Mostly fantasy, but with widely varying approaches to the genre. I also played with modern occult and horror games a little.What kind of games do you write, and why?
Other than designing my games from scratch, I rewrote the mechanics of several games for use in my gaming group, because we found their settings interesting and fun, but their systems too complicated, too unbalanced or just unfit to the setting and style.
Recently, I design much less than I used to. I just found some games that I really like as they are (Mouse Guard, Nobilis, Dogs in the Vineyard), so, for some time, I may focus on running games instead of creating them.
In order of importance:What kind of game design principles do you use?
1. I always try to clearly define my design goals: what is the game's focus, how it is to be played, what is the players' goal. A game with focus on immersion and exploration will be much different from one designed for fair challenges, and a game where I expect realistic portrayal of human reactions when faced with supernatural will be much different from one aiming for cinematic horror.
2. I often ask myself "how this piece of the system will help in what I want from this game?" and mercilessly cut out things that detract from the focus. Do characters learn new skills and become significantly more powerful in this kind of stories? If not, I won't have advancement at all and use a different kind of rewards. Do I want characters to die from bad luck or bad tactics? If not, there's no mechanics for being killed. Is struggling against environment important? If not, I may remove typical tests and assume that characters always succeed, unless there is someone with opposing agenda.
3. I often use ideas and pieces from other games, but always in the light of the above. If I want abstract combat rules, where gaining a better position or dominating an opponent socially is as good as hitting him, I will definitely use HPs. If I want flexibility in character creation, there will be player-defined traits akin to aspects in FATE. etc. But I won't use HPs just because "everybody does this" if they don't help in achieving my goals.
4. I either create a system that is to be played RAW, with strict rules, but is abstract enough not to restrict player choice and not to produce absurd results, or one that is designed to work as a set of guidelines, with the GM using it when and as he likes. Both approaches work well, in my experience, while trying to mix them usually blows one in the face.
Various discussions and theories presented on Forge helped me enormously, both in playing and in designing games. The most important lessons I learned there were focusing on players' goals (as opposed to characters' goals), designing to help play the game the way I aimed for (as opposed to preventing people from playing differently) and treating the system (mechanics) as something that shapes play (as opposed to shaping in-game events).What kind of game design theories do you like or use?
There are several. Of course, not everything fits every game and every style of play, but if there are no reasons not to, I like to have:What kind of design elements do you like to include in your games?
- Dice pools, especially d6 pools, as a method of rolling.
- Death as a possible stake, but not a possible result of a random roll.
- Character goals, beliefs and/or personality traits as something that may be used mechanically and that is rewarded when demonstrated in play (as opposed to nebulous "rewarding good roleplaying" or not rewarding it at all)
- Social mechanics with clear rules, being usable on PCs as well as on NPCs.