GenCon 2017 Trade Day's Engineering a STrategy Game
I collaborated with Kevin Crowther, a high school math teacher who is teaching game design. Kevin and I met at a previous Trade Day when he came to one of my sessions on teaching game design, and began teaching game design with the help of my resources! Now we presented together, how cool is that?
Please note; if you are going to teach this as a quick design workshop, you may want to omit (or not) the slides in the beginning and start with slide 9.
This lesson is good for introducing game design to students of all ages (I've used this with elementary students through adults) as well as a standalone lesson on game design.
Handouts
Feedback Forms (the WINQ)
Outcome
Each person (or partnership if you like) will create a short game for 2-4 players. In addition, participants will understand the key steps in the design process and reflect on their own strengths and challenges in the design process.
Rationale
Quick is a key component of this lesson. Game design is hard; by moving slowly through the process, questions, concerns, and difficulties can overwhelm the designer. Making faster decisions for the game's design and the prototype means that less is personally invested in the game, and more is invested towards completion (and reflection). Gaining the initial game design experience through this process can help new designers understand more realistically the challenges ahead and their own needs to succeed.
Process
1. (Optional) Have everyone play a published game. This will give them ideas for later. If you're running a short game workshop, you may want to pick a shorter game, 10 - 20 minutes. I've used Survive! Escape from Atlantis for longer classes and for shorter classes, PowerPuff Girls: Villains at Large, Deep Sea Adventure, Cthulhu in the House OR Rumble in the Dungeon, and Hey That's My Fish!
2. Play a boring race game.
Print out a simple grid race map, and using two pawns and a die, play a game where they roll and move until one reaches the end.
Talk about why the game wasn't fun, and especially, why the players had no choices. Discuss how choices make games fun.
3. Talk about the game they played in step one, or, in other games they have played.
4. Explain they will make a race game, but discuss Fast'n'Cheap and Conflict first.
Tell designers: Of Good, Fast, and Cheap, which TWO are most important as they relate to game design?
Most will say Good and Fast or Good and Cheap. WRONG (though of course, we compliment them on the reasons they gave for their answers). The answers are Fast and Cheap. Why? Because it won't be good! Games never work in the beginning, and we don't want to spend huge amounts of time making a really gorgeous prototype that might need to be chucked later, or the designer refuses to chuck it thus spending more time on a bad idea. Rather, since we know we won't find what works, we need to find what is workable. Doing this quickly can help us to find the game that we are trying to design.
Explain the importance of conflict. Without conflict, you don't have a game, you have an activity. Two players trying to capture 4 out of 8 flags can be an activity, but two players trying to capture 4 out of 7 flags will be a game.
5. Explain the parameters for the game they will be designing.
These parameters have been, in my classes, the most helpful towards providing enough structure for the nervous, analytical game designer and enough freedom for the brave, creative designer. Designers need to be both, so this can help them find their other sides as designers.
6. Provide Components
I provide 11x17 paper because it can easily be trimmed to a decent 11x11 inch game board or two can be taped together for a MUCH larger game board. (Personally, I don't usually allow rectangular game boards because they can build in imbalance between two players on one end versus two on the other end, but that's a quibble for larger game projects later on.) I provide blank paper as well as paper pre-printed with 1" square and hex grids. Large rolls of hex and square grids are great too, plus the reverse of the paper is blank.
As for bits, I have boxes of bits that I've scrounged from garage sale games to scraps given to me by other game designers and publishers. I put out a decent variety of cubes, pawns, chits, and pre-printed scrounged bits, but not so much that can be overwhelming. I don't allow dice (too tempting, Roll and Move you siren), and I get out plenty of markers and other crafting materials.
7. Get to work!
Emphasize bias towards action (get to work!), rapid prototyping (start making something!), and success comes after a lot of failure (but you can't fail with this, as we're just learning the basics!) Have students design and playtest in an iterative fashion constantly developing their game to make it better. In the handout there is a page for designers to write down the main details of their game and its rules.
Talk about persisting through setbacks. Good game designers design bad games then make them better, so the faster they playtest, the faster they can identify what works and what doesn't, and they can make improvements.
8. Playtest!
Have students playtest each others' games. Use the WINQ form to help them provide feedback in different ways: what Works, what needs to be Improved, what New Ideas they have, and what Questions they have for the designer.
8. Celebrate!
Save time at the end of the lesson or workshop for designers to present their game, talk about what worked and what didn't work, and what they would continue to work on if more time was permitted. There are reflection pages in the handout if you're so inclined. Focus on positive growth and progress.
This lesson is good for introducing game design to students of all ages (I've used this with elementary students through adults) as well as a standalone lesson on game design.
Handouts
Feedback Forms (the WINQ)
Outcome
Each person (or partnership if you like) will create a short game for 2-4 players. In addition, participants will understand the key steps in the design process and reflect on their own strengths and challenges in the design process.
Rationale
Quick is a key component of this lesson. Game design is hard; by moving slowly through the process, questions, concerns, and difficulties can overwhelm the designer. Making faster decisions for the game's design and the prototype means that less is personally invested in the game, and more is invested towards completion (and reflection). Gaining the initial game design experience through this process can help new designers understand more realistically the challenges ahead and their own needs to succeed.
Process
1. (Optional) Have everyone play a published game. This will give them ideas for later. If you're running a short game workshop, you may want to pick a shorter game, 10 - 20 minutes. I've used Survive! Escape from Atlantis for longer classes and for shorter classes, PowerPuff Girls: Villains at Large, Deep Sea Adventure, Cthulhu in the House OR Rumble in the Dungeon, and Hey That's My Fish!
