Brandon the Game Dev

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the seventh of a 19-part suite on board game design and development.

This suite is based on the Five Levels of Communication through Game Development, my own personal board game development philosophy. However, I’ve brought in Dylan Cromwell, the lead designer of Seize the Bean so that you can get two viewpoints instead of just one.

For this and the article that follows, we’re going to focus on what I call internal narrative. It is true that games speak to players through gameplay – the core engine, mechanics, and rules. However, when people think of storytelling in games, they think of theme, story, art, components, and even box design. The internal narrative covers everything about the game itself as a complete product minus the gameplay. That’s what we’re talking about today.

This guide comes in four parts:

1. Who is Dylan and what is Seize the Bean?
2. Why is storytelling important?
3. How can you tell stories through games?
4. How do you make stories match their games?

Who is Dylan and what is Seize the Bean?

Brandon: Thank you very much for agreeing to help with this post!

Brandon: Tell me a little about yourself and your project, Seize the Bean.

Dylan: I’m a long time artist and creative person – started out drawing and blowing glass. I’ve always had games in my life since being a dungeon master in D&D as a child. As I grew, I got more into technology and found myself doing mostly programming jobs.

Dylan: Recently I’ve learned to grow and manage great teams as well. I’ve just had my first child (a daughter!), so I’ve time off of work. Whilst spending it with my family, I’m also utilizing it to attempt to launch my own games publishing company, Quality Beast. Our first project scheduled for release is Seize the Bean, a comical, super thematic deck-builder based on our HQ city, Berlin.

Dylan: In Seize the Bean, players take the role of pretentious baristas (no offense!) who believe they can do everything better than their boss. They quit their job and grab their measly savings to open their own hot café in the diverse city of Berlin. The only problem is that all their friends (also pretentious baristas) have done the same thing!

Dylan: It was our intention from the beginning to create a silly, tongue-in-cheek game that acted as a window into the diverse and distinct social archetypes of Berlin: hipsters, tourists, artists, start-up employees, unemployed expatriates, street freaks, tech nerds, families, fashionistas, society rebels, and more. We knew we wanted to allow players to attract certain types but also wanted that players would need to manage who came and how they were served. Would a hipster like it if you also served tourists?

Dylan: The trick about the game and the theme is that no one agrees on what makes things the best. Is it hype? Coffee quality? Social dynamics? A quiet place to work alone? We wanted the game to allow a variety of strategies to be victorious, thus allowing the players themselves to show their own diversity. We wanted some people to play it with careful resource management whilst others treated it like a push your luck game of scarcity.

Dylan: This was our challenge in trying to flesh out appropriate mechanics for Seize the Bean’s wild and almost untame-able theme.

Brandon: That’s an exciting theme! It seems we’re both working to capture physical locations through gameplay, so this resonates with me.

Brandon: Berlin, in particular, is one of the most culturally eclectic cities in the world. The coffee shop – real or in game – provides a common ground for all these different sorts of people to gather and mingle.

Brandon: Because we are all, of course, addicted to caffeine 😛

Why is storytelling important?

Brandon: A lot of people who first get into board gaming are surprised how rich and immersive their worlds can be. Why do you think storytelling is important in board gaming?

Dylan: I’ll try to answer that both personally and professionally.

Dylan: For me personally, I must admit I’ve heard people (especially those in my team) refer to me as “the theme guy.” I’ll see a piece of art or hear an ancient myth and – boom – I’m inspired. My design visualizations always have a rich thematic beginning, even if that theme is abstract. That story is really crucial to me because it pulls me in. Sure, once I’m in, abstract strategy is fine and I can get really deeply focused on it (in fact our next release will be an abstract strategy game), but having some layer of make-believe lets me fully enter that world.

Dylan: Chess is such a fantastic example: it’s really a geometric puzzle. But the pieces have such honor, prestige, and allure to them that it gives way to a rich and complex history even without having any formal story at all. Almost no one I know begins chess with a story of “you are a king / queen at war.”

Dylan: On a professional level, whilst I am new to the board game industry, I’ve found that art and theme are the major components that can bring people in without having heard anything about the gameplay. I don’t ever want to proclaim this is more important than mechanics; it certainly is not. I’ve found that the majority of players who may be attracted by art and story are just as easily pushed away if the mechanics aren’t fun and don’t back up that story that’s been told.

