Genre and Generic: Part 2

Once again I’m back to talk about the genre of “Fantasy” in games. How can designers stay true the genre without being boring? In the last post I talked about the co-operative battle mechanic that seems to be everywhere (not just in fantasy games), and the one that seems to define the World of Warcraft experience. I realize the discussion strayed from being specifically about “fantasy” and morphed into more about “class-based” systems of combat. Just remember that those particular systems are integral to most fantasy games and we get ourselves back on topic. sort of.

Moving on!

Here's a quick description of one of the more memorable fantasy RPGs I’ve played. The main character has a distinctive sword as his trademark weapon. He wanders around a strange world full of diverse creatures (and usually kills them). He faces the likes of dragons, ogres, and demons. Sometimes he and his friends use magic spells to defeat them. It sounds pretty generic, but I found Final Fantasy 7 to be one of the most unique fantasy titles I’ve played.



Final Fantasy 7 (and it’s barrage of T.V. commercials) was what convinced me to buy a playstation. The game totally lived up to the hype (with one exception:



I mean really...).

What impressed me the most about it was how strange it was, despite being rooted in the traditions of a fantasy RPG. In addition to the features I listed earlier it was also filled with things you never saw in Dungeons and Dragons. The game was infused with all sorts of cyberpunk stuff: machine guns and helicopters (and zeppelins), and robots. Despite all these technologies, the main hero still carried a sword (a hugely impractical sword that was impossibly large). The characters for FF7, indeed all the elements of the game, seemed well thought out and interesting.

Final Fantasy is obviously not “traditional fantasy” by any means but it still feels like part of that genre. To be fair, it’s probably at the fringe of what you could get away with and still call it a “fantasy RPG”. It works as a good example for this discussion because even though it's "out there", it's not completely "gone".

I don't think you have to go that far to keep things lively. But in order to accomplish the task of making a fantasy game (or anything) that doesn’t seem exactly like all the other ones, there are a few things I would take into consideration.

Defining the Genre:

The first part is probably the easy one. How to identify the trademarks of the fantasy genre. What to we expect from a standard “wizards and warriors” type affair? On the surface there are three basic ingredients:

1) A vaguely medieval or early renaissance setting.
2) Magic and mysticism
3) Fantastic creatures and demi-humans.

That’s the makings of your basic fantasy anything. Knights in armor, spell-slingin wizards, and a dragon eating an elf. Perfect! Ship it! These are the superficial elements to the fantasy genre. There are games/books/movies that do great things just by dropping or changing these elements. We've already discussed the cyberpunk infused Final Fantasy VII as an example of addition, but subtracting from these main three elements can yield equally interesting results. The "Harry Potter" series has elements 2 and 3, but is set against a contemporary backdrop and is much more interesting as a result.

Another commonly mentioned aspect to fantasy is the “escapism”. Fans of the genre want more than compelling drama and love-able characters. They want a whole new world to immerse themselves in. Hand-in-hand with that escapism often comes a built-in sort of nostalgia for a past that has long since gone. Fantasy often takes a romantic view of "olden times" and it's this idyllic "world of yore" that we escape to when we get lost in a great fantasy game. Even the aforementioned "Harry Potter" series shares this fondness for days of yore (You never see Dumbledore use a computer or anything like that).

Pushing and pulling all these different elements is what leads to innovation, within a standardized genre.

Question and Answer

Ultimately it's not enough for any of these games or stories to throw together fantasy elements with no real intention or forethought. The memorable experiences do something critical to creating amazing worlds and compelling stories. The best examples of the genre ask us an interesting question, and delivera a thoughtful answer.

Final Fantasy 7 asks the question, “what would happen if a typical fantasy world were imprisoned by a cyberpunk one?” Harry Potter asks, “What would happen if you woke up to discover that you were part of a secret world of Witches and Wizards?” The question can be dark or whimsical (or both), but it's this flight of fancy that drives the whole fantasy experience. The question ignites our imagination, and opens the door to daydreams and wonderment.

This is the part where World of Warcraft falls short. The world is not without its charm. It’s colorful, well presented, and full of variety. Ultimately though, the WoW universe feels so generic because it doesn’t give us a compelling “What if?”. It’s well crafted, but formulaic. While there are some challenging game-play moments, the world itself fails to challenge our minds.



