will try to link to the presenters websites whenever possible.

Things You Think About Games

Event Number: SEM1122700

Presenters: Jeff Tidball and Will Hindmarch from Gameplaywright (http://gameplaywright.net)

Things You Think About Games

 

The No-No’s of Game Design

Event Number: SEM1128758

Presenters:

Stan! (http://www.stannex.com/)

Jeff Neil Bellinger (http://killerbunnies.com)

Daniel Solis (http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com)

Matt Forbeck (http://www.forbeck.com)

 The No-No’s of Game Design

 

 

Lessons from Indie Publishing

Event Number: SEM1122904

Presenters: David A Hill Jr. from Machine Age Productions (http://machineageproductions.com)

Lessons from Indie Publishing

 

Design an RPG in an Hour

Event Number: SEM1122800

Presenters: David A Hill Jr. from Machine Age Productions (http://machineageproductions.com)

Design an RPG in an Hour

 

 

Game Design is Mind Control

Event Number: SEM1120297

Presenters:

Luke Crane (http://www.burningwheel.org)

Jared A Sorenson (http://memento-mori.com)

Game Design is Mind Control

 

The Legal Rules of Gaming

Event Number: SEM1118576

Presenters:  Neil A. Wehneman (http://boardgamegeek.com/blog/377)

The Legal Rules of Gaming

 

 

In addition to those excellent seminars, I also had the pleasure of running 2-3 playtests of the Spark RPG with some excellent gamers and/or designers.  I didn’t request permission to post those game sessions online from the participants, so I will not post those particular recordings.  I was told a couple of things by all of the different groups of playtesters.

  1.  I need to improve the presentation of the rules; teach them in a better fashion with more clear character sheets
  2. I should change the GM Fate tracking sheet into a variant of the normal player character sheet.
  3. It is counter-intuitive to have conditions which only help you or only impede you, regardless of circumstances.  I will consider changing this around, though I am uncertain how exactly that would affect the economy.

I hope the seminar recordings and I wish to thank all of the fine participants of GenCon who supported my playtesting endeavours.

 

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 Posted by Jagash at 12:54 am

The Foundations of Fun (Part 1 of 2)

 The Process of Design  No Responses »
Apr 112011
 

The Foundations of Fun

Basic Decisions when Designing RPG Mechanics

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Gears

Note: This is only the first half of the article.  I will aim to release Part 2 of 2 dealing with Resolution Systems, as well as the full article in PDF format  within the next week or so.
I hope you enjoy  reading and please feel free to leave comments
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There is a great wealth of knowledge of Game Design that can be found online if you have the patience. There are forum threads describing abstract theory, blog posts on novel techniques and the occasional dialogue on Twitter on the underlying philosophies. It can be a challenge to learn though, since they tend to be I thought that it might be useful to have a high-level overview of how mechanics function and that such a document could be a boon for new designers.

Disclaimer: I am neither a wealthy nor a successful designer.  I don’t even manage to play one on TV. I have more then a few years of experience in the craft and spend far too much time reading up on game design theory and technique, but that’s it.

 

 

What this is about

Each game is fundamentally built out of a series of choices, each informed in turn by your central design premise. Rather then examining each particular application, I am focusing on providing a high level overview of the general types of decisions you will have to make. The major decisions fall into two categories; what kinds of Traits are on the character sheet and how that interacts with the Resolution System. Once you use this to build the skeleton of your game system, you will be able to go into depth and determine the specific traits and formulae. Those details will allow you to encourage specific behaviours and focus the style of play to meet your needs. That is where most of the real challenges lie, once you build a foundation

Traits

The typical format of an RPG has multiple participants who play different roles in the game. These characters are differentiated by the various Traits they possess. I am using the most generic form of the word to represent attributes, skills, aspects, abilities, merits, flaws, cash and an y other element written on the character sheet. This is intentionally broad and represents the Cues/dice in Vincent D. Baker’s “Clouds and Arrows” article in the Further Reading Material.

 

1 How many different Traits?

The number of traits is a good measure of system complexity. The more Traits, the more variables that a player will need to account for during play. Often some Traits are lumped together in categories to represent differences. For instance, Melee, Archery and Riding might all be Traits in a system where they are all categorized as different “Skills”.

