Big Game Hunting - Game design roundup

So, the last five articles I’ve provided talked about how to design a game, everything from setting and backstory to design. The final part of this is distributing it.

And I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to distribution it has to be said. In my ‘real world’ job, I’m a copywriter, editor and PR specialist as well as crazy author type lady. And to be honest, it’s the bit I like the best.

The best bit about producing a game that works is sharing it with others – I know many people that take part in homebrew projects and then keep them to themselves – which is a waste in some ways. If you’re having fun and after some really robust tests (hint, I usually find wine and a group of friends that are up for a laugh really helps after final design) and it still works – I’d say release it.

But the question would then become ‘how’?

With digital printing and print on demand, it’s not as difficult as it used to be – but, no matter what anyone tells you, it’s going to cost you something. If you’re not a professional writer, you’re going to need an editor (though, your friends might help with that) and an artist (again, friends might help). At that point, you could just distribute it as a PDF – there are some great sites that let you do so (including Drivethru RPG).

And if you want to involve a local element – print some business cards with a download code and give them to your local store. They sell one, he hands out the card – some software lets you generate one-time access codes – others will rely on the honesty of people buying from the local store to not give out the URL.

And if that makes money – consider investing in a real live print run. The gaming industry is pretty well set up for that – one of the groups in my home town, Contested Grounds Studios put out a|state when I was still back home, over six years ago and it was a roaring success. Gregor Hutton, who is an amazing game designer (and a good friend), puts out his games quite a lot and appears at gaming events. He’s the reason I design my own stuff – after chasing me to take part in a 24 hour RPG contest. The only thing that really limits you is the time you’ve got to invest – because that’s often a bigger ‘expense’ than printing, especially if you go PDF first, then offer a print run.

A final thing to remember – where I can, I buy the extra PDFs that go with our games because I like them on my iPad – and with the Kindle Fire coming soon, it might be that GMs find their favourite tool isn’t their dice roller, it’s their e-reader. In which case, the investment for indies is going to be tiny.

This week, Kai is still editing. The less said about it, the better, but on the bright side, the book is out on the 12th February!

Big Game Hunting - The penultimate... fight scene?

So, you’ve got background, you’ve got character, you’ve got stats... what’s last?

The only thing we’ve not talked about so far is fighting and other rolls to ‘gain’ something. Contested checks are great fun, but unless you have a great grasp of the underlying basis of your game, and what you *want* from it and its setting, contested checks are also the hardest thing to design.

And unfortunately, they’re also the area I’m weakest in. So instead of explaining how they work, I thought I’d save you a bit of time and tell you about a disaster I had designing my CSI style game.

So, picture the scene. I’ve got this kick ass mechanic that lets you accurately decide how long something is going to take to solve, and a chart that lets you ‘rank’ your investigation by how long it takes to solve something – there’s even a mechanic to decide if the person escapes or commits another crime. It all works. I’ve got rolls for science checks and XP bonuses for people to award if the description and ‘jargon’ is right.

And then I got onto capturing the criminal, if she/he hasn’t escaped.

The problem I encountered was that I could not weight the rolls to show that the criminal was/wasn’t a mastermind and was/wasn’t adept. Some crimes were vicious – others were planned. And unless the GM had separate tables to roll against, invariably, the CSI’s, no matter how weedy, kicked his/her ass.

The thing is, the more varied the game, and the encounters, the harder the contested rolls will be to design. In the end, I left that freeform – it’s part of the GM set up right at the beginning. There’s 12 tables to pick from, and the GM picks one from each row of three – and that covers every conceivable event that you’ll hit for ‘fighting’ – and that forms part of the ‘bad guy’ character gen. It’s not the most satisfying solution, but it works. So, I’d say that if you’re not getting what you want approaching it head on, try it from another side. You never know – it might work better if you make it more rigid – or if it’s too rigid – make it less rigid.

This week, Kai lied last week and is still on FINAL, LAST CHANCE edits for Glass Block. She’s also thinking hard about what to write next week And yes, she’s considering how to share the CSI game too – if her brain doesn’t asplode first.