Dylan: In fact, we faced this dilemma with version two of Seize the Bean, where the game mechanics were becoming some sort of grindy euro engine builder which completely betrayed the story that the art and theme was selling to the players. I think not everyone needs this, but on some level a lot of players appreciate the presence of a rich and thought-out theme and art basis upon which the mechanics lay, because it allows them to dive more deeply into the experience. It gives them a universe to explore; it brings what would otherwise be pretty dry mechanics to life.

Brandon: “Theme guy” has been reading ancient texts again and claiming it’s for work…

Brandon: On some level, humanity is built to see stories no matter where we look or whether they’re really there or not. You can even see this in chess or abstract euros simply through the actions you perform within the game. Now you mention earlier that sometimes theme and mechanics can clash and work against players’ expectations in a negative way. I’ve actually touched on this before. I use the phrase theme-mechanic unity to describe when the theme and the gameplay perfectly line up.

Brandon: Failing to achieve theme-mechanic unity can feel really off-putting, especially in modern gaming.

How can you tell stories through games?

Brandon: All this said, what tools do we have at our disposal to tell stories through games?

Dylan: The most obvious is art. The second is language. These are two I’ve found come most naturally to me. Especially with English – thankfully a super blurry language to begin with – there is a lot of room to work around the theme, finding new names for things that might be more convincing and thus more immersive for the players.

Dylan: But art and language can only get you so far. Discovering physical or mental actions that players embrace in the game helps a lot to deliver the story; not just because they may fit the theme, but because the players do these things themselves. In essence: they drive the story.

Dylan: In Seize the Bean, for example, we knew that the player had to have a way of stylizing or building their café so that it attracted the type of customers they were going after. It took a lot of variations until we found the right approach, but something a simple as installing a tourist upgrade (like free Berlin city maps) gives the player the ability to now take a tourist customer card during an open draft. This really helps to put the player in the driver’s seat of their own story within the game’s universe. What we found was this went beyond our expectations of a pre-established story: it allowed players to create stories we hadn’t even thought of yet.

Brandon: Art, language, and mechanics sell the story in a big way.

Brandon: I’d say that components and the physical or social behaviors you are compelled to perform should be included as well. A really simple example from my own work is that Highways & Byways is about travel, so all the Travel Markers (placed to show where you’ll be traveling), have little GPS symbols on them.

Dylan: You’re right! How can I forget: Seize the Bean’s components fuel the theme for almost all our players. We’ve created our own 3D printed coffee beans (literally modeled after a real coffee bean), miniature milk cartons and even super realistic sugar cubes. Not only do we provide these in the game, but there’s a fun and light-hearted scooping mechanism in which players get a variable amount of beans with each go. That and some small, silly good and bad review tokens with funny statements on them all work together to really bring out the theme.

How do you make stories match their games?

Brandon: How do you make sure the story you’re telling is consistent with the gameplay?

Dylan: That’s a hard one. We discovered that our story was more about humor, which is typically a lightweight feeling, so the game shouldn’t feel overly heavy or go on too long. We also noted it was bringing in a crowd of very diverse gamers, even groups that had a diverse range of game experience and different approaches to the learning curve. This meant that brutal penalties or lack of rubber-banding were a really bad thing in our game.

Dylan: Early on, our story and mechanics allowed shops to go out of business, literally ejecting players from the game. It became obvious that while this could be part of the story, it betrayed the ideas of fun and humor and thus didn’t fit the game’s true ethos. I think this is important for creators to remember: your story is how you write it and it can change. Watch and listen to your players and how they react, they are going to be your compass, guiding you back on track to keep your story and gameplay consistent.

Dylan: I also think you should talk to your team and ask again and again “what is our game about? How should it play? What is its weight? Who are its target players?”

Dylan: These question are super easy to only ask once and forget or even overlook completely. But they help set your goal. It took us until the third version of Seize the Bean to finally say “this is not a grindy engine-builder euro, it’s a kennerspiel, yes, but one that’s quick to explain and not to long to play”.

Editor Note: Kennerspiel translates to “connoisseur/expert game.”

Brandon: I agree that humor and game length are connected tightly. Part of the magic of good jokes is that they’re gone just as soon as you process them. You can’t overstay your welcome! In games, that means keeping humorous ones under an hour (usually…always play-test this stuff). Same thing with game weight and learning curve.