 

1.1 Games with Few Traits

There are a number of advantages of a system with relatively few distinct traits. Fewer traits mean that the game system is proportionally easier to learn, to recall and to teach to others. These games are usually friendly with new players and allow for quick character generation. These lightweight games tend to be friendly to improvisation and will naturally reinforce character actions as driving the story forward.

Examples: Dresden Files RPG, Savage Worlds, Dogs in the Vineyard and even 4th Edition AD&D.

 

1.2 Games with Many Traits

These types of games tend to be more complex and more precisely describe the player characters. Many traits mean that the game models more complex interactions between the character and different elements of the settings. These heavyweight games tend to do excellent jobs in modelling certain situations in game and can promote a sense of realism. The heavyweight games tend to be friendly to planning and will naturally reinforce character concept/capabilities as driving the story forward.

Examples: GURPS, Hero System or Rifts.

 

 

2 What is the Scope of the Trait?

Each Trait has a range of situations where it applies. Athletics may be defined in the book as allowing running, throwing and climbing but not swimming (Proscriptive traits). Alternatively, the player may decide to write in “Track and Field” on their sheet and interpret the trait during play (Descriptive traits). The question is whether the applicability is defined by the game designer in advance or by the player in game.

 

2.1 Proscriptive Traits

These types of traits are common in RPG’s. The designer tells the participants exactly what each given trait does mechanically. Trait A will only apply in these situations, and will behave in a predictable fashion. This dates back to the early versions of Dungeons and Dragons where thieves might have a score in “pick locks”. It’s very clear that exactly what those traits do mechanically and there will be no confusion on where that particular trait applies. As a natural result, it limits the number of possible actions that a given PC might perform. This often allows for the designer to focus the style of play to match certain themes, moods and settings.

Examples: Almost every RPG in existence has proscriptive traits. Most systems have Skills as clear proscriptive traits.

 

2.2 Descriptive Traits

Descriptive traits are rare, but have been appearing more and more of late. The participant writes in some statement, question or word for one of their traits. When the player, GM or group determine that the trait is relevant, there is some mechanical effect. This means that almost every trait is unique in applicability and each player has drastically different capabilities. As the traits are determined by the player, they are custom tailored and flag exactly which issues and actions the player wishes to focus on. Descriptive traits also have the merit of being flexible and usable for any setting, as it is the player who determines them.

Examples: Unknown Armies (Skills), Dresden Files RPG (Aspects), Burning Wheel (Beliefs).

 

 

3 What values can the Trait have?

Once you know _what_ each trait applies to, it comes down to deciding what possible mechanical effect those traits have. While I know you haven’t determined your precise mechanical system yet, you will need to know what variables will feed into it.

 

3.1 Binary Traits (Lever)

Binary Traits, also known as Levers, are traits that have two values. They can have a value of Yes, meaning that the Trait exists and will apply the mechanical affect within it’s scope. Otherwise, the character doesn’t have the and it will not have any mechanical effects. Levers are simple to remember, easy to learn and fast to apply during play.

Many game systems treat languages as Binary Traits, with characters either fluent or ignorant of the language in question. Another common use of levers is for special traits called “Conditions”. When a character is stuck in the head, they may have a condition of “Stunned” which would have certain mechanical effects.

Examples: Dungeons and Dragons (Languages, Feats, spells), Storyteller System (Some merits, flaws)

 

3.2 Fixed Traits (Score)

Some Traits are fixed in values and are referred to as Scores. Other then occasional improvements, each Score will remain static. These are qualities have predictable and consistent mechanical effects whenever the Trait applies. It’s the most common type of Trait in existing roleplaying games. These are just written as integers on the character sheet most of the time.

Examples: Dungeons and Dragons (Attributes), Storyteller System (Skills)

 

3.3 Variable Traits (Dial)

Variable Traits, referred to as Dials, change frequently during play. Each Dial will have a minimum (usually zero) and a maximum value. The value of the Dial provides some mechanical effect and/or interacts with the resolution system. Conversely, certain kinds of events in the fiction can change the value of your Dial. These are the most customizable, complex and compelling types of Traits. Usually Dial Traits are tied to the players long term concerns and goals.

Examples: Don’t Rest your Head (Madness Dice, Discipline Dice, Exhaustion Dice) or Vampire: the Masquarade (Humanity).