Big Game Hunting - Sully their character!

Game designers are, let’s face it, responsible for most of the initial shouting and swearing that goes on around the table in general, and also some of the biggest hilarity before people actually gets into the game itself. That's right, this week I'm talking about the player character design process.

Depending on how people choose characteristics, both good and bad, will dictate how they play their character in game. Also, you’re giving the GM fuel at this point – the truly savvy GM listens to how people describe their characters, and how others discuss and react to the information they share.

Abilities and skills are interchangeable in the minds of players, but it’s important to understand when designing games that there are three sub types of designing a character. It’s key to explore a couple of systems before settling on how you’re handling this bit – you can either have something that’s really ‘rigid’ but actually generates the right range of characters for the game, or something really loose and give your players the chance to rely on luck and common sense.

Positive and negative are difficult to consider in terms of characteristics. So once you’ve generated the vital ‘statistics’, (whether bought or via dice roll), the next step is almost always to choose from a list of characteristics. Of course, for the game writer, it’s not as easy as ‘just picking’. Depending on the mechanic of the game, you’ll design it in one of several ways.

Both ways are basically based around XP though – the GM will give the gamers a pool of points to buy stats from. And this is the game designer part - you have to think about how your player is going to design the character they’re going to play. And to do this, you have to think about archetypes.

Archetypes are the stereotypical ‘meta’ characters that people can create. Warrior, mage, healer, rogue, etc. Each of these character types have strengths and weaknesses. This is your ability/attribute/skill set pool. So, you can create the characters, brain storm over the elements you think you might need, and playtest, playtest, playtest! And then, add a splash of personality. So, you’re a fighter and you’re good at it – you’re probably going to be an arrogant toad. So, add arrogance (and give that stat a consequence – you could add points back into the pool to buy something else, but it could mean that in certain rolls, you have a penalty. Positive stats cost more to buy, but add to rolls, or give automatic successes etc.)

There’s a final part to this – you need both the positive, and the negative. Without negative traits characters aren’t only one dimensional, but they’re difficult to play, and mostly unsatisfying. So, ensure that there’s some nasty in with all that nice.

D Kai Wilson-Viola is on FINAL EDITS for Glass Block and is genuinely wishing her senile cat would stop the pre-dawn chorus.

Big Game Hunting – Meet the Munchkins….

Our illustrious leader, Ben, filled me in very briefly today about the kerfuffle that Fantasy Flight caused when releasing a new game that, apparently, hadn’t been play tested to a rigorous standard. So, instead of talking about characters this week, I thought I’d talk about something that usually comes much later in the design process, but you really need to start planning for from the outset.

Play testing.

It’s actually quite fun. I’ve had one play tester ask for a ‘look good naked’ skill and discovered, while doing the final playtest of another game that falling from a kerb is actually lethal. And apparently, that that newest release for Mansions Of Madness (which is being very quickly errata'd and fixed), needs two rooms... printed on either side of one piece of card. And that’s just one thing I was told about.

It might not seem like much, but play testing is one of my wish list, big-ticket gaming items – and one that I don’t actually do very often. I like play testers to find holes in my games – much like I like my beta readers to find holes in my plots, so I thought I’d share some play testing wisdom – perhaps, it’ll help you design characters and scenarios.

1) Never expect people to play it straight – in fact, if you’ve got a friend that likes to ‘munchkin’, let them. It’ll stop the conversations later on of ‘I can’t win’, which no GM likes to hear. Or worse, a GM having to fill the holes themselves.

2) Deliberately cheat when play testing – how obvious is it if the GM cheats? How about the players? Look at every hole you’ve got and try to drive that MAC truck through it. That way, you know what to adjust.

3) Go to extremes. Play a game where one round the players are lucky (automatic critical successes) – does it make the game impossible to play later because they’ve won stuff that they shouldn’t have. And then, play the same round the other way and critically fumble the rolls. Again, does it really shaft the players? Then, middle of the road? What happens.

Finally, roll actual results a couple of sets of times. What’s the average outcome?