Brandon: It sounds like you had to experiment a lot before you found what you ultimately wanted Seize the Bean to be about. This is something that happens in game design a lot.

Brandon: To share some examples from my own experiences about making gameplay and storytelling consistent…

Brandon: War Co. is about scavenging the remnants of a very, very old war and using them to fight in an endless cycle of retaliation. Such a waste of human potential! You see this reflected in the fact that the entire game is about reducing your enemies’ supplies to nothing. You feel the effects of scarcity because you always have to throw out one of your own cards at the end of the turn, too. It’s a harsh, unforgiving game (and a lot of people are surprisingly into that!)

Brandon: Highways & Byways is about constantly being on the move, a narrative borrowed from some pretty extreme road trips I’ve taken (like 5,000 miles in 9 days). That’s what the whole game is about – moving physically on the board and travelling real roads. Every turn you have to deal will something that happens to you. You try to plan for the future. I’m relentless about keeping the underlying story consistent in the way it plays, looks, and feels.

Brandon: So let’s say you’ve done some play-tests and you’re ready to start ordering art and making physical components. How do you make sure that your art and components are consistent with your storytelling?

Dylan: Art direction and component choices are a tough piece of the puzzle. Finding the right artist is key. It’s better that you align with someone’s natural instinct and style so they are at their most comfortable. There are some extremely professional and highly talented artists and graphic designers who can create a wide array of styles but mostly people already have a vibe and matching this to your game – and what your audience is going to expect and like – is pretty key.

Dylan: Once you’ve done that, making sure to set up a good working arrangement with your artist and/or graphic designer is also very important. People work best when things are clear and fair for all. Beyond that, making sure to supply them enough info about that game up front is also very important; even better if they’re able to play the game and get a feel for it. Not a single creative person I’ve ever encountered wants to be told exactly what to do, so it’s a good idea to explain how their work should feel in the end, but not precisely outline what it should look like; give their creativity space to grow and stretch your story. Many artists are fantastic storytellers and if you let them into your universe they’ll likely expand it beyond your expectations.

Brandon: Finding the right people is so, so important.

Brandon: If you do that you can give them a paragraph or two for each piece. Otherwise, let them run with it. The results then wind up that much better because you’re not nailing art to a spec document, though documents are important.

Dylan: For components, the trick in the end is always going to be the price. Board games aren’t easy to manufacture or sell unless you’ve got a lot of funding up front, ready to spend, and a lot of confidence on the back side that your game will sell enough to replenish the investment. We’re lucky enough at Quality Beast to have team members who can 3D model and 3D print so we’re able to experiment in those areas.

Dylan: On a more simple level, though, thinking about how each component represents something in your game world is a good exercise. Does this card allow the players’ imaginations to run wild? If not, ask yourself what else could it be that would further the game’s immersive environment. We’ve gotten away in a lot of areas of Seize the Bean by converting things like “victory points” to “good reviews” but had a tough time getting the player board to be both functional and represent a café environment accurately!

Brandon: Components are hard. You’re right that especially for the newer designers, you need to find what’s available and work with that when you can. If you customize, you better make it really, really count.

Brandon: If you can’t do custom components, I’d argue the next best thing is using them creatively. I’m turning tarot cards into postcards for Byways. If memory serves, Colt Express turns interlocking pieces into a train.

Dylan: Sometimes it’s even about removal of components completely. Often we designers try to cram too much into one game, constantly demanding that it fit our original vision.

Brandon: Yes, absolutely. And that’s something you have to train yourself out of. Creation requires reduction.

Dylan: We had this issue with “coffee blend” cards, trying to make Seize the Bean into a dual-deck-builder (customers going into one deck, blend cards going into another). I’m very happy we wised up and scrapped that idea. It was just too much going into a game that ultimately wanted to be about customers not coffee itself.

Dylan: So, in summary, getting the art and components to match the story is also about letting go. The same could be said for mechanics too, I think.

Brandon: Similarly, Byways has left behind an impound yard of abandoned mechanics. War Co. had 500 cards at first and 200 of them never made the cut.

Dylan: Hahaha, yes, I know that exact process. “Kill your darlings” I think some have called it. A typical writing technique.

