Worlds of Design: Game Design Rules of Thumb - Part 1

There are plenty of rules for game designers and even more for role-playing games. Listed here are principles, extreme likelihoods, and observations of behavior, including some "laws."

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“Obey the principles without being bound by them.”- Bruce Lee

I’m not trying to dictate these observations to anyone, they are what I’ve known to work and be relevant. These are not presented in any order of importance: to me, they’re all important.

Murphy's Law​

"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”

We can't really leave out Murphy's Law, but it's pretty extreme. The point for game developers is, don't assume that things are going well, rather monitor what's happening to be sure it's going well, or if it isn’t you can do something about it.

Law of Realism​

"You’re most unlikely to get rich designing games.”

In fact, if you want to get filthy rich, you're better off playing the lottery. Phenomena like Minecraft and Clash of Clans and Terraforming Mars are much less common than enormous lottery wins. It’s hard enough even to make a living as a game designer, let alone get rich. See Owen K. C. Stephens’ tweets about the life of a professional RPG maker.

Learn to Love Constraints​

“Constraints encourage creativity, complete freedom discourages creativity. ”

Contemporaries have been taught to dislike constraints, but games are inherently an artificial set of constraints intended to result in interesting play. These constraints have been demonstrated in many arts such as music and painting. When you design a game, set limits for yourself to work within and you'll be a lot better off.

Laws of Game Creativity​

“Games are 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration."

Most of game design is a form of science and engineering. Furthermore, “you can't wait for creativity to come by and knock you on the head.” It's often an active, not passive endeavor, and while you don't want to discount creativity, problem-solving (the science/engineering part of game design) matters much more.

Nielsen's First Law of Usability​

“Your design will be tested by users. Your only choice is whether to run the test yourself before launch so that you can fix the inevitable problems while it's cheap, instead of playing expensive catch-up later.”

It's actually a law for website development, but applies equally to game design.

Law of Inevitability​

“If there's a way to play the game that's within the rules, somebody will play it that way.”

In other words, don't rely on sportsmanship, players being gentlemanly, or any other vague notion to prevent someone from playing within the rules. Instead, design the game so that what you don't like is either impossible or impractical because it doesn't lead to success. Fortunately, we have GMs to sort this out in (most of) RPGland, but it’s better not to have to rely heavily on the GM. This is not about loopholes in the rules. Of course these are undesirable, something you don’t want. No, I’m talking about rules being followed as intended, yet the result ends up with a line of play that you as designer don’t like. You can’t say “but that’s not the way I intended it to be played.” Often, the reason people play in what you might think are undesirable ways, is because they found a strategy that works. Camping in video games (turtling in board games) is the obvious example. If the game rules make camping a successful strategy, some people are going to do it, but you can design a game so that camping is not going to be successful; then there will still be some people trying to camp but it won't bother the other players because they know it won’t be successful, consequently rarely played.

Sturgeon's Law​

“90% (or 99%) of everything is $#!+.”

This law derives from a statement made by a science fiction author long ago. This applies more to academic debate and research than most of life, but in the era where we've lost trust in many institutions, perhaps it’s becoming more apparent how much of life is stuff you should ignore or stuff not worth bothering with. And in game design, most of the ideas and solutions you come up with will be crud; you have to keep searching to find one that’s right.

Law of Varied Preferences​

“What you think makes a game good, may make a game bad for many others.”

Beyond debunking myths, the most important thing for learning game design is this law. The corollary is “you are not your target audience” and another corollary is “design games for your target audience not for yourself.” This doesn't mean it never happens that people design games for themselves that become very popular. The video game Doom is an example. It worked for them very well, but you can't rely on that if you want a commercial success.

I'll add more rules of thumb in a future article, but for now...

Your Turn: What game design rules of thumb would you add to this list?

