Designing for Gamefeel

#13

very fair points, I’ll concede Burning Wheel is not a perfect example of what we are talking about, but I will say the tag system is more flexible than you assume. Yes, having the “big hat” tag will provide you a bonus to the scenario provided, but not having the tag is not a no-go. If you narratively position that your character had procured a big hat, you could convince the GM that they can use that hat for a one-time bonus, and if you consistently rely on it, there are mechanics that let players nominate you for the “big hat” tag at the end of any session, at which point you get more control over when you can invoke the tag.

To bring it back on topic, I think BW has better GameFeel than DnD because while its mechanics are less dense, they are also more rigorously defined in what they are meant to simulate (both by explicit author writing and in what “flavor” the mechanics are given). You could can run a game involving a group of characters travelling a fantasy world and building bonds to achieve some lofty quest in either game, but BW will do it better (opinion) at the expense of doing less things than DnD (ignoring how well DnD does those additional things).

I think there is something to be discussed in how much lifting “genre” or flavor does towards reinforcing mechanics. If Night Witches was pitched as a game for playing as pilots (no era specified) it would do what it was designed to do just as well but would be more difficult for players to “tune in” to the ideal play style.

Perhaps the difference between indie and classic design is how much genre is defined versus implied by the mechanics? Night Witches lays out what it’s about very explicitly, which does wonders for helping players enter the desired headspace. DnD and BW rather define their setting through the content. DnD definitely assumes the name is doing a lot of heavy lifting and BW’s rules only imply (there are rules for hitting people with medieval weapons, casting spells, and creating characters of different fantasy races), but I don’t recall it outright saying “this is a game for LotR style adventures” beyond listing LotR and other related stories in its bibliography.

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#14

Back to the original topic, I LOVE this idea! I really enjoy Dread for this reason. I would love to try more games with this sort of feedback loop. I have yet to try Dust Devils, I think the idea of using poker hands as the mechanics to a western rpg is genious! I haven’t played it but Ten Candles is a fascinating concept using candles to represent life force and how much time is left.

I think examples of these where they still use dice are Mothership and the San Jenaro Digest 1 game Clerics. Mothership because of the stress -> panic feedback loop. The more stress the character has the more likely they are to panic and you feel this as a player. Clerics because of one simple rule, whenever the PC’s as a player try to boss around the NPCs (the rest of the party) because the clerics are the “wisest”, the rest of the party is to act deliberately opposite. It really gives the feel that the clerics really are the only clever characters and the DM is a dick :stuck_out_tongue:

I think a good example of using improv rules to give a specific game feel is A Penny for your thoughts. I haven’t played this one either but the idea of giving improv prompts to recover your memory is inspired.

Personally, I would most like to see more games with gambling or bidding mechanics. What’s riskier than risking your life on an adventure?

I am currently designing a game about old west using the old west gambling game Faro. It is my first attempt at something like this. The idea is that going west in that time was a gamble thus the gambling game mechanic supports that feel. Faro by itself is a dull game like roulette but the gambling chips are the metacurrency for the story. If you lose all your chips, your character dies. If the player doubles their chips they get to dictate their happy ending. If the deck runs out and the players are somewhere in between they get varied success / failure and varied agency in finishing their character’s story.

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#15

Oh that is a great idea! I will add it to the list of scene types to cover in the second half of the series.

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#16

My next article in this series is out!

This one talks about the concept of modality. Modality is not something I hear discussed too much these days, so this is largely an introduction to the concept. Fortunately, explaining why it is important to good gamefeel is a relatively short discussion, so I’m able to fit that in as well.

Discussion Questions
What sort of modal game experiences have you most enjoyed?
What games with nonmodal rules have felt like the biggest stretch to you?
Do you often feel like you have trouble knowing how long to talk at the table?

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#17

Which games have felt the most distant from the action during play for you?

Old Deadlands had combat mechanics that sometimes required seven rolls with different types of die and numbers just for one action. I had to abandon that game, and that was under the period where I was really resistant to heavy systems.

Fiasco have a random generated ending, and I never felt that the randomized ending seldom mirrored what actually happened during the session. In some sessions, quite the opposite actually.

Dogs in the Vineyard. The die mechanics is too slow and calculating and breaks up the dialogue too much. That said, the mechanics of making all dogs (type of inquisitor) be like assholes is brilliant, but that’s more a case of emergent complexity (when all components forms one result) rather than what happens in the moment - in the system - enforces the how the game feels.

Which games have elicited the strongest emotional responses from you?

