Seekers of knowledge, now that we have provided you with our syllabus and overall concepts, we now present to you the first layer of the shell when thinking about roleplaying game design.
In addition to the our twin theories of design, we identify three forces that exert pressure on the design of roleplaying games: inspiration, ur-text and truth.
Ur-Text
Ur-text is an external source of information like a film, graphic novel, work of literature, historical account, mythology or current news events. All games have sources upon which they draw to help create the world and frame the mechanics and systems. We call these sources “ur-texts.” Often our ur-texts have ur-texts! For example, Tolkien drew heavily on Finnish mythology as depicted in The Kalevala. LeGuin drew on the myths and traditions of Pacific Islanders when creating A Wizard of Earthsea. When choosing your ur-text, we invite you to dig deep into the past and try to find inspiration as close to the source as possible. You’ll bring new insights if you do, rather than repeating conceptions of another author.
When searching for and reading an ur-text, try to stay open to the excitement of the ideas and the internal themes of the text, which may be very different than your expectation or foreign to your personal context. Be willing to follow the rabbit hole to the places that make your sixth sense tingle. If we were creating a game from Greek mythology, we might on a first (or second) read, have become excited by the idea of the Titans who predate the Gods of Olympus, deciding our game is about the ‘early’ years when the gods were still upstarts. We might look for texts that focus on that part of Greek mythology, or for references to the Titans in other nearby and older cultures. