250 Complete KOBOLD Guide to Game Design, Second Edition in rehashing old approaches and stale, “beginner” material for an advanced audience. The resulting premise means that the enemies were still deadly and combat was still a primary factor, but my understanding of what the audience wanted changed. And the dream of a Moria-style adventure had to be abandoned pretty quickly to accommodate other cool ideas, like a Masonic-style secret brotherhood, a corrupt gold dragon, and cursed gold that served Mammon’s ends. Closing It Down with Ease or Rage Finally, if you are persistent and don’t let anything stop you, the muddle in the middle does come to an end. The end phase of a project is either a time of hope or rage for me. When I leave a manuscript hopeful, I’ve had plenty of time with it, I feel all the elements are in place, and I think it really is ready for another set of hands. I may be a bit wistful, tinkering with strands of it but, frankly, I’ve grown a little tired of having the manuscript around. Sometimes this convinces me to make a turnover early, because I’m just done with it. These are the times it is easier to close out a project. Things float gently to a conclusion. The deadline seems generous. All is well with the project. That happens less often than I’d like, but it does happen. More often, the end stage is more about rage. I wish I had more time! The project deserves another month, at least! Yes, usually the deadline is killing me, and I’m fighting very hard to keep everything together, to fill in all the “XX” place markers and all the “TBD” or “NAME HERE” stopgaps that I used earlier as shortcuts. Sometimes it’s not the deadline but the word count. There’s either too much or too little space to do what I want to do. And so I slash and burn sections away to make room for something vital, or I fill out a section that I know the editor will want more of. It’s a stage of everything coming home to roost, which is especially the case for really large designs (say, over 40,000 words or so, and certainly anything over 60,000). It’s impossible for me to keep everything in my head for a 60,000- word manuscript (this is why I love outlines), so at the end there’s some shuffling and struggle to get it all together in a form I like, much less one I love. This is when I recall that someone said that manuscripts aren’t finished but abandoned. Large projects are harder to bring to the stage where everything interlocks smoothly with everything else. And very large projects always involve a certain amount of frustration because it is so very hard to achieve the level of quality I want through an entire design beyond a certain size. That upper limit has grown for me over the years (20,000 words used to intimidate me, but no longer), but there’s still a realistic limit as to how big a design can be before it becomes utterly unwieldy.
Creative Mania and Design Despair h Wolfgang Baur 251 I suspect that the sheer difficulty of marshalling all elements is what delays all larger creative works. They’re not just a linear string of text; if the work is any good at all, it has emergent properties, resonances, themes, and layers. In other words, the design has become a set of interconnected systems, references, and dependencies. Turnover and Acceptance The end stage is letting go, committing to saying, “Here’s the manuscript. I’ve worked hard and given it everything I know. Someone else needs to carry it the rest of the way to publication.” It’s a tough stage for some writers because you’re turning over something like a child to others. You hope they love it as much as you do, though inevitably you know in your heart of hearts that you have given more of yourself to it, more hours, more devotion, than others ever can or will. But you trust the editor, the graphic designers, the company you’re working with. And so you let it go, because time has run out, because there’s nothing more you can do, because you have grown to think there’s nothing else you can give to make it better. Oddly enough, turning over a manuscript to others always leaves me with a case of creative depression. My thoughts are generally morose or gloomy at this stage. I could have done it so much better! I had to compromise because of the word count! The rules in that section are way too complicated—I should have streamlined the bookkeeping somehow, or written a new subsystem. The playtesters/editor/DMs just don’t understand the vision I was aiming for. I am a pathetic Gloomy Gus. For about a week or two. Then, some bright, new, shining, wonderful idea will catch my eye, or I’ll go through my big notebook full of ideas. One of those ideas seems to be so full of promise, so glorious, that surely it will be the shining, perfect sourcebook/ adventure/article that I have always wanted it to be. And the mania returns. . . .
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THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE FOR GAMERS, GAME MASTERS AND DESIGNERS The first edition of the COMPLETE KOBOLD GUIDE TO GAME DESIGN laid out concepts, techniques and advice for designing roleplaying games and enhancing adventures. This second edition brings together essays from the original volume, many updated to reflect the changing game design landscape, as well as new essays by veteran designers Jeff Grubb (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Guild Wars), Kelly Pawlik (Midgard Sagas, Empire of the Ghouls), Amber Scott (Dungeons & Dragons, Eberron) and Ray Vallese (The Kobold Guide to Magic). Between these covers, you’ll find practical, thought-provoking essays on worldbuilding, creating magic systems, conflict, and compelling stories, what to expect when you work as a design professional, and much more. Conceptual chapters examine what game design is and how good design can create the best games. Concrete examples provide models to help you create well-rounded designs and exciting adventures. In his essay, “Seize the Hook,” designer Rob Heinsoo says, “Design a game you want to play but can’t because no one else has designed it yet.” THE COMPLETE KOBOLD GUIDE TO GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION will help you do that, and your games and campaigns will never be the same. www.KoboldPress.com PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION Winner, 2012 Gold ENnie Award, Best RPG-Related Accessory “Highly recommended for gaming nerds everywhere!” —City Book Review