On Troy Costisick’s RPG design blog (http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/), he has a post about “The Big Three”. The Big three are three tough design questions that get to the heart of the game’s focus and how it addresses that focus.
I’m not near that level of development with Making the Bigs. However, Troy also has a helpful primer in that same post that reads as follows:
“First, discard all notions you have of what an RPG “should be.” For an excellent post and discussion on this topic (which I will revisit later here on this blog) check out Josh Bishop Roby’s “Games, The Standard, and Spoons” on his blog. Second, jot down your ideas first. Don’t start to create a game based off these three questions. The likelihood of that working out for ya isn’t too great IMHO. Write out briefly what you would like a session, an adventure, a campaign, to look like. Decide what’s most important to you in your game and then come back to these questions. Third, write out a brief “snip-it” answer for each that will give other people a good idea of what your game is, then write out a much lengthier answer for yourself. The lengthier answer will be your guide for design. Fourth, take your answers and design over to the Forge and post it in Indie Design. I cannot stress that fourth step enough. Get feedback-get feedback-get feedback.”
Tip One is “discard all notions you have of what an RPG “should be.” Well, time will tell on that one, but I like the idea of opening your mind before you start making a game.
Tip Two is where I’m a bit stuck. And I’m glad to be here because before I started working on Tip Two, I’d spent time on the micro level (see my Duel of Hits post). I was having fun working on mechanics rather than addressing the central “How do you play?” question. So Tip Two is still in development.
My current vision is as follows:
A game session consists of a block of series. A series is a cluster of games against one opponent, either as part of a road trip or a home stand. During each series, the player(s) should not only play in the games, but primarily spend time working through an the field issue.
For example, during an away series with the “Pops”, Player A deals with a physical threat he received from a teammate who is vying for his position while Player B is hiding a hamstring injury because he’s heard a scout is coming to the series.
An adventure would span several game sessions and could be realized in the example above as Player A’s rival is promoted to The Bigs or washes out or is traded to another minor league team. Also, Player B’s aventure could be resolved in that first series, or it could become a recurring story as the player meets the scout but has to hide it from his own team, the manager becomes supiscious, a pitcher finds out and asks to be “let in”.
A campaign of Making the Bigs would be a single season. Either the player makes it to the September Call-Up or is promoted, or labors away. Players and the GM can decide on a second season, but that should function like a second season of a TV show.
Write out briefly what you would like a session, an adventure, a campaign, to look like.
As I stated before, I’m not quite ready for Tip Three or Four, which involve answering the Big Three and design, but I’m going to continue to hammer out Tip Two.
