Hello everyone!
Has anyone used Itch for play testing pre-release?
I'm thinking of putting together a PDF with the core loop of my tactical, solo-first TTRPG, with the ask of sharing their experience in the comments. The PDF would be FREE.
Any shared experiences, answers, insights, & thoughts would be appreciated.
Almost talked myself into a naming mistake during my design process. I was figuring out the bits & bobs of my own project & reached for a word borrowed from a totally unrelated business concept, just cause it sounded right.
Caught it before it stuck, but it left me sitting with an uncomfortable question: do I actually know the difference between 'engine', 'system', & 'game'?
Or have I just been dressing up a branding choice as design theory this whole time?
Here's where I've landed, for now:
an engine is the reusable mechanical core, built with the actual intention of sitting underneath more than one game.
A system (or ruleset) is the whole set of rules, whether or not reuse was ever the plan.
A game is the system plus everything built on top: fiction, setting, the whole representational layer.
Could easily be semantics dressed up in a design-philosophy costume though. Wouldn't be the first time I've overthought a label. Overthinking everything is kinda my mutant ability.
I think of Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) as an engine; stalks like a tiger, pounces like a tiger, has to be a tiger, right. One engine, reused across a genuinely wide pile of different games, each with completely different fiction sitting on top. That doesn't feel like branding to me. Feels like a real, solid distinction.
But the creators of PbtA have said that PbtA is not a standard game engine or trademarked system. It's more like a design framework & philosophy. Slapping the PbtA logo on your game just shows that you are a designer who was heavily inspired by Apocalypse World & has permission to say so.
I don't know if PbtA the right example, or just the one that's stuck in my head.
Curious how the rest of you draw these lines. Or if you don't bother distinguishing at all, & I'm the only one losing sleep over a word choice.
In designing my tactical solo TTRPGs, I like to figure out the rules, bundle rules together into mechanics, group mechanics into systems before tying systems together into the game loop.
As I write this I realised that I lean towards an emergent & iterative approach too. But I don't think I'm deciding the game loop first & then reverse engineering the rules. Needs more thought...
Realising that a rule is the smallest building block brought me a degree of comfort, cause this hierarchy mirrors a familiar one from screenwriting:
beat -> scene -> sequence -> act.
I'm trying to be diligent & disciplined in reusing rules, mechanics, & systems in order to limit scope creep.
But it's definitely wearing a cape, cause it's super hard & fighting me in a never-ending battle. I constantly can't help thinking 'What if I do this?' or 'This would be cool!'
Starting to believe that good system design is in part asking 'what can I reuse?' before 'what else can I add?'
Now I'm curious if other designers have a similar hierarchy.
In designing my tactical solo TTRPGs, I like to figure out the rules, bundle rules together into mechanics, group mechanics into systems before tying systems together into the game loop.
As I write this I realised that I lean towards an emergent & iterative approach too. But I don't think I'm deciding the game loop first & then reverse engineering the rules. Needs more thought...
Realising that a rule is the smallest building block brought me a degree of comfort, cause this hierarchy mirrors a familiar one from screenwriting:
beat -> scene -> sequence -> act.
I'm trying to be diligent & disciplined in reusing rules, mechanics, & systems in order to limit scope creep.
But it's definitely wearing a cape, cause it's super hard & fighting me in a never-ending battle. I constantly can't help thinking 'What if I do this?' or 'This would be cool!'
Starting to believe that good system design is in part asking 'what can I reuse?' before 'what else can I add?'
Now I'm curious if other designers have a similar hierarchy.