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Ben McFarland of Kobold Quarterly inquired to the various rpg bloggers in the RPG Network if they'd be willing to participate in a group review of an upcoming title. This title is a set of essays called _Kobold's Guide to Design, volume 2_ subtitled: "How to Pitch, Playtest and Publish" by Wolfgang Baur
As Ben describes it: "this title's primary audience is probably going to be aspiring freelancers, playtesters, and writer/designers, but there's good points to consider for any GM. As one of the chapters is about "How not to design a magic item," you will probably see quite a few of the RPGSuperstar crowd interested." (I was a bit amused at the phrase "RPGSuperstar")
One of the chapters I was offered to review was titled "The Infinite Onion" and Ben described it being about 'play depth'. That sounded interesting to me, as I like things that offer many levels of play and offer many different options. I'd like to learn a little bit more about play depth and perhaps how to create it.
I'm fascinated by the subject of process and design. As an IT Project Manager and former process management consultant, I loved getting paid to tell people how they should design software. Design in and of itself is part alchemy, part science to me, and having an opportunity to look at someone else's ideas and give commentary was an opportunity I jumped on. I believe I'll be getting a copy of the PDF in exchange for this review, so please do take the review in that light. However, read on, as I believe I've given a fair review.
In reviewing this chapter, I realized that it was difficult to do so as a 'standalone' context. I realize that reviewing an essay by itself versus reviewing an essay as part of a whole can be unfair to both, so I encourage you to please read the other reviews as well. To provide some idea of what this book will cover, here is a Table of Contents:
1. Fortunate Accidents
2. Lessons from Playtest
3. Talent Won’t Save You...
4. Design Guidelines: Playtesting
5. The Infinite Onion: Creating Play Depth
6. Promises, Promises: The Art of the Pitch
7. Challenge and Response
8. The Mystery of Mysteries
9. The Magic Bullet for Publication
10. Maps, Monsters, and Bottom-Up Design
11. How NOT to Design a Magic Item
12. Design that Matters
Some background - Wolfgang Baur (I'm really not up on the RPG glitterati, so if this all old hat, skip this paragraph) has worked at TSR on both Dungeon and Dragon magazines, WotC on various RPG and game projects and currently freelances as well as consulting to Microsoft on various projects. (taken from his Pen&Paper profile) He publishes Kobold Quarterly and runs an Open Design freelancing enterprise which is based on an old business model of patronage.
So, let's take a look at the chapter - "The Infinite Onion".
I've given it several reads. The first couple of reads was as just someone who might be interested in the topic, but not looking critically at the article. The last couple of reads was to answer "Does this essay help me to understand play depth." and how well does it fulfill its goal?
Mr Baur starts off:
"This is a normal stage of design, the stage I think of as playful discovery. It’s not that I don’t have ideas (ideas are the easy part!). It’s that the ideas I have don’t work together smoothly."
Design can be very daunting once people get into it. Most software developers I know tend to want to jump in and start coding without much thought to the greater whole. Design can be a frustrating experience and it's hard to lose sight of the fact that design is where ideas get shaken out, improved, rewritten and sometimes rethought. Wolfgang's phrase of "playful discovery" is a good way to look at it.
"Build a prototype game. Playtest. Fix. Iterate."
Mr. Baur goes on to talk about how he approaches design as "layering or lacquering, or making connections in the design." We've all done this since we were first assigned essay papers in school. Rough draft, critique, rework, rewrite. Mr. Baur is still speaking in somewhat generic terms, but I'm getting warmed up to getting in-depth in design.
The next part of the essay takes a turn, as it's heading is "Playtest Types".
"... you can’t always count on editors and playtesters to find the flaws that you care about. They’ll find most of them. They’ll find flaws you would miss. But whenever I can make the time, I like to playtest the material myself, as well as having it playtested externally."
Mr. Baur goes on to compare two types of playtesting - where the game designer runs the game/adventure himself, or when the gamedesigner turns it over to others to test. In the software world, this is similar to the "prototype" approach and "peer review" approach - you don't know what your design will do until you put code on the machine, and sometimes we tend to put too much into our own design, not being able to look at it objectively. It's a good thing to keep in mind.
"In an adventure, this is usually tone or theme or roleplay elements that external playtesters may or may not pick up on. In a rules set, it’s usually about gauging player reaction to a new mechanic..."
Next, Mr. Baur takes a couple of paragraphs to talk about how he pictures the end result and whether his testing or design iterations are bringing him closer to that goal. In other words, "Stay on target, Red Two!" Unfortunately, it was at this point that I started to ask myself - where's the meat? I was looking for some in-depth discussion, but Mr. Baur is taking a very breezy approach. His examples take on more of a tone of "Look at what I have done" without giving concrete examples:
"That Platonic ideal of a game is sometimes a spark that inspires me (such as the clockpunk of Tales of Zobeck), or it can be an attempt to match a particular genre tradition (such as the use of faerie lore in Wrath of the River King)."
I found myself asking "OK, you give these examples, where is the lesson from them? Tell me how that clockpunk inspired and guided your design. Give me an example that has some weight to it!
One of the hardest things to do, but yet the most valuable, is to show someone a "design in progress" or examples of how things work well, and how they won't. Much of what Mr. Baur writes is interesting, but it feels very lightweight. This is where I wonder if things he covers now will be examined more in depth, or if the sum of this book is a set of quick essays that touch on points, but don't give much detail. Still, we press on...
"The time I spend examining design permutations and drawing new connections is the game of what-if."
In this section called "What-If Design", Mr. Baur gets into a bit more "meat" I was hoping for. He talks about a technique of asking questions at the design, seeing what answers he gets. This is a tricky thing to do, especially if you're sold on your design. I may think that my awesome Ultima I interpretation is the coolest thing ever, but when I asked myself "What are the players going to do? What if they don't want to go after Mondain? What if they fail to kill the Pirate Lich?", I realized that I had designed a railroad, not an adventure for players to explore. Wolfgang explains his take on asking questions and at what point design is ready to move on.
And then... the conclusion:
"In my experience, good design is more like an infinite onion, layers of junk and variables and better and better approaches to a goal. A goal that, in most cases, you never quite reach. But that’s the joy of it."
And that was it.
Overall, I'd have to repeat my comment that this chapter/essay felt "breezy". I'm sure that Mr. Baur doesn't want to give away his own secrets, but this felt like a warmup, rather than a real discussion of "depth" - as well as I didn't get my original question answered about "play depth" itself. This was less a discussion of "play depth" and more of an overview of "good design" - I didn't come away with having learned anything specific about designing FOR play depth, aside from iterating through playtests and what-if to get to the goal.
Now, admittedly, I'm examining one essay and one chapter only. There are 3 more chapters (10. Maps, Monsters, and Bottom-Up Design, 11. How NOT to Design a Magic Item, 12. Design that Matters) that perhaps cover design a bit better. It's clear that Mr Baur has a LOT of experience to impart, I just wish I had gotten a lot more in this essay. Then again, I'm spoiled by the War-and-Peace style of tomes that are written for IT subjects and perhaps that is where I am comparing this to.
Still, the reinforcement of "don't give up after your first draft" and "have fun" is well given and overall, this essay fits well as long as it's followed by more in-depth treatment of the subject or of design in general. As I said, take this review in context with the other reviews to decide if this product is for you.
The book is available (preprint) here: http://www.koboldquarterly.com/KQStore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=32
Want to read more about The Kobold Guide to Game Design, Volume II? Read on...
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