Morning!

Now that I've aged a year and had a joyous week off, time to act like I've learned something so I can impart it.

The most valuable thing I've learned in tech and rpg design is being able to tell the difference between your preferences and design "rules".

There is this point, especially when you starting designing your own stuff, when you are thinking a lot about what you are designing and what feels good in your own brain.

I'll be honest, that shit is intoxicating.

Your job is to not get drunk.

You get drunk on your own opinions on design, you start confusing them with PRINCIPLES OF GAME DESIGN and you then begin to forget a demonstrably truth of the world:

Different games for different brains.

Different games exist to scratch different psychological needs and profiles.

The proof is...all the different games that exist. If there was just one universal game, we'd have it.

The fact that TTRPGs tend to be household to fit the brains of GMs/players is more proof.

Houseruled....omg my autocorrect is being aggressive this morning.

Its very possible that the thing you hate actually is a thing that works, for other people.

That the game that is too "crunchy" (hate that term so much!!!) for you makes sense to other ppl.

You can interpret me to say "don't have strong opinions"...but you'd be incredibly fucking wrong about that.

Keep your strong opinions...but learn the boundaries around them.

Ppl who don't realize that their opinions are IME really tiring in design and playtest.

The short version of why folks without an understanding of the boundaries and limits of their opinions are tiring:

They keep trying to fit what IS into their version of what SHOULD BE.

That is tiresome and potentially destructive to all design processes.

The practical matter around design of all sorts is observation and learning idioms and expectations, and solving problems around that.

You can force your preference into that, but...its going to be messy, I promise you.

So, with all that said, I've been thinking about what is close enough to a "rule" that you could use it universally for games.

I think I have it:

Keep your promises.

It sounds glib, but it works for me because to keep a promise, you have to make a promise.

To make a promise, you have to understand who you are making a promise too.

To keep that promise, you need to understand what is expected of you.

It means if you design for an established game, you have to design in a way that helps it keeps its promises, which means learning its idioms and boundaries.

Making and keeping a promise sounds easy, but it is actually a brutally hard thing that few systems do fully.

Design that goes wrong for myself and that I have seen go wrong for others is design that is intent on satisfying an opinion or expectation instead of a promise.

(A clear vision is a promise, but if its too murky or undefined, it's not)

OK, that is todays installment of "a nobody tells you how to design TTRPGs", lol.

Hope yall have a great day!