RPG Design Patterns

Before writing this book, I had been designing, writing, tweaking, and rewriting my own role-playing game, Legendary Quest, for over 20 years. In that time, I created seven editions of the game to which only my close friends and I had access. The experience gave me great practice in designing games and taught me much about how a role-playing game should work. Because I had approached my designs from the vantage point of making the best game possible for my gaming group, I didn’t look too far afield for how other games approached similar problems. My friends and I created designs that suited our interests and we were happy with the results. And, in fact, we should have been pleased. Through our efforts, Legendary Quest evolved into a fine game. I would like to thank all the LQ play-testers over the years in helping me in my various game designs. I would especially like to thank Matt Ault, Dave Bailey, James Bockmon, Mike Brown, Denys Carrico-Bockmon, Mark Chester, Leroy Hills, Melissa Kirk, Mike Patrick, Adam Reid, and Paul White for all of their support and many design ideas over the years.

When I made Legendary Quest available on the Internet, everything changed. A fan base sprouted up that began providing feedback. And, I started interacting with other game authors, primarily on The Forge website (http://www.indie-rpgs.com). To my delight, I discovered that I still had a lot to learn about game design. Several years ago, the Forge was a forum devoted to exploring RPG Game Theory and creating well-crafted independent role-playing games. To a game designer, The Forge was candy store, amusement park, and Christmas all wrapped up into one. It kept me enthralled for years, although my role was primarily been that of a silent lurker. Only rarely did I contribute back, and then only when I thought I could provide some insight that others had overlooked. That didn’t happen often. Unfortunately, not long after I put up an initial draft of this book on The Forge, the administrators made the decision to de-emphasize the development of RPG Game Theory on their site and focus instead on crafting new games. They locked the forum discussing RPG Theory, so visitors could read the discussions that had taken place earlier, but prevented anyone from making new posts. At that point, I largely lost interest in the site, although I still drop by from time to time.

Even so, I have always wanted to contribute something back to the community. To date, this book is my best attempt at doing that. So, even though they do not know me very well (if at all), I would like to thank the following people on The Forge for the inspiration they have given me over the years: Vincent Baker, Paul Czege, Ron Edwards, John Kim, Timothy Kleinert, Chris Lehrich, Tony Lower-Basch, Ralph Mazza, Clinton R. Nixon, Jared A. Sorensen, and M. J. Young.

There is one other Forge-ite to which I would like to express my deepest gratitude. Mike Holmes took me under his wing early on in my game studies. He has provided me with a tremendous amount of constructive criticism on my designs and has patiently tutored me on modern thoughts in game design theory. I have never encountered anyone with as much sheer volume of knowledge about various role- playing games as Mike. This work would be far less useful without his insight.

Finally, I would also like to give special thanks to Mike Cantrell for hosting and administering the LQ Design Forums and for editing this book. Many people pointed out numerous flaws in an early draft of RPG Design Patterns. So, it was obvious that I was in great need of Mike’s technical writing expertise. I believe the book to be greatly enhanced by his efforts.

– John Kirk
(9/13/2009)