For those of You who Write/Design your own Games

[Meatboy]

What and why?
For me I design fantasy games for the most part. I've dabbled in some other areas, like steampunk, but those are mostly just fantasy with window dressing. As for why its more like why not? I guess I've just been making games for so long that I just never really stopped. Growing up my friends and I didn't have the money for DnD, or at least we didn't spend it on the books, and so ended up playing by our own rules.

Design Principles?
I tend to use two. Keep it simple, there are few things that will stop me from playing a game, especially an rpg, like a wall of text to describe how to get a yes or no answer. Do I hit him is an obvious one but usually in D20 games (my fave) its skills that suffer from this the most.

The other one is give people options. This may seem like its counter productive when paired with the first principle but really its necessary if you want people to continue to play the game. I mean if a player can't make the character they want (within reason) then they will play a game where they can and if being a certain character type means no variation every time its played then the players will get bored fast.

Theories?
Not really sure I use any. I try to read as much about it as I can on sites like this. But mostly I read posts to see what others like and go with my guts on what I make.

Design Elements
As Bedrockgames said I'm not sure how this differs from principles but here goes.

If I am designing an RPG I always try to use d20 and the OGL as a frame work. I have spent too many years designing games from scratch only to abandon them. I find d20 to be an super flexible framework on which to hang my ideas.

For board games I like d6s and cards. D6s are great because everyone has them and they can combine nicely with variety of rolling mechanics and cards are good because they contain all the needed info of whatever it is that they represent.

 

[Janx]

For those of You who Write/Design your own Games (or wish to) - what kind of games do you write, and why?

Here's some of the games I've written:

Arena: an Apple IIe/Commodore +4 arena combat game with a couple hundred weapons and spells. Multi-player. Had a unique attack/damage algorithm. The computer added both players skills and gen'd a random # between 0 and that sum. if the result was less than the attacker's skill, he hit.

Rustlers: a 24 hour game I wrote about cattle rustling using dice as cattle. It was very swingy, A player would pick a target player and roll a d6. The number that came up would be the cows of the targeted player that would move over. So the side showing up on the cow die was like a brand.

DragonNET RPG: something in the early mid 90's, everyone was pissed off at TSR on rec.games.frp.dnd. A bunch of us started putting together a new RPG as an online project. I participated in discussions, ,ade suggestions, but "didn't do the work". I dumped the printouts I had of it before 3e came out, but a couple 3e ideas seemed familiar. I doubt they stole from it, more like DragonRPG was influenced by the same influences that Monte had.

NerfWars: in college, I had a vision of us playing a paintball like game with nerf guns in the Fine Arts building (all fine arts buildings on college campuses are like mazes). So I wrote up 1 page of rules, and we all bought nerf guns (or the better Larami Super Soaker brand dart guns). I also had the Ultimator rocket launcher. very powerful.

Action Role Playing: In HS, a buddy showed me a Dragon mag article about these guys doing LARP. So I wrote up our own 3 hit point combat rules. We used wooden swords (not padded)). Nobody broke anything or lost an eye.

What kind of game design principles do you use?

keep it simple, minimize excessive dice rolling, table lookups
keep it uniform, same mechanic for everything it can apply to

What kind of game design theories do you like or use?

there's game design theories?

I have my own ideas, never took the time to read a book on somebody elses.

One principle is that a player doesn't like to wait for more than 4 big activities before their turn. This is why when larger group sizes in even simple games start getting bogged down.

What kind of design elements do you like to include in your games?

each game varies really, depending on the nature of it.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

What kind of games do you write, and why?

Mostly fantasy heartbreakers, but the only game I've actually gotten to a playable form is a M:tG inspired card game that I play with my tarot deck.

What kind of game design principles do you use?

My current fantasy heartbreaker project is a sort of D&D Lite. If I finish it, it'll be great for spontaneous game situations where players don't have time to write characters for my favorite D&D system.

I call it a fantasy heartbreaker, but my baby does have conceptual differences from D&D. Namely that all PCs begin as warriors who adventure to gain the secrets of magic. Magic is special, and it is not balanced with sword-swinging. Once a warrior becomes an experienced mage, he becomes a leader of men. If he survives to the pinnacle of achievement, he becomes an immortal warrior-mage-king.

If I get beyond the basics of this game, mass combat and domain building will have solid rule sets of their own, because I think D&D loses a lot of potential fun by ignoring those aspects of advancement.

What kind of game design theories do you like or use?

