Role playing game

During my first year of study at Supinfogame - Rubika, I created a role-playing game on the theme of Indian history in a group. I had little experience and it was a good introduction to Game Design.
The opportunity to work on a project that did not require technical skills allowed me to focus on the essence of what makes a game: How to make an experience fun? (this was obviously a rewarding failure.)

My job

General Game design
- Imagine the macro gameplay of the game and the main mechanics of the role-playing game that we were going to use for the latter.

Narrative design
- Le world building du jeu, duquel découle l'ambiance et certaines de ses mécaniques.
- Le Quest Design du jeu. Pour la présentation de notre expérience, nous devions faire une session de jeu équivalente à une quête. C'est à moi qu'est revenu cette tache.

Context

Année : 2019

Type de projet : Jeux de rôle papier

Equipe : 3 personnes, en m'incluant

Rôle : Game Designer / Narrative Designer

Limite de temps : 3 mois

Contraintes :

Jeux de rôle papier
Univers local
Une session de jeu comprennent une mission faisable en 1h

World building

I chose as the environment for the game a fantasy version of the India of the XVIth century, a pre-colonial India that is full of myths and creatures that can be used in the game.

The player finds himself in a politically complex world, where two ancestral empires clash in a wild territory populated by many monsters and dangers.

The players are in Mathura, a large trading city, bordering the two empires, where everything is gathered to set ablaze the great fire that could burn down the empires.

Indian mythology allows the use of many gods and monsters in the gameplay, offering a complex bestiary and a panoply of power and abilities available to the characters

Quest Design

As for the mission proposed to the players during our playtest, they found themselves in an inn in order to receive their quest which was to move to another city, on the way he fell into an ambush.

He was in a more or less favourable position depending on their previous actions and their jet result. At the end of the fight the story progressed, the mystery of the reasons for their quest thickened and they reached their target city.

The event path:

Meeting of the players between them and reception of the quest in the hostel: presentation of the objective and increase of the synergy of the characters.
Escape from the city: discovery of the game’s mechanics
Journey with ambush: Discoveries of the Lore and the bestiary
Fight against enemies and monsters: discovery of combat mechanics.
Reward and arrival at destination

What the project has taught me

Simplicity is good

During the playtest of the game, the complexity of the game system that we had set up came out as blocking for the players, I realized that we wanted to do too well and too complex. You have to sort your ideas and keep only the best ones to focus on it.

The best ideas being the simplest here.

My tastes are not universal

My ideas were many on this project but I realized that even if in my head they were good ideas, once put in place, they were either not good, or they liked only can of anyone. I have to be more objective than subjective.

Develop my ideas and apply them

I also learned to develop an idea, deepen it, criticize it, question it, challenge it or improve it until reaching a concrete product. Having ideas is good, putting them into practice is better.