Blankshield

Sigh. This is going to sound really bad to folks who don't know what I'm talking about but...

I can't find my copy of Sex and Sorcery. Did I lend it to someone who reads this?


thanks,

James

Coolness.



James

Allright, it's official.

Barring super-teeny exceptions about Serenity and Battlestar Galactica, I've talked about nothing but gaming for three months.

Three. Months.

I'm moving this to Blankshield Press. Where it will be called something witty like "smart ass opens his mouth, and can't shut up."

Link to follow.

James

We interrupt your regular blogging service to bring you an exercise in pain.

Reality Cops

Regular blathering about game design will continue when I recover. It may contain sage advice about the foolishness of deciding to do a 24 hour RPG at 10 PM on a Tuesday.

let me know what you think.

James

Allrighty. In this bit, I'm going to address some of the obstacle-jumpers that go along with any kind of writing, not just RPG's. Mostly to get them out of the way, but also as a reminder that making an RPG is writing, even if it is to a very specific purpose.

Just write. Yup. Sit with an empty page, or a blank screen or whatever you do your writing on and sit there. Do not allow yourself to move until you've written something. Anything.

Change your environment. Go somewhere else to do your writing. The local library, the closet under the stairs, a garden, whatever. Have a place you can go to write that is at least metaphorically a separate space from the rest of your life.

Watch faces. Go somewhere with high traffic, like a food court or subway station or busy courtyard in an office tower. Look at the people and the faces and try to imagine their stories, what drives them, why they are there and what they are doing. Plug them into your game.

Play what if and what kind games What if.... the world was really flat? If you were a flower, what kind would you be? How about that guy? Him? Her? Your sister?

Carry a notebook. Take a notebook with you everywhere, and keep one beside your bed. Whenever something neat or interesting catches your eye, or you get a cool idea for your project, write it down.

These are just a handful of the tips that professional writers keep pushing and repeating when asked for advice from people who want to write "but can't". I take credit for none of them, I'm just regurgitating today. There's lots and lots of advice out there; if you hunt around (Google is your friend) you can probably even find your favorite authors giving writing advice. Some will work for you, some will flop horribly; use what works.

Next post will get back to the game-specific kind of advice.

James

Getting to the Nuts and Bolts.
(the actual writing and designing parts)

The single strongest thing I can recommend, is this thread on the forge. Quoting:

Anytime I want to design either a new setting or a new system, I'll sit down and imagine what a "perfect" game session would be like when it's actually played. In my mind's eye, I'll actually see fictional players sitting around a table playing my game.
As they're playing their game in my mind, I'll write down the game in a dialog format without any details of how the system behind the game works.

If there was a Nobel prize for Game Design, Roy would get it for this. There are other ways and other tricks and tools, but this one is the one that's worked best and most consistently for me. Go read Roy's stuff in it's entirety.

James

Why do I want to play this game?

This is the other side of the coin from the last question. This time, it's all about me, me, me.

What you need to do is take the fun you've put in your game (remember? The stuff you like.) and communicate it clearly. You need to, both in person and in the written text, be able to clearly let me know what's fun. That lets me decide if I like your kind of fun. One of the absolute high points for me in designing and writing Death's Door was when Person X read the draft and said "I don't think I want to play this game." This told me that, not only was I hitting my design goal (game about facing death), but that I was communicating that clearly. Someone could read my game and say "This is something I wouldn't find fun."

This may sound straightforward, but it's historically been a nasty benchmark to hit for RPG's.

There's lots and lots of other things that tie into this about marketing and publishing and selling, but I'm arbitrarily calling those out of my scope, for now.


Why not just use (D&D, Vampire, GURPS, Mystery System X)?

This ties intimately into the very first (Ok, second) thing I said, which was play lots and lots of different games. Because there may well be a game system out there that does, in fact, do what you want. Unless you're in it purely for the creative challenge, there ain't no point to reinventing the wheel - go use that system.

But more germane to this conversation, when you are writing a game, you need to think about this question. You need to make sure that your game is offering something that D&D and Vampire and the rest do not. Something about your gameplay must be different, or you're not just reinventing the wheel, you're spinning them. You sit there pouring hours and weeks and years of effort into something that ends up being accurately described as "so, pretty much D&D."

BUT. But. Do not innovate just for innovations sake. Don't tack on gewgaws because you're looking at your own game and saying "pretty much D&D". If you hit this stage what you need to do is step back and review the other questions. Because you've missed out on one of them, and I'd hazard a guess that it's probably "Where's the fun?" You're writing this game because you want a kind of fun the other system doesn't offer, right? So if you come out the other end and think "This is just like X" then you forgot to add the fun, straight up.

Hokay. I think that about covers it for the "Thinkin' and Askin'" stage, next post will start getting to the actual nuts and bolts of writing the damn thing.

Anything I missed?

James

Allrighty. The last couple posts have had time to percolate and stew. You've had time to think about where to get material for your budding game, and have an idea of how you need to approach it. Now the gloves come off. Mild language warning. Do not read while operating heavy equipment.

Where's the fun?
Why do I want to play this game?
Why not just use (D&D, Vampire, GURPS, Mystery System X)?

All of these are questions that get right in your face and make trouble. And that's good. Because sooner or later, someone is going to look at your game and ask them. If that someone is you, right now, then you stand a much better chance of having good answers.

Where's the fun?
What about your game is cool? What jazzes you about this game? Why are you excited?
Gaming must be fun. It doesn't always have to be Gee Whiz and Gosh Golly happy fun, but it needs to be interesting to play, and make you want to come back and do it again. What does your game offer to make you come back for more? Five years from now, when you are talking about your game, what will you say? THIS IS WHAT YOUR GAME IS ABOUT.

I'll say that again: This, the fun part, is what your game is about. The pronoun here is critical. This question, and this answer, are all about you. Your game needs to be interesting to you. Unless you are a professional writer (and even then I have my doubts), if you are writing about things you don't enjoy, that will come through the prose as clear as a spotlight, and your game will look like you don't care. Because you don't, pretty much.

There's a lot of baggage that gets rolled into every damn game out there. All that setting detail. Scads of different character types. Genre conventions. All that fucking setting detail. "New" powers in every supplement. A strength statistic.

If that stuff is what keeps you awake at night, more power to you. Write that game. But if you're writing it in becuase "that's how it's done" or because "everyone expects it" you need to jettision that baggage. What you need to do is make the thing you enjoy the focus of your game. This is the part where it's all about you - enjoy it, because it won't last. The thing you love about this game, the thing that kept you babbling at your friends for a week solid until they told you to shut up! Already! Jeez! - That's your game.

Find what is fun for you, and write it. When I pick up your game, I may say "not my cup of tea", but I will know that it's yours.

Next question in the next post.

------
Now, a slight aside. Folks, I NEED that feedback. I am not David fucking Arnison who co-wrote the famousest RPG in the world. I am not Paul Czege who writes games that kick my ass like some people use toilet paper. I am not a gaming guru or theory god.

I'm a guy who's read a bunch of stuff and written a little bit of stuff, and managed to pull off a neat game once. I am talking out of my ass here, and need to know if I'm making sense. I need to know that it's not an empty room out there. I need to know this has value. Because otherwise I'll stop.

I also need to post less when I'm on the other side of a couple glasses of wine. My language goes straight into the crapper.

James

Shiny.

I'm going again.

Go see Serenity.

I'm just sayin'.