I spoke at San Francisco Academy of Art and presented slides from the topic on UI Design for Games: Flowcharts & Wireframes.
The topic includes discussions of the tools, techniques and function of creating a flowchart of the modes and screens in a video game, as well as wireframes mocking up the functionality of individual screens.
Enjoy – RandyAngle-UIDesign.pdf
Cheers,
Randy
On September 17, 2012 I was invited to speak at the Game Design Conference in San Francisco. It was a terrific event an certainly gave me a chance to catch up with old and new friends and learn a few things.
I was on a panel with some of the best designers in our industry “How Do You Create Your Next Game?” and also spoke about “RPG Meta-Game” – “From table-tops to computer games and from action to social, how the mechanics of RPGs can be used in all games to encourage a deeper and more engaging player experience.”
I’ve put my slides up for all to see RPGMeta-Game.zip
Cheers,
Randy
Is Apple a Bully? Is the Patent System Broke? Should the FTC be doing something about this?
Apple Logo 1976 to 1998
I have to say that having just read the verdict in the Apple vs Samsung trial I am more than a little disappointed.
MSN Money: Apple wins $1 billion award in patent case
VentureBeat: Apple vs Samsung Verdict
The summary judgement is pretty interesting, with Samsung owing over $1B to Apple for damages. With an almost $12 stock price increase after the announcement Apple’s market cap also increases by over $1B. Does that mean I should blame Investors? Nope, but maybe I’m a bit envious that I can’t afford to be well invested in a stock that monopolizes its market and is protected by the legal system.
I’m not particularly blaming the jurors – who I’m sure followed the 100 pages of instructions and answered the 700 questions in their summary as accurately as they could in less than 3 days.
I could be disappointed that instead of a proper trial the parties were forced to race along against a 25-hour limit clock, like a chess game, forcing them to skip cross-examination and prioritize evidence in a way that no other trial has ever been done before.
Bloomberg: Apple, Samsung Get 25 Hours to Argue Their Case [video]
I could be disappointed in the way evidence was not allowed, or prior art was ignored.
I could be disappointed by the fact that the CEOs were not able to look past their differences and settle at the last minute as instructed.
I know that it scares me and my wife that a corporation is allowed to use patents to block competition and effectively monopolize a market, limiting distribution of Samsung’s products in many markets. Where is the FTC to limit Apple and force fair trade and competition? Why attack Microsoft in the 1990′s and yet allow Apple to bully developers, book publishers, musicians, the movie industry and now the competition.
Wikipedia: United States vs Microsoft
You will notice that many of the complaints raised by other software companies against Microsoft are pretty similar to the way that Apple is being anti-competitive now.
People laughed at Samsung when the iPhone vs S1 document leaked.
Scribd: Samsung Relative Evaluation Report on S1 & iPhone
Just to be sure, this is the kind of competitive analysis report that any product manager is required to do to justify the work they oversee. You must analyze your competition and make judgements and comparisons. It doesn’t mean you are cloning your competition. It is hardly a smoking gun… but if it is to be judged legally as a smoking gun then it calls into question the very essence of product development and how companies make software… including Apple themselves.
For all the things that I could blame I’m very disappointed that the patent system allows this kind of abuse and has not been revamped to keep up with the rapid progress of technology. The patent system that has become useless and now is demonstrating that it is hurting more than it is helping.
CNet News: Fixing a broken patent system
SFgate: Google lawyer – Why the patent system is broken
There are folks who believe that the Patent System isn’t broken – referencing all the good it has done throughout history.
Forbes: No the Patent System is Not Broken
I don’t think people are saying the Patent System WAS bad… just that it has become a way to monopolize a market and deter competition.
Insert Patent Rant
My views on patents probably come from my experiences as a young engineer making soil and moisture instruments with computers in them – before the term “embedded systems” was even coined. I had already made software that was Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) before that term was coined, and few people know that I left my college studies to join the computer industry and become part of the innovation (Does that put me in the company of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg… maybe). I’d learned everything I needed to help invent the computer industry and didn’t need to run Cobal programs on punch cards again just to get a grade when I could program every kind of computer available at the time in either Microsoft Basic or the actual machine language of the computer. My boss at the time, Bill Mancuso, paid to have me continue classes in a variety of topics and from time to time I’d find myself back in a software engineering course with the instructor asking me “Why are you in this class? You should be teaching it.” Bill also taught me to keep everything I did written in bound composition notebooks (the kind kids keep journals in for school). When I asked why, he explained that we need to know your frame of mind and process you use to reach the conclusions you do and if you happen to invent something really important we have the work all recorded for posterity. I asked if that meant patents… his answer was that from time to time patents are important and necessary, but you should use them only when you actually have improved something to the point of it being truly new, not just built on the stepping stones of those before me. Throughout my career I’ve had the opportunity to patent many of my software and user-interface innovations. Solved problems that many thousands of people before me could not… mostly what I’ve found is that most innovation is simply clever application of principals in other disciplines, and not actually the “world changing” event that would require patenting. Long before others used “soft-keys” on cell-phones I had made them available on those embedded systems I developed. When folks needed a way to compare their instrument results with other peoples results I found a solution that was challenged by academia and soil scientists world wide… until they relized that the equation was really as simple as one of electronics basic building blocks “Wheatstone bridges” and that with simple ratios I had solved a problem with a solution that others ignored. Could I have patented it… sure… but I didn’t need to because it wasn’t actually a new solution… just a clever application of a different solution. BTW – it was only during the writing of this blog post that I found out that Sir Charles Wheatstone actually used his circuit for measuring soil properties… I think he’d be proud of what I used it for.
I share a lot of secrets… my tricks and techniques for years with people I mentor, in classes I teach, or blog posts I write. I hold a few cards close to my chest because I still want to be paid for what I do… but mostly I’m willingly share a lot of what I know.
Unfortunately for Apple the trial also revealed many of their secret plans – I wonder if that means a ripple effect on what they release and ultimately affects their stock price.
WSJ – Apple’s Secrets Revealed at Trial
Are Apple’s patents really innovative?
