Writing a new RPG the Hard Way
I am currently in the throes of designing a whole new role playing game from scratch. For most of my life that would have meant that I’m spending a lot of time doodling in notebooks, and staring at a blank document unsure of how to start. But coming back to rpg game design, I’m older and wiser. I have some tools in my tool belt for dealing with the inevitable problems that happen in any creative project.
The importance of exploration
There’s an old adage in the world of Software Development.
In most projects, the first system built is barely usable....Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.
Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
Software engineers realized early on that, for any sufficiently unknown system, you were likely to get the design wrong in drastic ways that you cannot be aware of until you’ve actually gotten into the world and built something. This adage isn’t just applicable to building software. It is a deeper admonition about design in general. It is an acceptance that no matter how good of an idea you have, it won’t survive contact with the real world in tact.
What does this mean for us game designers? It means that game design isn’t primarily a process of creation, it is a process of exploration. A game is only as fun as it plays, and to know whether a game is fun or not you have to actually play it.
So with that, let’s make our game!
The intuitive game design method
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” - Carl Sagan
I call the diagram above the “intuitive game design method”, because this is how I first approached writing an RPG. It makes perfect sense. I want to play an RPG that I made, so I need to create a book with which to run the game. So I write the whole book then play the game. Easy right?
How many iterations of your game will you need to do before you get to a good design though? If you’re designing games this way, you better hope you get it right on the first try otherwise you’re going to be working on this thing for a long long time.
The intuitive method poses some obvious problems when you think about it.
Writing a book takes a long time.
I’m investing a lot of time writing to explain something that may be no fun at all.
After I play the game, if I want to change anything, I’ll likely have to change the whole book.
By writing your book first, you have made this project a real bummer. You’re spending a lot of time toiling in uncertainty, by yourself, with no guarantee that the end product will be worth a damn.
Don’t design games this way. You deserve to have more fun.
The exploratory game design method
This diagram is a little more complicated, but it makes game creation an act of exploration and play. There is a central realization you need to come to grips with in order to design this way.
You do not need an RPG book to play an RPG.
One of the main purposes of an RPG book is to transfer the knowledge of how to play a game into the head of another person. If you are both the author of the game, and the person running it you get to skip a LOT of writing. You can rely on hastily scribbled notes, your memory, and your improvisational ability to fill in gaps.
This means you can ‘write’ and play an RPG as soon as your idea about how to play the game is solidified enough for you to bring it to the table and communicate it to your players.
You can test ideas, without testing a full game
The other realization that helps with the exploratory method is that you don’t need to test a full game. Do you have an idea for a dice mechanic? Go sit at the kitchen table and start rolling. Grab your dice and start making notes. Do you have an idea for a class ability? Spin up a combat encounter and actually play it. Right now. Do it. Get it to the table. Need a monster for your combat encounter? Improv it, make notes as you play and maybe you’ll come up with some more ideas to test!
You need to move, cut, paste, roll, touch, and feel things with your hands to design. You need to step away from text and abstractions, and take concrete actions. The game in your head is never real enough to tell you whether it’s fun or not. Put your idea into the real world right this instant and play.
Minimum viable play test
Eventually rolling dice at your own table, and snapping together the lego pieces of your ideas will add up to something a bit more than disparate ideas. You’ll have something more coherent that you want to inflict on other people. Maybe a few character options and a core mechanic and some NPC rules you want to take for a spin, but really would like to get a feel for how players might interact with your game.
Don't start writing just yet. You are still the GM, and don’t need to download the rules into another person’s head. You just need to understand them well enough to explain them to your players.
What you need to do next is create a minimum viable play test. Create a checklist of all the things you need to actually test the specific piece of the game you want to test. Are you testing combat rules? You’ll need a small scenario, an NPC, a few character sheets, and likely some kind of reference sheet for you and your players. Don’t make any of this fancy. Don’t spend a lot of time on it. Get these materials together with the least amount of effort and start testing as soon as possible. Remember, it’s all going to be wrong anyway, and anything you create is going to need to be heavily edited. If all you have is loose notes scribbled on paper, you won’t have any attachment to the work you put in, and you’ll be able to get started on your next iteration with more excitement and less baggage.
The Hard Way
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” - Ira Glass
I have been telling you that the exploratory method of game design is ‘the hard way’, while also saying it is more fun and fruitful. What gives?
The exploratory method of design is harder because it makes you come to grips with the reality that the game in your head isn’t very fun yet. When you have an idea right now, and test it tonight, you only get to be in love with the abstraction of that idea for a few minutes. The gap between the excitement of your ingenuity and the disappointment of reality is shortened. You get to find out just how bad you are at making games, and you get to find out very quickly. You become aware of Ira Glass’s ‘gap’ in one evening of pencils and paper.
But even so, anything worth doing is hard. If lifting weights In the gym is effortless, then you aren’t building muscles. If the design of your game was effortless, it’s not likely that it’s new, innovative, valuable, or terribly creative.
When you test your ideas faster and more often the feedback loop will improve your game and your skills faster. You’ll close the gap between your ability and your taste. You will feel the strain of growing, but you and your game will be better for it.