Rule number one is: Have a good reason for any design decision you make, even the ones you didn't intend to make.

This rule is much harder to follow that it first appears.

Knowing Your Goals

Having a good reason means knowing what you want out of your game design. Do you want to design a RPG with strong financial prospects? Do you want to design a RPG to perform well in a competition? Do you want to design to challenge your abilities as a game designer? Or perhaps to challenge the preconceptions of yourself and others?

There are many good goals in designing a game. The danger comes when you don't choose one. Without a goal in mind you cannot know whether your reasons are sufficient. If you are building a game to sell, then your reasons must be motivated by the buying audience. Likewise in a competition your reasons must revolve around the judges.

Goals can mix, but the most critical error in game design is not having thought about what those goals are before you've begun designing. Perhaps because many goals sound appealing, we are inclined to add them all together. But consider, is it truly wise to strongly challenge yourself as a game designer if that same RPG is one on which you will risk money?

Decisions Unmade

Most of the important game design decisions you make in your game are entirely invisible sometimes even to ourselves. They are not the decision to add something or to change something, they are the negative decisions where you do not make a change. But ultimately these decisions are just as important.

When you enter into a design, you must challenge your preconceptions. Even on decisions which you will pass over, you must ensure that passing them over is the better choice for your game. For example, any RPG design should have a step where the designer asks whether a single player is needed to moderate the game. Chances are a GM is necessary, but until the question is asked you cannot assume it is so.

Borrowing from another design or general tradition can be very effective. But borrowings should not be automatic. You should challenge the work of others, even as you challenge your own creations. Even if the final players of your game do not see these decisions, that does not make them any less important.

Intending the Unintentional

As hard as you try some of your design decisions will be unintended. This is not a bad thing. Often the most important parts of the design are unintentional, they emerge without planning and lead into a new direction.

Should the unexpected interaction you've found between setting and system be allowed to remain, or should it be removed? Does it fit your original goal, or might it be time to change your course, and reconsider your design in another way? Perhaps the unintended can serve as a seed for a new design.

In any case, following rule number one means designing with care and thought. It means examining why you design and what you want to come out of it. Not merely designing within a theory of RPGs, the act of intentional design is to create a theory for your RPG. And when that theory meets the reality, you have succeeded in your design.

Designing in this way is difficult, but like all skills it is something that becomes easier in practice. Writing makes you better at writing, and so does designing make you better at designing. Practice, work, and challenge yourself. That's the only way you'll come into your own.

Next Month: Coming of Age