Designer Anxiety

I know, I was going to keep going with part two of the series about creating a brand new game. And I will. That article will be coming along shortly.

However, I felt compelled to write today about something that’s on my mind.

Anxiety. 

Anxiety is everywhere, and almost everyone feels it at least sometimes. I suspect writers and designers feel it more than the average. I’m going to focus on the anxieties that game designers feel.

I think the most prevalent type of anxiety for new designers, and even not-so-new designers, is the concern that their work isn’t up to the standards of those that came before them. There’s this mistaken belief that there’s some secret rulebook on how to create rulebooks— a format designers have to follow. If a product gamers like includes A, B, and C, every designer’s work thereafter has to include A, B, and C. And so designers feel they’re not following the example of what’s come before closely enough. 

It’s just not true. If I could give every new designer one bit of advice on RPG design it might be this: don’t just produce content. Don’t just fill your pages with the kind of stuff you see in other products. I mean, you can learn a lot by reading a lot of game material, but don’t look at any of it as a road map. Look to your own gameplay experiences and think about what would have made them better—and make your own road map from that. 

RPG design has been around for more than forty years. One can think of the waves of design (and designers) in that time as generations. Now, you can make a case for how many generations there have been—that’s not my point here, and frankly, I’m not very interested in that—so let’s just pick a number and say three. There was the earliest game design (Gygax, Arneson, Stafford, St. Andre, etc.), there was the design that happened in the 80s and 90s (Jackson, Rein-Hagen, Tweet, etc.), and then more recent design (Baker, Morningstar, Adler, etc.). I mention all this because each generation can learn from the previous ones, but each generation is defined by what they do differently.

To use a very simplistic example, look at all the adventures and game material that came out in the 80s. Most of it was plagued with the use of passive voice. Why? I’d argue it’s because Gygax, the first prolific RPG designer, used passive voice almost exclusively. I think he felt that passive voice, along with an extensive (and sometimes archaic) vocabulary, seemed professional. Maybe even professorial. I think his goal was to make it clear that the topics he was writing about were serious rather than frivolous and that his audience was intelligent. That’s a great goal, and perhaps was even more important in those early days, but that passive sentence construction taught a whole generation of designers who followed how RPG writing was supposed to be. It took probably ten or fifteen years before that style started to fade, and it’s still around. (If you want to read more about writing style in RPGs, check out this article I wrote a while back.)

Bad habits can spread like a virus throughout all of game design. Just following what’s come before you, afraid to get off the path created by others, can hurt as much as it can help. Put the backward-looking, slavishly format-following anxiety out of your mind. It’s actually holding you back and teaching you all the wrong lessons. Tell that nagging little voice to shut up.

But, I’m not going to let you off that easily. Because there is a sort of anxiety that I don’t think I see enough of. Yeah, I said it. Not enough.

And that anxiety comes from the concern that the designer hasn’t produced anything truly new.

Remember that product that gamers love that includes A, B, and C? A lot of designers will look at that, put A, B, and C in their own product, and then figure they’re done. They’re not done. That’s the equivalent of writing a paper in school by just copy-pasting from Wikipedia and changing a few words.

You might think I’m saying not to do that because it’s plagiarism. I’m not. Because you can provide the same A, B, and C that another designer has done without actually plagiarising. I’m saying don’t do it because it’s boring.

If a designer is writing a sourcebook about D&D druids, they should care less about whether they’ve covered all the proverbial druid bases and more about if they’ve done something new with druids.

I’d say any designer who can look at something they’ve done without being able to immediately point out one really cool, truly new thing they’ve created isn’t actually done with that project.

And ideally, there’s more than one cool new thing. Maybe a lot more.

A great designer will look at that book about druids and they will pour themselves into that book as though it is the very last book that will ever be published about druids. Not the first, not the definitive, but the last. Why? Because that means that if there’s some cool new druid idea that they have, or might ever have, this is the one chance they’re ever going to have to write it. Every game design—from a new game to an adventure to a supplement to an online article—needs to be the coolest, freshest handling of that topic you’ve ever seen.

If you find yourself saying, “well, now I have to write this boring section in my work because everyone always puts that boring section in,” stop. Filling space in your work with something because you think that’s just what people will expect isn’t just unnecessary, it’s terrible. If a gamer pays you for your game material and you give them exactly what they would expect, then you haven’t given them anything. If you’re bored, they will be bored. If you’re writing something that’s already been written, ask yourself why. If you don’t have a damn good reason, don’t do it. Give gamers something new.

While designing that druid book, if you’re writing about herbs and plants because, well, “they’re druids so you gotta,” don’t do it. Either come up with something new and interesting for druids to do with herbs, or skip it and move on to the thing you design that is new and interesting.

Always be creating something new. Add some brand new facet to whatever it is that you’re working on. Yes, RPG design is forty-some years old, but to look at it a different way, it’s only forty years old. Which isn’t much time at all. Most hobbies and games are much older. There’s plenty of space to head off in a direction that wasn’t on any previous designer’s road map.

Learn from the past, but only so you can use that knowledge to create something new.

Once you’ve done that, then you can put your anxiety to rest. 

The second part of the series about creating a new game from scratch will be next, and it will be here sooner than you think.