- What is the difference between a game designer and game developer?
A game designer comes up with the idea and format for a game while a developer refines and balances the mechanics.
1a. What commonly occurs during the game development process?
Prototyping, testing, balancing, and revision of the rules. This process is generally repeated until the game is at a satisfactory place.
2. What are the challenges of balancing a game?
The main challenge is numbers. When a game has numbers, it is important to balance those numbers so that they are both easy to understand and neither too strong nor not strong enough. Even if the game is supposed to be more challenging, all players should be on a relatively even playing field.
2a. What should every player of your game believe?
Players should feel the game is fair overall. They should come away from the game feeling as though their actions and strategies directly contributed to how the game played overall.
2b. How can you avoid stealing players fun?
If a player can be in a position to lose too early, give them an opportunity to come back.
Avoid situations that reward players who are already ahead. If you give them too much opportunity to snowball their lead, they will take the victory without anyone else having a chance.
When players are about to win, it should be like chasing a rolling ball down a hill. They should have to make a real effort to cross that last bit of terrain and take the victory. This builds tension and makes the other players feel like they have a real chance to catch up.
Find a middle point in player interaction. Players should be able to interact somewhere between not at all and too much.
Sending a player backward too far or without their choice is frustrating and can take a lot of the stakes out of the game. If everyone is constantly sliding back down the hill, they may become tired and give up.
3. What 10 Maxims should you follow when writing rules?
- Call things what they are and use words everyone understands
- Don’t make up words for the sake of the game. Keep it simple for newbies.
- Don’t make more work than necessary to get started.
- Keep flavor to a minimum. Rules should focus on rules and setup, and you can add lore elsewhere.
- Keep it Simple, Stupid. Don’t make your rules any smarter than the people you expect to play your game. Complicated rules can make games confusing.
- If you can’t figure out how to write a rule, discard it and find a new way to implement it.
- Keep things short and sweet.
- Go easy on the eyes. Formatting is important for readability.
- Test your final version. It might not be as final as you thought.
- If you find any errors in the ruleset, you can always release a second edition or address those errors online.
4. How has playtesting changed your game?
Playtesting has resulted in sweeping changes across the history of soul.
- The character creation. I learned from just two tests, one in class and one out of class, that my character creation was not easy to understand for the average user. I went back and changed how the sheet was formatted, removed a few mechanics, and changed how the handbook was formatted, and the end result is a much more readable product.
- The combat. When Soul started, it was a relatively simple turn based game, similar to D&D, each player attacked once a turn and then passed the turn. Playtests caused me to re write the powers, then restructure the combat system once, then again. Other games inspired me to re-write the combat system again and again, and now it is more similar to Magic: the gathering combined with a fighting game than it is similar to other TTRPGS. I have also found mechanics that were missing, like grappling and stealth, and have changed how charisma works thanks to a player marrying a boss. All in all, without playtests, this game would be much more broken.
4a. I think ronan and max would both be interesting testers for the game. Ronan has experience with tabletop games, and max has very unique perspectives on many situations, so I think those two would bring different valuable ideas to a test.
4b. My game is made for people who like TTRPGs but don’t like D&D, much like myself. That was the driving factor that led me to start designing this game, and I think that the way I’ve implemented many things allows for more freedom in some regards.
5. Who should play test your game outside of class?
My friends Stevie and Thad are my two main playtesters right now. Stevie, like max, approaches things differently than most, and as a result he is usually the one who breaks the game most effectively. This habit is both incredibly annoying and also incredibly useful, as it means that I have to interrupt gameplay to figure out exactly what has gone wrong, but i also gain valuable insight on what needs to be done to fix it. Thad is a player who likes to do the same thing every time, with minor variations. This is a pretty standard scientific approach, and it works well for testing the mechanics that are in place more thoroughly.