Take your favourite RPG system, or the one you're currently engaged with, and answer Sorensen's Three Design Questions.
>What is the game about?
>How do the mechanics support this?
>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
If you find a measure of incongruence between your answers to questions 1 and 2, make question 2 the following.
>What do the mechanics imply the game is about?
Pic is unrelated.
Example: Blades in the Dark
>What is it about?
BitD is about gangs and crime, executing heists and capers for wealth and power in the criminal underworld, and taking/weighing significant risks.
>How is it about that?
Flexible, mechanized planning allows for players to quickly engage in a new heist, without extended time spent on actual planning. Flashbacks allows for retroactive planning and preparation at the cost of Stress. Stress can be gained to negate consequences of actions, but at the risk of gaining a more serious, permanent consequence on your character should you max-out Stress.
>How are players rewarded?
Players are rewarded in XP for PCs and Crews, Coin (abstraction of currency), and Rep for Crews
PC XP is gained whenever you take a Desperate Action, or when you play to your class' XP trigger (specific MO), when you Train during downtime, and at the end of each session if your Vice and Trauma(s) have caused significant issues, or your PCs background/heritage/drives have come into play.
This XP can be invested in 4 XP tracks, to either improve general skills/actions, or to gain class specific abilities.
Crew XP is gained by playing to your Crew type's XP trigger (specific MO). Upon advancement, the whole Crew can gain a new special ability, or take more general upgrades.
Rep is gained for succesfully executing plans, depending on the Tier of your target. Rep is used to increase your Crews standing and access to resources, or to reinforce the Crew against hostile actions.
Coin is gained upon successfully executing plans. The amount earned is left up to GM interpretation, but 1 Coin is a decent amount of cash. Coin is spent as part of advancing the Crew's Tier, improve the effect of certain action during downtime (bribes etc), take additional downtime actions, and invest in a PC's lifestile upon retirement.
Bumping whle I write a second example.
GURPS
>>What is the game about?
Play anything
>>How do the mechanics support this?
Flexibility and adaptability. Balanced point buy. Simple core mechanics
>>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
Immediate satisfaction. Custom creating detailed powers and abilities exactly to spec. Fair play using the bell curve of 3d6 probability projections. Ease of use.
>Reward structure: immediate satisfaction
That's not what that question is about. What are the carrot and/or stick the game uses to enforce specific player behavior?
Example: Advanced D&D/PF.
Killing monsters and powerfull NPCs grants XP, which leads to a higher character level, making the PC more capable of killing. The game rewards and encourages violent behavior
Example: Basic D&D, Lamentations of the Flame Princess and others
Characters gain XP per currency unity of value for everything of significant value they take out of the wilderness, back to civilisation, but only minimal for combat. The game rewards avoiding direct combat.
Second example.
Legends of the Wulin.
>What is it about?
In one word: Wuxia. The trials and tribulations of life in the Jiang Hu: a parallel society of martial artists shaped by lifelong friendships, bitter rivalries, Confusian, Taoist and Buddhist moralities, and all the weird melodrama that comes from it.
>How is it about that?
Martial Arts: Players can master a variety of Kung-fu styles, with strong and weak points represented both mechanically and in-fiction. My Kung-fu is stronger than your Kung-fu and all that.
Players are given the option throughout the game to purchase Loresheet option. In-fiction, this represents a relationship with someone, an organization, a place etc. This can ensure something becoming a recurring element, giving access to knowledge, secret techniques etc.
"Alignment" is denoted with a score in the Confusian Virtues, and their Selfish counterparts, and Buddhist Piety or Taoist Virtue if your PC is a Buddhist or Taoist. The significance of the score is tied to the reward structure
>How are players rewarded?
Players are reward in Destiny and Deeds.
Destiny is the main advancing reward, but the reward trigger has little interesting interaction with the other mechanics. Desity is spent on improving skills, buying new Kung-fu styles and techniques, Loresheets, increase virtues, Chi and cultivation.
Deeds are awarded for performing particular heroic actions, or shows of virtue/power. Whenever a Deed is awarded, the PC also gains a number of Joss and Entanglement.
The PC gains a number of Chivalrous/Malicious Joss equal to the score of the Virtue corresponding to the Deed operformed. In combat Joss is spent to improve your chances of succes. Spending Chivalrous Joss increases your dicepool, while spending Malicious Joss decreases the dicepool of everyone rolling against you. It also works as a narrative currency, to make the fictional situation just a bit mor in your favour, withing plausability.
