Blog - On Player Movement
Tuesday, March 25, 2008As mentioned yesterday, one of my classes that started today is one where along with a group we do systems design for an RPG.
Today there was a brief exercise where we were shown a picture and had to say what systems we'd need for a game based off the image (however we chose to interpret the picture as a game.)
While the representative of our team was presenting, I noticed that the movement system was the last system he thought to mention.
Hmm.
When learning in a prior class how to write a design document, it was suggested that the movement system be the first system listed in the doc.
(Well, technically I was taught to do the controls first, which I guess I'm equating to movement here for the purposes of my argument.)
In any case, this advice I remembered again just a while back, while reading through what Perko has to say about movement in games. He points out that just moving in a game should be a kind of fun.
When reading that, I connected that to being taught to do the movement system first. Both stress the importance of player movement. After all, the player is generally going to have to be able to move before he can do anything else. Only a game which has no space can avoid this problem, and there are almost no games that have a complete lack of space.
Movement throughout the virtual world of a game is often the player's primary means of interaction.
It becomes the foundation for the core mechanic, if not the core itself.
So it makes sense to consider it early and list it first, placing it as the foundation it will inevitably be.
However, I had a strange thought: in this class our end product is to be a tabletop RPG.
How does one make an especially "fun" movement system in a tabletop RPG?
I've never found moving in a tabletop RPG especially fun. Admittedly, I haven't played as many tabletop RPGs as perhaps I should have, but I've certainly played a few, and none have had you move your characters in any way that stood out as "fun".
This is not to say that they were unpleasant, or badly designed. They take my characters from point A to point B just fine and I don't even think about it, which makes them well designed, I suppose.
However, Perko praises game movement systems where just getting from point A to point B is a pleasure in of itself, which does seem like a goal worth striving for in design.
So, how does one design "fun" movement in a tabletop RPG?
I suppose that is a problem for me and my team to try to tackle, and soon. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 10:30 PM 2 Comments Links to this post