Brandon: I’ve heard it called the delightfully morbid “drowning puppies”

Brandon: Which…god…what an awful and vivid metaphor

Dylan: Ouch. That’s a game whose story I wouldn’t like to see fleshed out in component, art nor mechanics. I’ll say that much!

Brandon: So next week, we’ll talk less about what storytelling is and more about how to do it right. Stay tuned, everybody!

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Telling stories is one of the most essentially human instincts. Whether or not we mean to, we tell stories through games. It’s best to embrace storytelling no matter how thematic your game is and perfect its tone. Through art, physical components, and clever use of language, board games can transcend their parts and become rich experiences.

In next week’s article, Dylan and I will continue to discuss storytelling in games. We will focus on testing our stories instead of simply creating them. For now, please leave your questions and comments about storytelling in games below 🙂

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the sixth of a 19-part suite on board game design and development.

This suite is based on the Five Levels of Communication through Game Development, my own personal board game development philosophy. However, I’ve brought in Sean Fallon, the mastermind behind Rift Shifters and Paths so that you can get two viewpoints instead of just one.

Rules provide directions on how to execute activities within a game. They explain, limit, and clarify. Game rules are how we regulate the mechanics of our games so that they are consistent with the messages we want to send to players. Sean and I will explain further. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our direct messages on Discord.

This guide comes in four parts:

1. What are some guidelines for writing good rules?
2. How do you test your rules?
3. Rules testing in action
4. Advice from Sean

What are some guidelines for writing good rules?

Brandon: Once you get through the drafting stage of rules, it comes time to get very serious. Rule writing can be business-like, resembling technicial writing in a lot of ways.

Brandon: What are some guidelines for writing good rules?

Sean: Guidelines for writing good rules really boils down to learning the art of instruction and communication. I’d say the main tool set for understanding and wielding that art form is empathy. When writing rules, you need to clearly understand and feel how that player may be feeling in the situation you’re writing for. In some cases you may want to invoke a specific reaction, hopefully not extremely negative, but a reaction that helps propel that player forward so they can strategically use other opportunities that may come their way in order to continue playing the game.

Sean: The last thing you want to do is isolate the player so much that the game is no longer playable. Isolation and making a game difficult are two very different things, which is why writing good rules are very important so misinterpretation doesn’t creep in during game play.

Brandon: I agree with what you’re saying. Never write a rule you wouldn’t want to read. For that matter, never write a rule you wouldn’t want to read to a table of people who are halfway listening!

Brandon: When people feel isolated from a game because of its rules, there’s usually one a few things going on. The rules could be way too wordy or vague. They could be framed in a negative manner.

Brandon: For an example of framing: there’s a huge difference between “lose 50% of your movement this turn” and “move 50% of normal speed this turn” even though they’re functionally the exact same. The latter just sounds better.

Brandon: To flip this, I’d say you need to make sure rules are concise, clear, and framed in an nonthreatening manner. For rules that explain, it’s really important not to make them too wordy. When rules clarify, it’s really important not to make them too vague. For rules that limit, it’s really important to frame them as neutrally as possible.

How do you test your rules?

Brandon: With all this in mind, how do you make sure your rules are actually any good? How do you test them?

Sean: It’s all about how others perceive the rule. This is why it’s very important to test with as many people as possible that are brand new to the game. Granted, it’s also important to have repeat testers, too, in order to make sure the flow of the game rules feel spot-on. Still, it’s even more critical to consistently play with new people. The reason for this is because the first impression means everything. If someone can read your rule and execute the action on the activity flawlessly, that is a fantastic rule. If it takes them longer, this may be due to a couple of different reasons.

1. The game itself is very complex, which has been known to happen as some games are specifically designed this way.
2. The game itself is very complex, and that wasn’t the intention at all, which is a larger problem.
3. The written rule and/or visual aid is poorly done and needs to be revised.

Sean: I personally have three different levels of testing.

1. Short-term mechanic testing. This type of testing goes back to coming up with ideas and tweaking them, testing each one individually based on what has been written down.
2. Private testing. This is where I will invite a specific group of game testers to test my game assuming they have the time to do so.
3. Public blind play tests. This is where most of the rules have been ironed out and are acceptable enough to use during a prototype either in person or online through something like Tabletopia or Tabletop simulator. This phase is supposed to help catch and inconsistencies, as well as document any unforeseen questions that players may have with any of the rules.