Atari 400 Keyboard & iPhone Settings Icon
Consulsions
So some people will say that I’m bashing Apple… and might wonder why. I learned a fair amount by programming my first computer the Apple ][+, and consider Steve Wozniak one my role-models… especially when it comes to software engineering and hacking code in innovative ways. I was President of the Diablo Valley Apple Users Club in the 1980′s and actually had breakfast with Scully (that is a long story, and doesn’t really reflect well on Apple). The iPhone revolutionized the mobile industry and has been my bread and butter for many years now… I’ve made money and made Apple a LOT of money with their 30% of each game item purchased in my free-to-play mobile games. My concern is that Apple has grown up to be everything it said it wouldn’t become when it was the BEST computer company in the whole world. Now Apple thinks it is better than everyone else, it can hide behind and abuse the patent system, and can’t do anything wrong… but what it really can’t do is anything without bullying a whole group of people (competitors, developers, musicians, Hollywood, book publishers…).
I love the old Apple, but…
Some of my buddies in the video game industry have been asking me about what has changed about my job with the new Free-to-Play (F2P) social and mobile games. My focus for the last 4 years has been games for smartphones, the last three of which has been all about making games free and charging players for items or In-App-Purchase (IAP) and new levels or adventures in the game or Down-loadable Content (DLC). Unlike old games where you designed and then built and released it, these new games ship and then iterate constantly for the life of the product. Part of that process has been learning the ropes of Analytics and Metrics and how to fine-tune your game designs based on how players are actually using your game.
During development we add calls from the game client code (the software on your smartphone) to the game servers (where the persistent data, leaderboards, shop data, etc. are kept) that track how players are playing the game. This is called “instrumenting” your game. This tracking data is used by the project managers and game designers to make effective decisions about what is working or not working and what can be done to make the game better. This tracking is called collecting metrics. Then you analyze the metrics of many players for statistical properties using analytics to optimize your design and iterate for greater enjoyment. When players are engaged and having fun, the value of making an IAP or buying DLC makes sense. Going from a free player to a paying players is called conversion – and ultimately leads to the financial success of the game.
Like the casino industry, games have begun to call the converted players “whales” (big spenders) and when analyzing the spending habits new categories have emerged like “minnows” (small spenders) and “dolphins” (medium spenders). There is another important lesson from casinos that many game designers fail to recognize: “whales” come to a casino when there is a lot of other people having fun in a social setting - when there is a party going on the value is there. Games with lots of free players have a party going on, and the “whales” will come.
Like websites that use hit tracking to tune UX/UI design, we can track which game screens are visited and which interactions the players select. If players take too long in the tutorial they may leave before they enjoy the actual gameplay, we can shorten or redesign the tutorial reducing friction that the players experience getting into the game. If menus are confusing we can prioritize the buttons based on frequency of use to optimize the menu design. This process means tracking and analyzing many players gameplay behavior.
While building our Item Shops we can price items and track which ones are used most and which might be priced too high. Over time we can tune these values so the functional power and IAP price reflect the kinds of economic behavior we want the game to have. Not too easy to play, and not so challenging that players never experience the content we design.
I like to keep in-game money earned while playing the game (Grind Currency or G$) separate from the in-game money people spend to buy IAP and DLC (Premium Currency or P$). P$ can be purchased with real money (dollars, etc.) using the app-store interface all F2P apps use. I try not to use real money directly for IAP or DLC as it can lead to confusion when you adjust prices or have promotional sales. It is also motivational for players to earn a bit of P$ for achievements and to denote progress – “earn 10 gold for leveling up”. Giving them a real $1.50 probably isn’t legal. Grinding for in-game money is a big part of many games, I typically say that the amount earned from grinding is roughly equivalent to 1/10 the amount earned from using IAP or DLC – this gives real value to spending P$.
These same buddies who ask me about F2P also wonder if isn’t “evil” or dishonest. Like any power, F2P can be used for less than honest reasons. There are some companies that learned the F2P formula and then tried making games that would prey on the psychological addiction to games and racked up large profits only to find that players get tired of being mistreated. Players are becoming much more sophisticated and recognize being scammed into paying for energy or undoing time locks without actual value.
One agrument against F2P is that that “core gamers” prefer paying for the game up front and then just enjoy the 10 to 30 hours of gameplay they paid for. There is a terrific game industry blog that posted “Why Core Gamers Hate Social Games: Because Their Selfish Exploitation Of Casual Gamers Is Coming To An End” - basically it suggests that casual gamers have been buying, but not finishing games for decades… and those casual gamers have been subsidizing the core gamers buy purchasing games they don’t actually finish or gain the real value for, but the new F2P games allow the casual gamers to enjoy the game as they like while the core gamers actually spend the money needed to finance the game. The result is that core gamers gain a large pool of players to engage with (see above about “whales” coming to the party) and the casual players become engaged enough that eventually they become paying players themselves.
This is an interesting redefinition of what “core” and “casual” actually means – and may for the first time reconcile what is really going on. The “core” players are the ones who pay for the game and “casual” players are the ones who provide the party or social atmosphere. I was always reluctant to believe the old definition by time played (core plays more than casual) – my wife, who enjoys puzzles and card games, will play those for dozens of hours each week, but she would not consider herself a “gamer”, and as busy as I am, I generally only get limited time to play as many games as I like… and the ones I do get to play tend to be for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, but I definately define my lifestyle as “gamer” by choice. So I like the idea of “core” or “casual” describing a game player’s spending behavior, not the kinds of games they play.
When a game has real value - truly entertains the players, provides a means of social interaction with their friends, and provides a genuine community for player’s to engage in – then players are happy to pay for the IAP and DLC. Many of the games I’ve worked on have had incredible conversion rates, large viral growth, and enjoyed significant financial success. This wasn’t by abusing players, but by giving them what they want – real value to have some fun.
When choosing what metrics you are going to track and how to analyze the data remember that there is already a vast amount of work out there already. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, especially if you can partner with one of the tracking services that helps game companies instrument their games and have wonderful web dashboards to investigate those large data sets. Let them provide that service, while your team works on the game.
Hopefully this is useful to many of you, and if it generates more questions than it answers I am happy to answer them in the comments.
I expect that at least a few of you are interested in how I made the PDF versions of Dragoons20 RPG and maybe even how to make the booklet.
I started with the original Microlite20 RPG rules. I cut the text as best I could from various sources. If you try to redo this you will notice that most of the PDFs are encoded – probably in come form of UNICODE (UT8 or UT16). Occasionally I could find a text or doc version if I looked hard enough and at least a few people who have extended Microlite20 have published their PDFs in easy to clip form. I’ve tried to make it easy for those that follow my footsteps.
