In previous articles we have talked about various mechanical elements of role-playing games. In this final article in the column, we'll take a step back to talk some theory and maybe put what we've talked about so far in a slightly different light.

Our intention isn't to merely rephrase and explain theoretical concepts that were there before. Others have done a good enough job on that before us. Instead, we'll try to provide some new ways to look at game design.

So, let's get down to business.

The Most Important Question

Sid Meier (the designer of Civilization) has defined the 'fun factor' as the number of interesting decisions made by a player divided by the actual time played. He was talking about computer strategy games, but this definition is perfectly true for our field of interest as well.

Sure, lots of different things bring players fun – in strategy games you also have pretty graphics, an interesting storyline, cut scenes etc. In role-playing games, you have the GM's narration, colourful places to visit in the setting, cool power descriptions and much more. But at the heart of the gameplay are decisions made by the players. The rest is colour. Not to say colour is not important; it may even be argued that in some games colour is more important than the player decisions (games that focus heavily on evoking a certain atmosphere could fall into that category). But we're here to discuss the design of gameplay, and thus, the design of decisions.

So, the bottom line here is this: the most important question you need to answer in your game is:

What are the decisions that the players face?

Player Choice Versus Character Choice

Note that in the question above it says players, not characters. That's because the decisions that players face and decisions that characters face are, while connected, aren't the same thing.

To help make the point clearer, let's conduct a small experiment (somewhat stolen from Ron Edwards). Here is what happened in the game: the characters went to the bad guy's castle, fought many guards, passed traps, had a conversation with the bad guy, then they fought him valiantly, defeated him and returned safely home. That's what the characters did in the game. But what did the players do? The answer is: we don't know. They could do lots of various things. More relevant to us, they could face lots of different choices. Perhaps they faced mostly tactical choices during the battles with the many minions and the bad guy in the end. Choices such as which power to use, where to move the character and so on. Maybe they faced narrative choices – how to better describe the situation at hand and how to have their character's story elements shine. These two options present completely different gameplays, even though what happens in the game world is identical.

Another example could concern the characters facing a difficult moral dilemma. But the fact alone that the characters are facing a moral choice doesn't yet mean the players are facing it as well. The players' decision can also be 'what would my character do in this situation', 'what do I want to show about my character's personality through this situation', 'what choice would move the story in a position of interest to me', or even something like 'what choice would get me into a better place in the court', ignoring the underlying moral dilemma whatsoever and going for pure political tactics instead, if that's the sort of the dilemma at hand.

And on the other hand, player choice can sometimes have no clear parallel in terms of character choices. For instance, 'Do I use my remaining fate point to invoke my character's aspect and get a bonus on the roll' has no equivalent character choice. If you look only at the characters, you might miss these potentially interesting choices.

So, the conclusion here is that when you come to answer the question about decisions, think about the decisions the players are going to be making, not the ones the characters are going to be making.

What Does Interesting Mean

In defining the fun factor, the term 'interesting' had been used. But what makes a decision interesting? There are three ingredients that need to be present for a decision to be potentially interesting.

First, it needs to have actual impact on the game. If you say 'you can turn right or turn left' but the results will be the same either way, it's not really a decision, just an illusion of one, and the players are usually good at spotting those.

Second, the players need to be able to predict what their choices mean. Put differently, if the decision might as well have had no actual impact on the game, then it's not a real decision. In the example above, if the players know absolutely nothing about what happens on the right and what happens on the left, there's no decision to be made there, even if the GM actually prepared different things for what happens on the right and what happens on the left. The players need to have enough knowledge about the situation to be able to make some predictions – at least rough ones – about the results of each choice.

Finally, the decision must not be trivial. You must make sure that the players can spend some time considering what to do regarding each decision they are about to make – if their choice is trivial, it's not an interesting choice. You can make a decision between several choices, each of them with pros and cons that need to be considered. You can also have a decision with only one correct choice, it's difficult to understand what that choice is – for instance, if the players need to solve a puzzle, then there's only one correct way to solve it, but it's still an interesting activity because finding that correct way is difficult. However, giving several options which are all viable is the simpler and usually better approach.

If the those three ingredients are present, the decision has the potential to be interesting. Whether it actually is interesting is up to the players. Different people find different things interesting and there's nothing you can do about it. So, your job as game designer is to make sure the players have meaningful decisions to make – there's nothing you can do about people who simply don't find such decisions interesting. Of course, you yourself should find those decisions interesting (otherwise, why would you be designing the game).

Tools of the Trade

So, you've sat down and you decided what decisions you want your players to be facing. Now you need to make a game that caters for those decisions. You need to put focus on the sort of choices you want the players to face and obviate other sorts of choices so that they won't attract unnecessary attention and shift the focus of the game.

To do that, you various tools at your disposal. The three main tools are mechanics, setting and behavour.

Mechanics

The game mechanics is all the stuff that has to do with stats, dice, cards, resources etc. This is what the column has been about until now. If you read our articles with decisions in mind, you'll be able to see that we have already talked about how various mechanics help create various decisions. For instance, if you have resources in your game, it automatically creates decisions concerning when and how to use those resources – and are thus an excellent tool for creating decisions. If your want the decisions to be tactical, you can create appropriate resources, such as mana used to fuel various combat powers, thus creating a tactical question of when to expend mana and what power to choose. If you want the decisions to centre on where the players want to take the story, you can have resources which players can use to affect the narrative of the game – Fate Points in the FATE system could be an example, since the choice they create is what actions the characters take are more important for the players and what are less, and also what aspect of the character the player wants to emphasise at the moment, which are story decisions.