“Thoughtful answers” and tweaking the genre

Asking a compelling question is only half the job. A thoughtful answer is also important. A fascinating set-up will only lead to a let-down if it's not followed through with a thoughtful attempt to examine consequences, and fully explore the logical conclusions that these questions might bring us to.

For games, it's critical that the users themselves are allowed to answer these questions through play. This is more than just moving from one plot point to another. The challenges the players face are the aftermath of the question. The powers and skills they use to overcome those challenges are part of the answer. As the players grow in skill and power, they also understand this world better and are better equipped to solve it's problems.

The Alchemist

Now for some half-assed attempts to tackle some of these issues on my own. I know you’ve all been waiting for it.

For fun I thought I’d challenge myself to spend a few minutes dreaming up an “interesting question” and some “thoughtful answers“ of my own. Here’s what I came up with:

My fantasy setting takes place on an alternate Earth: The fertile crescent, around 4000 BC. Life for the people of this world was once very dangerous. Rival tribes were constantly at war with one another. Food was scarce and dangerous creatures roamed the plains -- a constant threat to the fledgling groups of nomads there.

Over time, life improved for these nomadic hunters. The weaker clans fell or were swallowed up the by stronger ones and a balance of power was achieved. Animals who once terrorized the people were encountered less and less. Food was still hard to come by but the life the people had made was free. A nomad saw the horizon and called everything from here to there “home”.

Into this stable culture comes the first cities of Eridu and Uruk. It is the dawn of Bronze Age in Mesopotamia (I'm playing a lil fast and loose with the history here...a margin of error of about 2000 years...but whose counting? :) )

Popular theories about the founding of the first cities around the Tigris and Euphrates typically involve the invention of agriculture, but it turns out that those theories are incorrect. The first cities were founded after the discovery of a strange substance called "Majuk" (that's right...it's "magic" but spelled differently)

A collection of lesser tribes banded together upon making these discoveries and built permanent walls and other permanent structures to protect the stuff and keep it for themselves.

In its raw state "Majuk" is basically benign, but the priests discovered its secrets. By combining it different elements (wheat, flesh, blood, earth, etc) the "Majuk" would reveal startling properties that were extraordinarily powerful. Majuk could be made to heal or to hurt -- to build or to destroy. A new specialty emerged..."The Alchemist" - who was master of Majuk.

The leading nomadic tribes are now faced with two problems. The lands that they roam and depend upon are being "possessed" by others. This is a concept both foreign and insulting to the nomads. As these prosperous city-dwellers grow in numbers, they steal more and more land. Then of course there's the Alchemists and their Majuk who have tipped the balance of power into their favor.

Enmity also festers within the walls of the cities. The Alchemists are becoming the envy of their world. They have supplanted the standard priests who have fallen from grace. City leaders are also growing suspicious of these strange sorcerers. Mistrust and suspicion threaten to collapse the new society from within.

...Okay so there's my brief little set up. I sketched out a few characters (but I dont have a scanner right now so you have to endure camera phone pictures) including the Sumerian Sorcerers, the Alchemist:

(the alchemist at work)


I liked the idea of giving the alchemist some sort of full face mask to protect their eyes from unexpected results of their experiments. I also picture them as a kind of "grenadier" in combat. They don't shoot lightning from their fingers but they can bottle it and hurl them at their enemies. Alchemists need to be fit and agile in order to accomplish this task. I also gave this guy some "star" patterns (on the mask and pants) to echo the classic image of the wizard in the pointy hat - bedecked with a similar pattern.

(the darker side of alchemy)


Why not turn Majuk into some sort of addictive substance as well. It's frequently consumed in order to absorb the properties it contains. The alchemist is ultimately corrupted by his own creations.

(a warrior type?)


Some alchemists will be in the employ of rulers or mercenaries. They won't likely share all their secrets, but for a price they will sell you some. This warrior wears light clothing but is protected by vials of Majuk sewn into his uniform. He also carries a long staff with a powerful globe of Majuk at it's end...

(Smash!)


He gets a "one-time" use out of it, creating a powerful explosion or shock-wave.