Brandon: It’s interesting that you split your rules testing into three levels. Number 1 is the most interesting since that’s where you make rules that fill objective needs.

Brandon: At the short-term mechanic testing stages, you’re really just using rules to help underlying mechanics manifest themselves! This is to make sure the game is – on some fundamental level – balanced.

Brandon: Later, once you start doing private testing, a lot of balance issues start coming out of the rules. You have to tweak them over and over until the game actually plays well, allowing for different strategies and styles.

Brandon: The blind play-test stage is where clarity and framing become serious issues. If your rules aren’t clear, blind play-testers will struggle because they’re trying to learn without your help! If your rules are framed poorly, they’ll feel like they’re getting screwed over by the game when, from a strictly mathematical viewpoint, they’re not.

Rules Testing in Action

Brandon: You have laid out a really good framework for different types of rules testing so far. Yet this is all very abstract, so let’s tie it together by swapping stories.

Brandon: Can you provide an example each kind of rules testing from your own game design experiences?

Sean: Sure! Let’s start with a simple mechanic such as dealing damage. The thing to keep in mind here is that the majority of the time, we will always start to design something based on our own experiences, but once you’ve laid out the foundation, you must start bringing other experiences into it.

Sean: I started off with a very simple D20 type of system for Paths: World of Adia. This went very well with my short-term mechanic testing, but unfortunately, a lot of this had already been done. There was nothing new here, so I really had to dig deep into this one and start putting my own spin on things. This gets strange simply because the only way to put a true new spin on something is through the eyes of others.

Sean: I ended up resorting to a concept of taking MMORPG concepts and placing them into this D20 world. This completely altered the game and even broke some mechanics like dealing damage. The way something like the D20 system played was very slow, and very much meant for “theater of the mind” style of game play. By introducing this new MMORPG concept into a tabletop RPG world it dramatically changed everything.

Sean: Many times I had gone through how damage was dealt, and how it was taken. Where in an MMORPG world, that concept is very straightforward. Run toward the unit and attack or cast your spell. This was similar in the tabletop world, however there aren’t any beautifully rendered 3D visual models in animated focus. Here in a tabletop RPG, I had to seamlessly give both a “fast” feeling of gameplay while painting a picture for the player.

Sean: This was super rough until I realized that I wanted to create a way where the game controls most of the combat and the story can still be told by the players playing. This really was the best of both worlds. This lead to any damage mechanics being almost automated inside of a tabletop RPG – which is a very strange concept to think about.

Brandon:  It sounds like what you needed to test early on was how much you could minimize human interface, such as from a game master, in combat. At the time you were creating rules, you needed a proof of concept. To get into the meticulous work would have been silly. You just need to make sure it worked.

Sean: When running through the private testing phase we initially ran into some snags. Questions of “how do I know when a monster is attacking me?” and “who’s telling the story?”

Sean: I initially solved these with a sub-par “threat mechanic” that gives each player a “threat meter,” and the minion or boss would attack the player with the highest threat. I also made it to where each player would take a turn telling the story.

Brandon: With your threat mechanic, it sounds like you needed a way to resolve combat. Easy to execute and remember were your first priorities. What you initially tried worked okay for private testing in the sense that the game was functional, but it didn’t quite “vibe” right with your players.

Brandon: I had a lot of problems like this with War Co., too. I needed to make sure cards had written and executable effects – phrasing wasn’t a worry just yet. That fine-tuning – the efforts toward perfect balance, framing, and clarity – come later.

Sean:  Then we did some public play tests. Unfortunately, it didn’t go well at all. Many people were confused.

Sean: In the end, I had to go back to the drawing board. I was pretty much stuck, but I knew my concepts were great. People loved the idea but I failed to execute it. This is when I realized I seriously needed some help and another set of eyes. I started to scout out someone who could really help me put things in motion and help solidify some of these concepts I had.

Sean: Sure enough, I joined your discord server, Brandon, and that’s where I met Howl Philinish. He has helped me execute all of these mechanics, and then some, and really set-up a great backbone for mechanics like damage, who’s telling the story, and the threat generation system.

Sean: With that said, this means that we are now back in short-term mechanic testing and are slowly shifting into private testing.

