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In design, the greatest tool for improving a game is iteration. There are very few games that are completely, objectively perfect, if any at all. Iteration is vital to improving upon an existing game, from the smallest parts to entirely new editions and systems; however, this concept can be equally staggering as it is interesting. It’s dangerous to go alone, take this guide and make the first steps of evolving yourself from player to designer. When a player enters an area, more often than not their immediate response is to examine what they can approach first, and how they can interact with that stimulus to garner a positive effect. With more options, more time is taken to make a decision. Such is the simplicity of Hick’s Law, the time it takes to make a decision increases as the number of alternatives increases. Mathematically, this is often portrayed as the Hick-Hyman Law in the following formula: T = b * log2 (n + 1) T would represent the reaction time taken to choose among n choices appropriately. In this example, b is a constant that can be determined by empirically fitting a line to measured data, log2 is the performance of a binary search, and the +1 is to represent the uncertainty of whether or not to respond, as well as what choice to make.  For this reason, I would never place my players in a supermarket and ask them to pick out food. Without any qualifiers, the players realize that they can pick out any number of foods, regardless of cost, based on their whimsy, throughout any aisle, without a time limit. The entire session would be spent waiting for players to decide how their characters would eat. However, if I were to add limitations to their search, the entire section would take much less time and effort. By limiting the amount of food they could buy to a set dollar amount ($15), and the amount of time they have to choose (20 minutes), the focus becomes much more apparent, and the time taken decreases drastically. If players were to walk into a room and there are fifteen enemies, they would be overwhelmed as to where to start fighting first. This denotes that the only description of the room was “There are fifteen enemies”. By elucidating this concept, the players are able to make a more informed decision, more quickly. The worst way to describe this would be to tell the actual numbers. The best way to do so would be to lead with descriptions. A GM that enlightens their players to the numbers behind the screen is simply breaking immersion. For example, “Well these guys only have three hit points, so you can probably bash them quick.” The easiest way to do so would be to describe based on size, relative description, or comparable height to the player. “Well, there are five thugs roughly your shape, five thugs a bit bigger than you, and five of the biggest thugs you’ve ever seen.”  The alternatives have now dwindled, as the player will be able to accurately discern how to approach the group based on their relevance to the proposed choices. While they are not thinking in terms of how many options do I have and they are thinking of how dangerous my options are, the alternatives represent choices the player would logically not make.
If a player were to be set in a bustling town with three taverns and six shops and fifteen unnamed buildings, all with different interesting people to meet and things to see, the options would become paralyzing. Especially considering the time limits of most sessions, the longer they wait to choose of the multitudinous options, the more stressed they become to make any decision, let alone the right one. A GM could propose a motivation to the players to visit specific areas based on their objective tasks and motivations. If there are eighteen sites to visit, all of equal interest, the choice is bogged down. If there are eighteen sites to visit, and the player has a good idea of what they would most likely enjoy, ascertain, or gather, the choice becomes much clearer. The idea is to give less quantity and not less quality on both approaches. Having a million places to visit and things to do rounds down to similar experiences in each to accomplish purpose of the areas, rather than experiences gained. The question to ask is which choices reflect a good decision, and how that is accomplished. Enjoy our content? Have something to add? Join the forums and let us know! We also have positions available for contributors and writers. Inquire within to become a StrMod contributor today!
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In design, the greatest tool for improving a game is iteration. There are very few games that are completely, objectively perfect, if any at all. Iteration is vital to improving upon an existing game, from the smallest parts to entirely new editions and systems; however, this concept can be equally staggering as it is interesting. It’s dangerous to go alone, take this guide and make the first steps of evolving yourself from player to designer. When drawing the eye of the player, things that stand out will stand out, whereas common elements will continue to be common. While it may attract their attention, this will also attract their ability to remember. This is also known as the von Restorff Effect, a phenomenon of memory in which noticeably different things are more likely to be recalled than common things. Most often used in marketing, the von Restorff Effect is used in such examples as contrasting something that is aesthetically “clean” or organized with something that is visually engaging. When listing something, items at the beginning or end of a list are naturally more easily memorable than items in the middle of a list, unless the middle items are different. While best used visually, this can be used in description to place a visual in the mind of a player when artistically unavailable. While a giant, throbbing, red area of the final boss might be the most likely area of doing noticeable damage, it is immersion-breaking in that there is no reason for such an area to be giant, red, and throbbing.  Here's an example. The players walk into a rather well-furnished room of an important person. Within the room, they found a very nice couch, a meticulously organized desk, an ornate and decorated gun hanging above the fireplace, a desk with a lamp, and a well-suited rug. Of the previous description, the most memorable element would be the gun above the fireplace. It is not a piece of furniture, it is the only piece that can be held and inspected by the player easily, and it is concertedly more interesting than other such furnishings of the room. Most importantly, while it is still a furnishing, it is not a piece of furniture in the mind of the reader. I could continue to use that gun in any aspect of the life of the important person. I could also trick the players into viewing it and have it have no real connection to any other section of the game, making it a Red Herring. Most importantly, in three sentences, I have delivered a concrete piece for the rest of the session that the players will naturally and organically assume is important.  In any setting or any establishment, easiest way to describe something and have it exist as relevantly more catching than other elements would be to “highlight” the element. In that sentence, the word “highlight” is bolded, to catch your eye, and make you focus on the point of my statement without having to do extra work.
