作者：Cogentesque

2个人

制作桌面游戏并不容易。或者准确地说，前面70%是容易的，后面30%则非常困难，甚至让人崩溃。

“但如果这个不平衡会怎么样？我们发现如果玩家这么玩就不能势均力敌。但如果我们让这个更强大，那么游戏就会被破坏……？！”

当遇到这种问题时，你知道要怎么办吗？问伙伴。伟大的游戏设计师朋友最有帮助了。有时候，朋友简直就是上帝派来的天才和天使。你的游戏设计伙伴有自己的头脑，他能想到你所想不到的东西，从不同于你的角度思考问题。记住，你们是一个团队，你们有相同的目标（做一款人人喜欢的好游戏）。所以你们尽管在一起工作，却又各自关注游戏的不同方面——这正是你们能做出好游戏的原因。

具体说来，你应该考虑到以下两点：

1、选择一个你没有合作过的人。这个人跟你很不像。无论你们是什么关系，找到彼此的相同点总是比找到不同点来得容易。所以你应该先找到一个与你完全不同的人，然后朝着相同的目标前进。如果合作伙伴与你正是一类人，那么要找到不同点就困难多了。因为你希望合作者具有与你不同的思考角度和不同的经验，所以你更应该找一个跟你形成反差的人。有人说，你的合伙人越古怪越好，因为这意味着对方的想法总是出乎你的意料。

2、众口难调。设计师越多，越难达成一致意见。2是一个理想的数目，3就有点困难了，超过3基本上就什么事也干不成了—-因为每个人都有自己的想法，实在是很难统一成一款游戏。因为无论如何你都应该让其他人参与探讨，发表他们的观点。有时候，即使游戏的设计师只有3人，也很难达成一致。

Refer A Friend(from pinnaclerecruit)

记住，人类是合作型动物。我们自己工作时是一回事，搭伙或者结队工作时又是另一回事。但有人“助你一臂之力”总是好事，特别是当你突然听到有人说：

这个游戏我想了一周末，还是觉得我们合作好。

伙伴的微笑总是温暖人心——你也会笑着想起：“我不是一个人在战斗！”

1件事

游戏设计有没有什么关键法则？没有。我最多只能建议你“强化主旨”，因为我的朋友之一很讨厌我说这个，所以我得在本文中再次强调它。

什么是“主旨”？一个名词，表示不断出现的主题、想法。可感知的或突出的部分；主导想法或特征。

所有游戏都有一个统领全局的“东西”。在人们玩过某款游戏很久之后，往往会用这个“东西”作为该游戏的记忆代号。当有一个人带提着一袋写着“Hive”的东西走过来时，另一个人问：“这是什么？”“是一种六边形棋子的昆虫游戏—-跟象棋有点像？”有人会说《Hive》的这个“东西”就是：六边形棋子的昆虫象棋。我们不必解释甲虫棋子的装备机制，我们不必解释“One Hive”这个奇怪的规则，或者大肆称赞它最近人气很旺，有活跃在游戏社区。这里的“主旨”是：类似于象棋的、有六边形棋子的昆虫游戏。如果我跟你说过这个，你会立即知道我指的是什么游戏。

当然这个“主旨”是错的。《Hive》不是一种“昆虫游戏”，因为其中一种棋子是蜘蛛，我们都知道，蜘蛛不是昆虫。蜘蛛是动物类中的蛛形纲，而昆虫并不属于这一纲。另外，《Hive》也不太像象棋，它没有固定的棋盘，所以玩法自然与象棋大不相同。但或多或少，这个“主旨”成功地使我们记住了这款游戏。我们可以轻易地“明白”到他在说什么，并引出相应的记忆。

选择一个人们记得住的“主旨”

许多游戏都被人们遗忘了。这些游戏未必就不好，但它们就是没有在你的脑海中留下它们自己应得的记忆。当你回忆起这些游戏时，你往往不得不用诸如“类似于《地下城爬行者》”、“跟围棋差不多”或“基本上是一种占领游戏”等短句来形容它们。其实这也没什么不好。设计这种游戏往往是稳妥的，因为它们有现成的忠实粉丝，有些游戏的主旨太深入人心，实际上成为另一款游戏的派生产品。如果你在制作游戏，那么你应该选择一个让人能记住的主旨。

第一步：选择令人印象深刻的主旨

“拼图与随从”

“豆子卡片!”