Brandon: Public testing is so often where ideas fall apart. It’s often true that we need others to help us write clear rules since we tend to understand our own work better than anyone else ever could. We see our intentions and can never decouple them from our words. I remember you finding Howl through Discord, and I’m glad that happened the way it did!

Brandon: I’ve had so many rules go out the window through public play-testing. Nearly every Event Card in Byways got changed. I ended up implementing a light action point system to increase number of player choices. I’ve simplified Construction rules. I’ve reframed negative Events into more neutral ones. Public play-testing has dramatically improved the game’s rule quality simply because it’s not just me and, every once in a while, my brother.

Advice from Sean

Brandon: If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of game design advice, what would it be?

Sean: I would specifically tell myself four things.

1. Don’t be afraid to share your work and don’t be afraid to ask people to look at ideas. Understand that even if it’s just 1 person who enjoys what you are creating, you are impacting someone else’s life by your creation and design – and there is nothing that will be more valuable than that.
2. People will only support your dream of game design if you talk about what you’re doing. You can’t expect to post a single image, never share it again, and expect that magically everyone will look at your stuff. You need to be absolutely consistent, and sometimes repeating your same post 1 – 5 times before receiving some kind of feedback or response.
3. Don’t be afraid to learn and change your game design. People will always give feedback, but you as the creator need to understand that you need to keep some old and bring in some new in order to have an awesome game. This doesn’t mean go and change everything because some guy told you he doesn’t like your game. Look for a consistent pattern that is brought up by multiple people and then possibly pivot and change your game design accordingly.
4. Understand your audience for your game. This is so critical as this changes everything you’re doing. From rules, to theme, to game type and concept, you must be absolutely sure that what you’re doing is targeting the right people for what you’re trying to execute. These two things must become a beautiful marriage. A marriage between audience and game. If that marriage does not happen, you will most definitely be forced to pivot. I learned this the hard way.

Brandon: Wow, I couldn’t have said it better myself! Those are some of the core messages of my blog. Share your work, don’t be afraid to self-promote, be ready to change, and try to  understand people.

Brandon: Thank you very much for your insight. Looking forward to sharing this!

Sean: It was a ton of fun! I really enjoyed this and hope we can do it again soon. 😀

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Creating and refining rules can be a complex process! By publishing our conversation here, Sean and I hope to be able to help you create rules that make your game balanced, clear, and tons of fun.

In next week’s article, I’ll talk about the storytelling aspect of game development – the internal narrative. For now, please leave your questions and comments about designing and testing rules below 🙂

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the fifth of a 19-part suite on board game design and development.

This suite is based on the Five Levels of Communication through Game Development, my own personal board game development philosophy. However, I’ve brought in Sean Fallon, the mastermind behind Rift Shifters and Paths so that you can get two viewpoints instead of just one.

Rules provide directions on how to execute activities within a game. They explain, limit, and clarify. Game rules are how we regulate the mechanics of our games so that they are consistent with the messages we want to send to players. Sean and I will explain further. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our direct messages on Discord.

This guide comes in three parts:

1. Who is Sean Fallon?
2. What is a rule?
3. How do you make rules?

Who is Sean Fallon?

Brandon: Thank you very much for agreeing to work with me on this!

Sean: You’re welcome 🙂

Brandon: Tell me a little about yourself and your projects.

Sean: My name is Sean Fallon. I run a small independent tabletop games publishing company called Smunchy Games. I’m married and have four children, all of which are fantastic gamers themselves, ha! I really have a strong passion for both games and story as well as the experience that is provided to the gamer and reader. I’m working on a few different games right now that fall into three different worlds.

1. Paths: World of Adia, a fantasy themed tabletop RPG.
2. Paths: Temple of Ukro’Kaah, a fantasy themed dungeon crawling board game.
3. Rift Shifters, a science fiction themed miniatures war game.
4. Rift Shifters: Saint Albany 5, a science fiction themed micro card game.
5. Town of Adams, a post-apocalyptic themed worker placement game.

Brandon: That’s a lot of projects!

Brandon: As I understand, this all falls under what you call transmedia publication. Can you speak a little about that?

Sean: It definitely is a lot of projects! There are quite a few of us working on these games too. Roughly 12 of us have invested a lot of time into creating these awesome games…specifically the worlds, game design, and artwork.

