Ten Intro Game Design Tips I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons | Card Game Design | RPG Design

when i was a kid i had a million things i wanted to be when i grew up dj author i think at one point i wanted to have a sandwich shop but despite how much i loved games and using my imagination game designer was never on that list to this day i've never taken a class i eventually decided on film school i learned to be a video editor an animator uh oh no a sound designer and storyteller but in my off time i was still a player and games were always on my mind see the thing about filmmaking like game design is your earliest learning experiences with it and much of your interest in it comes from consuming it to be a filmmaker you start as a moviegoer to be a game designer you start as a gamer you play games a lot of them and you start wondering how they work taking them apart analyzing what makes them tick and passionately discussing them with friends family and even strangers everything i know about game design isn't something i read in a book or sat in a lecture hall learning about but there's absolutely value in both i learned by playing and asking questions while most of you are familiar with my tcg focused content much of my game design knowledge has come from playing and running dungeons and dragons it and other rpgs like it have unique challenges as games that give players near complete freedom aside from a basic rule set than what their imaginations can conceive these challenges and the process of designing characters and later monsters and whole adventures for my game design foundation i want to pass that knowledge on to you to empower you and give you permission to experiment by doing rather than feeling as though you have to sit in a class or watch thousands of hours of youtube tutorials and lectures before you feel ready to start we're going to talk about 10 general game design principles i've learned from dungeons and dragons and how they can be useful to you in any game you want to make today on draw 5.5 [Music] [Music] hey everyone and welcome to the table my name is gabe and this is draw five move five the show we draw connections between the mechanics behind our favorite games i think starting a creative adventure whether it be just one project a hobby or a whole career is one of the hardest things you can do to be creative is to try and find solutions to problems sometimes ones you made up and rarely is there just a simple blueprint that will get you the best result that process is scary and actually starting is often the hardest part for example i've been trying for the better part of half a year now to design a dungeons and dragons adventure for my friends i have this grandiose vision of a ragtag group of adventurers exploring a massive sprawling castle above the clouds if you've ever seen castle in the sky by studio ghibli it's it's basically that but with more puzzles and things trying to kill you this process however has been incredibly slow and that's because frankly i'm overwhelmed no matter how much research i've done i haven't felt like i'm ready like i know enough to start planning to start drafting ideas and making stuff this is a mindset that many creative people get stuck in artists musicians game designers feeling like we're not prepared enough like the first drafts will be so catastrophically bad we can't show them to anyone but at some point we have to at least start because that's half the battle and it's also how those bad drafts get better how we get better this video is designed to help you yes you start start designing any game design thing any game you want to make by giving you 10 basic principles to set you on the right path it's a framework i learned from playing and running dungeons and dragons i'll show you how i'd use them to start designing something completely different a card game both to show you these tips are broadly applicable and also because i know my audience and my usual crowd loves card game design some of these might feel really basic and obvious but for someone brand new to game design they're valuable things to learn i want this to be an introduction for people who don't know where to start i want to tell you that it's not only easier to start than you think but also that it is okay to start without feeling ready when we start doing something new we're not going to be good right off the bat we're going to suck a lot and it might take a while to get better all we need is a drive to learn and practice are we on the same page awesome then let's get started principle one know your audience as a part of making animations in college we'd write a treatment which is basically just a document that's pitching the idea of our film and it would often be asked who our intended audience was young adults children comic book fans you name it the act of focusing on this restriction determining who we intended to watch the piece often provided a lens through which we could organize our thoughts cut unnecessary ideas and focus on important ones your game's audience can be as broad as a specific age or demographic or as focused as my close friends because i know them well and i want to make a fun experience for them for dungeons and dragons adventures can be high fantasy low fantasy highly narrative focused low narrative with lots of monster hack and slash it varies so knowing the audience you're aiming to please can focus the adventure or in our case game design for example hollow knight's audience is we could say the metroidvania community while the yu-gi-oh tcg audience is both fans of the yu-gi-oh anime and card game enthusiasts you don't need to agonize over this question it's just meant to focus your efforts once we've got that down it's time for principle number two stealing [Music] now i want to be clear i do not advocate you wholesale claim someone else's ideas or work as your own that is literal stealing which is illegal and is punishable in a court of law when i say stealing what i'm referring to is some great advice by matt colville one of my biggest dungeons and dragons and frankly game design inspirations that advice