My team is working on an improv style storytelling game that revolves around completing goals in a series of short rounds, while playing a specific role.
- How will goals incentivize players to complete them?
- The goal deck is a core mechanic in the game, so if players don’t want to engage with the goals, many aspects of the game won’t work as planned. Unfortunately, this is also a very open ended part of the game, as most players will have their own ways of interacting with the goals, and we cannot predict all of them. I think the best way to prototype this would be to make a bunch of possible goals and have playtesters evaluate which ones they would want to do most and why. I think that the storytelling aspect of the game, along with the secrecy of trying to get a goal complete will get people to try a decent amount of things in the context of a game.
- As a story game, how do we wrap up the story in a satisfying way?
- Endings can make or break a game. Whether or not the last part wraps up well determines if people want to play again, and colors their memories of the rest of the game. I worry that without guidance on how to actually tie up the story, the game will just end with no real conclusion. Would people dislike that, or enjoy that they can imagine their own endings? I think we could test out different amounts and times for rounds to see if there’s a natural end point that people generally reach, or if we should have a rules mandated wrap up. I’m honestly very torn as to what I’m expecting here, because I’m pretty certain people will reach a natural conclusion at some point, but I think that point will change for every group and every playthrough, so it may not be feasible to let the natural ending determine the end of the game. I’m pretty certain that we could engineer an end that is satisfying for most people through roles and goals.
- Do we need to constrain how players react to events?
- A game like ours has a lot of player freedom, which can absolutely be fun, but may also get out of hand, or make it hard for players to actually play. We don’t want players to decide to do something that might completely derail the game, or we want to know if the game can actually be derailed in that way. We can start by having open ended prompts such as “how would your role respond?” and narrow it down to “choose one of the following (fill in number) actions” if need be. I am expecting that people may want some sort of guidance, as “do something” tends to make people freeze up.
- What kind of things do roles need to be attractive and unique to players?
- Roles will likely determine how players react to the different stimuli in the game, so they should be interesting to play and different enough from others that each person feels as though they can make their own choices. They also all need to intermingle well with each other in order to create a story line of some sort. I think that if we create a couple of different roles in varying levels of detail, we can get potential players to pick which ones they like best. I think that players will want some level of detail in order to get them started, but also the freedom to play around with the expectations that will emerge from each role.