 

3.4 Resource Traits (Currency)

Resource or Currency Traits are similar to Dials, but they have no maximum. They have values from zero (no resource) to potentially infinite. Resources can either be diminished in play or increased, but the actual amount of currency usually has no mechanical effect in the game. Often Resource traits function as “cheat mechanics” which allow for players to affect their chances of victory in specific conflicts.

Examples: Dungeons and Dragons (Gold, XP), Dresden Files RPG (Fate Points), Buffy RPG (Drama Dice).

 

To Be Continued

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 Posted by Jagash at 1:15 am

Game Design: Steps to Publish an RPG

 The Process of Design  1 Response »
Oct 152010
 

This will be the first item in my “The Process of Design” series on my site.   I am a relatively young designer, but I believe that I have gotten a decent grasp on the overall process for successful game design.   I have learned a great deal concerning design due to the excellent designer and podcasting communities and I appreciate their assistance.    This appreciation had led to my little series which aims to provide some good foundational information for new designers.

Disclaimer; I don’t claim to be an expert, nor even to play one on TV.  These are my questions, opinions and workflows which may not suit your particular purposes.   Even then, I hope that you can find some benefit from this post.

Game Design: Steps to Publish an RPG article in PDF

The Dozen Steps and 65 Questions for Designing a Game

I tend to break up my game design process into a set of twelve arbitrary steps.    Each step provides me with a different set of questions which will inform the final outcome.  Each of these questions may be an opportunity for me to step back from a design and consider producing a more limited game.  Not every game needs to (or should) be a boxed set with an offset print run in the tens of thousands.   I use many of these questions to guide me in determining how much effort and expense a particular project warrants.

Step 1: Initial Inspiration

This first step is the easiest; I usually carry out this step once every month or two and dump the results into a text document for a later date.   My muse is a fickle mistress, but her gifts can lead to greater things.

1.       What themes, moods or genres are inspiring this new design?

2.       What narrative principles, storytelling techniques or other dramatic elements would be appropriate for such a game?

3.       What procedural mechanics or other “crunch” would you use as a seed for this system?

Step 2: Market Research

Never skip this all important step; this is where you find out if some kind soul has _already_ written your dream game.    Dreaming of a game of amnesiacs seeking to regain their lost memories with improvisational-theatre inspired mechanics?  Just buy “A Penny for my Thoughts” and you can devote three years of your life to other pursuits.    Market Research can also allow you to find your competition and learn from those products.

4.       What are the essential elements of your concept which make your game unique?

5.       Does a similar game exist?  Would that game be close enough that full development of a new game would be unnecessary?

6.       Could you hack or modify an existing game/system to meet your needs?

7.       Is there any significant external audience for the game, or is it simply your play group?   No need to formally publish something if it will only be appreciated by your own home group.

Step 3: Scope

How broad in scale, complex in detail and expansive in theme will your project be?  Will it be a light and tight universal system?   Will it instead be a heavy, mechanically rich and detailed simulation of the French revolution?  This question will inform you one the amount of time that you would need to commit to the project during the design project.    If the scope is too great, you may need to pare it down and reduce your overall workload.

8.       How much mechanical complexity is necessary and appropriate for the game concept?   This is the question of Crunch.

9.       How much narrative structure and fiction is necessary and appropriate for the game concept.  This is the question of Fluff.

10.   How many different books do you plan for your core game?  A single stand-alone book, a pair of them or more?

11.   Approximately what length of book are you aiming for?   Pick out existing gaming books from your shelves to make your estimate.

12.   Is there a time pressure for producing your project?

13.   Are you willing to write and design after a full day’s work?

14.   Are you willing to write and design on your days of rest (non-work days)?

15.   Are you willing to quit your day job for this project?   This is a trick question; if you are listening to my advice then you are _definitely_ not ready to quit your day job.   There’s a scarce minority of full time game designers and they are far greater women and men then I.

Step 4: Finances

Money makes the world go round.  If you have a bit of initial funding, you are far more likely to be successful in your design project.   A successful project can in turn fund future projects or even give you enough profit for a cup of coffee if you are lucky.

16.   Do you have any external sources of funding?  This could be a grant, a tax refund, pre-orders or other similar mechanism.

17.   Have you considered using a service such as Kickstarter which would allow you to raise some funding prior to production?

