Do Your Readings

Tonight, I get down and dirty with breaking into tabletop game design. Yeah, that's right.

It's time...

For literature.

Specifically, it's time to read some articles about Socratic Game Design! And by some, I mean all of them. Finals week or not. Because I didn't have enough suffering in my life.

It was definitely an interesting read. I took notes. If there's one thing I took away from these articles, it's the following:

-State what your game's about in a sentence or two,
-Write what the characters do.
-Write what the players do.
-Have your mechanics feed into what your game is about. If a mechanic isn't doing that? Cut it.
-Find ways for mechanics to reward behaviors you want in your game.
-A good reward for players is not only mechanical advancement, but agency! Letting them have control of the story, fail or success.

I could go on, but I felt those were the most pertinent lessons I learned. I also discovered a document called the Forge, with designers like Vincent Baker!

Took a look at that, then back to my readings due Sunday, and had to wash the theory language out of my mouth. I'm sure it's an incredible document, with valid insights, and I'm by no means disrespecting it or the designers involved. You just spend two semesters with art criticism theory and you need a year off to recover, y'know? Maybe next time.

Hit the Ground Rolling

Welcome to the first post of What Do Those Dice Do?, where I chronicle my charge up the beaches of tabletop game design.

I figured it'd be honest to list some progress I've already made before starting this blog. So, taking inventory:

-Played games with some of Toronto's game designers and organizers, like Kate! She's really awesome,
-Ran games at Breakout 2017 (a really awesome gaming convention in Toronto!) for Gaming By Storm,
-Met a few game designers as a result of aforementioned con,
-Wrote a few Powered by the Apocalypse playbooks privately,
-Joined a cabin of game designers to write a game this April for National Novel Writing Month.

So, I have a few connections, I've messed around with game design a bit, but I've only really scratched the surface.

As for game experience, I've been playing tabletops for seven years now. My favorites are probably Chronicles of Darknesss games, Urban Shadows, Monsterhearts, and Ryuutama.

My goal is to get an RPG published; I have ideas for at least two.

I'll check in again later today as I tackle some game-design literature.