If the players are looking at a garden, and there are green vegetables, and green leaves falling from the brown oak tree, with a single patch of red roses in the middle, surrounded by a small white fence, they will notice the roses. The scientific reason behind this would be that I led the statement with something that is green, and contrasted the natural setting with green’s complimentary colorred, then finishing with a rather basic staple of a garden being a generic fence. The roses did not have to be red, per se; they simply had to be different than everything else. As the only element that is red, it is naturally attractive. Rather than having a series of elements that has subtlety to their differences, the most catching and immediate memory-catcher would be having something that is unnatural blended with something that is natural. If I have a box of shapes, one square, one circle, one rhombus, one rectangle, and a shape of indiscernible points and edges that makes my eyes lose focus as I gaze into its many compartments, I would very likely have forgotten what the second shape was in this statement without looking at it again. I am obviously much more interested in the element that is fascinating rather than the elements that are common, natural, or understandable. Then again, it is awfully hard to make shapes interesting as a description runs long without something being rather different. These effects are mostly used when describing an area, as description and placing a thematic setting in the mind of the player is one of the largest and most difficult aspects of tabletop gaming. However, with proper use, the players will naturally lead themselves towards the intended target, simply by memorizing the pieces. Enjoy our content? Have something to add? Join the forums and let us know! We also have positions available for contributors and writers. Inquire within to become a StrMod contributor today! In design, the greatest tool for improving a game is iteration. There are very few games that are completely, objectively perfect, if any at all. Iteration is vital to improving upon an existing game, from the smallest parts to entirely new editions and systems; however, this concept can be equally staggering as it is interesting. It’s dangerous to go alone, take this guide and make the first steps of evolving yourself from player to designer. A common misconception is that complexity is a 1:1 ratio for depth. Depth is the amount of different aspects and interests that can be explored from a design, which can also come from the very simplest of designs. By stripping away everything that is unnecessary, we can fully and succinctly examine the most interesting parts of the games, the core, and the focus of the experience that can be garnered. Ockham’s Razor, or the principle of parsimony, is assertion of simplicity of design over complexity of design. The design definition of Ockham’s Razor (Also known as Occam’s Razor and lex parsimoniae) is given a choice between functionally equivalent designs, the simplest design should be selected. Simply stated, unnecessary elements decrease a design’s efficiency.  I rather enjoyed playing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. I found the experience to be very fun, and an engaging story told by the beautiful and masterful Studio Ghibli. Something I did not enjoy is how every three hours in the eighty-hour game, a new feature was added and implemented to increase the complexity of the game. What started as “Get familiars, train familiars, beat up other familiars” wrapped around an endearing story of a boy and his mother turned into “Get familiars. Here’s another character to control, but she is far weaker than you. Press these four buttons to make everyone defend. Here’s another character to control, but he is far weaker than you. Feed your familiars specific random foods to increase one of ten stats. Evolve your familiars by using one of eight stones. There are three types of evolutions. Here’s another character to control, but he arrived 85% into the game. Read an in-game book to discern this riddle. Have fifteen more useless spells.”  Did I mention that I enjoyed this game? I find myself needing to repeat that statement. Based on the wall of text alone, there is nothing that seems enjoyable about that complex series of actions. However, the designers found it necessary to consistently add elements, therefore adding complexity, therefore theoretically increasing the experience garnered by the player. I would have been perfectly fine with just capturing and training my familiars though.
Design of Puzzles: Simple puzzles, simple solutions. The best puzzles and traps come from a player thinking “It was so simple, how did I not see it!” The difficulty for most interactions comes from the analysis of problem and reaching the primed answer. The difficulty should not particularly come from collecting specific pieces from the ends of the earth to form the right key. By allowing the players to create their own depth from simple concepts, the complexity becomes organic and fluent rather than forced. If a pool is one-thousand miles long, but only holds a foot of water, it will be a sloshing walk across a thousand miles rather than a pleasant swim. Design on Paper: The largest problem comes from trying to incorporate too much. Ambition is the number one killer of projects. Ockham’s Razor takes into account that a design does not need a million moving parts, but specific core concepts that can be elaborated upon throughout interaction. Before adding a new feature, designers would benefit from asking the simple question of “By adding this, what new actions can my players take? A game should consistently be described as the actions the player can take. If your game takes place in the magical world of Fakevillia with ancient dragons and endless loot tables and specialized math for determining damage and three-hundred pages of character creation, I haven’t heard anything about what makes the game a game, as none of those are meaningful actions taken while playing it. This is not to say that every game in the universe should be Tetris. This is simply to state that there are core concepts of actions that will promote the experience intended, and these concepts should be focused over all other aspects in designing games. Enjoy our content? Have something to add? Join the forums and let us know! We also have positions available for contributors and writers. Inquire within to become a StrMod contributor today! |
@CorruptionPointsCan be found designing games and game systems mostly around 4am. Archives
November 2014
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