What kind of design elements do you like to include in your games?

I'm not sure how to answer these. I don't ascribe to any particular theories or elements; I just write what I think will be fun to play.

 

[nedjer]

NerfWars: in college, I had a vision of us playing a paintball like game with nerf guns in the Fine Arts building (all fine arts buildings on college campuses are like mazes). So I wrote up 1 page of rules, and we all bought nerf guns (or the better Larami Super Soaker brand dart guns). I also had the Ultimator rocket launcher. very powerful.

Can't XP, but that's inspired dude!

Keep a couple of Nerf Recon CS-6s by the bed myself; for those early morning attacks from the kid

 

[El Mahdi]

My Design Rules:

• Model reality as closely as possible, then reduce to the simplist mechanic possible. - (Players should be able to make decisions based on how things really work (what they know), rather than having to be a game mechanic/tactics expert.) - I call this: Reality First, Simplicity Always.
• Aim for Elegance and Intuitiveness.
• Steal liberally from other systems and game concepts.
• Having multiple approaches to resolution in your GM toolkit is a good thing. - I like to have multiple mechanics for the same type situations, so I can choose the best that works for the situation at hand. I can easily switch between Realist, Narrativist, and Gamist modes as the situation dictates.
• Options should be available to ALL characters (not restricted to certain classes). - Some classes will be better at things (represented as a bonus), but access is available to all.
• Eliminate Prestige Classes and the need for Multiclassing. - I have rules for Multiclassing that support roleplaying concepts, but are unoptimal as a min-maxing tool.
• The game system should be challenging at all levels while maintaining a feeling of improvement and advancement.

 

[Frostmarrow]

For those of You who Write/Design your own Games (or wish to) - what kind of games do you write, and why?

What kind of game design principles do you use?

What kind of game design theories do you like or use?

What kind of design elements do you like to include in your games?

I like to keep it simple. I aim for the following:

Keep the rate of success to about 62% This is the golden ratio. Keep modifications to a minimum.

The setting is the GM's brain. In a game you surf some dude's mind. Cut him some slack.

Identify the valuable actions/skills in the game and divide those among the players. Any other actions can virtually be free, since they don't come up as often.

Make sure the players have multiple currencies for bargaining within the game such as gold, XP, HP, mana, equipment, status, contacts, luck, honor, et c.

-That's basically it. Oh and use dice. Dice rule.

 

[Jack7]

Several people have come up with some very interesting and nice ideas. I'd like to give some more experience points but I've got to spread more around. Again.

I liked El M's method detailing his parameters.

Another question or questions I meant to ask and forgot about.

Is there any design principle(s) or element(s) (or whatever) that you consider absolutely necessary, essential, or fundamental to game design? Anything you feel cannot or should not be left out in order to produce a good or even a great game? If so what is this (or these) thing(s)?


What about this as well: how far beyond essential should one go? And why, and how?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Is there any design principle(s) or element(s) (or whatever) that you consider absolutely necessary, essential, or fundamental to game design? Anything you feel cannot or should not be left out in order to produce a good or even a great game? If so what is this (or these) thing(s)?

I think you at least need a clear idea of your design goals and I believe you absolutely have to playtest.

One thing that is pretty essential IMO is understanding the probabilities behind your numbers. There are tons of great online tools for this these days so you don't need to be a math wiz to figure out success probabilities in your system.

 

[Jack7]

I'm not sure how to answer these. I don't ascribe to any particular theories or elements; I just write what I think will be fun to play.

Feel free to detail your own theories or elements if you feel you haven't done so.

By the way by using the terms "theories" and "elements" - I just mean a theory as the general guideline by which one thinks a thing operates, whereas elements are the actual devices (for lack of a better term) or components used to make one's theory function or do work.

Or in game terms a theory is the way you think things work or should work, and elements are the things actually working. Or put another way the elements are "the working things."

But if you want to approach these terms differently then just define how you're using them (so others can understand what you mean), and tell us how you think they should work.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

One of the emergent properties of the model is that it generates new games/ forms of gameplay, e.g. our collaborative production ARG Renegade is a re-mapping of cognitive gaming from the imaginative gameplay world of RPGs into the real world, which (as soon as the site stablises and we can post more) is generating Renegade Legends - taking the gameplay across to the desktop.

If all that hasn't sent you into a coma the games are at Thistle Games. No costs and nothing complicated involved

I went there. I'm lost. Is there a game there? I see an article telling you to play other games in order to play your game, but I don't actually see your game.