is to take the things you love and put them in your game often we need inspiration something to jump start our design ideas provide lore a solution to a problem we've been struggling with this is why stealing is so useful i wasn't sure about running an adventure for my friends until something in this case of the castlevania series on netflix and castle in the sky by studio ghibli inspired me to make an adventure around them from there i've been adding my own ideas and plot along with yet more stolen references to make a wholly original story and adventure for my friends when you view the full picture my previous dungeon master stole among other things the story of daxos for magic the gathering sparrow setting to create a major antagonist for our game it wasn't a wholesale rip-off he was inspired by it and then tweaked and tinkered until it was his own unique thing another piece of covellion advice by the way as creators were only as good as the obscurity of the references we steal from only two people in our adventuring party of eight played magic for them it was a cool easter egg for us daxos was a completely original antagonist if you're making a tcg and you enjoy epic fantasy or cyberpunk or wild west take that and put it in your game you'll enjoy working on it more and it will inspire mechanics and themes you might not have thought of yu-gi-oh does this all the time we have an entire archetype that is just star wars plus the wizard of oz does it make sense no but they find a way to make it mechanically unique while blending both thematic sources yes yes they did cosmo is a fan favorite archetype because of this our third major principle is to understand the fantasy you're trying to emulate a major purpose of the game's rules is to make gameplay feel good that gameplay feels good when it's in sync with how we imagine something should work for example if you're trying to hit someone with a sword in dungeons and dragons roll one of these a d20 then add your strength bonus and a bonus if you're trained with that kind of weapon called a proficiency bonus the fantasy we're trying to capture with this system is the feeling of being a hero one which scales based on how new you are to the trade the two modifiers increase as your character grows stronger raising the likelihood you can do something heroic meanwhile the d20 provides the potential for luck to swing with or against you even the strongest heroes can mess up and even newest adventurers can have a moment of triumph the fantasy heroic actions with chances for drama is well emulated by d d's combat system designers understood the fantasy they wanted to create and build mechanics to make it happen the fourth principle is that games are better with variety before we keep going i'll address the asterisk in the room these next three principles are all going to have one as for what it means that's actually principle seven so stick with me and we'll come back to it later okay games tend to be built on pillars several core ideas that support or explain what the game is all about guy design philosophy and usually work in tandem these pillars vary by game and some will be more important than others they can also provide variety in gameplay and give players different ways to enjoy their experience dungeons and dragons is primarily a combat game a good half of the rules focus on it but the game's designers built it on two other pillars exploration and interaction exploration focuses more on puzzles exploring spaces learning new information and lore the you know dungeon part of dungeons and dragons interaction meanwhile could more easily be called social stuff talking with npcs other players role playing negotiating all of these fall under that pillar different players like to play different ways and almost all players could use a break from time to time through the other pillars everything in the game every ability monster npc combat and adventure is made to support these pillars in one way or another by the designers when making your own game or building specific elements ask questions like what is my central gameplay pillar what are the supporting pillars and which pillar does this mechanic support doing so can help you focus on which parts of your game need more work whether or not you need more variety and whether or not a mechanic fits the game you're making at all sometimes we have to kill our darlings fifth principle the rules of your game should be clear obviously games need rules and usually a rule book or two to list them out this is about more than that as designers the flow of information to the players is of utmost concern if they don't understand how a critical part of our game works how to summon the monster how to hit a creature in combat how to move their character they're gonna struggle and if they're new might give up on the game now it's fine to have mystery dungeons and dragons for example can be very story driven and the process of solving mysteries and learning new info is fun not knowing how bad guy did this crazy cool ability or its exact rules is exciting there are plenty of things that we don't have to outright tell the players from the get-go especially when it comes to war plot and enemy actions we also want to talk down to the players they're often smarter than we give them credit for but the rules for the player's core actions must be clear to them so they can play the game fairly i just finished watching chugga conroy's very long xenoblade chronicles 2 let's play and that game suffers from really bad tutorials the combat system's core elements and strategies things like canceling auto attacks how blade combos work and fusion combos work and what stats feed into which attacks aren't really expanded upon and more grievously than any of this these shoddy tutorials aren't even reviewable meaning players have one chance to learn the rules often incorrectly and after that it's trial and error as a result a lot of people don't end up sticking with the game or its incredible story and that's a real shame that is what we're trying to avoid with clear rules make the game enjoyable and fun by giving them a fair shot