 

[Fenris-77]

As a GM though, I often need ancient history and cosmology in order to produce adventure content. For example, if I want a cool ancient artifact, it really helps if there is enough ancient lore in the setting for me to draw from. With cosmology that has a lot of utility in terms of understanding the setting when it comes to stuff like making new monsters (something I like to do a lot when I am running a game)

Oh, for sure. What I was getting at is not to focus on less gameable content. Some supplements and rule books have page after dry page of history and cosmology and I find it neither interesting nor useful. Cosmology for example, can also be useful gameable content if you dig into church factions, motivations, connections to characters or whatever - you know, the parts that actually make events in the game work tick along and get complicated.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Oh, for sure. What I was getting at is not to focus on less gameable content. Some supplements and rule books have page after dry page of history and cosmology and I find it neither interesting nor useful. Cosmology for example, can also be useful gameable content if you dig into church factions, motivations, connections to characters or whatever - you know, the parts that actually make events in the game work tick along and get complicated.

This I agree with. I think a good example, at least for me, is the difference between the Ravenloft Van Richten books when they were made by TSR (which had lore, accounts, etc but it all seemed to help me make stuff in play). The Van Richten Books published by Swords and Sorcery Studios got lost in the lore and background material in a way that just didn't translate into gameable content for me (same with their setting supplements for Ravenloft). I would say the key difference is the S&SS books felt overly self indulgent when it came to this stuff, without enough concern for how it would be put to use at the table.

 

[GMMichael]

Hey, fun! Where were these when I was writing? Anyway, let's see how I did...

Murphy's Law​

We can't really leave out Murphy's Law, but it's pretty extreme. The point for game developers is, don't assume that things are going well, rather monitor what's happening to be sure it's going well, or if it isn’t you can do something about it.

I playtested my way up to a 2nd edition. Of course, that's an endless process...

Law of Realism​

In fact, if you want to get filthy rich, you're better off playing the lottery. Phenomena like Minecraft and Clash of Clans and Terraforming Mars are much less common than enormous lottery wins. It’s hard enough even to make a living as a game designer, let alone get rich. See Owen K. C. Stephens’ tweets about the life of a professional RPG maker.

Yeah, I gave up on that, and decided to make my game free. Mostly.

Learn to Love Constraints​

Contemporaries have been taught to dislike constraints, but games are inherently an artificial set of constraints intended to result in interesting play. These constraints have been demonstrated in many arts such as music and painting. When you design a game, set limits for yourself to work within and you'll be a lot better off.

I decided on a rules-lite game, and found myself often saying "oh wait, I can't add this. That will lead to even more rules..."

Laws of Game Creativity​

Most of game design is a form of science and engineering. Furthermore, “you can't wait for creativity to come by and knock you on the head.” It's often an active, not passive endeavor, and while you don't want to discount creativity, problem-solving (the science/engineering part of game design) matters much more.

Sounds more like the law of Game Science, but as one might attest, I didn't force any creative ideas into my game

Nielsen's First Law of Usability​

It's actually a law for website development, but applies equally to game design.

I used it. Had a blast

Law of Inevitability

In other words, don't rely on sportsmanship, players being gentlemanly, or any other vague notion to prevent someone from playing within the rules. Instead, design the game so that what you don't like is either impossible or impractical because it doesn't lead to success.

Ah, the root of the min-maxer. I have yet to find a "wrong" way for someone to play my game, but I'm sure there's something.

Sturgeon's Law​

. . . perhaps it’s becoming more apparent how much of life is stuff you should ignore or stuff not worth bothering with. And in game design, most of the ideas and solutions you come up with will be crud; you have to keep searching to find one that’s right.

I might have had this in the back of my mind when I decided against a rules-heavy game.

Law of Varied Preferences​

Beyond debunking myths, the most important thing for learning game design is this law. The corollary is “you are not your target audience” and another corollary is “design games for your target audience not for yourself.”

I did not design my game for myself. But I didn't design it for a target audience, either. I guess it's a game for game designers, so I'm following the Law of Realism nicely...

