Core Design Philosophy: Getting Out of the Way
I learned a lesson as a new game designer I didn't now I needed to learn. It seems obvious to me now, and fundamentally important, yet I had never even thought about. And I figured it out when three things came together: on the same day I was designing a game, playing a different game, and attending a funeral.
This may seem obvious to all of you experienced game designers, but as a new game designer, it never occurred to me to think about my core design philosophy. This might come as a surprise given that I interview people about this every week. But as a new designer, I never stopped and asked myself the question. I basically had ideas for games and things I wanted to accomplish with them and then designed from there.
However it was incredibly illuminating to stumble on my core design philosophy, something I can try to build for when I design, something that I feel confident about. Let me give you a little background on what I've been working on. Lately I’ve been working on layout stuff for upcoming game The Hard Lessons, a shared storytelling game by Joshua Wise that will be an APON Games release. On top of that, I’m adding polish to my game Broken, and I’m prepping to start actually releasing games. I've been learning about itch.io and itchfunding and setting up our itch.io page for APON Games.
So while doing that, obviously I need some creative outlets, some designs to fiddle with. Also, I keep finding new systems I really want to design for. Most recently I’ve been working on something for the Together We Go game jam from Tony Vassinda and Plus One Exp. So, while designing that game I kept teasing around the edges of this design philosophy. The game I’m writing for the Together We Go jam is called To Whom Shall We Go, a game about pilgrims with different and competing beliefs about the nature of their god, all making pilgrimage to find true words about the deity. To Whom Shall We Go itself is a quote from Peter in John 6. And so one of the fun things I’ve been doing is reading through Psalms trying to match up Bible verses with aspects of the game’s design. I was doing this just before attending a funeral, one where I was not officiating or leading in the service but simply worshiping with others, including members of my own congregation.
So I was attending the funeral and listening to the sermon when I realized something about applying both scripture and game abilities: if they are vague enough, you can really make them fit a lot of interesting and creative situations. Then I realized something very important to me both as a GM and designer. I realized that it is players at the table, during game play, who will always have the best ideas. No ideas I come up with as a GM or as a designer will ever be as compelling to the players or as interesting as what they come up with.
Of course, this has been my core GM philosophy for years. As a GM, I mostly try to create the circumstances for players to have great ideas and then let them experience those ideas in action in the game. Sometimes as a GM that means deliberately asking questions to find out what they want for their experience or their characters, and sometimes its by being really good at listening. Listening is, after all, something I learned in seminary and in ministry. Sometimes the players don’t even know they were their ideas. I've changed entire major story arcs in games I've run just by listening to players ideas around the table between the scenes. I believe that too many GMs get obsessed with their own really cool ideas that they want their friends to experience, only to have players frustrated that their solutions to a situation aren’t the right ones. I'm not saying this is a universally applicable tool. Obviously you need risk of failure in games. But if you only have one way to access a building that your party is trying to sneak into, and the players come up with 15 clever ways to access it but you don't let any of them succeed because they weren't what you planned, you're doing it wrong.
I realized as a game designer, I want to design a similar philosophy: get out of the players way. Create the circumstances for them to make cool stories, but ideas that I have are not going to be as cool as what the players want to accomplish. And honestly, helping the players have the experience they want at the table is kind of what its all about, right?
I want to give an example of a game that does this exceptionally well, which is the second half of this story. That night after the funeral, I played Trophy Gold for the second time. I freaking love Trophy Gold. But I realized while playing it that it applies that philosophy especially well. Our game started in a town. The first thing the GM (who happened to be my best friend Blaine Martin) did was ask us all to describe something we notice about the town that exemplifies how down on its luck and poor the town is. Everyone offered really interesting ideas for it, but one player threw out that the local church was now acting as a brothel.
It was such a great idea, and it snowballed. We ended up going to the church-turned-brothel to try to find some holy water. We went on this whole mini side adventure in the brothel. Plot points were spun out of going there. All this awesome story and character development and narrative complication flowed out of just one idea that a player had, and the GM had absolutely nothing to do with. The GM was willing to let the player have a great idea and see it through. It was absolutely cooler than anything that GM could have planned for in advance. But a great GM will build and expand on the players’ awesome ideas.
In many ways Trophy Gold does this very well. It asks you questions every chance it gets, and it puts different questions next to each other to help distinguish them, and get better answers. It’s brilliant.
So, now I’m thinking about how to design with this core philosophy in mind. Oftentimes I’ve thought as I’m writing Broken: a Tragic Romance Game for two players, what more should I add to this game? What more do I need to design or put in? Essentially, how else can I hold players' hands? But I think what I’ve realized is that guiding the players too much stifles their own creativity to make the game what they want it to be. With the right balance, players have the opportunity to essentially design the game along with you, by filling in the gaps of what the game is about for them. The things that are important to them about the experience are what will shine through, and the experience will be more of what they want.
I wrote about this in my “letter from the author” at the start of Broken. The game is more complete when others who aren’t me play it and make their own stories, with their own themes, and own priorities. It’s not my game anymore. It's yours. It belongs to whoever plays it. And it's more complete for it, and hopefully we’re all a little more whole and complete for having played it.
In Broken you have the tools to set scenes, you have blanks to fill in, and you have prompts to guide you. But you bring the prompt objects, you fill in the blanks, and you tell the story you want to tell. I think that’s better than anything I could have come up with.
If you design games do you have a core design philosophy? Have you ever thought about it before? It might help you to give it some thought. Or perhaps you’re very experienced and this is super obvious to you. It wasn’t obvious to me, but I’m glad I figured it out. Next, I want to think more about what lessons I learn from preaching that apply to game design.