principle number six is to give the players real meaningful choices we watch movies and read books because we want stories told to us no agency or interaction but in games most players want to know that the choices they make the abilities they choose the cards they put in their deck the allies they recruit and the enemies they make all lead to a different outcome lead to their success or failure for rpgs like dungeons and dragons dungeon masters and adventure designers often have to ride a fine line between giving players enough direction to know where they should go to progress the story and so much direction that the players are just following a linear tale where their choices don't matter like reading a book or watching a movie i often find the best way to do this is either by providing different types of gameplay that can provide unique solutions the three pillared approach of combat exploration interaction dnd uses for example or by giving the players lots of things to customize characters in dnd and other rpgs have tons of customizability but card games like magic and yu-gi-oh are also great at this near infinite customizability of a deck means you can both change how you play the game aggressive controlling comboing and what tools you have to deal with the problems your opponent presents time for principle seven remember all those asterisks from before this is where i tell you that those principles i just gave you the ones with the asterisks you're allowed to break them as long as you know why principle 7 is all about re-examining common wisdom and re-examining your design decisions dungeons and dragons has some set rules in place because it is a game and it needs them rangers have favored terrain a critical hit lets you roll twice as many damage dice warlocks use charisma these are just examples but sometimes the class you want to play is kind of bad compared to everyone else at least or you all agree that you want to make those lucky moments more interesting or the character you want to play isn't especially charismatic and if we're being candid why is a warlock need to only get powers from charisma couldn't you bond with an entity that values wisdom or intellect these are all things my friends and i tweaked as we were playing d d over the years rules we broke because they weren't working for us and changing them didn't seem like it would break the whole game we tried a ton of ranger variants we introduced the crit table to make those critical hits even more crazy and several of us at various points made warlocks based on wisdom with some slight readjustments to the saving throws we knew what rules weren't working for us and why so when we used homebrew and changed the rules to fit our needs it was never an issue as long as we talked about it the advice and rules you get aren't always going to make sense there are some games with minimal variety hyper-focused experiences that do one thing and nothing else stuff like getting over it with bennett foddy a master class on frustration there are games where the rules aren't clear to the player like the card game mao where the rules are explicitly different from table to table and hidden from new players and there are games where the players choices don't matter at all like warioware get it together where the characters are just different ways of beating the same micro games over and over cute and add variety sure but you're still just drawing a sword from a chief whether you break or keep a rule isn't the point the point is to know what you're doing and why because i don't like it or because it's cool or neat are really good reasons they can start the thought process but dig deeper why don't you like the traditional wisdom why do you think the mechanic is cool and knowing that does breaking it or keeping it support the fantasy you're trying to encapsulate the experience you're trying to craft you can do whatever you want we're making games but know why and come to peace with axing ideas that don't have a good reason to be used our eighth principle is to reward the desired style of play in tabletop rpgs like dungeons and dragons players have a lot of options for what they can do and where they go obviously the game master has a plan in mind but this isn't a video game where we can just wall off areas we don't want them to go there are spells designed to get around or through walls player abilities to teleport or shape change barbarians who are just very strong lads the power of flight it's a spell players can and will go where you don't want them for any number of reasons some completely nonsensical to you at the time they'll do things you don't want them to rather than trying to use hard limitations by flat-out telling players that they can't do something which only works in some types of games many game masters and adventure designers will instead try to make a feedback loop by providing rewards and incentives for doing the behaviors that fit the style of game one of the classic problems of dungeons and dragons is the murder hobo where players loot kill and pillage anything that moves or gets in their way because they get stuff without having to do all the boring talky blah blah bits and getting attached to characters and because frankly sometimes we just need to blow off some steam instead of telling them no you can't do that we put better rewards or things that matter to the characters and players behind exploration and interaction while sometimes giving them combat this means the players still get to fight stuff but get better rewards when they don't kill everything in sight you can also try to disincentivize certain actions in addition to giving the players better rewards for engaging with the world there can be consequences for them trying to kill large swaths of people and take their stuff expecting no repercussions let an elite team of mercenaries confront the players for their actions let them get in over their heads fighting a dragon they weren't prepared for but went after anyway let them lose some of their stuff the goal here isn't to punish the players to have a gotcha moment it's to show them their actions have