Once I had the basic rules in a good easy to edit MS Word document, I started the process of rewritting the rules and adding new sections. Some of it went pretty quick. Sections like laying out the character sheet and many of the tables I saved for later – in my Desk Top Publishing tool of choice Serif PagePlus. I started playtesting even this early version and felt like I was really getting somewhere very quickly.
Once I was happy with the sections and basic text I started importing the DOC file into PagePlus. First I create my master doc, a side folded 8.5″ x 11″ booklet. Then I create my master pages: one blank, one with just a border and one with a border and page numbers. Then I import the acutal DOC file in as a new text frame. It spills and jumbles its way on to a HUGE number of pages and looks like junk. It does preserve the idea of layout text so I have one header style and a normal style. Easy enough, I change those styles into something that looks like the fonts will fit into my tiny, but useful, half-pages. I always prefer to have one topic per page (unless sections are very small and grouped together). So next I insert a page break for all the big sections at the header. Now I have topics mostly on pages by themselves and a bit of room for tables and graphics. Tables are pretty easy for me to build – I either fake them in text layout or actually build them in MS Excel and then import the cells as a new table with cut and paste.
The graphics are from 30+ years of keeping a sketchbook and I pulled characters that fit my wacky sense of what Bantumwart is like. I love to draw, but never have been that good at REAL people – just monsters, beasts and fairy creatures. My fantasy world is filled with achronistic paradoxes and I have never taken my fantasy too seriously. When I read fantasy authors I prefer Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Patricia Wrede, Robert Asprin and great comic authors like that. My fantasy art tastes go in the wild directions and include Brian Froud, Frank Frazetta, Sergio Aragones, Mike Ploog, Tony DiTerlizzi, John Bauer, and others who mix fantasy and cartoons.
Then it is time to edit, edit and edit some more. I make my family and friends read everything so that they can fix my crazy grammar and funky way of punctuation. I count on grammar and spell checkers, because I was not a English major.
Most of the crazy little mechanics for adding humor come from over 30 years of homebrew rules and reading tons of other fine RPGs. I’m pretty proud of the results and my players seem to really like the ideas – even if they get frustrated when they visit Hell. Games run very quickly. Several combats and tons of role-playing all in about 3 hours a night. Try that with some of the more complicated RPGs out there – no offense to D&D 4E, GURPs, HERO System… but if you play with all of the rules in those systems you will probably bog down a bit while running the adventures.
To make the actual PDFs I export the non-booklet rules and character sheet from “Publish as PDF” in PagePlus. I use Print and send it to Adobe PDF to generate the booklet. Since PagePlus already knows it is a booklet because I told it so before I started it actually handles all the fancy page reordering and as long as it is done double-sided everything works out great. I notice one review mentioned that the booklet might be a PocketMOD. I love PocketMODs, but they only hold 8 pages. This one is 28 pages and becomes 7 double-sided printed pieces of paper. Pretty cool really. It also explains the one blank page 
– it is so that I have the back and front covers on the same page.
When I print the booklet, I print page 1 and 2 on two sides of on one piece of card stock. Then I print pages 3 through 14 on 6 double-sided regular printer paper pages. My wife is a needleworks master and knows a bit about saddle stitching. So she pokes 5 holes in the folded pages – 1 in the center, 2 are 0.5″ from the edges and the other 2 are bisecting those. Then she laces the pages together with good strong thread and ties the knot off in the center pages of the book.
I also considered buying a “long” stapler for this task. If you would like to try this yourself take a look at some of these fine sites:
http://howaboutorange.blogspot.com/2007/10/make-mini-saddle-stitched-booklet.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_5176140_saddle-stitch-booklet.html
Because I use a folded booklet template in PagePlus, making the booklet into an A4 booklet only took about 40 minutes. But I’m afriad it would take me quite a long time to tell it that I want each page on a single A4 sheet – I may even need to start from an empty project and re-layout the entire book using cut and paste. For now I’ll just post the A4 booklet and character sheets – maybe I will figure out a clever way to solve this problem Until then enjoy the game and let me know what you think about it or pass along your own editing and bind tricks. [EDIT - OK, so a few minutes later I realized that I didn't have to re-layout the PagePlus file - I just needed to trick Acrobat into printing over the old PDF with the paper size set to A4 - it worked and I've uploaded a A4 verison for everyone to enjoy.]
I’ve been playing tabletop RPGs (TRPG) for 32 years now and computer RPGs (CRPG) 25+ years. The definition of action RPG (ARPG) generally causes some debate. For discussion purposes I’ll start out by calling Gauntlet, Diablo, and Legend of Zelda ARPGs – they have character development over time and yet still feel like arcade games. Strategy RPGs (SRPG) move away from the single character or party based games into an almost war-game or Real-time Strategy (RTS) style game. I’d hazard an opinion that Disgaea and Defense of the Ancients are both SRPGs – and yet very different games.
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is the BIG TRPGs. high schools, colleges and neighborhoods everywhere were seeing players spending too much time rolling funny looking dice and calling out the silly names of spells and monsters from the game. If you could scratch out a rough plan on graph paper you were the Dungeon Master.
Some folks will pine after the days of leading a whole party into a dungeon with the classic Gold Box D&D. That certainly has the feeling a TRPG but only one player and a pre-canned adventure with a cyber-GM. The same era had Gauntlet which allowed up to four players to cooperate together against a continuous threat. Computer players with modems could challenge their skills in a Mutli-user Dungeon (MUD) that could change because the sysop could fix-up the encounters. This same era had the incredible Adventure Construction Set and Eamon Adventures for the computers, which allowed users to build dungeon adventures for other players to explore. I still remember playing Wizardry with 3 other people sitting around a keyboard – everyone had a job to do running the keyboard, mapping levels, keeping track of stats on a clipboard or bringing in more snacks from the kitchen.
The 80′s also brought a boom of TRPGs that broke the ‘dungeon’ mold. Now players could have adventures in Gothic horror, sci-fi, cartoons… the possibilities were endless and the creativity moved slowly away from the mechanized rules of the 1970′s to the creation of truly unique characters that had the ability to change over time and emphasised role-playing over roll-playing. Computers and arcades had nothing on these TRPGs – except you could game anytime you want and many player’s yearned for but did not have groups to join around a table. For many the CRPG was the only game in town – and they never came back.