Sean: Transmedia publication is the model of publishing multiple different products of the same entity. For example: publishing a book, a tabletop game, a video game, and a movie. Transmedia publication, I feel, is extremely important when it comes to publishing any creative brand.

Sean: It’s very important to understand your goal and make sure it’s attainable. Typically with large goals in the creative world, transmedia publication will help you reach and accomplish those large goals. Many people dream of becoming as large as companies likes Blizzard Entertainment or Wizards of the Coast. Both of those companies used a transmedia publication business model and with patience and time have achieved greatness by becoming legends in the gaming world.

Sean: This is the same model we’re taking when it comes to our creative worlds and game titles. Though we are a tabletop games company, we are already starting to work on novels and novellas for each of these worlds. This will help us take that first initial step toward transmedia publication.

Sean: On top of that, we’re also creating two different types of games in the same world of Adia – Paths: World of Adia and Paths: Temple of Ukro’Kaah. We will be able to leverage any other world by doing the same. Rift Shifters is another example as we already have a wargame in development, as well as the micro card game. This is a very powerful model as long as you have patience, persistence, and endurance to see it through.

Brandon: In effect, you’re merging brand and in-game universes over a very long time frame, building both a customer base and rich, lived-in worlds ripe for exploration.

Brandon: With this in mind, let’s talk about Paths: World of Adia in a little more depth. Since it is an RPG, it’s very rules-heavy by design, correct?

Sean: That’s correct. Being an RPG, it is purely based on paper and pencil, a rulebook, and your imagination. Typically, unlike other tabletop games, specifically board games, RPGs will have these massively thick books that drive not only the gameplay, but provide the building blocks for others to create their own stories using the world and system provided.

Brandon: This means that your rules have to be easy to remember, easy to enforce, and perfectly worded for clarity when needed for reference. That goes for board games, too, but it’s extra critical in RPGs.

Sean: This is very true. Luckily for me I have a few of the other game designers on the team that will help structure those rules for clarity. Making rules clear to players is definitely critical in order to reach success with any game.

Brandon: So that begs the question…

What is a rule?

Brandon: What exactly is a rule?

Sean: In simplistic terms, a rule is something that is detailed, explicit, and understood within the activity that is happening. In this situation, the activity is a game. I believe writing a rule is very much an art form. Accurately getting the instruction across to the player, and having the player able to flawlessly execute on that rule is creative precision at its finest.

Sean: However, there is more to rules than just the written word. Though the written word seals the deal on what activity must be executed, there is also a visual aid that may be provided, and more often times than not, it’s ideal to have. This visual aid ultimately enhances the written rule and gives further clarification making a good rule, a great rule.

Brandon: In short, you define a rule as directions on how to execute an activity within a game. Rules can be written and are often complemented by visual aids.

Here is an example from Highways & Byways…

Brandon: To provide another perspective, I define rules as follows:

Brandon: The basic idea behind a game is the core engine. Mechanics are how you bring the basic ideas to life. Rules are specific directions on how you regulate mechanics. As an example, my own game – Highways & Byways – is about travel. This manifests itself as point-to-point movement on a highway map of the United States.

Brandon: Some of the rules that regulate the point-to-point movement are “you may move up to six (6) spaces per turn. You don’t have to move all six every turn, or even at all if you choose not to. You can move to any dot connected to the previous one.”

Brandon: Can you provide an example of what a rule looks like in your RPG?

Sean: Sure! Role-playing games can be similar in the sense that you measure spaces, but you need to sometimes add real life measurement systems into it. This helps define the action for the player. Here is a great example of something in Paths: World of Adia RPG.

Sean: “For every 1 square or hex on a map, that square or hex is equal to 10 feet by default, unless said otherwise by a CYOA campaign or Game Master. If you decide to take two move actions, that is 20 feet which equals 2 squares or hexes.”

Sean: This in itself is actually a very complex rule to understand as not only are we having to define the position on a map for a player, but also pin that position to a real life equivalent. In this scenario, it’s a 1 for 1 trade (“1 square or hex on a map will equal 10 feet by default”). However, there is an “else” statement in there defining an alternate path, “unless said otherwise by a CYOA (choose your own adventure) campaign or Game Master”. This lets the player know that the rule could change and be arbitrary in specific situations.