Just as with Joss, When you are awarded a Deed, you get a number of Entanglement equal to the value of the corresponding Virtue. This Entanglement is used to buy Loresheets for your character, but done so by the GM or the player awarding you a Deed, and always in relation to the circumstances of the Deed itself. This represents the increasing involvement of the PCs with the world around them.
Characters rank-up, and thus gain more raw power, whenever they've gotten a certain number of Cultivation and Entanglement.
GURPS
>>What is the game about?
Nothing. It's a generic system, as the name implies. It does not contribute an explicit concept to the games played on it, only implicit bias towards concepts it supports better.
>>How do the mechanics support this?
Simulationism. It expects the people playing to be wanting to play something with realistic mechanics, and provides those. If it appears to succeed more often than not it's only because it filters out those whose game wouldn't benefit.
>>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
It doesn't. The game is very much cut to size by the GM before play, meaning the GM is the arbiter of what the "flexibility" it offers actually entails. The system doesn't consider players to be agents that play the game, but rather focuses on providing mechanics for characters to interface with the world of the game.
>old ben and the introduction of the fucking light saber in a trough
user, please.
I didn't make the graph. Besides: Ben's introduction was just after Luke got knocked out by Sand People. I'd say the Lightsaber is part of the build-up to Luke's aunt and uncle's death. He get's shown all these fantastical things from beyond his moisture-farmer life, culminating with the destruction of what's keeping him tied there.
>What is the game about?
Being gods.
>How do the mechanics support this?
Failure is pretty unlikely or impossible for most actions, the primary way in which things are accomplished involves no random element but rather a resource management.
>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
It gives them XP for accomplishing personal goals, for doing godly things, and it gives them Dominion, the power to exert godly influence, for impressing worshipers.
What's the name of the game?
Godbound.
Shadowrun 5th Edition
>What is the game about?
A lose group of specialized operatives doing less than legal contract work in a dog-eat-dog cyberpunk dystopia.
>How do the mechanics support this?
A broad set of tools allowing you to go about your operation in the way you deem proper. Lethal combat along with arbitrary enemy counts that will be fielded against you tends to push towards subtle solutions. At times this results in overplanning, where the players sit around planning their moves without getting anything done.
While meticulous planning is part of the game (legwork rules support this), every group has to find a point to stop planning and get it on. This is essential, and there are no mechanics that enforce this on their own. Which is reasonable because the "right" point differs from group to group.
>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
You are rewarded for fulfilling your contract (cash, XP, street credibility, contacts that can get you gear & intel) and mildly penalized for backstabbing (notoriety) and not keeping opsec (public awareness).
Thus you are rewarded for keeping a cool head on your shoulders, plan ahead and have backups. But you are also rewarded for taking opportunities (e.g. ratting out your boss, turning it in to a different party), which you have to weigh against the penalties.
I think it captures what it is about fairly well, but being a crunchy system may result in these mechanics being clouded from some players which can result in gear-munchkinning and combat min maxing. There are not enough guidelines how to punish or pressure players outside of a given mission or contract, which is where the GM has to be fairly in touch with both system and lore to create an ecosystem where stuff actually pushes back on your Combat Monster Troll.
One final example before bed.
Undying
>what is the game about?
Vampire politics and the internal Monster/Human conflict. Also, its PbtA, meaning difficult choices are a core part of gameplay.
>How it it about that?
Rather than use the more common 2d6 roll with miss/partial succes/complete success results, Undying uses Resource management to enforce player choice. The resource in question is Blood. It is spent to activate specific Moves, or increase their effect(s), and is gained from draining Prey (humans).
Beyond their Blood reserves, characters are defined by Status, Debt and Humanity.
Status denotes your rank in the vampire community. Higher Status gives more points to buy tags for your personal hunting grounds and gives more options while Hunting for Prey. If applicable, status changes are applied at the end of each session based on in-fiction actions, or if you were able to trigger your Playbook's Status Change move.
Debt denotes what you owe to and are owed by your peers in services and favours: the currency of the vampire community. When negotiating for specific services/favours/help, Debt and Status together determine your position in the pecking order relative to who you're bargaining with.
Humanity is your relation to your Prey, and determines your power as a vampire through your maximum blood reserves. High humanity gives more options when Feeding, alowing for more stealthy and humane feeding. Low Humanity gives a larger maximum Blood reserves. Humanity changes are voted for at the end of each session, based on in-fiction behavior.
