Martin talks RPG design pt. 3 - Design goals

As much fun as it is to just play around with dice and mechanics and see where it leads, if you ever want a finished game, you have to define where the journey is going. Imagine a map of every possible RPG you could write — then put a pin into where we are going. This is called design goals.

We’re continuing from part 2 where I defined a few things that differentiate tabletop RPGs from other games.

“Who is your daddy and what does he do” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Picking up from part one, a good place to start is to define the core activity of the PCs. Hop from planet to planet in their ship to trade. Fight the evil galactic empire. Catch ghosts. Defeat the demon lord.

Of course this is an RPG and PCs can try to do almost anything, but but you have only so many pages in the book, so you need to figure out what sort of activities you want to support in your rules set.

This can also help you figure out what PC archetypes you want to support. If we’re fighting a galactic empire, probably a rogue smuggler, a young senatorial, and the one with an energy sword who is into hokey religions. Make sure there are enough unique options for everyone. I don’t know why some people write games with only three distinct options when there are five people at the table. Basic math.

There’s a few well-defined ones like fantasy, space opera, cyberpunk, superheroes etc., and it shouldn’t be hard to find new genres and inspiration from books, movies, anime, TV shows and so on.

Every new designer always wants their game to cover every genre ever, and it’s like watching a toddler touch the hot plate. You can tell them not to do it, but the message only really gets through once they burned their fingers. Please pick one.

You can always take your rules set and apply it to something else later, but finish supporting one thing first. You can only credibly claim support for a genre if you actually ran a successful playtest campaign, and how many of those were you planning to run in parallel?

Also please think twice before you make yet another fantasy RPG. Yes it’s the most popular genre, but it also covers around something like 90% of RPGs out there. If you’re not going to bring a fresh approach to that genre, or really, really nail it in a way that more experienced designers couldn’t pull off, this will be a very hard sell because everyone already has their favorite fantasy RPG.

Once you picked your genre, research its tropes as these will be what will drive the gameplay. Let me delve into how to leverage tropes in RPG design in another installment.

Another way to define where you want to land with your RPG is to think of different sliding scales from 0 to 10.

For example, character power level. Zero would be something like small children or rodents. Ten would be superheroes, although power level can go up to 11 and beyond. Some games try cover the entire range from zero to hero to demigod, but if you’re not working for a major publisher with its own playtesting department, I recommend setting a more manageable scope.

Rules density. Zero would be something like Calvinball where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter, ten would be Magic: The Gathering where “draw a card” and “put a card in your hand” are distinct game actions that have precise definitions and don’t trigger the same things.

Combat-heaviness. Zero would be something like Wanderhome that very explicitly steers PCs away from violent resolutions. Ten would be a miniature skirmish game that doesn’t really care about modeling anything else with its rules or playing out any scenes outside of battles.

Setting density. Zero would be a one page RPG that drops 2-3 sentences to set the scene and then lets the group improvise the rest. Ten would be something like Glolantha or Das Schwarze Auge where you can buy thick encyclopedias with setting detail.

Seriousness. Zero would be a parody RPG like Paranoia, ten would maybe be a game like Ars Magica that really values historic accuracy, formalizing the supernatural and playing power politics. Or a dense horror game that doesn’t want to give players even a brief moment of comic relief.

We can come up with dozens of these sliding scales, and the point of the exercise is to find out where your game falls into the more extreme points. If your game is average rules-dense around a 5, that doesn’t really define much of a design direction. Think about sliders that you want to get down to zero or up to 11, because that’s where the game gets interesting and distinguishes itself from the rest.

The most important role of design goals is to give you an idea of what NOT to do. If you’re not careful, an RPG project can easily spiral out of control where the only way to ever finish this is a multi-million dollar Kickstarter, founding a new publisher or acquiring one, hiring a team of 50 people including in-house artists, a playtesting team and software engineers, and about a decade of time. Ultimately yes your game might be the outsized success that will set you on a journey there, but for now, maybe let’s finish a first playtest draft of 50 pages and take it from there?

For example, you might feel the urge to write a subsystem for massive space armada battles. If the idea of the game is to lead the rebellion against an evil empire, maybe you want this for pivotal moments in the campaign. If your design goal says we’re playing small privateers in just one tiny ship, maybe this would be a waste of time and page space.

However you define your design goals, good ones allow you to cut things and keep your game focused.

