Processing my way to a game

Posted by Jere on May 21, 2006 at 10:09 PM

I’m going to be referring to my design process as I develop what our next game is going to be.

My game Tantaene Animis Caelestibus Irae has wrapped up so its time to start thing new games. Iin the after game wrap-up session a few desires came out for the next game:

1. Keep the group together. This is actually a pretty unusual goal for me as I don’t think I’ve worried about his for 15+ years. My basic modus operandi is to pitch a game concept and see who is drawn in. I’m lucky to exist in a pretty big pond of gamers. However, this time around there is a very real desire from the group to keep the band together and I’m not seeing any reason not to. So a major goal is to develop a game that everyone will have equal fun.
2. Episodic stories with an overarching theme. Stories that you know when they are done but are tied together by a season arch. Basically they want to play in a style reminiscent of most genre television since the early ‘90s (Babylon 5, Buffy, you name it)
3. Travel. Theres a huge desire for a travel game.
4. Heroes. They want to be heroes this time.
5. Cast of thousands, a place where you know everyone’s name. Different locales but a core group of NPCs with whom deep relationships can be built on. These relationships should be that of equals.

What I’ll be trying to do here is, with the group, develop the roadmap of the game expectations, its mechanics, controls, rules of fairness and unfairness and a whole host of other stuff. If I’m successful it will give a good glimpse inside my head, and make the game more successful. If I’m not, will hopefully the exercise will get me closer to being successful.

Now I’m currently in the first step, identifying goals. Though to be honest I’m skipping the second (Recruiting) and moving right into the third I’ve really had the first three goals handed to me. I’m going to take what interests me and fashion them a little. What I want to do is to fashion these into a solid set of goal statements. The general rule I've always been taught and followed about goal writing can sort of be modified to fit gaming as follows:

1. Write the goal down
2. Brainstorm to identify the things that by being demonstrated achieves the goal
3. Sort through the stated activities and select those that best represent the goal
4. Incorporate the activities into a statement that describes what the game will do
5. Evaluate the resulting statement for its clarity and relationship to the original fuzzy notion.

Basically a game goal is a clear statement of what the game will demonstrate I.e., what shared imaginative space it will create. That’s why they should form the foundation for all subsequent game design activities.

I’ve crafted the following goal statements using this process from my starting three:

1. Player input, achieved through consensus building, will develop a world, mechanic set, and play strategy that will appeal to everyone (this is my easy objective, but a good thing to remember).
2. Play will use structural breakdowns to define the session and the story where the opening, closing, and certain key transition points will be fixed but the middle will utilize an accordion structure to allow immersive play.
3. Narrative use of space and time will be achieved through use of a travel and the search for believable and memorable spaces.
4. Characters will be superior in degree to others and to their environment, that is the mode is that of Romance, where the actions are marvelous, but the hero is human. "The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability."
5. Community will be expressed both in the social contract and in the interactions of the players with the world.

I think these are ambitious, but I’ve never been known not to be ambitious.

So know I’ll run these by the players. But honestly because I know the group and what they want I know I’ll do best if I do so by wrapping this in setting, because that’s what appeals most to this group.

Folks have asked me a lot since I started talking about this what I mean about entry behaviors. And it’s probably a bad term and I should find a better one. What I basically mean is what the players’ skills and behaviors are. I’m a firm believer that we all change as we game, and that we can game to develop our gaming skills. I’m a different, and better, gamer than I was 5 years ago; and I find that each new game is designed to bring out different aspects of my gaming experiences.

Looking at the entry behaviors of my current group I see the following important things:

• Setting is very important.
• Information is okay, but it has to be given in small, easily organized lumps.
• 1st person voice is a hot button topic. Some are eager for more. Otehrs are resistant. If this group stays together there probably needs to be a compromise here (note, play strategy development should focus on this).

So instead of a recruiting step what I’m going to do is wrap the goals in a few different packages, present them to the group and see what flies. This will be the third step, “What do we want the game to do” which we’ll come out off ready to write the campaign framework, discuss social contract, play strategies and choose some mechanics (and I can assure you, conflict resolution will be a hot button there). And since I, like anyone else posting on a blog I am an exhibitionist, you can expect to read about it all if you are interested.