As computers and consoles both got much better at graphics and storage they became very attractive as the only or at least alternate game for many TRPGers. Players now had more choices and the import and localization of Japanese CRPGs started its boom. Now games like Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior ruled the console market and Might and Magic and Bards Tale ruled on PC. RTS games boom and create the likes of Command & Conquer and Warcraft. Warcraft is such a success for Blizzard that it spawns Starcraft. Blizzard takes a chance on an ARPG – Diablo and the advent of multi-user dungeon crawling on computers rocks the world.
The 90′s were a very interesting time for the TRPG market. Some companies lost their luster, while others grew in strength and loyalty of their fans. Games like GURPs, the Hero System and Vampire pushed the limits and created some of the best TRPGs ever. The advent of Magic: The Gathering and other Trading Card Games (TCG) create a whole new kind of draw for TRPG players – some never come back. Warhammer and Warhammer 40K pull even more TRPGers over the the miniature gaming world - some never come back.
MMORPGs like Ultima Online and Everquest are opening up new horizons for CPRGers. For the first time many of these players see no reason to ever play a single player game again.
WOTC buys TSR and Hasbro buys WOTC. Now D&D 3rd Edition comes along and literally changes the rules – both in the game and how the after market works. Almost anybody can become a d20 publisher and many do overnight. Over the next 3 years a flood of gaming materials overflows the shelves of local game shops. Feeling a bit out of control WOTC releases a D&D 3.5 Edition to sell more core books and releases the Star Wars and d20 Modern rules. Still the glut of materials pours in – this is great for TRGPers and provides more options than players have ever seen before.
Almost as quickly as it came the TRPG market changes again, possibly because Blizzard releases World of Warcraft (WOW) – a MMORPG that, like Diablo before it, catches on in ways nobody would have ever guessed. The headlines are still full of the success of this single brand and its legions of loyal players. WOTC redesigns D&D and releases 4th Edition – some say as a reaction to the new MMORPG crowd. Time will tell, but the reaction doesn’t seem to have created the rush they were hoping.
This rush of players to WOW has also created a business opportunity for other publishers and big brands LOTR, Star Wars, Warhammer, Star Trek, Stargate and more will all have their MMORPGs.
Interestingly enough the 90′s and 00′s have created a fascinating side market. The indie gamer and indie games – both for the table-top and computer players benefit from the no-frills, yet highly innovative small publisher market. You can buy short-run books or PDFs (Risus, Goblin City, Impossible Missions and more) of a variety of TRPGs and likewise play in CRPGs (Aveyond, that are created on a fraction of the budget of console and larger publisher brands. For the price – these are some of the best fun you can have botharound a table or with a mouse in your hand. You can tell I have fond place in my heart for these games and my only concern is that many of these game developers will never make back the enough money for the time and personal investment they have committed to their passions.
I love to play all of these Role-playing Games. It hardly matters what they are. For the entire time of my late teen to adult life I’ve been consumed with RPGs and especially designing them. Some of my most cherished memories in my career as game developer are working on Star Trek: TNG for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo and then D&D: Eye of the Beholder for Nintendo GBA. A few years ago I tried an idea on an ARPG on mobile phones called Endless Adventures. I’d love to bring that back again now that the idea of publishing small RPGs is so possible on PCs, Consoles and mobile. I would love to hear from each of my readers about your own favorites or insights into how this market has grown and changed over time. Maybe you know another type of RPG I should be listing???
19990421
Having designed games since 1977, I have a few things to say about the subject. I prefer the academic approach to design even if I live my life more like a wacky cartoon character. These ideas have stood the test of time and several projects. I have confidence that I am right but I’m not so foolish as to suppose that there aren’t other ways or even a few tidbits I may have missed.This is an introduction to what I feel are the most essential “rules” by which good designers should measure their creations. With these “rules” it may seem like you have enough to insider information to go off in a dark closet and create a million selling game. I doubt seriously that it would ever be made. First and foremost, a design is a living document prepared with the development team in mind. Without the synergy and buy-in of the team any design is incomplete.
What is a Game?
Definition: Two or more people interacting using a set of agreed rules. This can mean a lot of things in different contexts but fundamentally that is why games can be almost anything.
If during the development of a game you see the elements of the game becoming more like the props and characters revealed in a story or movie with little motivation other than moving the story along you have made an interactive story but not a game.
In games each prop is part of a larger economy that changes the balance in a system. The characters are the other players or their agents (simulated or not), or they are “signposts” intended to assist or reveal secrets. The two or more sides of players are negotiating the “board” trying to gain advantage so they can beat their opponents.
Many “adventures” boil down to a story cut into chunks revealed by solving puzzles. It is important to realize this when you sit down to design. Place yourself firmly in the “Adventure” or “Game” camp before you develop further. I also have never seen a multi-player “Adventure” and probably never will. The very mechanics of an “Adventure” makes it solitary.
Simulations are reproductions of some real-life activity, usually sports or vehicles driving/piloting. Occasionally there is a game under the simulation, sometimes there is just practicing the activity which you can’t normally do unless it is on a computer. The main problem I have with simulations is that I much prefer to live out my fantasies in my games, and they don’t usually include playing sports or piloting a combat fighter. If given the choice to play Formula 1 or Mario Kart, it is Mario Kart every time.
I’ve had conversations with video game designers before that were stumped when it came to game concepts. Some friendly advice, play games, all kinds of games, real sports and board games, paper games, classic games and cutting edge console games. While I’m at it, I think you should go shopping, buy comic books and toys. Become inspired to create FUN. Think young. Play again.
What is Conflict?
At several points in my career I’ve been asked to design a good puzzle. To me a puzzle is a problem that needs to be solved. Once solved access is revealed to previously unattainable locations or items. The solution can also set off an event that will change the game state. A narrow minded individual may invent a clever lock and key puzzle, but why can’t the problem also be combat with an enemy, navigating a particularly difficult obstacle course, or seducing a character with some reward.
In games we are talking about interactivity. The possibilities are endless. Conflict arises because we are put in situations were we need something and there must be a way to obtain it. The situation may be too difficult to overcome with your current resources, which drives you to obtain the power needed to defeat it.
The game industry’s genre system means that players who like one kind of problem solving over another can readily buy games that fit the mixture of “conflicts” they like to solve best. Kids may buy more “jumpers”, “fighters” and “shooters”, while adults may buy more “puzzles”, “sports” and “adventures”. Everybody gets what he or she wants.