Brandon: And certainly measuring distance relates to a whole lot of different functions within Paths: World of Adia. That makes clarity really important.

Brandon: There are lots of different kinds of rules you can put into games, so it helps me to categorize them a little bit. I tend to think of rules as coming in three broad categories: rules that explain, rules that limit, and rules that clarify. Do you have any additions to that?

Sean: Coming from the perspective of an RPG, this rule could fall under all three categories you’ve listed above, so this may be more so a sub-category, but specifically rules that allow creative freedom. That is the very rule that all RPGs are built on. The creative freedoms that allow you to build a world, a home-brew game, or even your own rules and systems spun off from an origin system. That specific rule type then has its own sub-rule set that effect the initial sub-rule. This is probably why at times many feel RPGs can be very complicated, when in reality, there are just seldom explained well.

Sean: Rules recursion is a fascinating concept. I feel it adds a lot of the magic we hear and see when experiencing an RPG.

Brandon: Right, and rules sometimes don’t fall neatly into one category. Sometimes some rules become irrelevant and other rules become relevant.

How do you make game rules?

 

Brandon: When you see the need for a rule in a game, how do you come up with one?

Sean: Great question. That intuition really comes from understanding not only the feedback you’ve received from testing your game, but also from understanding the story you’re trying to tell. By story, I don’t mean just the lore behind your game or your character’s personality, I specifically mean why the game exists in the first place.

Sean: When creating your pitch to sell a game, your rules are weaved straight into it, which makes your rules ten times more important than originally thought. This comes back to thinking about your game, and why your game exists.

Sean: Here’s an example: “you’re a space pirate captain guiding your crew through space, and your personal mission is to board, loot, and pillage each space ship you come into contact with. Regardless of difficulty, it is your job as the captain of the Roger’s Skull to show your crew how great of a captain you are!”

Sean: In the above example, you’re a space pirate captain commanding your crew. Let’s say you run into a snag in the rules on how to board another space ship. You must then take that snag and break it down based on the action you’re trying to execute. This comes back to the initial thought of what the game is about, your sales pitch, and how this action would be executed.

Sean: Writing down multiple ways to execute a rule, and then testing each one in detailed theory can guarantee success. However, you must be careful when focusing on the details of a specific rule as you will often need to pull back and view the game as a whole to make sure all rules are working cohesively together to meet your vision for the game and provide fun, value, and a great game experience to the player.

Brandon: You can word a rule perfectly and wind up tossing it if it doesn’t fit your message overall. For example, if you’re the captain of Roger’s Skull, you don’t need to have rules that let you change the layout of the galaxy. That’s the external environment. That should limit you. That should be something you operate within. Now how you’re actually limited by your environment can come across in a few ways…

Brandon: “Each turn, you have 3 action points. It costs 1 action point to move 1 lightyear. A hex is 1 lightyear.” – that explains the action point system, limits movement, and clarifies that 1 lightyear = 1 hex

Brandon: “You can only move to connected galaxies, as represented by [insert symbol].” – limits

Brandon: And that’s off the top of my head. This is game dev improv class.

Brandon: “It costs 2 action points to pillage a ship on an adjacent space. Roll the red die to see how much loot you take.”

Brandon: Having too much fun with this.

Sean: I love that! Exactly, and maybe we could use specific symbols on the dice that display the type of loot you receive. Or possibly have the type of loot known and offer an alternative option to take, a different path to victory. Maybe you’re collecting red bands from the RedBand boys, and you have a special bounty card that asks you to collect 25 redbands, granting you “X” number of points by the end of the game.

Brandon: Maybe you have to collect a certain type of loot and return it to a pawn shop hex to get VP. As you continue to develop, you might find yourself tweaking the action point system in our example. Let’s say 3 is too limiting for number of actions per turn. You can bump it up to 4, or alternatively, reduce the cost of expensive actions.

Brandon: This is pretty much how rule writing works. Coming up with limitations to impose and ideas to test.

Brandon: Now testing…that’s a whole other story! Let’s save that for next week 🙂

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Coming up with rules is an iterative process like other stages of game development. Over time it slowly evolves into a very meticulous process. That’s what we’ll talk about in next week’s article.

Testing your rules can be very hard, but don’t worry – both Sean and I will talk about this in more detail soon. Until then, please leave your questions and comments below 🙂