How do you know when you're designing for your audience or yourself?

<< < (2/2)

Lance D. Allen:
What Ron and Eero are saying can be best summed up by the simple idea that you should always be in your target audience. Given that there are gamers out there who are not like you and have different preferences, it's probably equally true that there are gamers like you who will love that you designed a game for them. The others, this supposed majority? Their needs are almost certainly already being met. Don't design for people who would rather keep playing what they're currently playing anyway. Design for the people whose needs aren't being met.. In other words, design for you.

More specifically, I like the approach you describe. I *also* like the top-down approach, mostly when other people with more skill than I have do it. But the bottom up approach is what naturally happens anyway, no matter how much top-down prep you put into the game. You can know the precise tea times of the Wungabunga people, but no richness of detail will occur unless play goes there. Think of fictional works set in big top-down settings.. You might know that David Eddings Thulls are stupid and brutish, but as no significant fiction ever takes place in their lands, you never really get a feel for them. The Malloreans and Murgos are much more fully fleshed out because the story of the "PCs" goes into those lands and experiences their cultures. If you've ever picked up "The Rivan Codex", you see that he approached the setting in a very top-down manner.

Systems that help you shape a setting from this organic bottom-up approach are a good thing, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page