Places to Go, People to See, Things to Do
For almost all of the years I’ve been designing games I have also been a computer programmer. I like distilling systems into their component parts, determining the relationship between those components and simulating behaviors. The old saying “Places to go, people to see, things to do” struck me one day during a design session and has remained my object-oriented approach to game design since. One of the best side effects of this approach is that it is also easy to program when you get to that stage of development.
“Places” are the worlds, levels, locations, terrain and maps of your game. Players (simulated or not) can navigate the map using movement, or “Go” to “Places”. “People” are the avatars of the players and their encounters. The graphics and sound represent all the sensory input that the player experiences, or “Sees”. “Things” are the props, items, power-ups, etc. that the players can accumulate and use to gain advantage during the game. “Do” is the kinds of interactions the players have that can change the game state and ultimately lead to a win or lose situation. During design I like to make lists that fit these categories adding to them while building the game.
The “Things” should have simple enough economies that they are easy to learn to use. Those economies allow the designer the opportunity to dial the difficulty or drive the action during a specific section of the game play. Alfred Hitchcock called the “Thing” a “McGuffin”, a prop that drives the story. An economy is the cost to the player it takes to use those items. Some items may use forms of energy; others may be limited use or require a recharge time. The item can be difficult to find requiring more exploration than is needed to finish the game without it. The item can of coarse be the key needed to reveal more of the game.
The player’s interactions (“Do”) are usually fairly limited at the outset of the game but become more complex and interesting as the game progresses. The player makes decisions based on what they “See” and tells the game, through a controller, what to “Do”. This is called “Player I/O”. The status of the game is rendered for the player to “See” using the game map and the user interface instruments. My eight-year-old, at the time, son once told me that anything that happens in game occurs because of something the player did or a timer. All I can say is “That’s my Boy.”
Technically any game that has the player interaction aspect of the design well defined can easily move between single player and multiple players. It also makes the artificial intelligence for the automated agents much easier to develop because a simple expert system may evaluate the game state make a decision and “Do” some action. Another key component of this is the “Reaction”. Any object in the world that can have an “Action” can cause other objects to have a “Reaction”. Typically “Reactions” are processed to change a state in the various objects, colliding with a wall causes a “Bump” reaction, getting hurt causes a “Damaged” reaction.
Character Development
One of the single most important decisions I make when buying a game (besides the clever box art the marketing types want me to see) is what will I be doing as the player. If the character I become isn’t interesting I will continue my search.
The role of developing a good intellectual property is not just to get a toy line and Saturday morning cartoon. It gives the player a hook. They become the hero and live vicariously through the main character while playing the game. The more interesting you make the character the more players will be attracted to your game. Simple characters may hook the players, but to hold their attention and sell sequels a player must see a relationship develop with the character. During the course of the game the player must feel compassion and empathy toward the situations the character gets into, because the player is in those same situations.
I’m not saying that every game must be a role-playing game (RPG). But as designers we can learn a lot from looking at the classic RPG mechanics and realize that all games put the player into some type of role.
Storytelling
Another important design decision is placing your game on the sliding scale of storytelling. At the low end is a game of just rules and scores where the player is tested against previous scores or other players. At the high end is a carefully crafted story that follows classic storytelling formulas to achieve 3 or more acts with an ultimate conclusion.
Learning the finer elements of storytelling is great for any game designer. How to construct scenes, build tension, develop characters and deliver dramatic endings is also important to good game design. I think each game designer develops these skills to some extent and uses them to make better games.
Looking carefully at the academic analyses of storytelling shows us some good tools we can use as designers. Morphology of the folktale, 36 dramatic plots, 3 (or 9) act movie structure, and the mono-myth all give practical examples of a distinct formula for developing story. Aristotle’s Poetics can easily be used in game design, and many designers do.
An important distinction I make as to what makes a great game as opposed to a great story is that the players all write the game, each one differently, whereas the author writes a single view of the story. Simply placing the elements of a story into a game will allow the players to experience them in a random fashion, like a dim sum restaurant. Arranging them carefully so that they are revealed in a time-released way, tells a strong and convincing story of the game that player experienced. It will always be subtly different than another player’s story of the same game. The trick here is to give the players the story components and let them build their own story from those pieces. Clever construction of dialog and cut-scenes means you can get more mileage from your story assets.
Mass Destruction, Carnage, Crushing Your Enemy, and Global Domination
This is wholly an observation on my part, and one that tends to cause quite a bit of controversy. I will stand on a soapbox for a moment and tell it the way I see it.
Games that sell well allow players to reap chaos and benefit from it. This may be appealing to the lizard part of your brain or just some juvenile form of energy release. But it works. Watch the top ten lists and keep a short count each week of which games have violence or any kind. Look at the revenue from these products.
As a designer you must decide where you are comfortable drawing the line. I personally believe that taking the classic Warner Brothers cartoon approach to violence is my comfort area. Mayhem occurs but the consequences are unrealistic and can be detrimental.
As a society we have been “programmed” to respond to certain kinds of violence in positive and negative ways. Football is OK, but mugging is not. The damage can be similar but the intentions are different. In games I believe that we can keep our good karma if we blow stuff up, but slamming people has consequences if done for the wrong reasons.
During design you must ask yourself what am I allowing the player to do? Have I given the player freedom to play as they wish within constraints that make sense? Accommodating every kind of player is just not practical within our game budgets. Draw your bell curve of player types and pick the biggest standard deviation. Focus test to be sure. Realize that I make games for profit, not art.
If you make games where the only interaction is “Blowing Stuff Up” you are forcing the player to follow that tactic. Try giving the players both a Captain Picard and a Captain Kirk way to solve their problems. It worked for me in the Star Trek: The Next Generation cartridge I designed for Sega. I once heard from Sega that it was the number one selling RPG of all time for the Genesis in the USA. One reviewer even said it “redefined what a good Star Trek game was”.
The Heartbeat
In any great design there is always a single life-giving heartbeat. That single shard of the design that once distilled is the essence of FUN that makes your game. Once you know what that one thing is everybody gets it. It becomes the vision of the project. The team comes together in a fascinating and synergistic force of creativity that becomes unstoppable; management sees this as the blockbuster of the year; the marketing departments “gets it” and sells the game like “hot cakes” (have you ever actually seen hot cakes sell fast? hum).
