I’m still heavy in the brainstorming mode for my next projects (big and small), which has spawned a variety of ideas (good and maybe not as good). I even wrote a One-Page RPG for the One-Page RPG Jam that I talk about so often.
I then played that game.
I then threw that game in the trash (metaphorically/electronically speaking).
This is an important step in the game design process, and it should not be overlooked.
Inside
Scrapping Ideas
(Game) Jam Season
July Production Update
Scrapping Ideas
This was how the (doomed) game worked:
Shuffle a deck of cards.
Flip a card from the deck to represent the first room on the map.
Choose an action to take. Taking actions requires rolling 2d6 and trying to beat the value of a card flipped from the top of the deck. Actions available are:
Find Door — move to another room of the dungeon/maze.
Learn Magic — acquire cards to your hand that can be used to help bad rolls
Search for Clues — find clues to the location of the endgame event (the exit, the boss, the MacGuffin, etc.)
Continue searching rooms until you have enough clues (6) to achieve the endgame condition.
The vision of the final game was that each card would have a prompt to describe what was in the room that you were dealing with while attempting the other actions. Before writing the prompts, I test-played the game to see if it actually worked and the endgame could happen.
Did the game work? Yes.
Was it fun? No.
This is an important thing to be able to admit. I wish I could say that everything I have ever written was awesome and every game was 100% fun 100% of the time. I cannot say that. Especially as I look back at my work over the last couple years…I’ve learned a lot. Including how to deal with this situation. Because the next question is the most important:
Why wasn’t it fun?
Being able to articulate this is critical because responding to this question is how we make games better. It is a vital part of the game development process.
So, what was the problem with this game? It turns out that it was just too many dice rolls without enough urgency to force the player to make interesting decisions. Play proceeded thusly:
Enter new room.
Roll for Clues.
Roll for Magic.
Roll for new doors.
Repeat.
Sure, if I had the prompts done, maybe those rolls would be broken up with storytelling, which would help. But that was still a lot of dice rolling when the dice rolls work the same every time. Too much dice rolling.
How do I fix this? There are plenty of options. Here are a few that I considered:
Add urgency by a clock or some other resource diminution throughout the game.
This required more tracking than I was interested in doing.
Limit the number of things that the player can do in each area.
This actually just made the game longer, since you needed to visit more areas to achieve the endgame condition.
Make the endgame condition easier to accomplish.
This shortened the game, but did not make the actual play more engaging.
Change the dice rolls for another resolution mechanism.
I considered using the cards in a different way, but eventually decided that it did not help. The issue of going through the same cycle in every room remained regardless of whether you were rolling dice or flipping cards to resolve the actions.
In the end, I think I am going to actually end up splitting this into two games:
One will be a dungeon/maze game focused on the act of escaping. Cards represent areas/rooms, some of which present challenges, while others simply exact an effect. Moving between rooms is free, no roll required. This will play more like a solo board game than a TTRPG. This is something that I could possibly turn into a One-Page RPG for the jam.
The other will focus on the contents of each area. There will not be challenges, only prompts, which will have meaning to the character witnessing them. This will be a journaling game, and it might be an excuse to break out the tarot deck again. We’ll see…this game has not made it onto the production schedule quite yet.
(Game) Jam Season
While I talked about the One-Page RPG Jam last month, in the intervening weeks I’ve actually found, joined, and submitted an adventure to a completely different jam:
The Appendix N Jam is collecting short (four A5-sized pages, or the front and back of one standard sheet of paper) adventures based on imaginary book titles that could have been in Appendix N, the list of titles that inspired the original Dungeons & Dragons game. Each participant in the jam is assigned a title from a nonexistent book, and they must write an adventure inspired by that title.
My title is The Mountain of Power. Honestly, when I first saw that, I did not think I would follow through on making something for the jam. The title was too vanilla, too basic, too cheesy.
But after a few days, revelation struck. What is Power? Electricity. And what does Electricity look like in a game of D&D? Lightning. A Lightning-themed dungeon in a mountain? I could do that. I could even draw an isometric map for a dungeon like that.
A century ago, the dwarves were driven from Lozh Temple by the cruel wizard Kirthek. In the decades since, Kirthek has melted down the dwarven hoard, using the conductive gold to transform the temple into a massive circuit board. Soon he will be ready to power his doomsday device, raising generations of dead dwarves for his army.
You can download the adventure for free from my itch.io page:
July Production Update
Since last month, I’ve added, and completed, The Mountain of Power. Grimm Solitude successfully funded on Kickstarter, and Brian is working on finishing and printing those zines now.
The other big addition (and big announcement) is that I am going to be participating in Mausritter Month on BackerKit in November! Similar to Mothership Month from last year, Mausritter Month will feature a group of Mausritter projects all crowdfunding at the same time. The teaser page for my project is not up yet, but I can share that I am working with Jamie Douglass again (who did the fantastic art for In Ruins)! More details soon.
Thank you!
That’s it for July. I still might end up making something for the One-Page RPG Jam, but it will be a buzzer-beater if I actually get it done in time. Thanks for reading!
—MAH
Thanks for being honest enough to admit that an idea isn't fun enough to release as a product. As someone who has bought too many board games that aren't fun, I wish more people had this amount of self-awareness!
That production schedule chart is really cool btw! Can’t wait to check out Mountain of Power!!!
I wanna do all these Jams but I’m just now finding out about them lol