So there you go. A different approach (I hope) to the standard fantasy fare. Obviously it would need a whole lot more work to really bring it to life but I think it's a good start for a fantasy setting that gives us something a little different from the standard fare.

-E

Genre and the Generic. Part 1

Years ago I went to a panel at the Game Developers Conference about "Cinematic gameplay". It wasn't quite what I was expecting. The presenter spent most of his time telling the audience to AVOID being creative and original. New ideas, he said, would alienate your audience, while treading familiar (and formulaic) ground would more easily push the emotional buttons your looking for as a story-teller. It's probably no surprise that this presenter judged the merit of games purely on their ability generate revenue. Games that sell are always good and games that don't are always bad.

I've always approached games from more of an artist's perspective and this sort of crass commercialism was borderline offensive as far as I was concerned, but the presenter brings up an interesting problem: How do you forge an emotional connection with your audience (which requires some sort of familiar territory to operate in) while still bringing something fresh and original to the marketplace. I think there are a lot of ways to approach this puzzle and obviously creative people have solved this problem successfully in the past. Usually they seem to get the most milage out of recombining unfamiliar or surprising elements and finding inspiration from genres that are underused or long out of fashion.

I'd like to take a look at a specific genre/game and see if I can breathe some new life into it while still being true to the core ideas driving that particular category.

World of Warcraft (WOW) is an immensely popular online game in the "fantasy" genre. It features wizards, knights, magic, and all sorts of outrageous supernatural creatures. It's deeply rooted in the same family of story telling given to us by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons. Between books, games, and movies there must be millions of opportunities for fans of this stuff to get their fantasy fix. WOW has delivered a vibrant and exciting take on the sword and socery genre, but Ive noticed a few things since it's release that are starting to bore me.

1) I like WOW and the world they created (which - in terms of visual style at least - owes a tremendous debt to Warhammer), but in many ways it's fairly generic. I suspect that it gets by on charm and scale more than anything else. In terms of art style there has got to be another way to scratch that Elvish Itch.

2) I know that WOW wasn't the first to come up with this, but I'm gonna call it the "WOW system" anyway. It's the mechanic that encourages and creates cooperative game play between the very different types of classes available to the players. It's sort of a system of dependancies between character types that ensure that the greatest challenges can only be bested by a full party of diverse classes. It's a great system but is it perfect? Is that the only way to encourage cooperation? Is it the best way?

Let's talk about this system first. Here's the basic idea: you basically have characters who are offensive (damage dealers), defensive (damage takers) and support characters (healers or characters that enhance the other player's strengths). So here's chart below...



The Warrior is up front, keeping the enemy busy and absorbing most of the damage. Close to him is a short range damage dealer, but one who is typically harder to detect like the Rogue. At long range are the damage dealers like the Mage (who specializes in area effect attacks) and the Hunter (more focused attacks). Supporting all these characters is the priest who's main job is keeping everyone alive.

A couple things stand out to me when i examine this model. First of all I have a hard time believing that all these characters would actually hang out together. Since when to the football players (Warrior) and physics majors (Mage) spend time together? This level of coordination between highly specialized combat units doesn't remind me of the "historical" period typically represented by this genre. It reminds me more of a modern "combined arms" doctrine of warfare:



The armor leads the way along with infantry in close support. Far behind the main fighting is the artillery, and far above are the long range bombers. All the while, logisitics (represented here by a field medic) keep all parties supplied and supported.

So my first instinct is to really look at medieval combat and see if i can draw inspiration from their, but it turns out that those pro game designers are employed for a reason. This more modern approach really does lend itself to more interesting gameplay. Which is probably why you see it everywhere. Pretty much every class based game (from shooters to rpgs and even some board games) follows this model, I'd like to find a way to break out of the system, but looking backwards might not be the answer this time. Besides this is fantasy we are talking about, not history.

(side note: my research into medieval warfare is by no means extensive so there may be some gold there to mine. I did read some stuff about the "lance" which is a sort of mllitray organization that is appropriate to the period, but in the end it didn't seem to offer enough to supplant the more familiar WOW system. )

The real strength of the Combined Arms style of game play is that it allows highly specialized (and therefore unique) character-types to play on the same battlefield together. The side effect to this approach is that the more specialized the class, the more focused it tends to become on one particular task. This is true pretty much everyewhere. Look at something like a small, family run buisness versus a large complex corporation. When you have 3 employees, each person in the business is goind to be responsible for a fairly wide variety of tasks. When you have 3000 employees each small cog in the machine tends to have one particular task that they have to excel at.