With experience most designers understand what it is. It is not easy to teach, but there is a test that can help determine if you’ve found it. Take everything else away: graphics, sound, story, and characters. If it still looks FUN to play you have found your heartbeat. With a good heartbeat the game will work on any platform, two people can develop it or twenty people and still be successful. Players will feel it instinctively and clamor for the sequels. You will be successful. I have seen it work on a design where the budget was cut, the team reduced, and the platform changed. I have also seen it work when there was no other reason to finish the product, the team had the kind of passion necessary to finish even after cancellation due to circumstances beyond their control.
Many designers suggest that this heartbeat can be a single sentence. I have always believed that ideas transcend communication so I don’t worry about how many sentences it takes, but it should be easily communicable.
Conclusion
Go forth and design great games. Do Good, annoy Evil. Make big bucks and buy more of my games. Thanks.
Original content Copyright © 1999-2009 Randy Angle
19990512
Allow Me to Introduce Myself
A man walked into a bar; an ambulance drove him to the hospital where they treated the concussion. (Maybe not the best joke, but it is clean)
A personal philosophy of mine is that reality is overrated. If I’m going to live life by my rules then things are going to be FUN. If I’m not having FUN then I must be doing it wrong. Being an engineer and designer means that I look at life analytically. I use my background to create systems, rules, and explanations for why things work the way they do. One of the most difficult aspects of human personality is humor. Why do we laugh? What is funny? In Star Trek: The Next Generation the character Data spends entire episodes dwelling on humor trying to make sense of it in his android mind. Philosophers and great comedians have commented on this subject for centuries. Game designers like Greg Costikyan, Warren Spector, Steve Meretzky, Al Lowe, Bob Bates, James Wallis, Walt Frietag and others have found innovative and creative ways of including comedy in their paper and video games. This is my attempt to show how you might also include it in yours.
Making Nonsense
A particularly effective way of making nonsense is to use random table generation. Carefully constructing tables of similar types and using the tables to seed your adventure plots, character names, McGuffins, and motives. Picking from a list of colors and foods gives results like “purple banana” which is strange and therefore funny. Constructing an Evil Genius you may pick personality traits like “robot” and “diaper” and create someone very funny that nobody would expect. Coming up with non-sequiturs is much easier if you “choose one from column A and one from column B”. Comic strips like “The Farside” are masters at combining two dissimilar concepts and creating something very funny in the twist.
Take a look at “Madlibs” a wordplay pastime that takes any story and replaces the verbs, nouns, and adjectives with blanks that are filled-in by the players. It is the very absurdity of taking something familiar and wreaking chaos on it that causes laughter.
Sounds Funny to Me
David Letterman, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks all like weird sounding names. Towns in New Jersey, words with ‘K’, ‘W’, or ‘OO’ can all create visions of something funny when you say them. Strange sounding cultural words can be funny too, try Yiddish, German, French, and Japanese. Many-times normal words will sound funny if you use outragous accents. Try Monty Python and Peter Sellers movies for good examples of comedic accents. When you hear a strange word write it down and use it later. Use puns (sparingly) and oxymorons or other forms of wordplay to build small “in-jokes” for players to find. One of my favorite one-word oxymorons is “Producer” since they tend not to.
Comedy Plots
For our use a picaresque is a funny travelogue. It is a series of humorous events that happen while going from point A to point B. If you build your adventures as sets of funny bits that players can reveal while playing, and then whisk them through it with a wacky guide they will experience the humor to the degree that they participate. Remember that there is a big difference to writing humor and playing humor. The players must feel like they have some control of the plot even if they have a lack of control of the situation. When faced with conflict a player should be able to choose from multiple possible solutions.
Try the books of Terry Prachett, Douglas Adams, and Robert Asprin for examples of putting character into funny situations while they try to accomplish a goal. Taking a standard fantasy epic and parodying it is a cheap, but effective, way of making comedy. For great parody check out “Bore of the Rings”.
Get a running gag. Find something early in the game and reuse it in different ways. Don’t go overboard. A properly used running gag can give a theme to your game and help make the game have continuity. I like to tie my running gags with my reoccurring characters.
Rim Shot
Tempo or Beat is one of the most important features to keeping the game moving and funny. If the players seem stuck or bored drop something unexpected into the scene and let the mayhem begin. A comfortable way to gauge encounters in games is to properly balance action and storytelling. Too much storytelling gets boring; too much battling gets monotonous. Open the adventure by dropping the players into a short action sequence, once resolved let them catch up to the story by having an actor or McGuffin give them clues to the situation. Always finish with a climatic action sequence followed by a wrap-up story ending. Another aspect of beat that is very important with multi-player games is keeping everybody involved. If a player has nothing to do there is no way for them to have fun. Purposely find ways to use the players together and focus several times during the game on special character attributes of each player.
Stick in the Mud
Funny motivations can help otherwise unfunny players to join the act. Give them something silly to do, make it difficult to achieve while at the same time opposing some motivation of another player and you have the recipe for disaster, and that is great for comedy. If a player still won’t get involved send a game character after them. Little brothers, jealous girlfriends, angry authorities, and hungry monsters all work to spice up the life of the terminally serious.
On occasion I’ve picked a running gag and used it mercilessly on the unfunny player. You must be careful with this but it works like a comedy team with a Straight Rube.
Building Character
People are funny. The way we relate makes animal mating behavior look simple. Our bodies are always leaking, oozing, farting, or belching. Everyone has unique looks and most people have at least one funny feature. We get embarrassed from the mistakes we make. We place taboos on certain body parts and certain behaviors and then spend all our time trying to break the taboos.
When putting characters into your game make sure you consider all the human weaknesses and include a healthy dose of those weaknesses when defining personalities. Occasionally give someone a sneeze, body odor, or nervous tick. It may become the most memorable part of that character. Don’t be afraid of forcing the players into situations where they catch colds, get sprayed by skunks, or get unsightly blemishes.
I tend to spend a lot more time on the personalities of characters than their back-stories. If a character makes it trough a first pass I’ll then spend the time to more fully develop them. I love to reuse characters that the players have met. It builds relationships and provides a sense of continuity.
Remember that it is much more funny to role-play a weakness than it is an advantage. Being the best isn’t as funny as thinking you are the best.
In single-player video games I suggest that you have a buddy-AI, a sidekick that follows the player. That way the player has someone to talk to, instead of himself, and there is always somebody you can do something funny to without it being the player.
Another interesting rule I learned from melodrama is don’t use shades of gray in personality. There is evil and good, but nothing in-between. Even if your bad guy has a weakness, his intent should remain solidly evil. Use extremes of personality and borrow heavily from stereotypes so that players can easily grasp the intents and purpose of your characters without much thought. If you wish to have a character switch sides, so to speak. Make it happen as the result of the player’s actions.
