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@explorers-design
Monthly design jams, critique, theory, and inspiration for tabletop rpg designers by rpg designers. Vetted. Looted. Curated.
My monthly newsletter full of tabletop rpg design links is live this month with a genuinely jam-packed (pun intended) issue. This is a good resource if you want to read, watch, and listen to other rpg designers from across the industry.
If you don't have a name, you don't have an idea.
When I was studying design and copywriting, I was taught that ideas need names. If you can't name the idea, the idea isn't finished.
I'm somewhat convinced the same might be true for game design and naming rules. If you can't name it—or the name feels wrong—maybe the rule isn't baked yet.
This probably lacks some context, so let me ground it a little.
If you're a designer or copywriter, your goal is to create something that spreads. You want your writing or your designed thing to "click" with people. If an idea's name and form doesn't feel intuitive—if it needs explanation—it's not going to find immediate adoption and advocacy when you're not there to explain it.
A thing with a good name stands on that name.
Don't be afraid to do the obvious thing. Sometimes it feels obvious because it's natural, and sometimes—in an attempt to be obvious—you end up being clever, or even better, original.
After a decade of design writing, I can honestly say this is the hardest lesson to actually learn and live by. Doing the obvious thing feels lazy, hackneyed, and wasteful. Then I actually do it and realize it's some of my best work.
In tabletop rpg design, sometimes it's not about the mechanics we add, but the ones we omit.
https://www.explorersdesign.com/dominant-mechanics/
Martin Scorsese, to the New York Times, after they published an article shortly after Federico Fellini passed away calling his movies- and other 'foreign' movies of the same ilk- 'hard work'
Martin Scorsese should roast the NYT on a regular basis.
The blank page is intimidating as hell, but if you cut that page in half? Not so much. Focus on just one side. One half. One corner. Every intimidating project is a dozen trivial ones.
This is what I'm telling myself repeatedly this morning.
A game "system" is just one of many systems game design is connected to. There are others, some more relevant depending on the game, like manufacturing, distribution, play culture, game store dynamics, convention setup, etc. We are always designing inside of systems. It's good practice to identify these systems, not just because it protects your work, but because it highlights opportunities. Anyway, I'm thinking about how the perennial struggle to schedule games—and constantly fluctuating between too few and too many players—would be no issue if I had a backup rpg designed just for that, like I do with backup board games.
When you're designing your rpg's book, never skip the press proof. You'll always catch something in your book or zine's test print that would drive you wild if it snuck into the final print run.
How to do "old-school" rpg design.
A design delve into the cult classic rpg of sword and sorcery.
Dungeon Crawl Classics is a gonzo bundle of extremes. It’s a speeding train of disco balls and kerosene—the Nic Cage of RPGs. You can’t look away, and you shouldn’t, because it’s doing something special. DCC is great. That's news to me because it has every oof-inducing visual design error you can imagine on its pages. As a designhead, that's hard to look past. But here's the truth: DCC does it for a reason, and it might actually make it the king of pulp fantasy rpgs. If you like Dungeons & Dragons, if Stranger Things, Freaks & Geeks, make you yearn. (Yeah, I used that word.) Go get yourself a copy and read it. And for a quick shot of this funky, musty rpg, read my blog/newsletter/design delve where I go off the rails talking about Werner Herzog, polyhedrons, and funhouse mirrors.
