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This is not a rant about why Game Masters need to shut up about Min-Maxing. This is the lesson about player motivation that threatened to eat that rant. The rant is coming soon.
I promised you a big honking example of how to design an adventure with goals, challenge, momentum, and inertia in mind. This is it.
Here it is, as promised, only three weeks later — I said weeks; did you hear days — the last part in the What Do You Do When You Lose the Plot miniseries. This is the part where I tell you my secret five-step recovery plan to bring any project back on track when it’s gone off the rails. As long as it’s a gaming project. This isn’t life advice.
It’s time for us to start talking about how True Campaign Managers handle the arduously awful process of Character Creation.
Today, I teach you about the second of a pair of complementary gameplay dynamics vital to making winnable — and losable — adventures that feel great to play.
This is the second part of a personal story about how I lost the plot in my current campaign and how you can to. That still has nothing to do with plots and outlines and stories and everything to do with totally burning yourself out.
I want to tell you a two-part story about what’s going on with my AD&D 2E campaign because I’ve lost the plot and the campaign feels doomed and I have to fix it and I’m hoping that by telling you this story, I’ll help you launch a campaign you’re excited to run and then fix it when it inexplicably goes to shit for no obvious reason. If you’re one of the players, don’t panic; I’m being hyperbolic. Mostly. Kind of.
A quick — well, quick for me — aside about whether you can count on D&D’s Attrition Dynamic for all the gameplay Inertia you need.
Winter break is over and it’s time to talk about True Scenario Design again. Today, I’m introducing the first in a pair of complementary game design forces, Inertia and Momentum, that separate the real True Scenario Designers from the Mere Adventure Builders.
Here’s the follow-up lesson about Character Replacement Policies. Except it’s totally not about that at all. It’s actually about how life sucks and you can’t win. At Game Mastering, anyway.
Another lesson in True Mechanical Managery. This one’s about setting a policy for creating new characters in the middle of the game to replace dead characters, retired characters, or to let new players join the game.
In our ongoing discussion about Scenarios players can win and lose, we need to talk about how players often see Goals different from Scenario Designers and why that’s not true and you’re stupid for thinking it is.
Now that you know what Winning and Losing are, actually, correctly, and for reals, I can tell you how gameplay is both continuous and discrete and what the Quest Structure really, truly is.
Last time, I told all y’all you need a more complete, more nuanced understanding of the concepts of Winning and Losing. This time, I’ll give you that understanding. Because I’m awesome.
It’s time to start a whole new True Scenario Designery module. This one’s not about Winning and Losing, but that’s where we’re starting, and boy is that a messy place to start.
It’s time to finish the lesson on Character Death Policies by telling you how to write your own damned policy and not telling you to just steal mine.
We’re taking a short, one-lesson break from the syllabus to talk about your Character Switching Policy and also to talk about making your decisions based on actual frigging reality.
Let’s take a moment here to consider, again, why we’re doing this whole True Scenario Designery thing. Because, listen maties, there be rough waters ahead.
Today, I’m continuing the discussion about game mechanics that wreck campaigns unless you’ve got a plan for them before they come up. Today’s mechanic: Character Death.
Let’s see if I can’t help tie together the last three lessons of random, conceptual, game design bullshit by showing you how a True Scenario Designer comes up with a Design Statement.
It’s time I have a little bit of an intervention because, frankly, some of y’all are starting to scare me with your approach to this whole True Campaign Managery thing.
In this follow-up on Experience and Advancement Systems, I teach you how True Campaign Managers actually evaluate such systems and set a policy that works for their campaign. It’s easier — and harder — than you might think.
When True Campaign Managers decide how to practically implement their game system’s Experience and Advancement System, they’ve got to know what the system’s for and what’s at stake if they implement it wrong. That’s what this half-a-lesson is all about.
It’s time to set up a new True Campaign Managery lesson module. Over the next several lessons, I plan to teach you how to properly manage your game’s mechanics. But first, I’ve got to teach you what that means.
In this last of three parts, I wrap up my introduction to basic, conceptual game design. Now, maybe we can move on to actually designing a Scenario or something. That is if you dunderheads actually grok this crap.
It’s time for the second in this three-part whirlwind tour of what True Scenario Designers know about what makes games games. And this really is all about what makes games games.
The topic so nice, I wrote about it twice. This is the follow up to that first lesson about yelling at your friends for their crappy attendance to your pretend elf game.
It’s time for the first of three hodgepodges of game design concepts that together make a sort-of foundation for this whole True Scenario Design thing.
The Scenario Design cat is out of the bag and clawing up the furniture. Which means it’s time for a real True Scenario Designery introduction. And this is it.
I’ve made a terrible decision. But I can’t tell you what it is until I defend my stance on worlds that level with the characters and get you to sing the game design anthem with me.