consequences ones they may not like so they should try a different type of play while these examples are rpg specific almost every game uses incentives and disincentives tcgs like yu-yo for example often contain stall strategies as an option they usually don't make those cards expressly better than the other available combo control and aggro tools because they're not fun to play against konami does not encourage you to play mystic mind burn despite giving you the option and most people will not be happy to see you playing it unless you're jeff leonard everyone loves jeff i recommend that as you build mechanics and scenarios for your game think about if you have any hard limits in place to encourage a certain kind of play and if they work up just as well when replaced with an incentive or disincentive find feedback loops that encourage the desired gameplay by rewarding it the ninth principle is rather obvious play testing is key dungeons and dragons fifth edition only got to its current state through rigorous testing of ideas and player feedback and on a much smaller scale every dnd session i've been in was basically a first play test a playtest for the story the dm was telling to see if it made sense a play test to check the balance on their homebrewed monsters or battle scenarios a play test of new cool potentially game breaking player abilities when you're a dungeon master you make your own content or run an adventure for the first time your players are your play testers and it's important to know what they think play testing helps route out bugs before you release a finished product clarify wording on abilities rework entire mechanics when they don't feel like the fantasy they're trying to capture or are just completely broken it's a key component of working in game design and it's often how we find new and more interesting or elegant solutions to problems the final principle is after play testing for a reason there will be mechanics you design that are more deadly or janky or broken or unfun than you thought they'd be it's happened before in our dungeons and dragons games there was one fight where a player character got magically charmed into eating poison dirt for the entire fight another where a player character got swallowed by a purple worm and could barely do anything i ran the one shot two times the first time it worked out great the second time with newer players the plot fell apart and we didn't finish the session this process is trial and error and we are bound to make mistakes and you know what that's okay pick yourself up dust yourself off and analyze what went wrong then tweak the design get back on the ride and run it again don't be discouraged don't give up and most of all don't be hard on yourself no use over analyzing your mistakes that's the kind of self-sabotaging thought that makes you stop doing the things you love it's all right just try again that's it that's ten game design principles i've learned playing dungeons and dragons now i think it's time we put that framework to use and make something fun principle one know your audience my audience is this channel i can probably tell you i'd like to make a game geared towards tcg players and designers so we're going to make a tcg principle 2 stealing i like big monster fights i always try to put them in the dnd games i run somewhere and moreover i love godzilla movies and other kaiju stuff so let's use that as an inspiration and steal another game as a template we'll borrow from the bakugan tcg where you fight with teams of three creatures each attack with them and buff them in combat minus all the plastic toys and rolling and life decking one creature each they start in play they fight a few times somebody wins that's it principle three understand the fantasy you're trying to emulate i want this to feel like two massive monsters going head-to-head with supporters on each side trying to increase their strength before the battle and have sudden dramatic changes during the fight your main creature your kaiju has some stats and maybe a static or combat ability support cards which help you draw through your deck search for specific cards or apply specific buffs free combat and then in the combat phase we can have attack cards that represent specific fighting actions or moves they can nullify buffs add power etc then because we want this to feel dramatic and swingy it takes three successful combats to win but the losing player gets a resource think of it like the prize card system in the pokemon tcg we could if we want make these specific cards with powerful abilities that start outside the game or use the pokemon formula and just take the top three cards of the deck face down for now let's try specific cards i think that's more fun and we can test it later principle four games are better with variety this big monster tcg is pretty heavily focused around the combat phase but i can also use supplementary pillars of drawing cards and interaction cards all three work in tandem but apply different skills different kaiju could have a different abilities that support different styles of gameplay if there was a mind master kaiju for example its player could look at the opponent's hand and remove one attack card from it for this turn as though they are anticipating a coming tactic that's a very different style of play anticipating moves taking an advantage than just going head to head principle 5 rules should be clear this one is pretty self-explanatory there's a rule book it'll explain the basics of the game each player buffs their kaijus and plays their supporters pre-combat fights in combat and can add attacks to modify damage or add other effects whoever has more power at the end of fight wins the round and the opponent takes one of their prize cards if they tie the round has no victor and play proceeds as normal whoever runs out of prize cards first loses principle six give the players meaningful real choices if we've already talked about different big monsters having different abilities and styles of play we can expand on that with our support teams and cards that interact with the opponent there can be a researcher theme