When i look at WoW from the perspective of the player's experience it reminds me very much of this sort of "assembly line" approach to solving in-game challenges. Every player (while possibly mindful of their surroundings and fellow players), basically looks in one direction, pulls their lever and presses their button till the encounter ends. Damage dealers attack, healers heal, tanks manage the aggro (meaning they make sure the monsters are focused on them rather then their team members). Usually the interesting part of an encounter in WoW is before it actually takes place (when players decide how best to handle the threat given their specific roles and abilities) or if somethihing goes wrong and your forced to act outside your standard duties.

In fact...when the healer dies, or the tank gets possesed or something else awful happens...thats when the game truly gets intesting and the experience goes from repetitive button pressing to some sort of jazz-like improv session.

The question than becomes, how do you inject that sort of excitement into the standard game play and make it the norm rather than the exception? Here's a half-baked solution I've been tossing around in my head.

First I'd do what any respectable game designer does when faced with a sequel, or expansion, or some task that involves taking an old product and repackaging it: I will add a new resource. We already have "health", "ammo" (or mana), and the invisible "aggro". For lack of a better term lets call the new resource "morale". The primary purpose of morale is to force players to change their focus once in a while from their specialized tasks. Each player's morale is affected by the actions and status of others. The fighter, for example, might get a morale boost by being in close proximity to his teammates. The more fragile members of the party will have to weigh the benefits of boosting the fighter's morale to the consequences of moving closer to where the danger most likely is. High and low morale can trigger events both good and bad respectively. A healer's low morale may result in all players taking more damage from enemy attacks, while high morale might do something like trigger my second idea for enhancing the WoW system: The Chain.

The chain is a mechanic that is baiscally lifted from fighting games like Street Fighter and re-worked into a co-op format. Certain circumstances (like a character's morale being lifted to it's maximum level) unlocks the opportunity to initiate a "Chain". When a chain is intiated, a character's normal actions might change slightly, but only if performed in the proper sequence. That sequence triggers a larger more dramatic effect. Of course the sequence must be acted out amongst multiple characters in the party.

So let's say, the fighter's morale maxes out and as a result, chains are now possible. Any character can initiate the chain. A priest might do it by casting a specific healing spell. A mage might initiate it by casting a simple fireball, etc. Once the chain begins, it requires that the next action performed by anyone in the party conforms to the chain's requirements. Otherwise the opportunity is wasted, (and maybe something awful happens to eveyone). The point is, if the players are just banging away at their buttons and focusing only on their own "buisness", they will likely trigger the chain on accident, and/or break the chain. On the other hand, players who are truly cooperating and are aware of their commrades, will execute the chain and recieve its glorious benefits.

As I have never tested these ideas out, I have no idea how practical or workable it is. One obvious flaw is that there is nothing here that improves the game for a player who is venturing out alone. This is probably not a huge problem with the whole "chain" idea (you just can't use chains while playing solo) but the morale system as I've laid it out could actually be a detriment to a solo player.

Still, the point of this little exercise was to explore ways to improve the multi-player co-op experience and I think stuff like "morale" and "chains" are at least a good start.

Next time I'll look less at the mechanical side of WoW and focus more on the look and feel of fantasy worlds like the ones in World of Warcraft. I'll be trying to find a way to breathe some new life into this very familiar genre while still keeping true to an engaging "sword and sorcery" experience.

Theme

Discussions of "Theme" was one of the first things I encountered when I joined Board Game Geek and became seriously interested in board games. Video game people don't really talk about theme -- not in the same way the board gamers do. Theme, which is to say, "the game's setting", is important to board gamers. Sure there are plenty of fans of abstract games like "Go" or the "gipf" games, but most of the big time boardgame fans have a thing or two to say about the theme of their games.

