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.