Tag Archives: RPG Design

How we design a role-playing game

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I thought I’d share a bit about how our game design process works and (in a subsequent post) what we’re currently working on. This is not necessarily the best way to design a game, and we’re always looking at ways to get more stuff done, but at the same time we are only two people, geographically separated and both with full time jobs and families. This is what works for us.

Idea

We have lots of ideas. Any time we have an idea that might be game worthy, we put it on our (private) Wiki. Currently we have around 40 ideas that are worth making an entire game from. At this stage the idea is simply a 1-4 line premise. This could be as simple as “A spy game” or as in-depth as

Status: Refugee (working title) – Set today, the Solar System is destroyed by a nova. Luckily for us, the Interstellar government intervenes and transports all 6 billion of us off-world, in the very short space of time we have left before the Sun explodes. We all then become refugees spread across dozens of worlds, with no clue about laws, customs, aliens, technology, where our families are, etc. Many, many campaign and adventure possibilities.

Germination

We let the ideas sit on the ideas page for a while to germinate. Because we tend to read that page relatively frequently, we’ll see something that catches our eye and remember something to add it to the idea. Eventually, one of us will write a piece of fiction or a scrap of a system or background, often as a blog post. This gives the idea enough weight to drop into …

Development

At this point we give the idea it’s own wiki page and move any content to there. Usually we’ve had enough work done on this point to at least fill one page. Our wiki sends us updates via RSS any time someone makes a change to any page, so that’s usually what sparks things off. I’ll check out an update Matt has made, then I’ll add a bit to what he’s done, based on whatever goes click in my head when I read (and vice-versa). This tends to be bursty, so we get 4-5 “bits” done at a time, where a bit can be anything like a collection of relevant links, a piece of relevant fiction, some background notes, or even an entire system.

Our projects hang out in this stage for a while, until they gather enough of these bits that the wiki starts to become an unwieldy place for them to gather any more. We currently have 12 games in this stage, some of which we have blogged about (as seen under our Game Design category). This is one area where we are inconsistent on what happens next, but generally we go into …

Book Development

We create a book outline (with all four parts of course) that gives us some idea of how big the book is likely to be. Then we’ll slot whatever blog posts and wiki material we have into that book outline in a desktop publishing app.

From there we keep adding written material, look for artwork, rewrite things we don’t like and so forth. We currently have 5 ideas in this stage, at various stages of completion. We expect to see one of them drop out of this part of the funnel and into print Real Soon Now.

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Six Role-playing Annoyances

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Here are some annoying habits that players can exhibit in your game. There are some suggestions as to how to deal with these problems, either by encouragement (as another player) or enforcement (as a GM).

  • Playing yourself, but with armour

Problem: the character has the exact same personality as the player, which means that every character that players plays has the same personality. The result is usually very forgettable characters a bland roleplaying experience for everyone else. Unfortunately, this type of player is often a roll-player also (see below). Even the two-word-personality is better than this.

Solution: The GM think about the character as a character, instead of a series of statistics. Write down the major motivations of that character and play them. Even two-dimensional role-playing is better than none.

  • Dick Ramhard, and other stupid character names

Problem: you try to play a serious game and someone comes up with a stupid name for their character. This leaves everyone either snickering or sighing every time the character introduces themselves.

Solution: keep your name appropriate to the game setting. GMs should veto stupid names anyway, so this could well be the result of poor refereeing or player-bullying.

  • Objection! Rules lawyering!

Problem: the flow of the game is constantly broken as the player points out the rules and loopholes that have been used or missed in every situation. This is common in players who are more used to GMing, and in those who prefer less narrative style games.

Solution: this is a tough one. Remind the player that the GM is the final arbiter in all things (stick). Reward the player for good role-play, ideally through creating good story,regardless of the rules (carrot). One way is to give a conditional award – e.g. Everyone gets 3 character points for last week’s session. One (or more) of Bob’s are conditional on him not pointing rules infractions in this week’s session.

  • Kobolds can’t kill us metagamers

Problem: the player knows the system/background really well, and knows what every creature or denizen is capable of doing. Often this results in the character taking unrealistic chances based on knowledge he/she wouldn’t have. Sometimes it’s saying something like “there can’t really be a huge dragon in that cave as we’re all puny characters and the GM wouldn’t do that to us”.

Solution: give standard foes a non-standard name and/or appearance. Give them abilities that they could have but aren’t in the published material. Kill stupid characters who go into the dragon’s cave – it’s harsh, but fair (make sure and give plenty of warning that this is a dangerous thing to do!). Don’t tell the players what they are up against – describe to the characters what they experience.

  • Solo adventuring for five (GM Hogging)

Problem: One player insists on taking up a large percentage of the GM’s time. Sometimes this is because of rules-lawyering (above), other times it’s just because they (the GM and the player) don’t realise what they are doing.

Solution: Whether you’re a GM or a player, the simplest solution is to engage the other players in roleplaying. As a player, you should also try to engage the GM-hog, which will free up the GM and get the game moving again. If you can’t engage him/her, at least the RP with your other team-mates will provide for an interesting session. As a GM, you need to get better at managing your time equally (as much as possible) between players – creating circumstances for inter-player RP is one of the most effective time management techniques.

  • Roll-playing, or role-playing?

Problem: a player insists on making a roll for everything (“It’s a … pleasure to meet you!”), which not only slows down the game, but many times doesn’t make any sense. This can often be frustratingly combined with rules-lawyering and playing oneself and at it’s worst can lead to min/maxing in order to ensure the best rolls.

