Can designers learn anything from old-school role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller? Sure! Talk given at WebVisions 11 in Portland, OR.

1. Pig-faced Orcs
Can designers learn anything
from old-school roleplaying
games?
James Reffell
@jreffell
WebVisions 2011
May 27th 2011

2. Gamification
This is not a gamification talk. There will no talk of badges, points, leaderboards, or anything of that sort. I’m not even going to
talk about flow. Those concepts are interesting, but they mostly come from a very specific subset of games. And those were
not my favorite games, even as a kid.

3. awesome map i drew
first convention badge
I liked Dungeons & Dragons. Most D&D players (at least ones my age) can tell you a story of how they discovered the
games. You can ask me that one tonight at the bar. What I will say is that while I had no idea I was going to be a designer
when I grew up, many of the things that made D&D fun for me were very ... designey. Like obsessively making elaborate
maps on grid paper.

4. Chainmail Dungeons & Traveller Runequest
(1971) Dragons (1974) (1977) (1978)
Gygax & Perren Gygax & Arneson Marc Miller Stafford & Perrin
Quick and totally incomplete history of pen & paper RPGs. Wargaming around for a long time. In the 70s, some folks got
bored & changed a few things: focus on individual, non-military units, fantasy elements. Realized they had something
different, packaged it up. More or less BOOM. Explosion, huge cultural impact, co-evolution w/ computer games.

5. Pig-faced orcs. Theme for the talk. Orcs, from Tolkien. Usually portrayed as monstrous humans like in the
movies. But in older D&D modules you often saw them illustrated w/ pig faces. Apparently a miscommunication
between Gary Gygax and the artist, now kind of symbolic of the earlier age.

6. Recently a few gamers have been delving into what made the originals interesting. Maybe some things that work
better (or differently) from what has come since. Old school. And the more I read and thoughts about it, the more
some of that seemed to apply to design as well. So here goes.

7. This is the D4 version of this talk. I’m going to propose 4 ideas. They start pretty concrete and move into the
fuzzy. I’ll talk about how they are used in RPGs, and how they could be used in design.

8. Give them something to manipulate.
Dice. Miniatures. Graph paper. Maps. Screens for the game master. These are all tools for games, and they all
have their official purpose -- creating randomness, simulating exploration, visualizing combat. But there’s another
purpose. They give you something to futz with. (Hand up who has tried to build a dice tower?)

9. Give them something to manipulate.
So pop psychology. Having things to manipulate -- particularly physical things with texture & visual interest you can
look at and hold and move around -- helps concentration. It has intrinsic aesthetic value. It also gives a feeling of
control. It gives you something to do during down moments. And it’s something traditional software usually lacks.

10. Give them something to manipulate.
There are some examples. Random number generation my wiggling the mouse -- strangely satisfying. Totally
equivalent to rolling dice, maybe not quite as much fun as that. Mobile devices are a better fit for this -- any app that
you need to shake, wave, wiggle, or whatever, is a god fit. Think about incorporating twitchy movement into your
designs.

11. Give them something to manipulate.
Those are a good start. But they’re missing two things. 1. Ongoing, idle manipulation while doing other tasks. 2.
Texture. When we start seeing more touch UIs with feedback (video games have been doing this here and there) we
me have something.

12. Use randomness to build story.
So, dice again. What are they for? In a basic sense, resolving actions that have a chance to succeed, just like in any
game of chance. But that’s in some ways the least interesting use of chance in role-playing games.

13. Use randomness to build story.
An example is the rumor table from B2: Keep on the Borderlands. This was explicitly a training module for new GMs
and players. Are it suggests that you arm the players with a random selection of rumors before they start. Some of the
rumors are true, some false. Depending on what you roll, the characters may react very differently ...

