RPG Design Patterns

Provide a concrete way for an abstract concept to have mechanical interactions with a game system.

Not applicable

Attribute, Currency, Resource, Skill, Trait

Understanding gauges is vital to designing mechanical game systems. A Gauge is a graduated value generally associated with a name. Commonly, the graduated values are numbers, but this is not always the case. Gauges are introduced into role-playing games in order to highlight some key game concept that the designer wants to affect and/or be affected by other key game concepts. Gauges are the building blocks of any mechanical game system. It is the relationships that a gauge has with other gauges that gives it its true meaning within the system. No gauge has any purpose independent of its connections to other game entities. In short, no gauge stands alone. What purpose would Hit Points have independent of Damage? What value would a Resource have without some Consumer on which to spend it? Why possess an Attribute if it affects nothing?

Along with Currency, the Gauge design pattern is probably the most widely used pattern of any RPG Design Pattern. Quite often, it is overused. Introducing a Gauge into your game makes a statement about what you, as the game designer, feel is important to your game. Using too many of them dilutes the impact that any single gauge has on your system and thereby detracts from the game’s central concepts. Use a Gauge when you

1. Want to want to emphasize an important game concept,
2. Want that concept to play a mechanical role in your game,
3. Have seriously considered not representing that game concept as a gauge,
4. Having properly pondered, concluded that introducing a gauge brings more of a focus on the game’s core rather than distracts from it.

A Gauge introduces a metered value for what would otherwise be an abstract concept. It thereby gives a concrete form to that abstraction, allowing it to manipulate and be manipulated by a mechanical game system. A gauge is an artifice, a simulacrum of an underlying idea whose purpose is to provide a hook into a game system. It is nothing more or less.

Because of their artificial natures, gauges have the potential to distract players from their immersion in the game world. The more gauges your game contains, the greater the danger of this happening. So, use them where appropriate, but keep them to a minimum. The actual number you will use, of course, depends on your design goals. High-fidelity games purposely incorporating lots of metaphorical knobs and dials to tweak in order to satisfy gamers seeking lots of “crunch” will naturally tend to have more gauges than lighter-weight games intended to “fly under the radar” as much as possible.

As stated before, gauges have meaning only in relation to each other. Most games give gauges numerical values and impose arithmetic relationships between them. That is, one gauge value is added to or subtracted from another gauge value to generate a third gauge value. Diagrams of these kinds of gauge relationship can be found above in Figures B and C. But, do not think that addition and subtraction are the only ways gauges can affect one another: you do not need to limit yourself in this way. Consider these alternatives:

1. One gauge value could be set as the maximum or minimum of two or more other gauges.
2. Along the same lines, one gauge value can act as a ceiling or floor to another gauge value.
3. One gauge value can act as a threshold to another gauge value.
4. One gauge could “spill over” into another gauge value when it “fills up” past a certain value. So, one gauge has a maximum value and anything more added to it cascades into another gauge.
5. Gauge values can be divided or multiplied together or one can be raised “to the power” of another. (It’s a good idea to stay away from these kinds of combinations for gauges that are calculated “on the fly” during play, though.)

A trait-based game might have players select “Verb” traits and “Noun” traits for their characters and give them ranks by spending an allotment of “Trait Points” given to them for this purpose. Players have their characters perform actions based on these traits, but cannot use any single trait in isolation. Rather, Verbs and Nouns must be used together and the rank of the Verb/Noun pair equals the minimum of the ranks of the Verb and Noun. So, a player that was playing a baseball player in a game exploring the effects of money and drugs on professional sports might give his character a Verb trait of “Resist” and a Noun trait of “Steroids” with ranks of 2 and 3 respectively. The “Resist/Steroids” trait pair rank would then be the minimum of the two ranks, or 2.

The Game Summaries section overflows with gauges applied to various purposes. In fact, every single studied game contains gauges of one form or another. If you want to explore a minimalist extreme in this regard, take a look at the summary of Puppetland.