Game On.

Who are you and what are you doing?

Hey there! I’m a game developer living in the California. After 15 years of coding web and mobile games for studios of all sizes, I’ve been itching to unplug and tackle a very specific, personal tabletop game design that’s been haunting me for quite some time. This blog is a record of my attempt to design, build, and publish it.

What kind of game are you making?

I’m making a single player, fantasy-themed, tabletop game that will exist somewhere in the space between theme-based “Ameritrash”, tile-based world building, and RPG.

Why?

I’m tackling this game design project because for years I’ve wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons and other Tolkien-like tabletop fantasy games, but I never have anyone to play with. Furthermore, all my attempts to organize gaming groups have fizzled in one way or another.

Can’t you just join a local gaming group?

Sure, I could just go down to the local game shop and jump into a gaming group. But I don’t want to play tabletop/RPG games with just any random stranger. I want to play games with people roughly my age, of roughly my gaming disposition and emotional maturity, on roughly my schedule. Since this combination is almost impossible to come by and unrealistic to ask for, I kinda just want to play games with me when the mood strikes.

Why not just play Mage Knight? Or Magic Realm? Or Barbarian Prince? Or the new D&D miniature-based tabletop dungeon crawl games? Aren’t those all single player tabletop fantasy games? 

These games are awesome in various ways, and offer solo gameplay. If you haven't, check them out. But...they're not quite what I’m trying to make, and not exactly what I want to play.

Barbarian Prince is really cool. I love the overall vibe it exudes. But it’s a bit old skool and too pre-programmed for my personal solo-gaming taste. The world map is static, and much of the narrative is pre-programmed, like a choose-your-own-adventure. It’s a fun design and an inspiration, but not quite the gaming experience I’m craving.

Barbarian Prince cover art and game map

Mage Knight seems pretty cool and supports single player, but it’s more of a straight up fantasy-themed hardcore strategy/puzzle game. From what I can tell, it does this very, very well. Fantasy gamers looking for a solo gaming experience LOVE this game. While I appreciate this game, I’d like to create a design that prioritizes the unfolding of a narrative rather than facilitating hardcore strategy and victory points.

Mage Knight box art

Magic Realm seems awesome but impossible to get ahold of (except print-and-play), and maybe even more impossible to learn. The newer user-friendly rules and art make learning this game much easier, but it’s still a beast to wrap my brain around. Magic Realm is roughly in the ball park of the kind of experience I’d like to create and play. But like Mage Knight, it’s very rules-heavy and is more of a hardcore strategy game than a narrative-focused quest game.

Magic Realm--a cult classic

The D&D miniatures tabletop games are just too big and cumbersome and too much of a grid based tactical grind for me. Once again, I totally appreciate what these games do. They do it very stylishly, but it’s still not quite the gaming experience I really want to invest in at the moment.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt

So you’ve defined what isn’t working for you with some of the well-known single player fantasy tabletop games. How is your game different?

Here are the attributes I want my game to have, and why:

Single Player

As I mentioned before, I really want to do some tabletop/RPG gaming but don’t have access to my ideal gaming group. Some tabletop games have a solitaire variant but aren’t designed specifically for solo play. I want to design my game specifically for solo play, and then create a variant for multiplayer. I’m intrigued by the design challenges that a solitaire tabletop game creates.

Fantasy Themed

I’ve always been a fan of Tolkien, D&D, Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, Game Of Thrones, etc. I don’t see going with fantasy theme as a lazy way out. I think it’s practical to embrace a system of archetypal symbols with which gamers are already familiar. Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, Barbarians, Goblins, Dragons—these are all concepts that gaming hobbyists (myself included) already embrace so it seems like the most logical choice of theme for my game. Whenever I dream about playing this game in my head, it’s always a fantasy game. So I know it’s right.

Game Systems Should Support Narrative

Some games end up being about number crunching, optimizing skill and resource values, and collecting victory points. Other games take a much more odds-based approach—role lots of dice. Play the odds. Embrace randomness and luck. Many games use both number crunching strategy and dice-based odds. I’d like to utilized both, but minimally and for a higher purpose.  As I build each game system, I ask myself the following question. Does this particular system: 

   a) make the game feel more like Chess?

   b) make the game feel more like Yahtzee?

   c) help the player construct a better story about the characters they are playing.

The more the game feels like Chess, the more likely it is that the design is becoming too tactical. I LOVE chess, but that’s not what I’m going for. The more it feels like Yahtzee, the more it’s getting too dice heavy. Each system should tilt the overall game design to support the narrative of the play session. I still want the game systems to sit on a state machine. I want the gameplay to be rules-based. But I want those rules to enhance narrative— not crunch numbers—whenever  possible.

Limit Grinding

One beef I have with most computer RPG games, some tabletop games, and even D&D to some extent, is grinding. Battles go on too long and can get formulaic and repetitive. Characters chip away at monster hit points while monsters chip away at character hit points. A terrifying battle with a fantastic beast is reduced to a health meter button mash or dice grind—no real narrative.

In my game, combat should be terrifying, avoided at all cost, but usually quick and painful when it can’t be avoided. Characters and monsters will not have hit points, as hit points do not really support narrative. Instead, attacks generate wounds which can be light, medium, or heavy and can result in broken bones, blood loss, or trauma to vital organs depending on the weapon used and strength of attack.

Instead of gaining levels, the characters in my game gain more stories of survival, more war wounds, and more time among the living to continue their quest. Quests in my game do have victory conditions and milestones, but both serve the narrative. Instead of building victory conditions and collecting victory points, the player is building a story and collecting chapters for it.

Exploration Focused Gameplay

I’ve always preferred exploration to combat in RPGs, maybe because so many RPGs focus on one long grinding battle after the next. Since I hope to eliminate that with a simple narrative based attack/wound system, I’d like to move the emphasis of gameplay to exploration and discovery. One thing I love about Mage Knight and especially Magic Realm are the tile-based environments. I like the idea that each play session can present a different realm to be explored and conquered.

Dice Light

Since the gameplay will not be purely tactical, it will make use of dice to determine the outcome of some events based on likelihood of success. But since I want to avoid having the gameplay become a dice-centric experience, I want to keep the number of dice, types of dice, and number of rolls to a minimum. I’ll attempt to make use of a single d6 per character for most odds-based and random game logic.

Cool Art

I’m not sure if this is the least important, or most important aspect of the game design, but it’s the one aspect of the project I’m looking most forward to. I want this game look really, really cool. One of my favorite things to research online these days is fantasy cartography, fantasy art, game board designs and art, game card design, rulebook design, and so on. I believe that a huge part of my attraction to tabletop games is the aesthetic and mood of the worlds that the game art creates.

Expandability

I want the game systems and visual design to accommodate expansions. Each component in the game should be compatible with all future expansions. First edition printing of cards and location tiles should be usable in all future editions and expansions. I don’t plan to make expansions at the moment, but I want the ability to grow the narrative toolbox at a later date if I chose.

Portability

I’d love to avoid making a heavy 50 pound game that comes in a suitcase sized box. My game should come in a package smaller than a child’s lunchbox, and weigh not much more than a few decks of cards. To do this,  I will avoid the use of miniatures and large quantities of 3D assets, at least for the basic first edition of the product. I envision the design utilizing a few decks of cards, some meeples or chits, a few dice, and a compact but dense rulebook. A later deluxe edition could potentially employ miniatures and other 3d assets.

Wow, that’s a pretty huge wish list!

Yeah, I’m not saying that the final product will include each and every one of these design attributes executed to perfection. This is just a list of qualities that I wish more games had. I may change my thinking radically during the design process, but for now, this is my vision and wishlist for the game.