Developer's Digest: Research and Design
I'm currently putting together some materials for training new Spycraft designers for next year, and a thought occured to me that I thought I'd share. One thing I kept hearing from writers when I was at Gencon Indy this year was how fast people could write - 1000/2000/5000 words an hour, etc. I didn't hear how many of those words were kept through edits, or how many rewrites the editors went through with them. From the other side, the developers I spoke with talked about how quite a few writers were turning in pieces that was poorly thought out, written, or developed. Personally, I think there's a direct correlation, and this leads to the vicious cycle of low pay and thus lower quality output.*
The hub of this issue lies with research. I believe that knowing your topic - whatever it may be - is the lynchpin of good game design, and this applies to both setting and rules development. But when writers are pushed by low per-word rates, it's often the first thing that is cut as a luxury or worse, a waste of time. If you've read Spycraft material, you know we pay a lot of attention to our research. I like to think the Faceman/Snoop Class Guide is a good example of this - Clayton and I busted our humps to really make it representative of both cinematic staples and real-life intelligence and investigative practice. For the European Commonwealth Chamber Book, I delved into political thrillers, cold-war spy stories and conspiracy theory films to help make the tension of the chamber felt palpably down to the classes and feats.
But your game doesn't have to be realistic to benefit from research. A good example is Midnight, the first DnD game that I feel really captures Tolkein's vision of Middle Earth in a way that is inspirational for players, doesn't railroad them and leaves the iconic LotR characters and story entirely out of it. Wil Upchurch, Greg Benage and Jeff Barber** (Midnight's developers) obviously spent a lot of time looking hard at Tolkein's body of work, considering what makes the trilogy so damn inspiring, than building their own story and mechanics from there. It paid off - Fantasy Flight won an enNie for Midnight, and even my enthusiasm(an even rarer thing when it comes to Tolkein send-ups). Even if you are developing your own setting or mechanics, research is critical. Learn what has come before you - historically, storywise, or mechanically - to learn what you do or don't want to do. If working on a line, read the books that came before yours; if starting a new one, look at similar games, do a little research into history for similar events and inspirations, look at the game creator's notes, or even read your first notes again.
Research is the grist that makes the game believable, and as we all know, gamers are into gaming for the suspension of disbelief. They want to pretend to be rangers and spies and cyberpunks and jedi, not a group of twenty- to forty-somethings sitting around a table in a basement rolling funny plastic polyhedrons and eating chips and drinking Mountain Dew ;) Research lets you make a place live; and when you know the place you are writing about in and out, when you can make that place come alive in the minds of the GM and in the people listening and actively joining that world, that's good game design.
* Mr. Clayton Oliver and Mr. Will Hindmarch have good point/counterpoints to the views posted here, which are worth reading. Check the feedback - they are also right. Yay for pluralism!
**Edit - added the names of Mr. Benage and Barber to the list of Midnight's developers; good job, fellas!
I'm currently putting together some materials for training new Spycraft designers for next year, and a thought occured to me that I thought I'd share. One thing I kept hearing from writers when I was at Gencon Indy this year was how fast people could write - 1000/2000/5000 words an hour, etc. I didn't hear how many of those words were kept through edits, or how many rewrites the editors went through with them. From the other side, the developers I spoke with talked about how quite a few writers were turning in pieces that was poorly thought out, written, or developed. Personally, I think there's a direct correlation, and this leads to the vicious cycle of low pay and thus lower quality output.*
The hub of this issue lies with research. I believe that knowing your topic - whatever it may be - is the lynchpin of good game design, and this applies to both setting and rules development. But when writers are pushed by low per-word rates, it's often the first thing that is cut as a luxury or worse, a waste of time. If you've read Spycraft material, you know we pay a lot of attention to our research. I like to think the Faceman/Snoop Class Guide is a good example of this - Clayton and I busted our humps to really make it representative of both cinematic staples and real-life intelligence and investigative practice. For the European Commonwealth Chamber Book, I delved into political thrillers, cold-war spy stories and conspiracy theory films to help make the tension of the chamber felt palpably down to the classes and feats.
But your game doesn't have to be realistic to benefit from research. A good example is Midnight, the first DnD game that I feel really captures Tolkein's vision of Middle Earth in a way that is inspirational for players, doesn't railroad them and leaves the iconic LotR characters and story entirely out of it. Wil Upchurch, Greg Benage and Jeff Barber** (Midnight's developers) obviously spent a lot of time looking hard at Tolkein's body of work, considering what makes the trilogy so damn inspiring, than building their own story and mechanics from there. It paid off - Fantasy Flight won an enNie for Midnight, and even my enthusiasm(an even rarer thing when it comes to Tolkein send-ups). Even if you are developing your own setting or mechanics, research is critical. Learn what has come before you - historically, storywise, or mechanically - to learn what you do or don't want to do. If working on a line, read the books that came before yours; if starting a new one, look at similar games, do a little research into history for similar events and inspirations, look at the game creator's notes, or even read your first notes again.
Research is the grist that makes the game believable, and as we all know, gamers are into gaming for the suspension of disbelief. They want to pretend to be rangers and spies and cyberpunks and jedi, not a group of twenty- to forty-somethings sitting around a table in a basement rolling funny plastic polyhedrons and eating chips and drinking Mountain Dew ;) Research lets you make a place live; and when you know the place you are writing about in and out, when you can make that place come alive in the minds of the GM and in the people listening and actively joining that world, that's good game design.
* Mr. Clayton Oliver and Mr. Will Hindmarch have good point/counterpoints to the views posted here, which are worth reading. Check the feedback - they are also right. Yay for pluralism!
**Edit - added the names of Mr. Benage and Barber to the list of Midnight's developers; good job, fellas!
Labels: game design, writing
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