“太空探索和战斗”

“藏匿的太空机器人叛徒”

“掷骰子修路：木材换绵羊”

game design(from penny-arcade.com)

第二步：强化主旨

我们来想想怎么解释主旨。首先凭空产生一个概念，如“玩家是可以占领任何身体的魂”，之后，你会发现很难保持最初的设计。我们将以这个概念为例，探讨一下如何强化主旨：

1、玩家是魂。我们想突出主题，所以游戏应该发生在墓地。墓地太阴森了？那就改成地下城吧—-地下城里也有魂，对吧？这样我们就有了：魂和地下城。

2、玩家是地下城之魂。好吧，地下城之魂为什么会存在？防止古代地下城被破坏或亵渎！好吧，所以魂是守护者。现在我们有了地下城守护之魂。

3、玩家是地下城守护之魂。他们要抵抗什么？当然是来地下城偷取古物和珍宝的入侵者！这样我们就有了：地下城守护者保护墓室中的财宝，以免那些寻找财富的冒险者把它们偷走。玩家可以寄生在地下城的怪物（如使魔、骷髅等），和甚至是入侵者体内。

4、洗劫墓室的冒险者。因此，墓室内必须有珍贵的东西。比如说强大的武器、圣物和黄金等，如是冒险者使用了这些东西，就会很难对付。你知道要怎么做吧？如果冒险者偷到了强大的宝剑，那么寄生在他体内的魂就可以抵抗其他入侵者，也就是说，玩家将使用强大的宝剑对付其他入侵者。

5、金子？我们说到黄金了，是吧？这显然能增强队险家们的前进动力—-金子越多，胆子越大。胆子越大的冒险者越难被地下城之魂附体。我们把这种效果叫作“信念”。现在我们有了第一个游戏机制，也就是“信念”机制。

我就说到这里吧，你应该能看出来如何突出游戏的主旨了。所以当一款叫作“地下城之魂”的游戏在全世界问世时，Martin再问“‘地下城之魂’是什么？”时，你可以告诉他：“是一款让玩家作为灵魂附身到其他身体的游戏。”

一次做一件事。把这一件事做好。不要迷失了你的目标。强化主旨。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Game Design Secrets

by Cogentesque

An important point here campers. So important in fact that it’s Design secret #1.

Making a boardgame is not easy. If anything, the first 70% is easy. The last 30% can become depressingly hard. Sometimes it can get all too much…

“But what if this isn’t balanced? We found that this can’t match up with that if the player plays like this. But if we make this more powerful than that then that other thing happens which can break the game…?!”
You know what helps this out? A friend. One awesome game designer friend helps immensely. At times, it is a genuine, angelic, godsend. Your game design partner has their own brain. That brain, is different to yours. It will look at things in an entirely different way to you. Remember that you are on the same team and you are working towards the same goal (to make a fun game that people like). So you are working together but looking at it differently – this is exactly what your games will do well with.

Two points furthermore:

1. Choose someone that you wouldn’t normally work with. Someone that is different to you. Finding similarities tends to be easier than finding differences in any relationship. So start with someone completely different to you, and work towards similarities. It is much harder to start with someone the same as you and find reasons to be different. This upside-down way makes sense as you are looking for someone who can think differently to you and has a different experience to you. Some say that the weirder your partner, the better [...]  as it encourages eclectic, and interesting views – things that you weren’t expecting.

2. Too many designers spoil the rules. Two is a nice number, three is harder – anything past three and the games design is simply to hard to get done as everyone has their own opinion that they would like to crowbar into the game. By all means you should get other people to “chime in” once in a while, to give their opinion. Once in a while. It can be like herding a room full of cats sometimes when even just 3 people are all trying to design a game collectively

Remember that we humans are a collective species. We work differently on our own, in pairs, and in large groups. But when there is someone else out there who has “got your back” – it can be so wonderful when  all of a sudden you hear:

So Sam, I was thinking about the game over the weekend a lot and I have furthered our collective cause
A big cuddly smile will warm it’s way across your grizzled and stressed-out game designer face. “I’m not alone!” and you will smile.

Do one thing and do it well.

T’were there ever a more important formula in design? No. There t’werent. I like to call it “Reaffirming your Motif” because one of my friends hates it when I say it, so I shall be repeating it the entire way through this article.