Solution: as a GM, I’ve taken away a player’s dice and even his character sheet to prevent roll-playing. As a player, I’ve tried to lead by example – I keep my character sheet upside down as a rule, and roll only when the GM tells me to.

Got any more annoyances? I know there are lots I didn’t cover (like Munchkin, Hack and Slash, etc.) mostly because I felt like they were well-established (they have Wikipedia entries!).

Edit: apologies for the typo – I got roll and role mixed up at a key point. D’oh!

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Status: Refugee – Perspective Selection

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One thing that was bugging me about this game was that which we’ve discussed on a number of occasions about different games: scope. If you are playing refugees with only a small number of worlds available to you, the sheer scope for play is mind-boggling. This then probably requires either a lot of work on the part of the GM, or a lot of background information in the form of source books – or more likely both.

Reducing the character roles available (at least in the initial version of the game) would help give this game better focus. It occurred to me that having the players take on the role of police / enforcement would create a lot of interesting roleplaying situations. What happens when a group of refugees on a particular planet start getting angry at their conditions and decide to become militant? What if two large groups of refugees who had rivalries on Earth get transplanted to the same planet? … and so on.

Giving the focus to policing allows me as a game designer to focus on the things that are important to that sort of role. E.g. what are the laws in different alien societies, how many planets are there and how many humans to each, etc. I can more easily create rules of thumb for large numbers of planets, because I’m viewing them from a particular perspective.

For now, as I continue work on this game, I’m going to assume that the players are humans working for this agency. Expect to see some more background information and fictional snippets over the coming weeks.

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Status: Refugee – A beginning

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They repurposed I-90 into a massive people-processing line, putting you through checkpoint after checkpoint. This one for DNA scan, the next one for ID verification, the next for health assessment–the list seems endless. You stand under the afternoon sun, sweating (is the sun getting hotter already?), shuffling with the line and lugging your allocated 50 kilos of personal belongings that you quickly stuffed into a backpack.

Your first real glimpse of a K’toaran is when you get to the destination allocation desk. You’ve seen them on TV, but that’s different. Seeing one up close is kinda … freaky. You try not to stare at the big flat head–does this thing even have eyes?–as the big, sewage-colored alien silently offers you a token with one of its many hands. You take it and trundle on, a little shell-shocked. Maybe the extra hands are what make the K’toarans so efficient. Maybe the big head contains a really big brain. Or maybe it’s just because they seem to breathe out their ears.

You turn the colored token over in your hand. It’s made of a dull red metal and shaped like a house, and stamped in some language you can’t read. You shuffle off toward the next checkpoint. Not too far ahead of you, where the toll booths used to be, are the Bridges. It looks like someone built a Roman acqueduct across the highway and put a different world in every archway.

Last checkpoint.

Another K’toaran takes your chit and puts it in a brown blob that you assume is a computer. It spits out a wrist-band made of that same dull red metal which you strap on. The word “REFUGEE” is embossed on it in several languages, some of which you don’t recognise.

A warm, female voice comes out of the blob. “Please ensure you wear your wrist-band at all times. In addition to carrying all your identification and biological data, it maintains your credit balance and any other information needed by your adoptive government. Please follow the red line.”

Looking down at your feet you see a red line painted on the ground leading to one of the archways. As you approach, you can see a room through the Bridge, much like a waiting room at a hospital or a government office, with people sitting half-bored, half-expectant on moulded benches. You take a deep breath as you have one last look at the Boston skyline, then step through the Bridge to your new home.

On another planet.

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Super Hero vs. Science Fiction

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A little off-topic, this one.  I was considering role-playing genre and inspirations for games (after Matt’s previous post) and I realised that I hadn’t seen a big budget science fiction movie released in ages.  Everything had either been fantasy, kids movie or a comic book spin-off.

Am I missing anything?  Apart from the Star Wars Episode III, has there been any scifi blockbusters in the last few years?

Originally written for lategaming.com.

Keeping track of time

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One of the more challenging aspects of being a GM is ensuring the game world retains its believability. Mature players (by this I mean anyone who role-plays, rather than someone who plays a one-man-army war-game) demand a world in which things happen much as they do in this world–all actions have consequences (some of which are unforeseen), and much more is happening in the world than what the characters see.

Part of creating this illusion is of course in your world building, but an equal part is time management–keeping track of all the events that you have planned to happen, and making up new ones based on the actions of your players.

One method I’ve used to do this is a simple table of time/characters. With time along the top of the table and characters (including PCs and NPCs) down the left, it is simple to prepare before the start of a session by jotting down what the NPCs will do assuming the PCs do nothing. As the session progresses, you can modify that based on player activity. One thing to be careful of is the linear nature of a table can lead you to linear thinking on the part of the NPCs. This might sound dumb, but having a table like that will literally encourage you to think within the box.

Another method I’ve used is more like a traditional brainstorm–bubbles with text associated with arrows. This means you can keep track of NPCs actions (and even non-action things like desires and intentions) in more of a flow-chart. Drawing new lines of association between bubbles as different events occur to change the landscape means that it’s more likely that things will be less linear. However, little bubbles scattered over a page make it harder to keep track of the times when events are going to occur.

Finally we get to the method I currently use, which is a mash-up of the two. I use bubbles to note down events and ideas, and a table to tell the order in which they will happen and did happen. That way the game flows freely, I can make notes quickly and still tell where everyone is at any given time, and when the players are talking among themselves I can update my table as I go.

I’ve found that having the bubbles makes it much easier for me to think up sub-plots and micro-plots on the fly, and to ensure that the characters that are relevant to that plot are available at the right times to be involved.

Originally written for lategaming.com.