Copyright © 2002-2003 Fabien Niñoles
| Revision History | |
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| Revision 0.5r3 : | 2003-06-02 |
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Add a paragraph about the link between Beauty and colors. Add some keywords to the document. A small remarks is add about the adaptability section. | |
| Revision 0.4r4: | 2003-01-26 |
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A lot of minor revisions. Reverse Cyan and Magenta association. Mixed up colors, sorry! Nostalgic Magenta is now called Expressive Magenta, and Dream Blue is now Immersive Blue. I think a lot about adding a new chapter about this. Also, change the title since this is really a Typology of mechanics. | |
| Revision 0.3r2 : | 2003-01-10 |
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Add Brightness description. Move Transparency into Brightness and add a note about difference Transparent system and Transparent Color system. | |
| Revision 0.2 : | 2003-01-10 |
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First complete release (public). | |
| Revision 0.1 : | 2003-01-01 |
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Initial release (incomplete). | |
Abstract
Role playing game design is an art, “a system of principles and rules for attaining a desired end”. However, it's an art in its infancy. Although many models have been available to describe the experience of role-playing game, not much have been done regarding mechanics. We have the DKF description, some designation regarding levels of design or mechanics elements but mostly nothing about goal of mechanics, or only in a very abstract form. This article aim to explore a single aspect of game mechanics, which is to determine which qualities are necessary or at least desirable in all role playing games. This, we hope, will be a first premise to more characterization of mechanics, helping us to discuss and evaluate different systems, and, with the help of other tools, finally create a real science of role-playing game design.
Table of Contents
What's the art of game design? The Webster 1913 defined art as a system of rules and principles for attaining a desired end. So, what are those rules, those principles, and more important, what's this desired end? For this last question, I think you can have as many answers as there are role players. Although some people have defined and described carefully the motivations and goals of players, not much have be done regarding how those goals can be satisfied.
The goal of this article is to make a new step in this direction. What I try to do is to answer to a single question: “What's desirable, if not necessary, in every role playing game system?” That's a very hard question to answer since most role playing games have different goals, different settings, different ways to make the role playing experience exciting and fun. But strangely, this appeared to be the easier obstacle encountered on this road. The bigger obstacle I met were the lack of a common vocabulary among designers. No designer has the same way of naming things, and that's true either in French or English. Also, people often used the same word for talking about very different things. So to avoid this problem, I chose a very different approach: I decided to use a color metaphor. Since colors are a bit opaque to role playing system terminology, which doesn't help at all for a tool aim to help communication, I had to add some adjectives to them, just clear enough to hint the new reader about the possible meaning of such colors.
The first version of this paper will solely be about those colors of mechanics, as well as a short presentations of examples. I however plan to add more to it, especially regarding other aspects of role playing, like the relation between those colors and the already existing typologies, like GNS. But for the beginning, we have to define first what constitutes a role playing game, and especially, what's a role playing game system.