The prevailing wisdom is that games that have "a lot of theme", suffer in terms of mechanics and games whose focus is on elegant or clever mechanics tend to have dry or shallow themes. The argument goes that a highly developed theme requires extra rules, extra bits, and extra book keeping throughout the game in order to support the subject matter, while games that have compact and elegant rule-sets must necessarily abstract a lot of the "cool stuff" that goes into making a great theme. All sides acknowledge that there are are games that manage to somehow break this rule and do both or maybe just fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. These are the games that many people hold up as "great".

I've always found something missing in this conversation. Many of the games detracted for having shallow or dry themes, seemed very intriguing to me, while other games that were supposedly rich and detailed in their setting ended up failing to capture my imagination.

Recently the guys over at the "Boardgames to go" podcast had a discussion on theme that introduced me to some cool concepts about theme that are worth exploring. You can listen to the conversation here: [link] and I recommend that you do. The ideas put forth by Greg Pettit and Mark Johnson have real potential but at times the discussion lacks focus. After thinking more on the subject I think I know what's missing.

The basic idea put forth (Primarily by Greg) is that what gamers understand as "Theme" is really an amalgam of two separate qualities. These are "Narrative" and "Metaphor" and they are independent of one another. A game could therefore score strong in narrative and weak in metaphor, or strong in both, or weak in both, or anywhere in between. In the most general sense, metaphor is there to help make the game easier to understand and narrative is there to help make the game fun.

Greg is very clear as to what "Metaphor as theme" means: Metaphor is a measure of whether or not the rules or mechanics in a game make thematic sense. He is less clear about what "Narrative" theme is. Throughout the podcast Pettit seems to say that Narrative theme is basically the game's setting. It's the flavor text -- the writing on the back of the box.

This definition is incomplete, especially if these two categories are to be judged independent of one another. In order to figure out what is missing from this definition, I'll take a well known game and break it down in terms of narrative and metaphor.

For this example I'll take the well known board game "Monopoly". What aspects of Monopoly could be described as theme as metaphor?

In Monopoly the players represent real estate tycoons. Throughout the game they acquire property. If someone spends time on your property, you charge them rent. Charging someone for the time spent on your property scores high on theme as metaphor. If you spend more money on your property in order to upgrade it, you get to charge more rent. This also scores high on theme as metaphor. The movement around the board (which traditionally represents Atlantic City) scores low on metaphor, since your movement is dictated entirely by chance ("I'm sorry Mr. Trump, I know you were interested in Park Place but you rolled an 11 so you'll have to take a look at Baltic Avenue instead").

The narrative theme of Monopoly is: "A game of Real Estate investment where players are trying to make the most money and avoid going bankrupt." The first question to ask is "How do we evaluate the strength of Monopoly's narrative theme?". Metaphorical themes are easy to evaluate, either a rule makes thematic sense or it doesn't (It makes sense that I - as a Real Estate Tycoon - make money off of people staying at my hotels).

One might suggest that the strength of the narrative theme is measured by how engaging or appealing an idea it is. While this is certainly an important thing to consider, it is also entirely too subjective to be reliable. The only thing we are left with as a way to evaluate the Narrative strength of this game's theme is based on how it "feels" at the end of the game. Did I "feel" like a Real Estate Tycoon?

If this is our only method of judging a game's Narrative, than it's hard to imagine a case where the metaphoric theme is weak, while the narrative theme is strong. Imagine that we change the rules to Monopoly. In this alternate version, players who land on an opponents property are required to sing a song. Players can upgrade their properties but only after being sent to jail and the game ends when one person lands on free parking. The metaphors are so weak in this example and it's hard to imagine that this game would "feel" true it's intended setting.

If Pettit's theory is to remain useful it needs further clarification. The narrative theme is ultimately the game's story and a story is based on the actions of it's characters. The narrative theme is not only the game's setting, but it's the actions afforded to the players within the course of play. If we accept that that narrative theme is not only "what this game is about" but also "what the players can do", we have a much more concrete way evaluating it, AND it can remain independent of metaphorical theme. It becomes a more powerful tool for evaluation.

Continuing the Monopoly example with this enhanced understanding of narrative, one asks, "What can I do in a game of Monopoly?". The answer being something like, "You can buy, auction, and trade properties. You can charge rent. You can upgrade your properties. You might go to jail. You might go bankrupt." Notice we are not examining the actual rules or mechanics (which is the realm of metaphor). With this model we can easily separate metaphor and narrative. It basically becomes a question of "what can you do?" and "how do you do it?".

