So in my quest to delineate what exactly Heisenberg is about I have been doing a lot of research and a lot of reading. For those of you who don’t know, Heisenberg is the name of my SF RPG. Most writers I know actively read a lot more while they are working than while they are not. In the last few months I have re-read swaths of Piper, Burroughs, Heinlein, Tubb, and others. All of them are great writers, and each is different.

H. Beam Piper was a recluse and an eccentric. His future history is a foundation of SF and is often copied. Even with the slightly earlier development with Asimov’s future history, Piper stands out. As dated as some of the elements are today all of the stories remain compelling.

Edgar Rice Burroughs "Barsoom" novels are only barely SF, but the swashbuckling style is also copied in many SF works that came after it. It also greatly helps that nothing is impossible in Burroughs worlds.

Robert Heinlein is the master. In my opinion no greater SF writer has ever been published. He had his faults, not the least of which was his treatment of women. He had his politics, which were equally as extreme. In all of this I think Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress represent the pinnacle of his work.

E.C. Tubb is a forgotten man in man SF libraries. His Dumarest Saga, thirty-two volumes in total, was long out of print and is only now being reissued by a new publisher. The fact that much of his work was not reprinted along with his copious use of pseudonyms make him a hard writer to track down.

I have also read a little Isaac Asimov and a little Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke's Rama series, both alone and with Gentry Lee, is pretty heady stuff. Time has not been as kind to Asimov's Foundation, and although he is probably the most prolific writer in English language fiction, he is not my choice for best.

I have also spent a lot of time on Forums. I used to spend all of that energy on newsgroups, but it seems those are sliding into disuse. While many are populated by crass people, navel-gazers, and those with very limited viewpoints; an equal number are really very nice. There are hundreds of great discussions out there.

Most well known are our own RPGnet and The Forge. RPGnet tries to cover the gamut, and does a pretty good job of it. The Forge is centered on creator-owned and self-published RPGs. These are collectively referred to as "Indie" RPGs. Elitism permeates a lot of the discussions on The Forge, and frankly that is its greatest failure. Lesser known but growing in popularity are both the Hero Forums and the Steve Jackson forums. These of course center on their "house games" but also branch well into alien territory. One of my favorites is a tiny little forum called Story-Games; it falls somewhere between a serious community and a local pub in a factory town. The topics range from random geekery to serious discussion, and all involved are polite in their convictions.

This doesn’t even take into account the blogsphere. So many creators, developers, and writers have there own sites as well as significant web presence elsewhere that it is daunting. Because of this I especially enjoyed Chris Chinn’s RPG Diaspora. The site is an aggregation of many of the best blogs for and about RPGs.

So where am I going with all of this? Quite simply I didn't know. I was lost in my own head. I was reaching towards too many places, or in too many directions. I couldn't seem to get ahead of the game.

Then I found the answer I was looking for, or not really. I kept stumbling on to different questions that designers were asking themselves. There were nineteen of them. I had no idea where they came from or whose they were. Google was little help, probably because my Google skills are "weak sauce". Finally I found The Power 19. These questions are not the end all of RPG design, and the creator of the questionnaire Troy Costisick goes to some length to stress that. They are, however, a very good place to start.

Without further ado, here they are…

1.) What is your game about?

2.) What do the characters do?

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?

7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?

8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

9.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)

10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?

13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?

16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?

17.) Where does your game take the players that other games can’t, don’t, or won’t?

18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?

19.) Who is your target audience?

The first three questions are referred to as "the big three" and are probably necessary in some form or another in any roleplaying game design. I think the last three are necessary for another reason.

I am convinced that we do not need just another miscellaneous RPG. Frankly I think there are too many RPGs already. There are too many ways to accomplish the same goals, there is too much rampant theft, there are also too few original implementations of ideas. The last three questions, more than any others, delineate why your game is different and why it is a viable business proposition.

Not all games will answer all these questions; I know that mine will not. Some may even break the paradigm so thoroughly that they can not answer some of them. In many ways those are the games that I most look forward too. In the meantime I will just plug along on my own.