Lewis Pulsipher's Blog
Dr. Lew Pulsipher started playing boardgames more than 50 years ago. He designed his own games, then discovered strategic "realistic" gaming with early Avalon Hill wargames, and ultimately earned a Ph.D. in military and diplomatic history. His book "Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish” was published in July 2012 by McFarland. http://bit.ly/MSRs8e He contributed to ETC Press' Analog: Tabltop Game Design. Formerly contributing editor to several role-playing game magazines and author of over a hundred game magazine articles, he is designer of Britannia (UK, US, and Germany in separate editions), Dragon Rage, Valley of the Four Winds, Swords and Wizardry, and Diplomacy Games & Variants. Britannia (2nd edition) appeared in 2006, with foreign editions (German, French, Spanish, Hungarian) in 2008. It was described in an Armchair General review of a 2006 edition as "ready to continue on as one of the great titles in the world of games".
Latest published game, Sea Kings (2015).
Latest published book, Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish, 2012.
Online audiovisual courses at https://www.udemy.com/u/drlewispulsipher :
- Learning Game Design (parts 1 and 2)
- Brief Introduction to Game Design
- How to Design Levels/Adventures for Video and Tabletop Games
- Get a Job in the Video Game Industry
- How to Write Clear Rules (and game design documents)
- The Joys of Game Design (hobbiest game design)
- Brief Introduction to RPG design
- Playteseting: the Heart of Game Design
- Conceiving a New Game: Tips for Aspiring Designers (free)
- Prospering at Game Conventions and Conferences (free with coupon)
Discounts and current projects are at PulsipherGames.Com.
YouTube "Game Design" channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/LewGameDesign
Game design blog: http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LewisPulsipher
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lewpuls
Expert Blogs
Harmony and its opposite, the kludge, are fundamental to good game design. Games that lack harmony or have in-harmonious aspects have a handicap, though some succeed. Fortunately, most of the in-harmonious games are never published, or only self published
Many aspiring designers, and some who ought to have enough experience to know better, design by trial and error (guess and check) rather than by using an efficient method related to engineering and science. I illustrate this and try to explain why.
Computer RPGs (especially MMOs) appear to be a "grind" aimed at rising in level. People don't enjoy the journey, they only enjoy the destination ("I'm 80th level!"). That's why there's a big market for sale of items and gold and even entire accounts.
Party games, and to a lesser extent family games, have always been reward-based (you're rewarded for participation) rather than consequence-based (winning and losing is important, plus more), but hobby games were usually the latter. Not any more.
What is the "natural" format of a game? You can program a boardgame on a computer, or vice versa, but the physical format difference is more cosmetic than real. A man dressed as a woman is still a man, a boardgame on a computer is still a boardgame.
Creativity in game design may amount to about 10% of the whole. The rest is more or less engineering/project management. Some people rely on trial & error (guess & check), throwing things against a wall to see what sticks. Find a more efficient method!
Lewis Pulsipher's Comments
Comment In:
[Feature - 02/15/2007 - 08:45]
How can you have mastery ...
How can you have mastery if you cannot fail it 's impossible, false productivity or achievement . That 's the thinking of K12 where everyone is special and self-esteem without accomplishment is emphasized that 's contributed so much to the mess the USA is in. I understand the British have ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 05/24/2017 - 09:57]
I was surprised by your ...
I was surprised by your description of MDA. I thought that Dynamics were the interaction between player s and mechanics, not how the mechanics work together with one another. Hence the Dynamics are not solely a System function. but both System and Psychological. I don 't refer to Story because ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 06/19/2017 - 10:08]
You may be projecting your ...
You may be projecting your own preferences in gameplay to everyone. While many players are Planners, just as many I think, more are Improvisers. They don 't want to plan in the conventional sense, they want to take the situation confronting them and do something about it right then. So ...
Comment In:
[Feature - 09/15/2010 - 04:25]
Outstanding analysis. r n r ...
Outstanding analysis. r n r nIt 's fascinating how much video games follow the boss model, whereas many tabletop RPGs do not. I think it 's because players expect Bosses to kill them several times before success, whereas you cannot do that in tabletop RPGs because respawning and the lack ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 04/24/2017 - 09:21]
I think kludges are much ...
I think kludges are much less visible in puzzles, and most single-player games are far more puzzle than game. Also, those video-game conventions that amount to huge kludges from a modeling point of view are so visible that other kludges can pale in comparison.
Comment In:
[Blog - 03/14/2017 - 11:09]
Hidden assumptions that I believe ...
Hidden assumptions that I believe are wrong shape this post. One is that a game will be played once, or at most a few times. In that case, RNG can be quite annoying when used in certain ways. When a game is played many times, RNG becomes less annoying and ...