Vocabulary
Schtick – Comedic actions, funny things people do
Beat – The timing, delivery is everything
Gag – A one liner that provides the theme for a session, often it repeats throughout
Routine – A collection of funny bits
Situation – A place and/or all the necessary components for comedy, just add players
Joke – A situation and players that when mixed result in something funny happening
Twist – An unexpected event, unusual use of an item, or unusual behavior
Pun – Different meanings for the same word, mostly with ironic or comedic results
Farce – A ridiculous and silly situation where everything is chaos and nonsense
Whopper – Exaggerating the properties of anything to an extreme
Surprise – The obvious and expected are replaced with opposites and uncertainty
Irony – While things seem to happen for all the wrong reasons, somebody is keeping score
Chaos – A state where no system of physical or social laws can give predictable results
McGuffin – A prop that drives the plot of a story, for example the Holy Grail or Maltese Falcon
Character Types
Rube – The butt of a joke or gag
Straight – A too serious person, because of their seriousness funny stuff happens to them
Stooge – A funny person that just can’t stop cutting up, bad luck happens all around them
Fool – An innocent, naive person that just wants to do good but can’t get it right
Goon – A tough person with more muscles and mouth than brains
Femme fatale – A Straight or Fool female who’s looks cause traffic accidents
Hag – A matronly, ugly, or nuisance female
Bitty – A friendly, sometimes overly protective female, eager to please
Grump – A dark, pessimistic personality that doesn’t laugh much
Rascal – A friendly personality that is sometimes lazy or sneaky
Miser – An extremely greedy personality, wealth and power rule their lives
Evil Genius – A soulless, power hungry, megalomaniac that has diabolical plans
Kook – A befuddled, wacky, and absent-minded old person with answers to most everything
Coward – A person who will at any cost avoid danger or threat, they can be liars too
Hero – A selfless and all around good person, everything is about action and the cause
Bootlicker – Similar to the Coward, the Bootlicker manipulates people in power to their own ends
Know-it-all – Contrary to their name they over state their real knowledge, usually causing harm
Dude – This person exudes Cool and bad luck simply slides right off
Bureaucrat – A political or corporate person of some stature that makes life difficult for others
Conclusion
Go forth and design great games. Do Good, annoy Evil. Make big bucks and buy more of my games. Thanks.
Original content Copyright © 1999-2009 Randy Angle
By Randy Angle for DunDraCon (years 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009)
Synopsis
How to add humorous elements to your RPG’s. For both players and game masters of any game system from TOON to d20. Details just what humor in gaming is and how it works. How to develop characters and NPC’s that are functional and yet entertaining in a way that will make playing them humorous. When to draw the line so the party won’t revolt against your character. How to design scenarios and run them so players will experience the silly and wilder side of both dark and light humor.
Outline
Introduction
What is humor in gaming?
I would wager that in every game session I’ve participated in someone cracked a joke or pun while playing. Everyone tries to be funny at some point, but – good or bad – that doesn’t make a humorous RPG by itself.
As Mel Brooks said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open manhole cover and die.” It is very difficult to think something is funny when all you feel is the pain. Some of the stuff that makes comedy work is the same stuff that makes games bad. Players want to have control. The consequence of failing in a game is usually death. They want to know that the “rules” of the game are consistent and that they can succeed. Much of comedy is about a lack of control. When Abbot and Costello line up to get ice cream and accidentally get inducted into the army they completely lose control of their lives.
Plato, when philosophizing about drama, believed that the difference between comedy and tragedy comes down to the consequences for your actions. If there is the treat of death for any choice the player makes in the game, it will feel like tragedy. It is interesting to note that in horror gaming and fiction the loss of control is almost identical to comedy. The difference is, again, the consequence of death.
Like all good RPG sessions, the game master must encourage the comedy and allow for players to feel, occasionally, in control, even if the rest of the world is not.
Dark Humor vs. Light Humor
One aspect of humor, things that make us laugh, is the stuff in our lives that makes us feel uncomfortable, or even disturbed. Dark Humor explores those recesses of our minds and tickles our funny bones in ways that Light Humor doesn’t. RPG’s like HoL, Over the Edge, Violence, and Kobolds Ate My Baby can tend toward the Dark side. RPG’s like TOON, Teenagers from Outer Space, and Ghostbusters are much sillier and tend toward the Light side. Your own gaming group may have their preference toward one side or the other. Often the difference between Dark and Light comes down to satire verses parody. Satire can be mean spirited while parody usually celebrates the subject’s uniqueness.
I actually enjoy playing my worlds somewhere in the middle. Evil characters will tend toward the Dark side, while most other people will tend to the Light side.
Overview of Funny RPG’s – TOON, Risus, Teenagers From Outer Space, Ghostbusters, Munchkin…
Funny RPG’s tend to have very simple mechanics and allow players and game masters to be very creative in the interpretation of the rules. The philosophy is that simple, easy, rules means the game can move along quickly and the action can stay at a manic level. The lighter of these games also has limited, or no, death as a consequence.
TOON – Steve Jackson Games, play as your favorite or made up cartoon characters. It uses simple stats and skills. It has lots of funny tables for wacky stuff to happen. Players succeed by being true to their characters.
Risus – Cumberland Games, very simple cliché based conflict resolution system. Clichés are ranked and used to resolve combat, be a 5d Viking and 2d Hair Dresser. Risus focuses on the dichotomy of playing characters with conflicting personality types. It encourages wackiness.
Teenagers From Outer Space – TFOS is a parody of life as a high school student with the added distractions of a reality where aliens have moved in next door. Very anime influenced.
Ghostbusters – Based on the movie, Ghostbusters takes rules somewhat similar to TOON and places it firmly in the world of ghost hunting.
Men in Black – MIB is a D6/Masterbook series game that takes a very funny subject and makes it into a viable game. Rules are more serious than some other games.
HoL – Human Occupied Landfill is a very dark parody of science fiction gaming and role playing games in general. The rules are very simple and the action can be intense, do not expect your characters to last very long.
Paranoia – Paranoia is a humorous look at the dark future after the apocalypse. The game mechanics are very solid. Rules allow for lots of places to introduce good role playing. Characters don’t last long, but the game allows for that by giving you a series of clones to replace departed ones. It has been known to cause fights between players.
