Three Motivations

There are plenty of articles and essays out there written about the various theories behind game design. I don’t claim to be an expert on all of them, and this isn’t going to be a rundown or a summary of that existing work. You can search those articles out for yourself. 

Instead, what I’m going to do is discuss, in a series of articles, my thought processes behind the games I work on, with a specific emphasis on some brand-new games that are currently in development. While I will almost certainly be covering some of the same concepts tackled in the aforementioned articles, I won’t necessarily use the same terms or approach the concepts in the same fashion. In the end, every creator is different, with their own processes and ways of looking at things. The important thing to take away from this is that game design, like gameplay, should be about choices, and I think it’s helpful to know the reasons for a designer’s specific choices. If a designer worked very long on a project without truly knowing the reasons why they have designed the way they did, it’s likely to be a substandard design. A unique die mechanic serves no purpose if it doesn’t work the way it does for a reason. A setting idea that’s cool but has no gameplay purpose is an unfinished idea. I suppose, in short, we can just say that the poorest reason behind a design is no reason at all. 

I’m an avid gamer. I am a voracious gamer. I play games—particularly roleplaying games—as much as I possibly can, and when I’m not playing them, I’m likely working on them or reading games designed by others. A big part of my job at Monte Cook Games is to read through everything that everyone else on the team designs and develop it, providing feedback, ideas, and insights. Hopefully, I’m making those products better while preserving the designer’s original ideas and voice.

All that is to say that I think about RPG most of my waking hours. I take experiences I've had in the games  I play and try to figure out how to make those experiences better. It’s not a matter of some clever new mechanic for its own sake, and it’s not about trying to make gamers play the way I think they should play. My goal is to allow people to get even more enjoyment from playing the way they already play. RPG designers don’t create experiences so much as provide the tools for other people to create experiences.

So when I set out to take a new idea and start the process of transforming that idea into a game, I begin by identifying what’s fun, and what’s enjoyable. That sounds so simple that it can pass you right by. It’s the secret you miss for a long time because you weren’t looking for it. But games need to be fun, and the people playing the game need to have an entertaining experience. That doesn’t mean their characters get all the loot—we’re nowhere near thinking about in-setting rewards, and we’re not even ready to think about characters. We’re thinking about the things that keep players (and GMs) coming back to the table week after week.

Plenty of authors have written about the “types” of players, usually from the point of view of what they like to do: the player who loves combat, the player who loves to chat in character with NPCs, etc. I approach the topic in a way that is a little different and, I believe, more useful from a game design perspective. I look at what the primary focus of engagement for a player might be. Not what they do as their character (that’s important, but it’s something different), but what’s going on internally as their primary driving motivation. What interests and intrigues them the most:

1. Accomplishment

2. Story

3. Mechanics

Consider this as a very simplistic test case: You’re playing in a game, and an evil sorcerer curses you so that you cannot speak. You find yourself in a situation where you need to communicate. What do you focus on internally: the challenge of dealing with the encounter with this hindrance? The events that transpire due to your circumstances? Or exploring the limits of the system as you try to subvert or undermine the curse? There are no right or wrong answers here, but each answer provides a very different motivation for a player. 

Accomplishment as a motivation is a direct interaction with the story being told, but through the lens of your specific character. You are the character, and as such, you want to succeed, overcoming any challenge. Maybe you like combat, maybe you like solving problems, maybe you like interacting with NPCs, but regardless, you want your character to do their best and come out on top. In a way, it’s sort of like reading a novel written in first person.

Story as a motivation is a focus on the entire set of events. You’re portraying a single character, but you aren’t as concerned with success or failure. You know that a good story can come out of either. You delight in just seeing this all in your mind’s eye, considering what each character in the scene is thinking at a given moment, and dreaming up the most entertaining thing that might happen next. This might be more like reading a novel written in third person.

Mechanics as a motivation is similar to accomplishment, in that you want to succeed, but not really in the sense of direct engagement or interaction with the story. Success, rather, comes from interaction with the rules themselves. It’s using the right special ability at the right time, managing your resources, making good decisions, being aware of all the options and possibilities, and perhaps even pushing the envelope as to what is allowed (or what you can get away with). To stretch our novel metaphor almost to the breaking point, I’ll say that this is like reading a novel but focusing mainly on the beauty of the language the author used, and less on the characters or the narrative itself.

Understanding that a player can come to a game with any of these motivations—or very likely a combination of them—forces a designer to think about their game from all of these perspectives. This is going to influence game rules, game setting, the kinds of characters the game offers (and how they are created and how they advance), adventures or campaigns the game will involve, and so much more.

As we go forward, then, we’re going to continue to focus on these three motivations every step of the way. We’ll start broadly and focus in as we go, and cover all the topics these motivations influence. I hope you’ll stick with me on this journey.