Assignment: Mechanics Game

Overview & Design Goals

Working in small groups, students will invent an original game, using only pre-generated elements from Tabletop Simulator. You will receive a few constraints that will guide your design. The main focus of this assignment is to work within your constraints to create a game that is playable and that also uses game mechanics to express its theme.

Design goal: Make a smoothly functioning player experience. Using formal game approaches (luck, strategy, meaningful player choice), you should strive to make a game that is balanced and playable. You should leverage your formal constraint to develop gameplay that is compelling and engaging.

Design goal: use mechanics to express content within a game experience. Your game design should somehow connect to the thematic constraint your group received. This might be a “light theming” or you can take a more detailed approach. The goal is to find a connection between the theme and your mechanics – to express the theme though the gameplay itself.

Design goal: clearly communicate your game design to an audience. You also have a design goal of presenting your game as clearly as possible. This means preparing a Tabletop Simulator mod where everything is set up and ready for play. It also means spending time with your rules document so that the rules are written and presented for new players to learn the game as they read.

Process & Constraints

The following are the constraints your game will receive:

• A structural constraint that includes a formal mechanic and one or more examples of existing games that use that mechanic.
• A thematic constraint with the content that should be expressed through your designed mechanics.
• To create the game, you can only use the pre-existing elements of Tabletop Simulator like dice, a deck of cards, tokens, etc. You can use blank cards and draw lines on the table, but you cannot bring in new elements like custom cards and pieces.

GETTING STARTED

First: Play Research.

The first thing your group should do is play the game that is listed along with your structural constraint. You can play other games, but definitely play the required game. Playing games will provide crucial ideas and examples of how rules and mechanics can work to generate player experiences. The best way to learn how to play is to find an instructional video online – and also to look over the rules. Boardgamegeek.com is a good starting place to look. If you are playing games on Tabletop Simulator, do NOT play a game with “scripting” of the game rules – you want to play a game where you as the players have to automate the game rules. Also, only play the “basic” version of your game – no need to play expansions, etc.

Then: Generate Ideas.

After playing the reference game, follow these steps:

• Everyone should take a day or two to generate 2 or 3 quick ideas. Each of your ideas should include both constraints that your group received. Ideas can be vague or unfinished – they don’t need to be coherent designs. These are “raw” ideas - not yet cooked!
• Meet with your group. Go around the circle, with everyone quickly sharing one raw idea, then sharing a second idea, etc. As others present their ideas, every other group member writes down one or more elements you like about the idea – try and keep the elements you write down as simple as possible. For example, “stacking blocks” or “players give each other silly names.”
• Put all of your notes in a central place – if you are in a physical place, write on note cards or post-it notes and put in the center of the table. If you are meeting remotely, paste your notes into a shared document.
• Then – see if you can generate ideas by combining elements. Perhaps start with elements that more than one person noted. See if combinations of elements from different concepts might work together. You will have lots of ideas that you don’t use – that’s OK and perfectly expected. As quickly as possible, try and assemble a coherent idea that you can start playtesting in Tabletop Simulator.

Deliverables

On the day that the project is due, please have the following ready:

• A Tabletop Simulator mod with all of your game elements present and the table set up and ready to play.
• A single PDF file that contains:
  • the name of the game, a 1-sentence logline, and the designers’ names
  • a 50-100 word summary of what the game is
  • the complete rules for the game
  • a 2-3 paragraph design statement that outlines the ideas behind the game – in other words, what your group thinks is interesting to point out about the game and its design

Tips

PROTIP: How long should a game last? While tabletop games can often take hours to play a single game, we would like you to focus on making a game that takes about 15 minutes or less to play. (It’s OK if it is much shorter!) Fifteen minutes is not a hard limit, but we are offering this guideline because if your game takes longer to play, we might not be able to finish playing it in class during the final critique and discussion. Also, if your game takes a long time to play, it will be that much harder to play and adjust many iterations in the short time you have for this project.

PROTIP: What if my group wants to break the rules of “good design?” Great question! You are welcome and encouraged to be creative and unconventional with your approaches to gameplay. For example, perhaps you want to make a game about chaos and confusion and therefore your game might not seem like a “smoothly functioning player experience” (as stated in the design goals above). The most important thing is to be aware that you are breaking these rules and do so intentionally rather than just stumbling through them.