 

[Blue]

Subtractive Design
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Do you need this rule? Can it be simplified and moved to a universal rule instead? Can it be dropped completely and the resultly reduction in complexity and time spent make up for it's lack?

Incentivize what you want to see
Rewards, bennies, advancement - use those to shape how the players want to interact to give the feel you want.

For example, compare advancement in AD&D 1st edition, with XP for gold and defeating monsters with the variant in D&D 5e about milestone rewards. But also compare to a system where you gain advancement by failing at important tasks. Right there it is says it's okay to fail, that a character should be trying things that might be beyond them, that it's not only okay to assume risk, it's the only way to grow.

 

[dragoner]

Sturgeon's law is the most relevant. KISS is good too. Design within spec, such as when I do structural steel for an elevator shaft, it is always within the written specs of the international building code, I could calc something outside of that, but why would I? So if you have a mechanic and there is already one there, use it, only design when you have to.

Do it as an art, but don't get too fancy, and if you do, realize when to scale it back.

Ease of use is a real thing, and also keep it concise, three paragraphs should be the max for someone to read and understand one thing. 10 things could still be 30 paragraphs, except don't be surprised if no one reads it.

 

[whimsychris123]

The corollary is “you are not your target audience” and another corollary is “design games for your target audience not for yourself.” This doesn't mean it never happens that people design games for themselves that become very popular.

I think this might be the most important rule. This was one of the issues with 4e. I actually happened to like 4e, but I think they ignored their audience, who didn't want that kind of overhaul of their game.

It will be interesting to see the direction of D&D going forward as a younger generation has new expectations of the game while an older guard wants something more traditional. I imagine the "target audience" will be younger players, which may leave the so-called "grognard" in the dust.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I'm not sure about the Law of Varied Preference. Innovators create the games they want to play. PbtA is good example. Their personal preference coincided with an undercurrent in rpgs and it became a success. Gygax and Arneson created the game rules for the adventures they wanted to play and D&D became a huge success.

So those two, and maybe a couple dozen more, out of how many hundreds, or thousands, of games published in the last 50 years?

 

[Lanefan]

Use Language Like A Computer Code
I don't mean to not use natural English, I am very much a fan of natural English than game jargon. What I mean is, apply a consistency to your use of language that means you could input it into a computer without crashing. For example, if in your game, each character has a 'Movement Characteristic' that defines how far they can move in a turn. Always refer to it as a "Movement Characteristic", and refrain from calling it something else like their "Speed", "Movement Rate", "Move Value" or anything other than the defined game term.

The risk here is that by constantly reusing the same specific game terms (and RPGs have a lot of 'em), while your rules text might end up nice and tight it won't matter because it'll bore everyone to death before they finish reading it.

 

[Lanefan]

Subtractive Design
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Do you need this rule? Can it be simplified and moved to a universal rule instead? Can it be dropped completely and the resultly reduction in complexity and time spent make up for it's lack?

It's really easy to go too far on this and take what was a fine rule on its own and ruin it by trying to shoehorn its concept into a universal rule.

There's nothing wrong with subsystems, for two reasons: one, a subsystem designed for a specific task is almost always going to be superior to a universal rule not designed for that specific task; and two, use of subsystems results in a more modular overall design where changes to one thing have less chance of impacting other things.

And this leads me to one design rule I'd toss in here:

Design for an audience that is smarter than you are. By this I mean never dumb anything down, assume your readers/GMs/players are smart enough to take whatever you give them and run with it, and assume good reading comprehension and literacy skills on their part. If your system is any good and people want to play it, they'll figure it out.

 

[Marc_C]

So those two, and maybe a couple dozen more, out of how many hundreds, or thousands, of games published in the last 50 years?

Yep. Those who fail have glaring design flaws and/or tried too hard to "please the market" and have no soul. There are of course other factors like liquidity and bad business skills.