18.   How much are you willing to contribute personally to the project?

19.   Are you willing to pay for commercial software for your game production?

20.   Are you willing to pay for other professional services in your design?  (More on this in steps 6-9)

21.   Are you aiming to make a profit for this game?  If the answer is no, consider releasing it for free in PDF format.

22.   Are you willing to take risks with some funding, or are you taking the more conservative and lower risk approaches?  These are explained in Step 10.

Step 5: The Actual Game Design

Yes, this is a step.  This is where the foundation of the game is built and you produce your first draft.  The game won’t be ready for sale yet, but you will at least have enough of a structure for testing and revision.   This is where you make your critical decisions which will shape your particular game and make it worth playing.

23.   What are the core principles of your game?    Try producing a one-line mission statement which you can come back to when you have problems and make your decisions to align with that statement.

24.   What is the balance of Dramatic compared to the Procedural content?  Does the game focus more on why things happen, or on what happens?

25.   What is the depth of simulation you are aiming for in this design?  Heavy verisimilitude, or light cosmetic touches?

26.   What is the depth of narrative structure and what type of narrative are you aiming to support?  Heavy story arcs with defined end conditions or completely undirected exploration of a setting?

27.   What is the depth of strategy and does this depend on perfect mechanical balancing?  Is it a deeply strategic game where battle maps and careful optimization of resources is necessary for victory, or is mechanically resolved conflict an afterthought?

28.   What is your audience?   What makes your game unique and memorable enough that your audience will pay good money for your game as opposed to the competition?

Step 6: Playtesting

This is one of the most critical steps in game design and often one given insufficient attention.   Unlike almost all other forms of creative media, Roleplaying Games depend on often intricate mechanical systems.   The only way to determine how those systems function is to playtest and this is also one of the only ways to detect any emergent properties produced by your game.

29.   How many alpha playtests will you have?   Alpha playtests in my jargon refers to basic testing of the game structure.   These are necessary to see if the underlying premise of the game can be managed with the core of your system.   Good friends and your regular play group are ideal for this testing.

30.   How much stress testing will you have?   After your alpha playtests, you need to have some individuals intentionally try to break your game system while following your rules as written.    You know any engineers or any exploitive rules-lawyers?  This is where they can help you the most.

31.   How many Blind playtests will you have?   This is the stage where you give your draft game to someone else with no additional verbal or written explanation and ask them to run a game.  Ideally you would provide a sample scenario and they would record the session for you.  When you run your own game, you will reflexively patch over many mistakes, or make snap judgements which are unsupported by your text.  Blind playtests will expose these problems for you.  Rules-averse players are ideal for these blind playtests as they will ask the most useful questions and force the GM to try to locate the answer.

32.   Will you have an open beta test and/or a closed one?   This allows you to polish the game and catch some of the left over artifacts from previous iterations.  English majors, literature buffs and militant grammarians are best for these tests.

Step 7: Editing

This step tends to be performed in parallel with Playtesting.  Each test will reveal more problems which need to be cleaned up in the editing process.

33.   How much time do you plan on spending on revising the core elements of the game design?  This is correlated to the number of alpha playtests, amount of stress testing and the outcomes of the Blind playtesting.

34.   How much time do you plan on spending on editing the organizational structure of the game, so as to optimize the text’s capabilities as an instructional text and as a reference text?

35.   How much time do you plan on spending doing revision of the text for clarity of prose and correct grammar?  This is traditionally referred to as line editing.

36.   How many friends, if any, will you ask to read through the text to spot errors for you?

37.   Are you planning on hiring someone to do design editing, structural editing or line editing?

Step 8: Layout

This step can be a challenge for some, or a breeze for others.  Layout is generally the process of turning a basic word-processed game into a final, visually attractive and easy to read page of gaming book.  It can involve insane amounts of work, expense and head-ache.  That said, some rare individuals are comfortable enough with the technologies that they do this task professionally.  Respect the graphic designer.

38.   What format will the book be in? Optimizing layout for a PDF on a widescreen computer monitor is quite different from an 8.5” x 11” printed book.   You need to nail down your form factor at this point.

39.   How fancy do you want the layout to be?   If the layout is sufficiently simple, it might even be possible to manage with a word processor alone and avoid the extra expense of full layout software.

40.   Are you planning on doing the layout yourself, getting a friend to do the layout for you or hiring someone to lay your book out?

41.   If you are doing the layout, do you want the expensive industry standard software of Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress ?  Alternatively, do you want to try to learn the open source and free competitor called Scribus ?