Psychodrame is using Dogs mechanics, but in a better way. The cards (instead of dice) are hidden, which makes the dialogue flow better, because the opponent can’t peak and the dice and do tactical calculations. Another thing is that you don’t use things that defines you, but feelings - which are easier to play out. I highly recommend to try this game.

Don’t Rest Your Head actually frightened me; I mean, them mechanics themselves did that! It’s using a form of loss aversion, and I wished more games did that. Dread is using it, in a way. Depends on how much you want to bend the definition, because the Jenga tower is more about the tension of drawing than the tension of making a choice, as in DRYH.

Montsegur 1244 is a game I haven’t played through, but I heard that people sink immensely into the role and thinks that death is a better way than abandon their religion … and this from secular Scandinavians. It’s a game without resolution mechanics, and I could tell that they followed the structure of how to achieve flow/immersion - based on Nordic LARP theory. The game pumped information to the players that they had to interpret based on their characters. By doing that, you’ll get immerse into the game.

Svart av kval, vit av lust (Black of Despair, White of Lust) is a Swedish game that is what Vampire should have been. The mechanics consists of letting your beast go to solve problems, and to sometimes obey the beast’s inner desires (suggested from other participants). The mechanics creates a “If I do what I want, I will tread a path of blood” feel, and I even had one guy screaming “Fuck you” (both upset and amused) to the rest of the participants for the choice he had to make.

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#18

That’s a great list of games! I’ve never even heard of Svart av kval before, I might have to try a find a copy of that.

I’m an especially big fan of how Monstegur and its descendants works with the concept of a set ending, an inescapable fate. It helps to steer behavior before hand and guide the play towards an ending that everyone has already bought in to.

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#19

The third article in the series is now out!

What games have you played that have had simple but fun mechanics?
What games have you played where complex rules made the play more fun?
Have you played any games with explicit phrasing mechanics?

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#20

Short follow up expanding the scope of pacing from the scene level to the meta-scene level!

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#21

Didn’t get a chance to read these updates until now - this one is great, useful terminology and discussion that I don’t really have any questions about or critique of.

All that’s left is to answer your questions:

A) What sort of modal game experiences have you most enjoyed?

I’ve enjoyed OD&D & B/X for a long time, the jarring shift from thinking through puzzles, negotiation, and exploration to fast messy and dangerous combat marks that combat as a sort of climactic collapse of player choices into risk and danger.

B) What games with nonmodal rules have felt like the biggest stretch to you?
The memory that jumps out is Torchbearer, simply because it’s so close to the classic D&D editions I mostly play in tone and goals. I liked the ideas of the system, but in practice the identical game of bonus stacking and sheet interrogation for chopping a ghoul with an axe and using elven memory and dance to make it remember its former life and despair felt way too gimmicky. I totally love the idea of forcing the undead to remember life as a means of overcoming them - but forcing everything into the same mechanical sausage casing is jarring.

C) Do you often feel like you have trouble knowing how long to talk at the table?

At times, I tend to be verbose and have a fairly strong personality. Luckily I’ve had a lot of training in meeting management and public speaking - so I think I usually manage it unless I’m super excited and/or drunk (which is not entirely uncommon when playing games). As a GM I find I do better at controlling pace and managing the flow of play while giving quieter players an opportunity to be involved as well - but I worry my descriptions can run long.

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#22

I haven’t played ZOMBIE WORLD. But I’ve seen the deck at a game store. And I’ve listened to a podcast playthrough series. And it sounds like it deserves your attention.

It’s based on Apocalypse World, but doesn’t use dice or playbooks. Instead, it uses various decks of cards.

There’s a mechanic in it that wrenches up the tension… The bite card. If you get the bite card, your character becomes a zombie. And in order to achieve various things, you have to draw from the deck containing the bite card. The more cards drawn from that deck, the more likely someone is to draw that fateful card.

Listening to the podcast, it sounded like the players were deeply immersed in the story they were unfurling. And the bite card was a palpable presence throughout play.

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#23

Actually came here to shout out Zombie World! I played it and goodness me, the bite deck makes that game tense as anything.

