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We talk about game design, especially tabletop roleplaying and story games. We're professional designers ND Paoletta and Will Hindmarch. We're glad you're here.
This is it. Our fiftieth episode marks the end of our long conversation about designing tabletop RPGs (and everything else we spilled over i...
You need funding. You might give your game away for free, but you didn't make it for free. Your time and work have value. How does that tran...
Let's talk about some of the software that we—Nathan and Will—use for production purposes like layout and graphic design. More importantly,...
As you're proceeding into production of your game, ask yourself: What can I do myself? When should I ask for help? What would I say to exter...
What form does your RPG take? Is it a book? A deck of cards? A poster or mousepad or business card? Are you sure? Design Games is made possi...
Let's talk about another means of delivering random results and packaging information for players in your tabletop roleplaying and story gam...
Look around. Get your bearings. Take a look back at what's working and what you've learned, then move forward with the knowledge. That's wha...
You've got a lot of notes, you've got rules and systems, maybe you've been writing for yourself. How do you start writing all of that out fo...
Say a thing. Say it again. A design isn’t right the first time, so we revise and restate and iterate. Let’s talk about that. Design Games is...
Do you know about the Game Chef design competition? This time we talk about our experiences with Game Chef and what we know of its history a...
Episode forty?! Ye gads. Here we explore more notions on the topic of your early playtests, and how to get information out of them, make sen...
We’ve reach that time. Let’s talk about playtesting your design—specifically, how to prep and participate in the early playtests of your RPG...
We set out to talk about designing games to be ready for hacking and remixing by the end user, but first a stopover at a discussion of unive...
Let’s talk about how a game moves, functions, and adapts. Let’s talk about affordances. Design Games is made possible by our supporters at P...
Some game designs are highly visual. When does that work happen? How early is too early to think about art and a visual arrangement of ideas...
This time, we tackle a great listener-submitted topic about how to makes risk and challenges feel dramatic and satisfying in your RPG design...
Another great listener topic, another episode wrestling with said topic. This time: we talk about designs involving Player vs Player and PvE...
Here we attempt to tackle another great question from the G+ community. This one’s about designing with purpose and how purpose can align wi...
We’ve talked a lot already about design steps and techniques, thoughts and approaches. You’ve got vision and notes and notions. Now let’s ta...
What even is a playstorm? We think we know and we dive into the answer in this episode, to consider what makes playstorming different from p...
What is “a success” in play? What is failure? When do players’ and characters’ victories align? When do they diverge? And how do we talk abo...
When we talk about “color” in RPG design, we’re often talking about texture and tangibility and how they interact with and express your game...
What do we mean when we talk about emergence? What’s emergent by design and what emerges anyway? We wrestle with the issue this time — and m...
Space, in many games (and especially RPGs), is abstracted and metaphorical, letting the idea of space mingle with other ideas in exciting wa...
It’s time to talk about time. This time, we make time to discuss real-time play, abstractions, and dramatic units of time in RPGs and other...
What’s the situation in your game? How do you flag, support, and inspire situations in play? RPG play can be as small as a single dramatic s...
Let’s talk more about settings and worlds for gameplay, including designing and recognizing links between your world and your game! Design G...
How does your game’s setting interact with its design? How do you begin to design a setting? How does your setting suit your game — and why?...
Let’s talk about influences on our designs and how we converse with them and with our own game’s vision and voice. Design Games is made poss...
What are some early exercises and tactics for starting a new design? Formalize your inspiration and vision. Make some notes on what is excit...
This time, we look back at the show and reflect on 20 episodes of conversations. What are we happy with and what do we still want to attempt...
What is antagonism in play — we talk about the problems inherent in the term, what it means in play, and how you can think about it in your...
This time, we talk about communications between a game’s designer and its players—especially the GM—both implicit and explicit. We also refe...
This time we’re dropping names and game titles all over the place, focusing on just a few of the games that we’re feeling influenced by late...
This time we’re talking about designing for GM authorities and responsibilities in tabletop RPGs — a rich topic that we’ll explore more in t...
In this episode, we discuss the roles, responsibilities, and authority of the GM in tabletop RPGs and story games. It’s a role with a lot of...
We’re tackling a few more listener questions this time — and it’s a bit of a challenge. These are great questions! Of course, it was only af...
For our not-spooky 13th episode, we address a few listener questions we’ve received. Still, things get a little spooky. Design Games is made...
Listen in as we discuss resolution mechanisms in RPGs, including musings about scope and scale and fictional time. How do you know when a th...
This time, we have a quick talk about the difference between a system and its rules. How does that affect your design and can a design chang...
We had more to say about reward cycles, systems, and mechanisms in theory and in practice, so this episode is about more of that. As proof t...
In this doozy (doozy!) of an episode, we talk about reward cycles in design and play, from their core dynamics and philosophies to how they...
Let’s talk about the terminology of our games and how that influences the patois at the table. What lingo do you use in your game and what s...
What is character monogamy in an RPG and what does it do in your design? Let’s talk about it! This time we reference games like Ars Magica,...
Here we look at the gist of experience points (XP) and character development, especially in tabletop RPGs, and how character progression can...
This time, we talk about characters in theory, in practice, in play, and in design, with examples focusing on tabletop RPGs and some referen...
Listen in as we reveal some of the questions and ideas that we consider and reconsider near the beginning of various game designs, like “Why...
Here’s a big one. We spend an hour talking about dice, uncertainty, and information in analog game design and we still only manage to put gr...
Let’s talk about how we talk about game designs. Let’s talk about how a game does its thing and how a design achieves (or doesn’t) its selec...
We, Nathan D Paoletta and Will Hindmarch, design games. Also, we talk about designing games. Sometimes that means talking about design outsi...