If you do this for several key mechanics in your game, you’ll probably get a feel for where the system is unbalanced, before your players do. Which is a very good thing.

This week, Kai can barely walk, having broken herself. There’s no dice roll to fix that, but, on the bright side, she’s pokemonning for all she’s worth.

Big Game Hunting - System thoughts (this might get a bit complicated)

I’ve always thought of system as the bit where people say ‘and here comes the science part’ in the advert (and the character dying as the ‘because you’re WORTH IT’ bit), but system is one of those things that I understand well enough to design, but probably not well enough to explain.

System is complicated, it’s scary, and it’s strange. So why is it, exactly, that I’m trying to reinvent the wheel designing my own? And worse than that, encouraging you, gentle GM to do the same?

Simple – if a system doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for your players either. Partially broken systems lead simply to “munchkinning” (where a player designs a character that deliberately breaks the rules) and the only person that doesn’t really enjoy that is well... everyone, there’s no harm in it, right?

Well, right. And wrong. Because if you’re one of the blessed few that can do better, then you should.

Designing a system comes down to ensuring that something is not only balanced, but works in ways that would work, whether you remove the optional parts. It works, whether your player is lower level or higher level, and is balanced to make sense in your universe. It can be a very difficult thing to do – because balance goes beyond players and NPCs and means that if there’s a cause and effect style event, that the rules cover that too. I remember play testing a game once and discovering that for even marginally unlucky to even kinda lucky dice rolls, we had to change the system because tripping and falling off the curb killed!

While you don’t think about that, the important thing when designing a system with balance is to remember that even after play testing, you have to find and apply errata. There are various game companies out there and there are frequently errata issued, so that’s OK. Whether this bothers you or not is your choice, but after extensive play testing you’ll still find something that you haven’t thought of. Which is why system designing becomes more and more complicated as time goes by – and each iteration can introduce complications – so it’s important to build a base system underneath that works. Once you’ve got the ‘solid’ base, it should bend but not break.

Whether it’s diceless, one dice or several dice types, find a system that works for you, then you can quantify – it doesn’t matter what dice you use, as long as it makes some measure of sense.

This week, Kai is getting angry at MS Word’s rigid spell check – munckinning is a word dammit!

Big Game Hunting - So… you want to design a game?

RPG games are some of the most amazing things that people can ever write – they’re more intensely interactive than most books and can take people into new worlds that they’ve never experienced. Give them the opportunity to explore as people they can never be.

As a games designer, it’s YOUR job to give the GM the tools to create the worlds that underpin and support their story. It’s your job to find the best rules set and character design and background to work with what they want, and it’s your job to excite and entice them into playing games.

So, with all of the games and all of the systems out there, why would you design one in the first place, and where do you start?Design is one of those things that can’t really be described – it’s something that you find yourself, but as a game design ‘rule set’, there are a couple of things that you should consider.

And over the next five weeks, or more, I’m going to talk about them. For now though, this post is to get you thinking about why you want to design a game, whether you can adapt an existing system, and if not, what you need to think about.

The why is a very personal thing. Game design comes down to filling a gap, either that you’ve got yourself, or one that you can see in the market. My games have always been designed around my books – because they’re important to me. I could have adapted other games out there, but I always worried that they wouldn’t help. For example, right now, I’m designing a game that requires multiple rolls for certain passes – and that these are always a core set and depending on the rolls, overall, will depend on the result. It’s complex, so it needs thoroughly tested, and I don’t think there’s anything quite like it out there. I’m designing this because it’s a specific thing that I couldn’t overcome in any other way. That’s my why. Yours may be more or less complicated.

If you can adapt a game, you might find that easier – it’s often how designers get into understanding the central ideas around designing games. But remember, sometimes its easier to set up your won stuff, so don’t always bodge systems.

Finally – if you’re designing a game, you need to consider a lot of things – from background to rule set to dice, and structure and system. All mostly interlock, so it’s important to start with the hardest one and bend the easier ones to match. Or at least, that’s how I do it.

Next week I’m going to talk system.

This week, Kai is testing out a three part dice roll system. It’s complicated.