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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Corone" data-source="post: 9527858" data-attributes="member: 6806393"><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/peregrines-nest-four-game-design-tips.708341" target="_blank">Picking up where we left off</a>, here's four more tips for designing your game.[ATTACH=full]388446[/ATTACH] <a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/adult-diary-journal-notebook-book-1850177/" target="_blank">Picture courtesy of Pixabay.</a><h3>Don’t sweat the maths</h3>A lot of game designers love to work out the various probabilities of any dice roll in vast tables to prove the efficacy of the system. I’d venture to suggest it’s interesting but not really necessary. Playtesting will tell you all you need to know, and the only thing you need to know is ‘do the characters seem to generally succeed when they should?’If a professionally skilled character usually makes most average rolls and has a solid chance of making harder ones, your maths is right. If unskilled characters are able to succeed sometimes but not often, again, you’re probably about right. All of this should be modified by the heroic level of the game. If the player characters are meant to be great, they should probably succeed more often than usual. A more realistic or darker game might make outright success very rare, with every roll needing some sort of sacrifice or complication to succeed. Essentially you should get to the end of any playtest and consider if the players managed to succeed or fail as often as you felt they should. If that is working the actual probability maths are irrelevant. However, remember that any single session might be an anomaly, so this is one of the many reasons you cannot playtest your game too much.<h3>It’s fine to use what works</h3>While you might be looking forward to winning an award for ‘greatest new rules system’ you don’t have to create a whole new system for the sake of it. If there is a game system out there that already suits the game you want to create, there is no shame at all in using it (as long as it’s an open system). If your western game would really sing using the rules for 5e D&D, then go for it. Sure, it’s nice to have an impressive or clever rules system, but it’s not essential. An unsuitable system, no matter how clever, will just ruin any game.As a side note, you might also consider if your idea needs to be its own game. Quite often what you want to make is actually more suited as a campaign for an existing game, and that’s fine (and much easier to do).<h3>Listen to playtesters</h3>Playtesting is vital. You need to run the game a lot. But more importantly you need to listen to the feedback you get, regardless of your ego. If only one of your players says they thought combat didn’t work, don’t dismiss them. Sure, they may be picky, but they make also have a different play style to you, and I can guarantee you that there are groups out there who might all have that play style. The same goes for all the usual player moans. They didn’t succeed enough, they didn’t get to use their character’s abilities enough, they didn’t feel inspired. While all these things are flags any GM should consider they go double for a games designer.<h3>Read a lot of games</h3>Finally, if you want to design games, read as many as you can find. Not only will that give you a broader sense of what a rules system can be, you might find one that solves a problem you’ve been wrestling with.Your Turn: Now that you have the full list, what did I miss?</blockquote>

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