Components and Formats

I get asked about format and presentation of MCG games a lot. I’m sure it’s because a lot of the games I work on often innovate in that realm. While we publish games that are traditional books, we also create a lot of games in boxes, games with cards, games with multiple books, and so on.

The questions about such games usually come back to the same thing: when do you start thinking about the shape of the final product?

For me, the answer is usually simple: right away. Because as soon as you start thinking about a game, you should be thinking about how it will be played, and how the players will use what you give them.

Multiple Books and Boxes Versus Books

Sometimes, it’s nice to have a big, chonky rulebook packed with everything you need. However, once you start considering how materials get used at the table, things get more complicated. Putting all the rules involving character creation in one book and all the stuff a GM needs in another make it possible for multiple people at the table to reference information without needing to buy multiple copies of the rulebook.

Games with multiple books can be made for sale as individual books (like the three main books of D&D have traditionally been presented), or they can come together in a slipcase which makes for a stylish presentation. Of course, the books need to all be the same dimensions, and it’s best if they’re approximately the same page count so they work best within the slipcase.

Games that come in boxes allow the designer to include loose maps, cards, dice, and more. You can have multiple books, and they don’t need to be the same size.

Boxes also offer the advantage of storage to the GM or players. Game notes, extra dice, miniatures, or whatever else the group might use in a game can often be put in the box.

Marrying Presentation and Design Goals

Let’s take a look at what is probably the elephant in the room when it comes to RPG format, Invisible Sun. From the get-go, I knew I wanted Invisible Sun to be a big box of cool stuff. This motivation came from seeing deluxe “big box” board games like Arkham Horror. I saw how fun it was to open that box up and explore the figures, the cards, the books, the board, and other bits and pieces inside, and thought, “Why hasn’t anyone done this for an RPG?”

Like a board game with lots of varied components, though, I knew nothing could be entirely extraneous to the game play. While one goal was to cover the game table with evocative stuff, all the stuff needed a purpose.

This is the point where synchronicity comes in, as multiple design goals begin to feed off one another. For example, I knew I wanted the different kinds of characters to interact with magic differently in the game, so where possible, the different orders had different cards or components to use as they used spells or magic. This worked so well because the players at the table could see one person referencing the threads of their weaver cards, another trying to fit their Vancian spells into a diagram, and still another reading from an incantation card. It reinforced that magic was strange, expansive, and took many forms. And thanks to the components, the game could show this rather than just telling the players.

Sometimes, however, a game’s design can be aided by some component that you didn’t initially imagine. In Stealing Stories for the Devil, each session has a three-act structure (similar to a film) and each act has its own requirements and modifications to the rules. It wasn’t too difficult to remember them all, but GMs could use a little help in that regard. Perhaps even more important, though, GMs in playtests needed a reminder to think about what act the game was in at any moment. Simply imposing a structure like that on a session was a challenge for experienced roleplayers who hadn’t had to do it before. So, at the last moment, we added in a component that stood up (table tent style), displaying the current act for the players and a brief overview of what happened in that particular act to modify the rules for the GM.

Of course, that can work the other way too. The original Numenera rules had instructions for utilizing miniatures, measuring distances and ranges for tactical play. It quickly became clear that no one wanted to play that way. Putting all the action in the shared imaginary space was the way that people used the rules, and miniatures or counters on a grid weren’t needed.

Different Formats

Different formats have different needs but present a variety of advantages. Going back to Invisible Sun, in that game the spells aren’t all presented in a book, but rather on cards. Cards self-limit the amount of text that go into a single spell, and it’s hard for one card to reference another. You can’t have a greater version of a spell that refers to a lesser version—all the information for each individual spell needs to be on its own card.

Cards offer a modularity to the spells as a whole that wouldn’t be there if they were in a book. One player can look at a spell on a card while another reads through a different spell on a different card at the same time. No sharing a book. Cards are portable enough that a player can just carry the 6-7 spells they know (and the couple of items of magical equipment) to each game. The fact that these conveniences are offset by the fact that it’s hard for two characters to know the same spell is built into the game itself. Characters aren’t supposed to know the same spells, and the fact that there are hundreds of them makes that easy and fun to do. (The same is true for items, but some minor items—called kindled items in the game—could easily be in the possession of multiple characters, so we just made duplicate cards of those things.)

Lastly, it’s really easy from a design perspective to add new spells or items to the game and have them immediately possess the same significance as the original cards.

Obviously, these differences suggest that “spells on cards” or a similar presentation for rules material doesn’t work for every game. Sometimes, a game needs the ability to have all these aspects of the rules in the same place, either for reference or for common use. In a D&D game, it’s probably important to enable multiple wizards to know magic missile.

Encouraging Gameplay Differently

Having a lot of components is going to change the way the game is played, even if the rules are the same. There’s setup time at the beginning (and cleanup at the end) to consider. There’s portability to think about, too. It’s very hard to play a game like Invisible Sun, for example, in a small space, or without a decent-sized table.

But let’s look at how gameplay changes when you add components where there had been none. Soon after we came out with Numenera (the first Cypher System game) we came out with the Cypher Deck, which put most of Numenera’s cyphers on cards. Without the (optional) deck, GMs needing to give players cyphers would page through the cypher chapter and often end up picking something that looked interesting. Even though there was a table where you could roll for them randomly, GMs were choosing. With the deck, randomization became so easy that it seemed more like a chore to flip through all the cards and pick one—you just pulled out a card and went with it. Both ways are good, but they serve different needs, with choosing cyphers favoring narrative play and randomization favoring novelty.

Enhancing Flavor and Improving Communication

Without question, one advantage components have over a standard book is that, when done right, they convey the flavor of the game. In Invisible Sun, the sooth deck with its surreal art and the testament of suns (a resin six-fingered hand that holds a sooth card) practically scream that the game is weird and mysterious, and they do so throughout every session.

Even the box that Invisible Sun comes in represents the mysterious black cube that figures into the game and setting.

Sometimes a component can just convey information better than a standard verbal description, or even an illustration. A long time ago, I wrote a dungeon adventure where portions of the dungeon rotated. The publisher (Goodman Games) agreed to put a metal stud in the physical map so that the cardstock sections could actually turn. The concept was thus immediately communicated to the GM just by looking at the map and playing with the rotating wheels.

Resources

Obviously, what I haven’t talked about is that components and bespoke formats are costly to produce. Usually, a single book is the least expensive way to present a game product. Multiple books are more expensive, even if the pages are exactly the same as if they were a single book. Boxes in and of themselves are pricey, and you very likely want to spend the extra money to ensure that they are sturdy and will stand up to a lot of use. (This is a consideration for books and all components, but boxes are what really suffer wear and tear.) Cards, dice, etc. add still more cost and, unfortunately, the more creative and original you get (oddly shaped cards, dice with non-standard faces or sides) the more they cost.

While this series of articles is about game design and not game manufacturing, it’s important to consider costs earlier rather than later as you’re planning presentation and format. I remember working on the Planescape adventure Dead Gods years ago and carefully planning out all the components and books that would go into the box, only to have it all be made into a single book to keep costs down. The end result was a little disappointing to me. I mean, I liked the product, but a lot of work went into various design choices that ultimately meant little or nothing.

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to format and presentation of a game product, and we live in a golden age of options. But it’s never anything you should leave to the last minute. It’s not an afterthought. It’s a core part of the design process.