"What can you do?" also gives us a more concrete way to evaluate narrative theme that is less subjective. Ra (as an example) is a game that always struck me as a little dry. The box says that it's a game about expanding power and influence in ancient Egypt, but all that you do in the game is participate in auctions. When you ask, "What do you do in Ra?" and answer "You participate in auctions", you can almost definitively respond with "That has a weak narrative theme".

-ER

Warning Signs: Design Diary part 2

The first play-test for "Warning Signs" went off last week and went pretty well. This is the second time that I've conducted a first play-test (got that?) and it's actually pretty nerve-wracking (even amongst friends). My expectations in these situations are pretty low and I never hope for more than a total melt-down/failure. If the game doesn't break within the first five minutes of play I am prone to call the whole thing a great success!

On this particular occasion there was one game-breaking exploit that was discovered early. I was aware of the potential problem but wanted to see if the players picked up on it. They did. But aside from that, the game was quite playable. Here's a quick rundown on how the play goes:

The game is based primarily on the cards which all have various "warning sign" symbols on them. Cards are dealt to the players which they take into their hands and 10 cards are dealt onto the board as "hazards". Players also have 10 "workers" that they are responsible for. Each player starts with one worker on the board.

All the left over cards are placed in a draw pile and the game begins. Players can pass cards to their left or play cards to hazard spots on the board as long as the card they are playing has a symbol that matches the one on the card on that hazard spot.

Every time a player plays a card to the board, ALL their workers must move one space. If a worker lands on a hazard card, the player has to be able to match one of the symbols on that card to a symbol on a card in their hand. Otherwise the worker is hurt (which counts against the players final scoring)



Players can also draw cards from the draw deck. Each time he does so, he adds another worker from his supply to the board.

Players who manage to get their workers through to the "finish" space will receive bonus points in the final scoring.

There are a few other wrinkles but that's the gist of it except for one crucial part. There are no "turns". With few exceptions, players all act simultaneously and whenever they want to or are able to.

This makes for some satisfyingly frantic game play.

What worked:

My goal in terms of "player experience" was fast and frantic -- manageable chaos. It seemed like the fast and frantic part was well represented here, and there was a healthy serving of chaos to be sure. The manageable part I'm not so sure about.

What needs work:

Players were unable to move a single worker from start to finish. It was too difficult to get them through all the hazards on the board. This seems to be a common theme in my early iterations -- that I make things too hard for my players and the primary goal is largely unattainable.

The main reason for this seems to be that the testers found it too difficult to match the symbols up. This was not necessarily because they were hard to see but more because the matches were too infrequent. I'll need to adjust the cards to fix this.

There were also problems with keeping the board up-to-date. Players naturally had a tendency to take actions quickly but in the wrong order, and missing important steps. For example: Players would frequently place a new worker on the board and THEN grab a new card (when this should really be reversed). Worse still, players would often play a card to the table and fail to move their worker pawns. This is a HUGE problem as it gives players a potential "out" of situations specifically meant to challenge them -- forgetting to move a worker could inadvertently save that worker from harm (it could also rob the player of positive movement towards their goal).

In other words, the "frantic chaos" worked too well and it meant players were unable to keep track of their pieces.

Another potential problem is pacing. Currently there are events in the game that require everyone to stop so that something can be resolved. It's not that this didn't work, but all the stopping and starting might run counter to the play experience I'm trying to engineer.

We also ran into a situation that I had not accounted for involving players who had all their workers out on the board. This was a problem because currently the action of taking a new card from the stack is tied to adding more workers to the board. So I'll have to figure out what to do there.

Lastly there was a big problem with players running out of workers all together (usually because they were all injured). This wasn't really accounted for in my original rules so I decided to just call this trigger for ending the game and commencing with final scoring.

The game played very quickly (another design goal)...about 30 minutes.

So I have some work to do still, but I got a lot of very valuable feedback. For a first play-test I would say "Warning Signs" was a success.

