Basics Of Good Game Design

I am not going to presume to offer a "Truth" just a few observations as a long time referee (started with LBBs).

Make it fun. (But since that depends just as much on the people playing as the game - I am not going to waste any bandwidth on it.)

"Make it flexible." Every group wants something a little different from the game. The system should be able to bend to the needs of the players. Traveller has seemed to fit this fairly well - I think I have seen Traveller rules adapted for nearly every kind of Sci-Fi. (Although I do have regrets for my robot gunslingers in the old west phase.)

Keep it simple. Tricky one here - keep the game play simple and smooth for the gaming session. Off-screen material (like starship or vehicle or character creation rules) can be as complex as needed but should result in products that are easily used when the players get together to play.

Provide tools to build the backstory. A well crafted backstory is vital. For players who don't have time to create their own settings, the default background should have enough detail to get them going. But If you make the background too tight and cohesive it can stifle creativity. Leave plenty of options open for players to insert their own content. A game like James Bond 007 suffered from having a constricting backstory - if you were not a 'double-oh' the game was not worth playing and having 4 or 5 super-agents in a team is just ridiculous.

Make the game about more than combat. Traveller was really the first (successful) system that offered more than just combat. The preamble to an adventure became more than just opening credits for a fight. Players cannot guess what is coming next. The possibilities are endless. That uncertainty makes every game fresh and exciting. The storyline is key.
(It was quite a revelation to my first group of Traveller players when they realized that success can be measured by something other than body-count. It was a revelation to me when my players stopped saying "loot the corpses" at the end of every fight.)

Give the players the opportunity to put themselves "in-the-game." Traveller at it's heart is about familiar tangible things - everything that exists in the players real lives also exists in the future in some form or another. (Of course, high technology will make everything *better*.) If a player says his character is looking for a toothbrush, don't respond with "what's a toothbrush." Sure your high-tech society might use dental gum, a laser polisher, an ultrasound dental cleanser, or a bio-engineered little critter to clean teeth. Why take a cheep shot at the player for not guessing the right techno-babble. The better response would be "you find a pack of dental gum." When the player responds with something unexpected like, "I wanted to use it to clean my gun" respond with "Oh, that gun has a cleaning kit in the stock." It is especially important to never make a player feel stupid in a SF game.

Don't forget the science. What we really want is the flavor of the science, but without any requirements to have degrees to understand the science. If the game has a good enough approximations of the science and it is applied consistently, those goals can be met. Where science has to be broken for the sake of playability, reasonable explanations must be provided. If the science is new, a reasonable theory on how they operate must be at least self-consistent.

Tom Naro (c) 2007

From The Traveller Mailing List <tml@travellercentral.com>,

> Can you give us some of the titles of these supplements you wish existed?

The Amastola Subsector
Ships of the Tementhal Alliance
The Flying Cities of Ziff
Manticular Order of Battle: Marine Divisions
Tanks and More Tanks
The Pham Family Fortune
20 Awesome Ships to Board or Defend
Decent 1cm Graph Paper with Bulkhead and Non-Bulkead Widths Marked
Imperial Marines: Gear and Responsibilities
100 New Software Stunts for Starships
The Buntalo: A Cool New Race
A Couple Dozen Cool Adventure Seeds You Can Drop Into Play And Get
Instant Results
The Ecology of Damanadan
Hunting Squirbs: Why It's Dangerous and Why It's Lucrative

> What would a game line produce ([nonsense elided]) that
> had the type of rules your suggesting?

Maps, NPCs, ships, animals, aliens, equipment, supporting tools,
software, ideas, organization structures, >TL15 gizmos, structure
floorplans, ship floorplans, reasons for wars, worlds that can plug
into a subsector, subsectors that can plug into a sector, political
structures, keen ways to make sense of awkward random stats, and a
couple more. Basically a whole whack of stuff that would be more
useful and require more creativity to build than fixed timelines and
rigid geography.
Brad Murray (halfjack)

So materials that augment this process interest me (lists of amusing
NPCs, organizations, starship floorplans, cool technology ideas,
etc.). Materials that supplant it don't. Game prep is part of my fun
as GM. If it was a chore I wouldn't do it.

Brad Murray (halfjack)