thread: 2011-06-07 : Concentric Game Design
On 2011-06-16, David Berg wrote:
Where my brain went with the "concentric" idea was not about time at all. It's about essentiality. The outer layers are specific implementations of the inner layers. Working from an inner layer, without further guidance, a play group would do something. If they want further guidance, the next layer takes all the somethings they could do and picks one and says, "Do it like this."
Thus, the inner layer of "here's some post-apocalyptic color about life being tough" and "MC, make the character's lives not boring" finds more specific expression in an outer layer. "How do we make life not boring in this setting? With fronts!" The next layer out specifies this even further, with lists of options for what your Front might contain (Grotesque Threat, Warlord Threat, etc.).
As for reward, I think the innermost layer needs a basis for incentives in play, but it needn't look anything like the finished game's formal reward system. "When you deal with not-boring life in the apocalypse, you make trade-offs between security, hope, and knowledge," could suffice. Though perhaps that's too unspecific to even register as part of a designed game. Something linking that to the die rolls and when they're used is probably required.
Perhaps:
1. The core of the game:
- Vivid color (post-apocalypse, danger, scarcity, ignorance, maelstrom)
- A few stats
- A few general categories of things characters do a lot, for which you use a simple die roll
- Roll high, the best happens. Roll middling, it's good but complicated. Roll badly, it's never nothing, it's always something worse.
- The MC's agenda, principles, and what to always say, including "make the characters' lives not boring".
Does "danger, scarcity, ignorance" + "not boring" + "roll a lot" + "best/complicated/worse" = reward system? (That doesn't cover "trade-off", but honestly, I'm not sure if the game does either, beyond multiple fronts with countdown clocks.)