Warning Signs: Design Diary Part 1

My primary creative outlet for most of my life has been drawing. Preparing for a drawing comes easy to me. I can sit down, sketch out some ideas, and generally work efficiently towards an end. The process from start to finish is an active one and you could track my progress from early sketches to final drawing by looking at what is being produced in between.

Game design is less familiar territory and I don't really have a good work flow established. The result of this is that I have frequent "design sessions" that look like this:



I can spend a good chunk of time in this state and it feels like time wasted. In these moments I am spending energy working through problems and trying to figure out what direction I might take a project in. On the other hand, my mind is also prone to wandering. I go into a "default" mode where I just start doodling and filling my paper with unrelated sketches.

I can fill hours of time with this routine and come away with very little measurable progress. I actually found that my "design sessions" seemed to break down so often into seated meditation, that I started combining "design time" with things like "Steam Room Time". Despite all that, I have just finished the first draft of a new card game and I've learned a few techniques along the way, that seem to help keep me focused and generate more tangible development.

"Warning Signs" (working title), was created for the monthly contest over at the Boardgame Design Forum: http://www.bgdf.com/node/3092. This is the second time I have attempted to put something together for one of these challenges. The first one I gave up on after a few days of effort (mostly because I wasn't really excited about that particular contest). This second one was much more interesting to me.

I still wasn't able to finish it in time to submit, but I'd like to continue working on it anyway just because it's a fun concept. The contest was to design a game that used all of the following symbols:




If you have time you should check out the submissions via the link above. There are some pretty surprising designs -- most of which feature some sort of deadly factory floor, or crazy industrial scenario. My design also takes place in such a location. The first thing I thought of when I looked at those symbols was the game Lemmings:



I took that bit of inspiration and decided to create a board game with a similar experience -- where players had to guide their people through a series of hazards in order to win. Because there are so many symbols, it made sense to me to that this would be primarily a card game. In my notes under "Player Experience" it reads: "Frantic, managed chaos".

The most important thing I learned while working on this project is that when it comes to writing surfaces, bigger is better. I used to like to use a standard sketch book when I was getting down to design business, but on this project I decided to use a large newsprint pad instead. The extra space meant I had more room to explore ideas. I could branch off of and organize thoughts with more freedom this way.



I also decided to employ the tried and true "brain map" technique for brain storming. I really needed some way to sketch ideas out as simply and easily as I do for drawing. I don't know how innovative or effective the brain map is, but it was familiar and it made me feel like I was getting somewhere and that alone made it worth while.



I should be able to get a play-test for "Warning Signs" in during the next week or so and I'll post the results here.

Doomsday Design Diary part 1

I've had a lot of false starts and half finished ideas as far as game design goes. My history is littered with character sketches, simple design docs, and meetings that ended up going nowhere. "Doomsday Device" is the first game that I've designed and taken to an actual playable state. As of this writing it is still a work in progress, but it has come a long way since its inception and this would be a good time to look back on its evolution.

I had a couple design goals with "Doomsday Device" but the primary one was to finish. While I don't consider the game done, I have taken it to a point that I'm pretty happy with. I've got a rule set, a decent prototype. Everything seems to work. People seem to at least tolerate it. If nothing else, it's the furthest I've ever taken a project. So even if the game is ultimately terrible, I'd still have to call it a success based on the modest goals I had set for myself at the beginning.

When I look back at the beginning of the project I realize that "Doomsday" was really an iteration of one of my previous attempts at game design called "Cults and Conspiracies". In my notes for this earlier game, I have a basic description that reads:

"Players must guide their secret society from its inception in ancient times up through the modern age in an effort to attain total control of the world's governments, culture, and economies. "

It was a pretty ambitious start -- combining aspects of civilization, bluffing mechanics, secret information, and semi-cooperative game play. It never made it to prototype but the early mock-ups had players moving pawns around a world map, trying to force certain pawns together and others apart. Frankly there was a lot of cool concepts in there that never really worked together but there are things I think I'll look into more in future projects. Players could move any piece on the board (rather than having ownership of a specific color or faction), and players would have to work together in some situations and compete in others. In order to accomplish their ultimate goals, players endeavored to complete secret "projects" (which represented things like currency control, or assassinations, or any sort of cool conspiracy thing). The game got more and more bloated as I threw more and more ideas at it. Part of this was because I never really had a formal design document or solid design goals to guide me. "Cults and Conspiracies" essentially became a complicated and lengthy brain storming session.