who focuses on drawing cards and gaining information a military theme that focuses on augmenting the kaiju for combat a theme of monster people who amplify kaiju abilities and all of this can be supported by different attack cards some generic and some specific to each kaiju which can turn the tide of battle beyond just clashing of stats principle 7 know why you've made a design choice conventional game design wisdom says that card games need an energy or mana system to keep things fair if you know me you know i love yu-gi-oh which lacks this feature that being said in this case i think using an energy system makes sense the bakugan and pokemon tcgs are two major inspirations for this idea and they both use it to control the pace of the game i don't want someone to just be able to spam all of their super strong cards at once to support their kaiju that would make the battles really one-sided super dependent on your opening hand and we want this to be a dramatic back and forth so instead we'll use the bakugan energy method set the card from your hand face down each turn as an energy that way the game can take a little bit of time to develop and some of the real game-turning attacks can be saved for later when it will be more dramatic principle 8 reward the desired style of play what i love about the prize card system here is it incentivizes the dramatic vision for the game a player may like to intentionally lose a round or two to get their prize cards then try to blitz through their opponent's cards in one go as an epic upset at the same time it's also more likely you win if you take an early lead this is back and forth the drama of who wins what and when is incentivized by the gameplay principle 9 play testing is key this is where we see what worked and what did right off the bat i'm seeing that some people think the unique prize cards are cool but most people agree they're way too strong as is might be better to just make it the top three cards of the deck instead of unique ones and people aren't huge fans of the mind master kaiju it's a lot less fun for the opponent than the other options i may have to tweak that or cut it entirely and finally principle 10 mistakes will happen clearly we had some issues with certain design choices that showed up in play testing we've analyzed them now so the only thing to do is get back on the horse tweak them a bit and get back to work and that's it we just started the design work and walk through some of the steps to build and test a tcg with these design principles all learned from dungeons and dragons when i started this channel in 2019 my intent was always to show that there are principles and mechanics we can learn from in just about any game and translate into building our own this isn't a comprehensive introduction to the design process but it should be enough to get you started making something it took us what five minutes to brainstorm all of that you don't have to use every tip here they won't always be helpful but you get the idea you have a framework to start with now and i hope if nothing else i've inspired you to start analyzing your favorite games more and try making something yourself whether or not you feel ready we all start somewhere what will your first project look like thank you so much for watching you have my humble and eternal gratitude and i do mean literally watching this time this is the first time i've really been on camera might show a little bit but i had a specific idea i wanted to execute for the intro and this was the only way to be possible plus now i can reduce the editing burden a little bit i hope which hopefully means i can get more videos to you guys a bit sooner anyway what did you think of the conversation were these game design principles helpful to you in starting your game design journey if you're more experienced were any of these new to you or useful to hear again and what did you guys think of this slightly different format with the me being on camera talking directly to you the viewer hi hello i'd love to hear your thoughts so let's keep this discussion rolling down in the comments if you enjoyed the conversation subscribe and dangling that notification bell so you never miss an update i'm putting out new videos on games and gaming mechanics at least once every month and dropping a like lets me know that you want to see more you can follow the channel on our community tab or on twitter and facebook at drawfivemove5 it's the best way to find any important announcements get hyped for new videos and see any other useful game design content i've come across my name is gabe this is draw five move five until next time go have a good game [Music] captain please be quiet man i'm recording down here okay remember all those asterisks asterisks wherever they were left hand is right right hand his left [Music] where is all of my low end hello [Music] that props our third principle is that's the right spot right i think so think so i think so our third principle hyper focused on experiences that do one thing [Music] this is where we see what worked my previous dungeon master my name that gameplay feels good when the system is in i didn't say the word system that's not in the script it's not in the script it's not in the script it's not in the script that is so silly i'm recording myself that's what i'm doing i'm laughing this is good you know what it's good [Music] you

Channel: Draw 5 Move 5

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Keywords: Ten Game Design Tips I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons, Draw 5 Move 5, Intro to game design, Game design for beginners, dungeons & dragons, trading card game design, game design, Game development, Face reveal, D&D, DnD, Dungeons and Dragons, how to make a game, how to be a game designer, how to start learning game design, learning game design on your own, Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel, Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading card game, TCG, RPG, D20, role playing game, RPG Design, TCG Design

Id: aJ9Tnb8hxOY

Length: 35min 14sec (2114 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2022