Practice makes perfect

The only way to get better at designing games is to design lots of games.

Taking a game all the way from idea to production is a lot of work, and it’s not always worth it.

As well as walking away from bad ideas, consider just sketching out designs before diving in fully. Brainstorm through a lot of quick designs, take them a little way along the path and drop the weakest.

Spend time working on perfecting this process, if you can get good at sketching you’ll see where you develop into a masterpiece more quickly.

Try just sketching some game ideas, and see where it leads you.

Not all ideas produce great games

It’s sad to say, but not every idea you start to develop will turn into a great game.

It’s important to recognise when what seemed like a good idea turns out to be rubbish, either over complicated, too difficult to produce or just not fun.

Look for ways to change what you are developing to remove the pain, but be ready to put the idea out of it’s misery if it’s not coming together, and move on to something else.

There are lots of good ideas, but not enough time to develop them all. Don’t flog a dead horse, but move on to the next thoroughbred when it feels like it’s time.

Repeating yourself

Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself on occasion. Returning to previous themes is a very valid way of expanding upon them and developing the ideas within them.

Multiple blog posts on the same topic will catch your new readers, and remind your long term ones of the previous posts. Multiple games focussed in the same style or theme allow you to build on previous ideas.

Returning to old work lets you see the flaws in it you couldn’t see when you first did it, the detatchment produced by time gives you a more independent view of your work, and allows you to improve it.

Don’t rely on repeating the same themes, mechanics and ideas, but always be aware that returning to the past can help you build something new.

A Bit of Bad Luck

A Bit of Bad Luck is a new Necromunda scenario for one player and an Arbitrator.

A gang runs into a motley crew of Hired Guns as they leave the scene of a recent gang fight. Battered and bruised, they need to take on these foes before they can enjoy the loot from their previous encounter.

This is a great scenario to make use of my Hired Gun creator, it’ll let you create the adversaries in seconds, and allow you to get going with the game nice and quickly.

I’m also trying a new look for main Necromunda page, check it out, and see if you like it better than the old design.

Fantasy Worlds

It’s easy to set your game in a fantasy world, and much harder to get by in a sci-fi realm. Using the real world falls somewhere in between.

The reason for this is the shared understanding of the faux-medieval culture to most people likely to be playing your game. Everyone understands knights, dragons, merchants and maidens. Using these cultural shorthands save a lot of explaining, allowing you to focus on the differences that are important to your game, whilst being able to farm out some concepts to a shared understanding.

It’s a lot harder in a science fiction setting as there’s no shared understanding, especially if you are creating your own future. The world building has to be much more in depth, you have to make choices over what you are aiming for, whether it’s Blade Runner, Star Trek, Firefly or something completely different, you have to make your world choices, and make sure people understand them.

Picking the middle ground of the ‘real world’ throws up a few more difficulties, you have probably got a shared understanding of some facets, but by no means all. The real problem can lie in the need for correctness that some of your players may exhibit when presented with a real world scenario. In a fantasy world, you get to decide how fast a dragon flies. In the real world you’d better get the airspeed of a 747 right, or have a good reason for the abstraction, or you’ll be defending yourself from nitpickers forever.

Pick your game setting carefully, make use of fantasy settings to give you a shorthand, but don’t force this, and don’t let yourself become lazy. Pick what works for the game you want to create, and be prepared for the work you need to do to make it real.

Trickle down

One of the biggest benefits of the web is the trickle down effect you see when you can put up lots of content, and keep it there forever.

My most popular pages are some that have been around for a long time, especially my Countdown game (over 20,000 games played) or my Necromunda pages. If we were still living in a print world, we wouldn’t see this. Something would get published, then forgotten about. once the next issue arrived.

Taking the existence of powerful search tools into account, and repeatedly growing your content, you can create a snowball effect. It’s not about starting off with a bang, but looking for slow and consistent growth.

Make content available to people, make it easy for them to find more of your content, and keep it around in the same place for a long time, and this will grow your visitors, pageviews, and hopefully you can convert that into people playing your games and haveing fun.

Life Insurance

A new Necromunda scenario, one gang is hired to protect a wealthy Guilder, the other has been hired by his wife to try and collect on his Life Insurance.

Don’t forget to check out my other necromunda resources, a printable gang sheet, a hired gun generator, and lots more. Let me know what you think, and what you’d like to see more of.

Idea log

It’s important to note down your ideas somewhere, and keep a decently neat copy of this list.

It lets you track thought you’ve had, to save you having that feeling you get when you can’t quite come up with an idea you know you’ve already had. It gives you somewhere to store ideas for later use, so don’t just note down ideas for games, but also mechanics, sources for stuff and anything else in the game ecosystem.

If you write down your ideas in one place, you can come back to that place when you are lacking inspirationm and draw something positive from it, unblocking whatever you are stuck with, and leading on to something great.

Blood Bowl League Manager

My latest project is now live, it’s a league management tool for Blood Bowl.

I’ve created it as the excitement generated by the new Blood Bowl computer game has lead to a renewed interest in playing the tabletop game.

Once you’ve registered you can create leagues, create teams, record matches and progress your players.

It’s currently in an early beta, so there may well be bugs with it, please let me know if  you find any. It’s not got any star players available (but they can be added), and teams should be generated according to the printed version 3 rules.

First mover advantage

In some games the player that moves first has a distinct advantage, it can be a big benefit and can really skew the outcome of the game. The first move advantage in chess is a well known example of this, although mathematically it may not be an advantage to play White, the statistics tend to show an advantage to games played in the real world.

It’s important to look at your first mover advantage, to try and ensure that there isn’t one, or that it’s balanced for another advantage given to the player that moves second, or that players play more than one game, switching the first player each time.

To find a first player advantage you need to play series of paired games, two players take turns to be ‘White’ and ‘Black’, and if White always wins, then there’s probably a first mover advantage.

You’ve got to decide if you want to maintain this advantage once you’ve found it, if you’ve got a way to determine the weaker player, then allowing them to play first can balance out the fact that they aren’t as accomplished at the game.

If you want to remove it, you’ve got to find a way to balance this. You can choose to reduce the options given to the player that moves first, such as Magic: the Gathering’s rule that the first player doesn’t draw a card on their first turn. If you don’t reduce the options for the first mover, you need to give the second player more options, let them play an extra piece, make an extra move, or give them more initial resources.

Be aware of the potential for first mover advantage, and make sure you take steps to counteract it if you see it occuring.