>How are players rewarded?
Clever play awards players with increasing status, better hunting grounds and debts owed to them. Foolish play will leave you stranded with poor pickings and piling debt owed to others.
Bump
Bump
What exactly is the intended goal of making these things?
My homebrew wargame (currently nameless)
>What is the game about?
Unlike most wargames today, no C-in-C ever worked in a perfect universe where his subordinates followed orders to the letter and in the exact way he imagined.
>How do the mechanics support this?
All subordinates have to test for response when either more than 6" away from their commander OR when enemy gets closer than their commander.
>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
Since this is a wargame, they (naturally) get to win the battle - albeit in a new and (hopefully) hilarious way.
>What is the game about?
Being a team of heroes and adventurers from a wide variety of people and regions banding together to stop a greater evil by getting other people and organizations on your side.
>How do the mechanics support this?
Mostly by sticking to archetypes of different "adventuring" groups and allowing for tweaking therein. NPC's statblocks are simplistic enough that you can turn them into allies and utilizing them doesn't break the game. Forming bonds and alliances gives the group static bonuses.
>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
By making friends they can use those friends to gain advantage over enemies. By making friends with settlements they gain very powerful benefits. You defeat enemies not just via physical violence but also through diplomacy or simply outlasting them even.
I assume the goal of the question is to note how... well thought out your system is?
I don't know, but as a result of this thread I want to check out Legend of Wulin and Godbound now.
Legends of the Wulin is a terribly edited mess, you're better off getting somebody else to explain the system to you.
Magical Burst
>What is the game about?
Power and impotence, if you want to be pretentious. Magical girls, if you want to be direct.
>How do the mechanics support this?
Destroying mortals doesn't even take a roll or use a resource. Protecting them can be harder. Over the course of the game you get overcharge, which ultimately causes loss of humanity.
>How does the game reward players enganging with what it is about?
Uh... It pretty much doesn't.
They're ideally intended to guide game designers so that they don't go around making shitty fantasy heartbreakers and the like.
>heartbreakers
What exactly does this mean, anyway?
It means a neat concept that will never see any light of day due to being too little too late.
a fantasy heartbreaker is basically a guy who has a neat idea for a setting or a subsystem but winds up restricting himself by just making an AD&D or 3.x hack.
It usually means that someone made a game that's barely different from D&D or another popular game on the market, but with one or two great ideas that ultimately can't shine on their own because of the rest of the work.
It's a heartbreaker because if the designer thought a little more outside the box, it's be something really special.
Dissecting and understanding the design bewind a game is a good jumping-off point to homebrew something for it, specially if it is going to affect the core gameplay loop. Also just a mental exercise to help think critically about the games you are playing.
May as well bump
Strike!
>What is the game about?
The tagline is "tactical combat and heedless adventure". It's a generic system that puts fast, tactical and fun gamplay first.
>How do the mechanics support this?
Mechanical/numerical simplicity combined with emergent interaction of self-contained gameplay elements.
>How does the game reward players engaging with what it is about?
There are a number of optional reward methods to determine what and how the GM rewards, but it usually boils down to advancing in levels which expands your tactical options and adventuring prowess.
Can I try this on my project?
>What is the game about?
Taking the fight to the enemy as superhuman monster hunters - or engaging in whatever other fantasy shenanigans you enjoy.
>How do the mechanics support this?
Fast, simple character creations makes it easy to start out, and increasing challenges are met with increasing tactical options for all characters. A 2d10 distribution makes characters fairly reliable, and partial successes make combat relatively quick and less frustrating (very little whiffing against opponents of similar power, and it's impossible to have a great hit roll followed by shit damage).
>How does the game reward players engaging with what it is about?
Character growth is constant and XP is gained slowly over in-game time, dependent on the challenges the PCs overcome. You'd have to shit around quite a lot if you're unable to even a single new skill rank after a session.
Characters gain more power and tactical options as they progress in power, and their exploits can turn out quite lucrative as well, giving the players wealth that can be used to purchase new combat options (armour, weapons, few of which are a straight upgrade), political contacts (and contracts), bribe officials and so on - wealth can't buy magic items.
>AD&D
>killing monsters
>not treasure for xp
>forgetting the impact of the magic item shop on the game economy
lmao B/X purist