Notebook Imps and Designs of Bad Stuff

Every once in a while I go on a kick where I sit back from the game and look at things from a player's perspective, ignoring the neat nifty stuff that keeps trying to gee-whiz itself out of my brain and into the game design.

During this time, I stare at aspects of the game, down on the ground as an anonymous player, as if I've never seen it before, and ask myself the following questions:
- Is this fun?
- Does this stay out of the way of my gaming experience?
- Does this add to my gaming experience?
- Is this an attractive aspect of the game?
- Is this something I can do many times and not get bored?
- Is this something that advances my progress?

If something earns a Yes in all four columns, then I move on. If a No lurks below the surface, I ask other players what they think. The answers are invariably surprising.

It's far too easy to design a game that is absolutely breathtaking and fantastic - a totally immersive experience that captures the attention of anyone who passes through its gates. That same game will probably be entirely unplayable by anyone who passes through its gates, since there is always the danger that the breathtaking experience resides entirely within the mind of its designer.

Case in point - an old magic system that I spent several months designing. I have a stack of notebooks over there on the credenza - sometimes I wonder why I save them - each documents an aspect of the game design. Their entries range from chicken-scratches and totally obscure columns of numbers which have lost all meaning as their labels never got written down, all the way up to the most detailed line-by-line explorations of spellcasting, from the discernment of a glimmer of magic in an object to the intricate spellweaving process which could, for some participants, take days.

Looked good on paper... woulda sucked sulfuric eggs in operation. GAD how boring it would have been. Its very complexity woudl have prevented a good portion of the playerbase from participating, and the learning curve to get into position to cast a simple spell of invisibility could have taken months - nay, years of work. Not game years.. real years.

I know why I keep the notebooks. They represent many years of imagineering and are, thus, bound to me and cannot be tossed away. To toss them somehow diminishes that time spent, and sometimes I have to reread their entries to remind myself that I am entirely capable of designing Bad Stuff.

What qualifies as Bad Stuff? Even the hint of a lurking No in answer to one of those questions (in the list way up there where you started reading) sends a design teetering toward the edge of the Bad Stuff penny jar. Two No answers can push it over the edge and toppling into the pennies below where I keep my Two Cents' Worth.

Every once in a while I take out the pennies and look them over for hidden prizes.. did one topple in by mistake, pushed over the edge by the momentum of some other, more evil penny stack? Does it deserve to be there, along with all the other bad pennies, or is there a rare 1903 Indian Head wheat lurking beneath the tarnish?

Hence the ever-present notebooks - the repository for the text which defines the Bad Stuff. I know full well that, a few years down the road, I'm going to have an absolutely brilliant idea - flash of genius! and somewhere in the back of my head is going to be this little cautionary tour guide who whispers, 'hey.. didn't we try something like that once before, about 6 years ago, regarding herbals?' Then it will be back to the stack, which will be thrice as high by then, pawing through the crumpled covers and broken spiral bindings looking for the one that has a scrawled notation 'Herbals" on its front, and the truth shall be again revealed - Herein Rests Bad Stuff.

Down there on the left side of the credenza is a green 6"x9" with yellow pages (college ruled on one side, quadrille on the other) in which the initial scribblings for ship navigation reside. It's a bad-nasty notebook which tampers with the forces of gravity, periodically flinging itself to the floor back behind the credenza where I can't possibly reach it through normal means. Once that happens, I dig out my gripper-reacher and haul it back up, carefully stowing it toward the bottom of a safer happier stack, in the hopes that all those good designs will outweigh its not-so-good contents. No such luck - within a month it will have shouldered off its less-persistent compatriots and thrown itself back out of reach. In doing so, it calls attention to itself yet again.. reminding me ever-so-gently of the fact that ship navigation is still a huge beast of an idea to be dealt with.

I like the design. It works mentally. It has some Bad Stuff in it, true - but that can be trimmed away with a careful hand, revealing the Good Stuff beneath. It feels like it will be fun, will stay out of the way of the normal gaming experience, will add to the gaming experience for those who desire to participate, will be an attractive aspect of the game, will be highly repeatable (although perhaps a tad boring to some folks), and will definitely advance progress. Besides, when it's in, we can blow evil pirate ships out of the water - how cool is that!?

So why isn't it in the game, one wonders?

No ships yet... although they draw closer now, and in proportionate response to this, the notebook increases its persistent leaping-from-stacks-to-ground, to remind me that it's almost time to move it to a more stable point of office space and update its contents.

Ok, maybe it's one of the cats - but it's more fun to consider the notebook leaping on its own, transmogrified into an impatient imp of an implementation. Damn the prosaic; full speed ahead!