14. Use randomness to build story.
1--Think of one of your players, describe his/her impact on your game,
what he/she does, how his/her presence or absence affects your GMing
(if at all). What you expect to happen when s/he's around, what kind of
PCs s/he chooses, etc.
2--Add something to the wiki then explain why it was influential
enough to you that you added it.
3--Four things you wish you want more of in your campaign, four
things you wish you had less of. Or, if you can;t do that, tell us why you
can't. Is your campaign perfect? Rock--tell us why you think it's
humming so well.
4--Compare your favorite moment as a player to your favorite moment
as a GM.
5--Write up a monster/trap combination. Neither the monster nor the
trap must be original, but the combo must be interesting.
So, software? I don’t have a lot of examples, but here’s one idea. A lot of sites that involve user-created content give
folks cues or hints to get them started. Adding a visibly random element might be entertaining. This table was posted
by Zak Smith to get other folks started writing blog posts. Now, this is a D&D context, but you can imagine ...

15. Use sandboxes and railroads.
Sandboxes games and railroad games. These are concepts that span all sorts of games, they come up a lot in video
games. But that can get hung up on technical limitations, so let’s stick with pen & paper.

16. Use sandboxes and railroads.
Sandboxes. The game designer creates an area to explore, and maybe some mild motivation. The players choose
what to do first and how to do it. Plot emerges from play.
Railroad. There is an overarching plot. The players make choices within that, but the game designer makes sure they
experience the main points and usually in a set order.

17. Use sandboxes and railroads.
This one is less a pronouncement than an analytical framework. Think about what you’re designing and break it into
sandboxes and railroads. Take e-commerce. Someone is browsing -- they may have a vague idea what they want to
buy, but they’re more than happy to look at other things, comparison shop, research, get distracted. Sandbox!

18. Use sandboxes and railroads.
But eventually they’ve got some items in their shopping cart and want to check out. Boom! Railroad the crap out of
them. Lead them by the nose. Eliminate distractions. It’s not just about efficiency -- you have a narrative (in this case
“you are happy with your purchases and trust us to ship them to you”) and you’re going to give them that story.

19. Enable risk-taking. (Carefully.)
So it’s really important that characters can die. Some games have other kinds of risk, but in old school RPGS, death is
usually the big one. Characters die. That adds spice, it gives the stories meaning, it makes for legendary action. Game
I remember the best was a Star Wars game. One shot. My Han Solo-ish character heroically sacrificed himself to save
the group.

20. Enable risk-taking. (Carefully.)
Now, in design, some sorts of risk are unacceptable. It’s not acceptable to lose your users’ data. Or expose it to other
people w/out permission. But without ANY risk, sterility. So, how do you as a designer, expose your users to
“good” (fun, narrative building) risk, but not “bad” (unfun, cynicism building) risk? I haven’t the foggiest. I’m working on
this one. :)

21. Enable risk-taking. (Carefully.)
So, Jane McGonigal talks about this in her book “Reality is Broken” -- she called it “fun failure”. She bases it on some
interesting games research that basically says that failure can be fun -- really fun -- only when the users have some
agency over the outcome, and can try again.

22. The ideas.
Give them something to
manipulate.
Use randomness to build
story.
Use sandboxes & railroads.
Enable risk-taking.
So, here are my 4 points. If you want to start using them in your work, obviously the thing to do is get a d4 and roll to
see where to start.

23. Thanks, Gary.
Gary Gygax (1938-2008)
James Reffell
@jreffell
designcult.org
james.reffell@gmail.com
http://www.slideshare.net/jreffell

24. Image credits
CC Tracy Lee http://www.flickr.com/photos/tracyleephoto/5442965871/
© Otherworld miniatures http://www.otherworld.me.uk/
CC Scott Akerman http://www.flickr.com/photos/sterlic/5364706165/
CC Dave White http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrdestructicity/5028309972/
CC Alan De Smet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gary_Gygax_Gen_Con_2007.JPG
© Elena Hill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zak_Smith.jpg
© XKCD http://xkcd.com/393/