Kobolds Ate My Baby – Self described as a “Beer & Pretzels” game, KAMB puts players on the side of the monsters. Effectively creates the alternate reality of thinking and behaving as a monster would by encouraging monster like behavior to succeed.
Pokéthulu – Parody of Call of Cthulhu and the popular Pokémon video game, cartoon, and CCG. The monster in your pocket is cuddly, evil, and itching for action! Gotta catch you all.
Elfs – Using a very modern RPG design style this satire of elvish life as an RPG has many unique design concepts. It works well to create the comedy atmosphere.
Stuper Powers – Super Hero parody. It is a little hard to believe that you would use this for more than a single game session.
Hackmaster – Based on the Knights of the Dinner Table comic it is essentially the AD&D game repackaged with comedy elements from the comic included.
Munchkin – Originally an inspired card game, the translation to RPG left me wanting more. It does show you how to add humorous elements to the d20 system.
Snarf Quest – Based on the popular Dragon magazine comic, Snarf Quest has several good ideas about how to run funny games and walks that fine line between a serious fantasy and a goofy one.
Overview of Standard RPG’s and how they might be made funny
Dungeons & Dragons – The original RPG and certainly the way most of us entered into this hobby. Gamers can easily add funny character classes, races, spells, and feats. Make it much harder to die and you remove the threat of death helping to make it more comedy like.
GURPS – Steve Jackson Games megalithic Generic Universal Role Playing System. Arguably has the largest number of source books for any game. If you want to make your GURPS games more funny look at the source books for Discworld, Goblins and Planet Krishna. It may be a bit too rules heavy for some but you can fix that.
If your RPG has a rule that provides tactical strategy and realistic simulation of some trivial element of the real world it probably should be surgically removed to make your game funny. Pacing in the game will come down to how easy it is to resolve skill and conflict during game play. If players are worried about initiative, attacks of opportunity, and bookkeeping they will be thinking much more than they will be having fun. An important corollary to that concept is that if your players like that stuff they might not enjoy a comedy RPG.
One popular technique for adding an almost Monty Python style incongruity to your world (every body knows that chaos is the next door neighbor of comedy) use the Chinese Menu style of random tables. Choose one from column A and one from column B. Peregrine Games’ Murphy’s World has more tables than you can shake a chicken at. You can also adapt the random generation tables from TOON or any other game for your own purposes.
How to make funny Player Characters
Sure you have some funny players, but do they have funny player characters. Most players have learned that evolution works, adaptation and power means you will be around to play again another day. Their characters become superheroes with the highest stats they can possibly achieve. This is what makes a satire of RPG’s like Munchkin so absolutely funny. But what makes a character funny is internal conflict. Any creative writing class will tell you that for a character to feel whole they must have dimensions of personality. Characters are striving to meet their destiny while fighting their weaknesses all the way. For a character to be funny, their destiny and weakness must be weird and comical. Your character may have 18 in strength, but is he also gullible to the extreme (low wisdom), or easily forgets which side he is on (low intelligence).
As mentioned before comedy and chaos are next door neighbors, if you play a lawful good Paladin you may find it hard to act impulsively. On the other hand you may scream heartily as you spring into battle almost carelessly defeating the spawn of evil in your glee to “Do the right thing”. Al Lowe, game designer on Leisure Suit Larry, once told me that whenever he had to make a decision about what happened next in the game, he always went with “what was funny”.
Having played many funny characters in a variety of games I can testify that if everything is a joke to you, your party members may revolt at some point. I cut up while I can, but always make sure that I come through when the cards are down and the party needs my assistance. An awful lot of whoopee cushions can be overlooked if you save their butt a few times. It is also important to let the GM have his moments in the sun too, if you hog the GM’s glory you may find your character a pulp of burnt flesh at the bottom of an elevator shaft, mine was. Played correctly your GM may actually appreciate your comedy interjections and you may find yourself the sole survivor in a quest to destroy the source of ultimate evil, mine was.
How to make funny NPC’s
Making a funny NPC is very similar to making a funny PC. An important part to remember is that for RPG’s there is no gray area, like Melodrama, it is best to paint your characters firmly black or white. Shades of gray means the players are thinking again, instead of acting. Your bad guys must be truly evil, even if they can be reformed. Your good guys must reek of saccharine goodness, even if they are driving taskmasters, they’ll do it with a big smile, cookies and milk.
I keep a few templates of common character types around for both good and bad guys. I use tables to generate (or pick) typical destinies and weaknesses. If the character survives more than just a simple exchange they get a funny name and go into my box for later use. Many of my longest lasting nemesis are legends in my campaigns.
Like a talking frog in a fairytale, some NPC’s are just there to drive the plot or the characters forward in the story. In the animated feature, Titan AE, the party encounters a guard that must be passed. The characters immediately try to bluff their way through. The guard is actually quite smart and like a clever detective points out all the reasons he can see through their ruse. After a quick fight one of the party says, “An intelligent guard. Never saw that one coming.”
How to run a humorous adventure/campaign
One of the all important rules of running a humorous game is to keep the pace moving all the time. You need to have slower moments in between the hectic moments so the players and you do not tire out during the adventure. When things start to slow down, drop something into the scene to cause excitement or conflict. Killjoys can be bottleneck puzzles or moments where the players are lost, traveling, or just don’t understand what to do next. Stay one step ahead of them and prepare for contingency. Keep a couple of wild “random” encounters on hand to use so you are not winging it too much.
When I run a game I really like to use props. Miniatures are just the beginning. I have buildings, vehicles, giant monsters, flora, and terrain I can use for most any location where the action takes us. I use a large play mat and draw out other details so the players really feel like they are in a place. Many times the player will use some feature of the terrain in their combats or sneak into a secret headquarters through an alternate entrance. I’ll have handouts of the documents they find and occasionally props of the items they find.
When you create your adventure outline remember that the players are the ones who “write” the story and the game master sets the stage and referees the action. If you become wrapped up in the idea of your epic story and drive the adventure too hard the players will feel that their actions do not matter to the outcome of the story. I drive the plot by seeding the location with elements that will make the players move generally in a direction that the over-arching story needs to follow, but leave the details to the players so they can feel they are participating. To make it funny make sure that the setting and the elements you choose can lead to humor.
Q&A
Conclusion
Go forth and play great games, do Good, annoy Evil. Make big bucks and buy more of my games. Thanks.
Original content created and Copyright © 2004-2009 Randy Angle