What a pretty, peaceful, pertinent pagoda.

mo·tif ?[moh-teef] noun 1. a recurring subject, theme, idea. A perceivable or salient recurring fragment; dominant idea or feature

All games have an overall “thing”. This is mostly what people use to reference them long after they have been played it. When the guys come over and one of them brings Hive (p.s. What’s up John?), and someone says “Hey, what’s this about again?”, “Oh that’s the insect one with hexagon pieces – kinda like chess?”. Some would say this is hives “thing”:  Insects with hexagon pieces kinda like chess. We don’t need to explain anything about the mounting mechanics for the Beetle pieces, we don’t need to explain the whimsy of the “One Hive” rule, or extol that there have been two recent expansions and there is a thriving online game community. The motif here is that it is: The hexagon Insect one like chess. You would instantly know what game I am talking about if I told you that.

Now of course this is wrong. Hive is not an “insect based game” as of course one of the pieces is a spider which, as we all know, are not insects. They make up the Arachnida class of Animal, wheras insects (or Insecta) are an entirely different class. Hive could be argued to also be, quite unlike chess. There is no fixed board to speak of and of course the game plays out quite differently. But none the less, the “Motif” that our friend used to remind us of the game worked. We can easily “get” what he’s talking about, the memory is triggered.

This leads us to our first point.

Choose a “Motif” that people will remember.

There are many games that people forget. These are not necessarily bad games, but they leave a wet vaccum in your mind where a memory of them should otherwise be. When these games come up in retrospect they tend to bare uninspiring tags like “Another Dungeon Crawler” or “Go-like” or “Basically Dominion” . As said, this doesn’t make the game bad. These games tend to be safe to design, they all have their dedicated fans and some are so routed in their chosen Motif that they are essentially derivatives of one game (18xx and the likes).  If you are making a game, you should choose a memorable motif.

Step 1:  Choose a memorable motif

“Tile Laying & Meeples”

“Each card is a bean!”

“Deep space exploration and combat, but with LOADS of bits”

“Hidden traitor space robots”

“Rolling dice, building roads: wood for sheep”

We are now halfway through: if you would like to go to the restrooms or help yourself to some Tea and biscuits out in the hall, we will reconvene in about 3 lines.

—-Intermission—-

Step 2: Reaffirm your motif.

Let’s choose our goal to help explanation. An idea picked out of the aether; “Players are spirits and can inhabit the body of anything else” … huh … *A Pencil scrawls on a notebook*, you then have the hard task of keeping to your original design. Let’s in fact use this as our work-through example. We will try to make each point reinforce the motif:

1. Players are spirits. We want to reaffirm our motif: so this should probably take place in a graveyard. Graveyard to spooky? Ok let’s go for Dungeon – there are spirits in a dungeon right? So far: Spirits & Dungeons

2. Players are dungeon spirits. Well, what would the reason be for a dungeon spirit to exist? To protect the ancient dungeon from desecration! Ok, so they are protective. So far: Protective Dungeon Spirits

3. Now they are protective – what will they protect from? Invaders that have come to steal the old artifacts and treasure of course! So far: Protective Dungeon Spirits guarding the tomb against fortune hunting adventurers. Players can inhabit the bodies of standard dungeon horrors (imps, skeletons, etc) and ALSO the bodies of invaders.

4. The adventurers are here to ransack the tomb. Therefore the tomb must have things of value. Items lets say. Powerful weapons, artifacts and gold that make the adventurers harder to defeat if they wield them. You know what would be cool? If the adventurers have stolen a powerful sword, then a player inhabits him to deter other invaders, the players will get to use the powerful sword AGAINST other invaders.

5. Gold did we say? Ahh yes, ok well this obviously comes down to how brave an explorer is. The more gold they have bagged, the braver they are – making it harder for them to be inhabited by the player spirits. Let’s call it “Conviction”. We now come to the first game mechanic that has been created from this process : The “Conviction” mechanic.

I will stop here, but you can see how every step has been put in place to reaffirm the previous point, which ALL come from the original goal; the motif. We are reaffirming our motif. So when “Dungeon Spirits” gets published and played on tables throughout the world, then Martin comes over and asks “What’s Dungeon spirits about again?” you can tell him: “It’s the one where players are spirits and inhabit the bodies of other things”

Do one thing. Do it well. Don’t muddy your goal. Reaffirm your motif.(source:exampleofplay part1 part2)