Setting

Mechanics were straightforward enough, but they aren't the only thing you design in a game. Setting needs to be designed to cater for gameplay in much the same way. Setting may feel different because it also provides most of the game's colour, but this is a question of quantity and not quality. Setting can – and should – also provide actual gameplay, while mechanics can also provide colour (for instance, mechanics using tarot cards in a game about mysticism and the occult).

Here are some examples of how a setting can be used to create and remove decisions.

In D&D 4th edition, there exists a setting concept called 'points of light'. This means that the world consists of small and fairly isolated communities, connected by not too reliable roads, and in between there's wilderness with lots of monsters. This design dictates that most of the game will have to do with killing monsters – which is indeed the intention. Setting the game instead in a land of great kingdoms and large cities, while seemingly an appropriate fantasy setting, would shift the focus to other areas, which is not the game's intention.

On the other hand, suppose you want to create a game about difficult moral decisions. You'd then need characters who often encounter and deal with moral dilemmas. You would also need for the characters to not have to answer to somebody who can force a moral decision onto them. An example of such a setting is Dogs in the Vineyard, where the characters travel from small town to small town, tending to each town's problems, which mostly have to do with sins and ethics. The country authority creates is only strong enough to add a possible conflict of what is right (according to the characters) versus what the law is, but not strong enough to actually force the law upon the characters. And the religious authority also doesn't play the role of guide as to what to do and how to solve problems – the rules of the religion are pretty loose and provide plenty of room for interpretation. Additionally, and maybe even more importantly, the rules of the religion and the theology involved are specifically designed to create moral conflicts and enforce a specific structure to narrative.

This last phrase deserve extra attention. Social norms are a very interesting part of the setting, since they can create very interesting decisions. If the character belong to a society that has unique social norms, playing them and making decisions on their behalf can become much more interesting. In the example above, Dogs in the Vineyard tells of the rules of its religion, of which the player characters are the representatives. Houses of the Blooded tells of the social norms of the Ven, the race to which the player characters belong.

So, setting can be used to create and remove decisions just like mechanics, and it is a powerful tool that you shouldn't disregard.

Behaviour

Finally, there is actual behaviour of the GM and the players at the table. While a designer can't influence those directly, he can certainly give instructions on how to act and what to do in certain situations.

There are many books, mostly if not exclusively for GMs, with advice on how to get specific things out of the players – this is exactly what we're talking about here. Usually such advice – even if it appears in the game book itself – is separated from the game proper. We believe this is a wrong approach. There is advice that can stand on its own, much like there are setting elements and mechanical elements that can stand on their own and be 'plugged' into other games as needed. Advice is no different. How the GM acts at the table is a very powerful tool and should not be disregarded by game designers.

As a small example, there are some useful methods to have the players plotting against each other in a game (usually appropriate for one-shots). The GM should give the players premade character sheets and make it absolutely clear that they should not look at each other's sheets. The GM can put small pieces of papers in the middle of the table to be used as notes and tell the players that they are going to need them (to pass secret messages). There are other possible tricks, but this should make things clear enough for you.

An important part of behaviour is the usage of mechanics – the mechanics are a powerful tool, but if you don't know how to properly use it then it's not too useful. It is often important to not only explain the mechanics themselves, but also explain how the GM and players should use those mechanics in play. Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World are two excellent examples of games providing with such advice.

Are Those Really Different?

There are many situations where something can seemingly fit into several of the above categories. Orcs have a +2 bonus to Strength – it's part of the mechanics of the game, but it's also part of the setting, since it says Orcs are, on average, stronger than other races.

The thing is, it really doesn't matter much what category you fit something into, as it has no benefit for the design. It's important that you know what tools you have in your repertoire as game designer – tools which aren't limited to game mechanics – and know how to use them. How you label a given element isn't really important.

The Setting Is Not the Game

We've talked about how setting is a tool to be used in the design of your game, but there's something else we want to stress: a setting does not define a game. We often see people asking things like 'what game should I use for [insert setting here]', and we can't help but feel that this is something of a wrong approach. The case is somewhat better when it is at least defined what the characters are supposed to be doing in the game, which also isn't the case, but like you can guess, the really important part – and the part that is almost always ignored – is what the players will be doing in the game. This is what truly makes the game what it is, while the setting is merely the scenery.

So even if you're not intending to design a game, next time you have an itch to play something, stop and think how you want the game to actually look from the players' perspective and what you want them to be doing around the table.

Conclusions

With this article we're ending the column. The column was largely dedicated to game mechanics and how they can be used in games. In this article we've put game mechanics as only one of three different and very important tools that are used in game design, together with setting and behavioural advice. We believe that all of these fields deserve an equal amount of thought to be put into them, and also into the way they interact. However, we don't feel that we have enough experience and knowledge to talk about those fields in the same length that we did about mechanics. It is our hope that game designers consider what we've propose in this article and try to study setting and behavioural advice with the same scrutiny that they've so far studied mechanics. We believe there is lots of unexplored ground to be looked at here. Especially interesting experiments could come from studying how setting and GM behaviour can be used instead of mechanics – this is more or less the case in freeform, but there's not much theory about how it works.

In the meantime, goodbye, and we hope you've enjoyed reading our column.