“Restrictions breed creativity” - Mark Rosewater

The most direct way to limit your game is just outright define what you don’t want. Typical examples are classless, level-less, GM-less, diceless, one page …

These can provide good design challenges that push you into unfamiliar territory where you will learn a lot about what is actually possible in RPG design.

The main risk with these limitations is that you have to know when the game has outgrown its boundaries. Yes, limiting yourself to one page can help you really focus on the one core element that drives the game, but once you get to the point that your text is smushed across a giant A0 canvas at 4 pt font size without any whitespace or illustrations, it’s time to stop. Give your game the 10 or 50 pages it needs to breathe and be readable by normal humans.

Another common issue is that someone takes D&D and just rips the classes and levels out. It’s like one of those horror movies where someone rips the skeleton right out of a human and leaves a dead amorphous blob of skin, muscles and organs. If you don’t want classes or levels, that’s fine, but then think about what kind of structure you want to replace those with.

With limitations, always think about what it was that you wanted to achieve when you set them.

For example, when you said, “no classes”, maybe you wanted to tell more slice of life stories, with average inhabitants of a fantasy world, and you don’t want everyone to be in a narrow category like fighter or wizard. Then communicate that and think of a structure that enables this kind of gameplay. Don’t just take the classes out, dump me into 50 pages of random PC abilities where I forgot what was at the start when I’ve read all the way to the other end, and claim you “fixed D&D”.

Often when you ask new designers about their design goals, they will list GGGGs, or generic goals for a good game. Things like easy to learn, easy to run, fun to play, fast-paced, streamlined, athmospheric etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with GGGGs per se. After all, of course you’d want a game that’s easy to learn. We’d never make a game obtuse and impossible to follow on purpose.

There’s just one problem here, which is that you can just frame these and hang them on the wall and they will serve you your entire design career, for any game you’ll ever write. But they don’t define THIS game.

Going back to the image of a vast landscape where you put a pin into the game you want to make, moving towards one goal should mean moving away from other goals. If your goal is to make a game that really nails 80s mecha anime, it’s probably not going to do elf wizard and dwarf fighter in a dungeon very well, and that’s OK.

EDIT: As I learned from Klok Kaos and his excellent TTRPG System Design 101, I should call these “design values” instead. It does sound nicer.

Another typical type of design goal that you see from new designers is setting very specific design parameters. Six stats, a 3d6 + modifier vs. TN resolution mechanic, and a three-tier wounds system, for example.

Now to be clear, if that’s the game you want to design, that’s great. But it’s not really a goal, it’s a starting point. You want six ability scores? Just pick six, done. Doesn’t really need a long design process and playtesting to get there, you just do it.

So these design “goals” are similar to the limitations in part 5, in that you need to know when the game has outgrown them. If after three months it is clear that two of your six stats are just always overlapping, and playtesters can never figure out which one to use, maybe it’s time to merge them. And yes that means dropping your six stats “goal” and going with five. Remember the real goal here is making a good game, not meeting an arbitrary number.

So if a real design goal is an endpoint, not a starting line, what do we define as endpoints?

Rather than prescribing mechanics, think about what you want to get out of your rules set when the game hits the table. For example, if you added parry mechanics, maybe what you wanted is combat to feel like trading fancy sword maneuvers in an old school swashbuckler or pirate movie.

Maybe that subsystem to determine supply and demand for trade goods is meant to encourage players to go and explore unknown planets and open new trade routes.

And maybe you want that really punishing system for failing difficult rolls because you want players at the edge of their seats whenever the dice are rolled.

All three of these describe gameplay outcomes. You can take a step back after each playtest and ask yourself: did that happen? Which of my game elements worked towards that goal? What were obstacles that detracted from them?

You can also often turn generic goals into productive goals by making them more specific. Rather than saying “my game should be fun”, define where you want the fun to come from. “I want players to enjoy kitting out their characters with a broad selection of mundane an magical weapons and armor pieces like playing dress-up dolls” both tells you things that should be in your game and it defines an experience that your game either delivers or it doesn’t.

I hope this piece helped you get over the dread that many designers feel when asked what their design goals are, and maybe even set a meaningful direction for your next game.

Happy designing.

If you’ve made it this far, feel free to check part 4, where I finally talk about actual game design, even though it’s just core game Fruit loops.