Development 17 - 3 Ways Not To Build a Labyrinth (Patreon)

 I've spent the last month or so reviewing Wayfinder game submissions for the summer, working with the Story Board to find the games we think are best for the summer. While reading the games, I found myself coming back to 3 or so core mistakes that everyone kept making, all the time. This isn't even about running games of any sort (especially since Wayfinder is so different from other venues), or even the raw act of creating and designing games. These are, in no particular order, three issues I've found with the way people try to present their game ideas to others. This applies most literally with Wayfinder's submission process, but also to written documents that are meant to be distributed to players for them to, y'know, play.

1. Don't Assume People Know Much

In a recent interview with bigar.com, Magic: The Gathering Designer (and heir apparent for the role of Head Designer) Gavin Verhey said this about part of the M:TG playtesting process.

There are some companies we work with in Seattle that recruit people who had never played Magic (and there’s a long list all the way from ‘never played Magic’ to ‘not played any games’). We bring them in, hand them introductory products, and basically just walk out of the room and let them figure it out.

The things you see during these tests will just blow your mind. One time, there were people who didn’t realize that your decks needed to be upside down. Since there wasn’t anything instructing them to shuffle their decks and put it face down, they just figured it would be face up for whatever reason.

While sometimes it's safe to assume the people playing your game will be familiar with what a game is (for instance, I don't write RPG products that are designed for a group of people who have never played a game before to pick up, as that is currently beyond my workload), but you should always remember that things you take for granted will often go unnoticed. Certainly, you might have a perfect vision for what you want the monsters in your game to look like, but the players will have no clue. While too much description can often hurt the game, having evocative description or images are needed so people actually understand what's happening in the game. You can get away without describing something, as long as it's equally clear we don't need to know what it is, or that it's up to us to create it. But, especially when pitching your creation to someone to run it, you want to make sure they have all the tools to understand what you're throwing around.A game I submitted this summer got judged rather harshly because the reviewer didn't catch some of the important subtext happening within the game. That makes sense, because nowhere did I actually explain the subject, and they misinterpreted it as athematic design. Remembering to say "this is what I'm trying to do with this game" is often so valuable so people know how to play the game you're handing them. If people don't understand the tone you're trying to capture, the game will become ... bizarre.

2. Don't Consider The Reading Experience

When someone is reading your games, you want the reading process to be like you're holding their hand through the entire thing. There's two conflicting desires when someone is reading a game: Mystery, or the feeling that there's something not yet explained that pulls them forward, and Comprehension, where they don't feel alienated by the text. You can never tell what alienates people from a text, although copious footnotes, extreme length, and incomprehensible passages tends to have that impact. This is why House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a perfect (and intentional) example of how not to format an accessible document. 

The most effective way to pull the Mystery forward, you'll want to do so through intentional vagueness, by which I mean -- don't imply the person needs to comprehend what you're referencing. Mystery is utilized all the time, from "I will teach you how to fly with dragons" (how do I fly with dragons?) to "From the distant shores of Zarkhod to the pillars of Mi, the slithering ones swept across the land" (what does any of that mean??) The trick is that none of that presents itself as part of a comprehensive overview, but instead as a gentle tease into what's coming next. Sometimes, mystery will be used in examples of play, or other situations which intentionally bridge the gap between the fiction and the reality. 

However, you never want people to feel like the rules are a mystery to them. A reader will absolutely lose interest in the game you're writing if they feel like they have no clue what's going on when they read a paragraph. If you're going to need to reference something in a rule that you haven't explained yet, you shouldn't. Instead, try one of these things:

• Rearrange the text so the thing you need to reference comes first.
• Acknowledge you haven't referenced it, perhaps with a page number or hyperlink.
• Give a short overview of the later thing first, and then come back to it later.

3. Fail To Have Consistent Voice 

This is my greatest pet peeve. The writing style of the narrator of the document should match the tone of the narrative. For instance, a comedy game absolutely should have a wild n' wacky tone, but using that same tone with a serious, in-depth game creates a bizarre feeling. One game I looked at this review season used a gleeful, cheerful tone to describe the massacre of a city. It undermined the game itself, which was trying to be serious and contemplative, and also suddenly pulled me out of the game. 

Now, this doesn't mean you need to write Properly whenever you write something serious. Fellow Story Board member Ruby (hi Ruby!) can attest to this. Her style is very conversational, at some parts not using punctuation or capitalization, with a lot of winking asides to the audience. What makes it work for her is both that she knows when to take it seriously and when not to, and that she is ultimately respectful towards the world she's presenting. Making jokes at the expense of the emotional core of your story just, doesn't feel good for the reader. It feels like the tragedy is just a plot device, as opposed to something with some kind of emotional pathos. This is a very effective way to alienate the reader from the emotional core of your narrative.

Well, thank you everyone for joining me. Please let me know if this update schedule is far too slow for you, or if there's other forms of content you want to see more of. I'm not able to release new small games at the moment, but if you have any other ideas, please let me know. (Yes, I've heard video essay, and yes, I want to. Soon!)