(an early mock-up of "Cults and Conspiracies):



Eventually "Cults" lost steam and I abandoned it. When I started Doomsday Device I began with some more specific ideas. I had a better and more streamlined design doc, and had clearer goals. There were some important similarities between "Cults" and "Doomsday" that make me feel like the earlier led to the latter. I'll get to those specifics in a bit.

As I stated earlier, my primary goal for "Doomsday" was to finish. To that end I wanted to make a simpler game, and I wanted to base it off something I was familiar with. I didn't want to re-invent the wheel, just put my own spin on it. I initially decided that this design would borrow heavily from a game called "San Juan". "San Juan" is essentially a card game where players are trying to build up their own part of a colonial city. In "Doomsday Device" the players are attempting to build up cartoon-style machines of devastation (Giant Robots and Super Lasers and such). As my goal was to design a new game (and not simply re-theme and older one) I also added an element of maneuver. Players would basically attain the cards (or parts) that they needed to build their devices via their maneuvers on the board -- and the devices they built would allow them to do new and more powerful things with their maneuvers.

Now we go back to "Cults and Conspiracies". In C&C, players were typically not able to maneuver pawns entirely on their own to achieve desired results. They would have to temporarily join forces with their opponents in order to get things done. My early versions of "Doomsday Device" had a similar idea: In "Doomsday Device", much of the game play revolves around the Black Market: Spaces on the map which (when occupied) allow players to draw the cards (or components) that they need to build their devices. These market places were divided by regions (Europe has its own set of market spaces, as does Africa, as does Asia, etc), and in order for one region's market to work, ALL the spaces in that region had to be filled. This typically meant that players had to work together to fill the market in order to activate it.

I also saw reflections of the C&C's "projects" in the different device types the "Doomsday" players would build. Pawns of different factions in C&C became Agents and Thugs in "Doomsday". In the end, it seemed to me that, rather than design an entirely new game, I had stripped down "Cults and Conspiracies" and tweaked the theme a bit.

I suppose the lesson here is that no work is wasted work, and that even something that ends up looking like a failure can lead to something better.

-ER

Introduction

"All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot’ cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc, are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart" -Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)."[4] In Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture,

Welcome to "The Magic Circle Blog" -- a blog about games and game design. This is the first entry, so welcome to the beginning! I should start off with an introduction and some sort of broad description of what this blog is all about. This is about exploration. When I said, "welcome to the beginning", I meant it in more ways than one. I am not a published designer. I am not an expert in the field of game design. I am a wanna-be. I am a hobbyist. I'm at the beginning. I am reading, practicing, and now writing about game design with the goal of getting better at it. I'm hoping that if you take the time to read what I write here, that you will participate in the conversations and we can explore this stuff together.

My interest in games has been with me many years. I was always intensely fascinated by video games in particular. If my family was out and about and we were by an arcade I'd beg for quarters and a chance at some time with those machines. Even at Disneyland, I was more interested in Space Invaders at the "Starcade" than I was in Space Mountain in Futureland. By the time I hit 6th grade I had discovered Dungeons and Dragons which took hold of my imagination for many years. I'd also play a fair amount of games like Risk and Axis and Allies thrown in with the occasional Monopoly experience that most of us know. In college I was also introduced to Magic: The Gathering and other Collectible Card Games (or CCGs as they became known as) and later I was caught up in the Poker craze that swept across the country.

Games continue to play a big part in my life. I still enjoy video games and I am recently fascinated by boardgames, having been re-introduced to the hobby through the explosion of "Family Strategy Games" that come to us from Europe. While I'm not a professional designer I have worked in the video game industry (on the production side) for 10 years now. Of course production is one thing, but design has the real allure. It's hard to play a great game and not deconstruct it a little. It's hard not to wonder how the creators came to certain decisions and how they manufactured these systems, these enviroments, and these play-grounds that come together to produce such memorable experiences. It's also hard to let these thoughts just tumble around in my head and still do something productive with them. So this blog will be a way to organize and investigate them a little further.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy The Magic Circle Blog.

-ER

coming soon.