Step 9: Art Direction

During the layout process, a series of blank spaces were left waiting for some artistic masterpieces.  Since we don’t want to disappoint the fans, it’s time to add some visual art.  The key sets of questions revolve around what kinds of art you wish to incorporate.

42.   What are your limitations in terms of art; can you use colour or are you limited to greyscale?  Black and white?  Only shades of red?

43.   Are you restricting yourself to a specific art style which would be appropriate for the game system?  Sumi-e brush art might be perfect for a Samurai game, but wouldn’t necessarily fit a classical Norse-inspired fantasy game.

44.   Will you produce any of your own art?  This could be in the form of pencil sketches, traditional paintings, digital photography or vector images.

45.   Will you use public domain art?  It is freely available for any purpose and any photographs produced by the government of the United States of America are automatically released into the public domain.   Project Gutenberg also has a series of images you can appropriate.

46.   Will you use Creative Commons art?  If so, you will need to pay attention to the specific license used.  Any “Non-commercial” creative commons art cannot be used for your project if you are planning on selling your game.   The “Share Alike” clause can potentially force you release your game under the same licence.  It may be possible to contact the owners of the CC art and acquire separate permissions.

47.   Will you buy rights for reuse of existing art for your game?   This would be relatively economical.

48.   Will you commission original art for your game?  This is particularly appropriate for the cover of your game.  This will be relatively expensive, though if you contact relatively young artists fresh out of school you may be able to negotiate noticeably lower rates.

Step 10: Production

This is how you transfer a digital file into something in other people’s hands.   This can be a digital file (with almost no costs for production) or a printed dead-tree variant which would incur some expenses.

49.   Are you going to restrict yourself to digital content such as PDF’s and/or the various e-book formats?

50.   Will you print a very small number, or are you highly risk adverse?  If so, use a Print on Demand service such as Lulu.   These POD services will print each copy individually, charge the customer and ship it to the customer.  The margins are very low in this fashion and the quality can be variable, but there is no expense up front.

51.   Will you print a small number of copies (50-500)?   In which case, try a Digital Printer who could fulfill those volumes.  There will be up-front costs, but the margins will still be better then Lulu.

52.   Will you print a large number of copies, at least 500 if not 1000?  Assuming you are certain that you can sell enough copies and your financing is solid, this can get you the best margins and the lowest per-unit cost.  Highest risk option among them though, so beware.

Step 11: Sales and Distribution

Once you have the books produced, the question is how you will perform the mighty ritual or transforming product into cash.  This is typically done by shipping a book to a customer who then sends you money.

53.   Will you sell them personally?  It’s the best option for you financially, though it takes a great deal or effort on your part to fulfill and engage customers.

54.   Will you sell at conventions?  This incurs additional costs as booths can be pricy, but you are surrounded by gamers and you can run demos.

55.   Will you sell through some fulfillment house such as Indie Press Revolution?   They take a notable cut, but handle distribution for you and definitely boost your overall sales even if your profit per book suffers.

56.   Will you sell directly to retail stores?  That will require some careful negotiation and you will have to provide them with a discount in the 40-50% range off of the MSRP (cover price).

57.   Will you sell through standard distribution?  Extremely unlikely if you are listening to my advice as you usually only get a very small amount of cash per book sold.  If you do manage to get traditional distribution however, you will get your book in thousands of hands which certainly isn’t bad.

58.   Will you be selling internationally?  If so, how will you handle little things like customs, tariffs and other export-related issues?

Step 12: Marketing and Support

This is the final step for any product that you might sell; ensuring that people know about it and helping your fans out with your game.   Not only does this encourage future sales, but it also makes you feel all warm and fuzzy as you realize you have fans that enjoy your product.

59.   How much transparency will you provide?  Will you publicize your quarterly sales, or will you keep your design and financial workings private?

60.   Will you pay for advertisement?

61.   How will your average gamer hear about your game?

62.   When you receive a negative review, will you argue against it, or will you thank them respectfully for their feedback and consider it for future revisions?   This is a trick question by the way….

63.   How much support are you willing to provide to your customers?

64.   Will you use a blog, a wiki and/or a forum?

65.   Will you release your product under one of the Creative Commons licenses?

I hope that this structure and at least some of the questions can inform your future design mastery.  Feel free to link to this document, print it and/or mail it to your political enemies.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.

Jason Pitre
Genesis of Legend Publishing
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