2. Play a boring race game.
Print out a simple grid race map, and using two pawns and a die, play a game where they roll and move until one reaches the end.
Talk about why the game wasn't fun, and especially, why the players had no choices. Discuss how choices make games fun.
3. Talk about the game they played in step one, or, in other games they have played.
- What choices did players have?
- How could they apply those choices to the race game?
- What other ideas could be added to the race game to make it more fun for players by giving them more choices?
- (Allow players to use random bits to explore different ideas, or the instructor can add some bits to have them explore different ideas like Tile Placement, Variable Player Powers, Modular Board (see mechanics).
4. Explain they will make a race game, but discuss Fast'n'Cheap and Conflict first.
Tell designers: Of Good, Fast, and Cheap, which TWO are most important as they relate to game design?
Most will say Good and Fast or Good and Cheap. WRONG (though of course, we compliment them on the reasons they gave for their answers). The answers are Fast and Cheap. Why? Because it won't be good! Games never work in the beginning, and we don't want to spend huge amounts of time making a really gorgeous prototype that might need to be chucked later, or the designer refuses to chuck it thus spending more time on a bad idea. Rather, since we know we won't find what works, we need to find what is workable. Doing this quickly can help us to find the game that we are trying to design.
Explain the importance of conflict. Without conflict, you don't have a game, you have an activity. Two players trying to capture 4 out of 8 flags can be an activity, but two players trying to capture 4 out of 7 flags will be a game.
5. Explain the parameters for the game they will be designing.
These parameters have been, in my classes, the most helpful towards providing enough structure for the nervous, analytical game designer and enough freedom for the brave, creative designer. Designers need to be both, so this can help them find their other sides as designers.
- Race game
- Race games have an objective and victory condition that are the same, so trying to figure what players are trying to accomplish it and how they will know they have accomplished it is provided for them. Plus, many games, especially those for children, are variations on race games, so it's a format that many find familiar.
- Animal theme (optional)
- Games are essentially expressions of conflict between players modeled with tangible items. So how to choose the topic of the game that will lend itself to conflict? Choose an animal! Everyone likes animals, their lives are all about conflict, and you can get really creative and fun with your animal choices (maybe it's operatic elephants looking for enough music scores to complete the opera, who knows, those babies can really belt it out).
- Action Selection or Action Points as main mechanic, or other mechanics that control player actions.
- Since we break hearts right away by telling players NO ROLL AND MOVE, we immediately offer Action Selection or Action Points as a way to give players choices in a manageable way for the new designer. For example, a designer could decide that the aforementioned operatic elephant player's choices could be to move, search, pick up a score, and sing. Maybe each action costs a different number of "points" by the player, up to the maximum allowed each turn, or maybe each player can simply take a three or four actions. In either case, or in many other variations, the designer figures out their choices and with that, the main components of the game are decided.
- Theme: Operatic Elephants
- Mechanic: Action Selection
- Objective: Complete a opera score
- Victory Condition: Be the first to complete the score, maybe also to go to the opera house
- Since we break hearts right away by telling players NO ROLL AND MOVE, we immediately offer Action Selection or Action Points as a way to give players choices in a manageable way for the new designer. For example, a designer could decide that the aforementioned operatic elephant player's choices could be to move, search, pick up a score, and sing. Maybe each action costs a different number of "points" by the player, up to the maximum allowed each turn, or maybe each player can simply take a three or four actions. In either case, or in many other variations, the designer figures out their choices and with that, the main components of the game are decided.
- Mechanics that control the number of player actions/choices allow a game designer to specifically control the number of actions a player may take on her turn. (Most student games use one of these.
- Action Point Allowance, Simultaneous Action Selection, Programmed Action/Movement, Worker Placement
- Less commonly used mechanics that control the number of actions:
- Push Your Luck
- Roundel Wheel
- Time Track
- Variable Phase Order
6. Provide Components
I provide 11x17 paper because it can easily be trimmed to a decent 11x11 inch game board or two can be taped together for a MUCH larger game board. (Personally, I don't usually allow rectangular game boards because they can build in imbalance between two players on one end versus two on the other end, but that's a quibble for larger game projects later on.) I provide blank paper as well as paper pre-printed with 1" square and hex grids. Large rolls of hex and square grids are great too, plus the reverse of the paper is blank.
As for bits, I have boxes of bits that I've scrounged from garage sale games to scraps given to me by other game designers and publishers. I put out a decent variety of cubes, pawns, chits, and pre-printed scrounged bits, but not so much that can be overwhelming. I don't allow dice (too tempting, Roll and Move you siren), and I get out plenty of markers and other crafting materials.
7. Get to work!
Emphasize bias towards action (get to work!), rapid prototyping (start making something!), and success comes after a lot of failure (but you can't fail with this, as we're just learning the basics!) Have students design and playtest in an iterative fashion constantly developing their game to make it better. In the handout there is a page for designers to write down the main details of their game and its rules.
Talk about persisting through setbacks. Good game designers design bad games then make them better, so the faster they playtest, the faster they can identify what works and what doesn't, and they can make improvements.
8. Playtest!
Have students playtest each others' games. Use the WINQ form to help them provide feedback in different ways: what Works, what needs to be Improved, what New Ideas they have, and what Questions they have for the designer.
8. Celebrate!
Save time at the end of the lesson or workshop for designers to present their game, talk about what worked and what didn't work, and what they would continue to work on if more time was permitted. There are reflection pages in the handout if you're so inclined. Focus on positive growth and progress.
