2016’s Lessons Of Gaming #21: 201-210

201. Remember Advice Comes From Sources

This is my advice, and what I’ve learned. It doesn’t necessarily apply to you. I’m sure you can find people who disagree. Particularly, the rules don’t seem to apply to Vlaada Cvhatil or Reiner Knizier, who are. . . productive monsters

202. Expanding Classics

A lot of good games use the basis of ‘classic’ card games and then add ‘not boring’. Blackjack is a push-your-luck, skull is poker; Pyramid is a kind of resource allocation, solitaire a kind of area control. You can build out on these. Heck, you can build a lot – look at how Samurai Spirits is basically an upgraded version of Blackjack.

203. Let’s Not, With The Genocide

When you make games about two warring forces, try not to make one of them a side that genocides things or people. Like it’s just not a good look.

204. Each Enemy Is A Puzzle

When you make monsters for games, are they boring as soon as you know how they work? Then you’ve probably made a nilbog. Nilbogs, from original D&D were goblins, backwards, and you had to heal them to kill them. They were frustrating and irritating, BUT as soon as you knew the trick to how they worked, they were boring, and just had to be picked out like rabbit turds in coco puffs

205. Trust Designers

Assume well of designers when you’re analysing their games. Assume they chose to do things rather than did things ‘cos they’re stupid. Not to say they can’t make mistakes or stupid things, but if you assume they had a reason it can be easier to explain things

206. Reference Pool

People will use other games as a reference point and that’s okay. So, it’s a bit like Netrunner,

207. I Believe In You

I encourage you like this because I am pretty confident you DON’T have creative infrastructure around you, don’t have good habits yet. I will hold out ‘Do Not over-scope’ and ‘make small things to start with’ as good principles, but odds are good, you’ll ignore it. But it’s important to me that you at least understand there’s something coming, there’s a future you can reach for where you Make Things If You Want To.

208. The Weird Copyright Of Emoji

EMOJI ARE THE WILD GODDAMN WEST. They exist somewhere between art and font and their usability is really uncertain. You can put them in your game, sure, but if you want to give payment/attribution to the creator. . . good luck finding them? This is not true of Unicode, which is usually included in your font or public domain. Unicode has lots of nice, useful symbols to it. This falls under ‘don’t reinvent the wheel:’ All the classical card symbols, a number of arrows and some expression are in unicode

209. Test Your Funny

You’re not as funny as you think you are just because your friends find you funny. Don’t push it in your rulebooks. Rules are hard to write, comedy is hard to write. Be damn careful about trying to do both at once.

210. Disposable Experiences Are Okay

A game doesn’t HAVE to be repeatable. Some games, like mysteries or horror, work best if you can only play them ‘once’ cleanly.