Burning Embers

BURNING EMBERS

This short essay/manifesto is a chunk of my thoughts on game design---specifically on what "game" means, what "designing" is, and how you should approach game design.

I've kept it short and sweet. There's only 1 page, and it's just to the right of here. These thoughts aren't detailed, but they are precise. I wrote this piece for the TTRPG Manifest Jam which encouraged its participants to take strong stances, so that's what I've done here. I believe that:

• A "game" is a specific kind of thing, it has known and observable traits which something must have in order to be called a game.
• "Game," however, isn't a value judgement. The point of the term is to enable communication about what a thing is, not its worth.
• Game design is just as precise as it is emotional, and there is a correct way to design games.
• Correctly designed games deliver specific experiences and emotions through the act of playing with them.

While I didn't say such in the essay, I also don't think that TTRPG design is substantially different enough from video- or board- or card-game design to warrant unique exceptions in design theory or labels as folk art. 

It is just game design, and treating it as its own, special-little-thing with a list of must-haves results in incestuous designs as devs constantly reiterate on the same handful of formats that others have bestowed upon them.

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This essay is, in large part, a reaction to a handful of discord servers and subreddits that I'm in, so I'm interested in seeing what is going to be said by those not in those places.