Confessions Of An Upstart RPG Designer

I love talking RPG Design. A friend and I were having a board game night, and inevitably started talking about Daggerheart and the migration of designers Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford to Darrington Press. We fantasized about what that might mean with regard to Daggerheart's continued development and its lasting power post public release. Ultimately this brought me to do what I do, proselytizing about successful RPG design. I've GM'd and played RPGs a very long time, and I've hosted and taken part in public RPG events for a very long time. And I've written RPG material as a hobbiest for an equally long time. 90%+ of every adventure/scenario I've ever run for any RPG I have written. My player count is up there, having run for something like 150 people--some of which were the original Blackmoor Bunch (that was only 1 session, and I was 1 or 2 co-GMs helping out the inheritor of Dave Arneson's original campaign which leads to Dungeons & Dragons.) Which is to say, I've become opinionated on the subject. While I write a plethora of rules/mechanics of varying RPG styles/culture, what I've gravitated to in my first professional games are Narrative design. Not because it's "the best," but because it addresses a specific table top player experience that I've found to be successful. Meaning, the sessions are a blast and the players get super invested in multiple layers of the game. Unfortunately, I face an uphill battle on my upcoming publications--true to form, I do things the hard way first. I push the envelope to discover how things work. In the case of the last 7 years or so, this has been about discovering how to publish and sell RPGs that strike away from popular perceptions of players, GMs, and even other publishers. This isn't something I think is a "good idea" to do, I just have complicated baggage. OK, I meant for this to be an article about design... but you can't critically talk about design without talking about the space in which it occurs. Two things sell RPGs: Culture and clever ideas. So you big publishers might immediately chime in, "No Ken, BRAND is the end all, be all!" Well I lump that into culture, which persists outside of a brand, while a brand can only exist within a culture (did I mention I was an anthropology grad student?) I point this out because we want to believe that good game design sells RPGs. But really it's incidental. So when I'm talking about RPG design, I'm compelled to qualify which aspect of it I'm discussing. For me, just generally talking about "RPG Design" is about the same as discussing "My Favorite Football Team." Is the discussion about what sells, what people will play, what people will play long term--or, my personal fav, what player experience does it facilitate? Alright, I PROMISE the next one will actually get into what I think good RPG design is and my approach to the projects with which I'm currently involved. How about you? If you like conversations about RPG design, what aspect of it do you like getting into? What elements of design really do it for you?