Design Diary #0: 10 Pages or Less

I was frustrated by my inability to commit to a project. I had mentally locked myself within a mental realm of concentric prisons, each one smaller within the latter, each one locked, with my inside the middle. The circles represented the various layers of desire and design that I wished to impose upon Malls & Morons.

My publisher saw that I had locked myself within a bad head space (bad for productiveness, anyway). Seeing this, he issued me the following challenge: write a more-or-less complete game in 10 pages.

10 pages? Immediately I was excited about the prospect and went to work on the outline. I knew in my mind that this was the sort of constraints I needed, the kind of constraint that produces creativity and design, not the kind that leaves one to stall and crash to the earth. It was the kind of constraint that inspired the back-to-basics bare bones design that I have come to appreciate over the years, and the kind of design I wanted to emphasize in Malls & Morons.

Already to go with my new project, I composed an outline for the topics I would cover. I put in what I felt was necessary for the game to function, using the rules, and the knowledge an judgement of the Mall Master, to fill in the blanks. After some adjustment to the outline, due to addition of topics during the writing of the first draft, the outline became the following:

1. Introduction
2. Task Resolution
3. Character Creation
4. Combat
5. Rewards
6. The Mall

Making a 10 page game was interesting, because it relied on the task resolution mechanics to carry almost the entirety of it. Everything that comes after the second section builds upon the principles described there. In that way, each chapter builds upon the information presented in previous chapters, making it important to read the book from beginning to end, as much as it is to reference it.

Of course, being only 10 pages, means that some stuff has been cut. This has taken the form of character options, but do not despair, because what has been cut, will be released to the consumer, fleshed out in the space that could not be afforded. There will be free supplements, and some non-free ones in the future, but that is neither here no there.

Tune in next time, when we will talk about character creation, and the options that are presented to the player, as well as the ease of making a character.