For other games I’d point out, Fall of Magic’s physical edition does a very good job with this. It’s a combination of gamefeel and conveying rules through components. Everything from the box to the canvas scroll the game is printed on to the weighty metal counters and hessian bag they’re stored in makes the game feel aged and timeless, which absolutely informs how people approach their play. The counters are double sided (with related concepts on each side, e.g. an egg and a bird, a river and the sea, a sword and that same sword shattered), and while never explicitly mentioned in the rules, I haven’t seen a game yet where a player hasn’t played around with that idea - flipping the coins to decide how the proceed, or changing permanently to the coin’s other side to show a change in their character’s outlook and there’s only 5 coins (mandating a maximum of 4 players). The scroll brilliantly conveys a sense of mystery and surprise as you steadily unfurl it, and subtly hints to the players that they should be advancing (even though it does give you the option to loop back at places). Best of all it has a brilliant reveal moment when somebody moves their token to the torch icon and says “what does this torch mean?” at which point you clear the table, and flip the scroll to reveal a whole other map printed on the back.

I’d also point towards the intersection between LARP and TTRPGs. Mist Robed Gate has an (actual, real) ornate knife in a silk cloth as the key resolution mechanic, with you pressing the side to your friends’ skin to show your character threatening them, or sticking the knife through their character sheet to show an attack.

I can’t find it right now but a very recent horror RPG has the mechanic that if you look behind you or into the eyes of your possessed friends, you are possessed by the fictitious monster prowling around the room. Which also reminds me of 10 Candles, where the game ends when all the candles on the table go out, which can be due to character action, or somebody breathing too hard, making the players very tense.

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#24

Great examples, something worth looking into is how physical components/actions can create and inform gamefeel.

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#25

Zombie World seems very cool! My only concern with that system would be that it’d be hard for a burgeoning game designer to get those custom cards, but beyond that! I talk more about the subject this week in Tools of the Trade!

What was your first interaction with polyhedral dice?
Do you know of any good playing card simulators online?
Are you using enough index cards?
What’s your favorite question to ask or be asked in a game?

(Sorry it’s so late! Been incredibly swamped lately!)

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#26

Reading this post made so many things click for me, @Meinberg! Thank you! I was particularly interested in the idea of questions being ‘tools’ you can move around the table like an index card or die, and your breakdown of how dice mechanics can enhance or diminish the inherent “mystique” of polyhedrals.

It got me thinking about how Imp of the Perverse uses a die mechanic that really slows the game down, but counterbalances it by having every die represent something particular and consequential: That’s not just another Black Die, that’s whether or not you let this stress spill over into your relationship with your estranged sibling! Also, the slowness of the die mechanic forces the player to deeply consider what’s going on in their protagonist’s head…very appropriate for psychological horror.

It also made me think about how a die mechanic can encourage asking questions, or how dice and questions blur into each other: In Spire, if work or familial experience have granted you the “Library” domain, you get a bonus when acting in a library, moving through library-like spaces, and having conflict with librarians. You’re constantly asking “Where am I from?,” “Where is this NPC from?,” “Do they move through the world in ways I can understand?” And that constant questioning encourages building a character with a history and a strong communal context, rather than a stoic loner.

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#27

Just wanted to chime in some encouragement - I’ve been enjoying these posts even if I haven’t been dropping by to chat on them.

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#28

Custom cards aren’t that difficult to make (unless you want them to look good). You can mock something up in Excel or Word fairly easily, and if you want to take a step or two up in complexity then nanDECK is a fantastic tool for cranking out packs of cards.

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#29

This is a fun conversation! On the topic of physical items, I wanted to shout out the Dadlands by the McElroy Family.

You pull poker chips out of a fanny pack, hoping for the right color. Not everyone will have a fanny pack to make this easy to play at home, but what a cool concept! As mentioned by sjbrown way back on Feb 12th, this is also a cool way to display the resolution to the table, or for the McElroys, to a gigantic audience.

One of the games I’m working on is inspired by this. Instead of poker chips in a fanny pack, some players eat from a mixed bag of normal skittles and sour skittles. I haven’t playtested this yet, but I’m really looking forward to the players’ sourface expressions revealing whether their action succeeded :slight_smile:

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Leadtown RPG: A game design diary for an Old West story game
#30

Thank you for the encouragement everyone! It’s been one of those times, as I’m sure folks know. That said, I’m working on my next article in the series as we speak! Probably won’t be out until the 10th at the earliest, but hopefully I’ll be able to hit that deadline.

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#31

This quote from Jeremy_Strandberg seems a solid gamefeel consideration
"

  • It’s very clear whether a +1 bonus only actually affected a roll, and only ~1 in 4 rolls are actually affected. So more often than not, it feels like that +1 modifier you got “didn’t matter.”
  • It’s much less clear whether advantage affected any given roll (even if you roll a special die, it still feels like it might have mattered. Thus, advantage feels like more of a boost."
    I deposit it here for later reference.
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#32

Just stacking wood.

Generally related

more specifically :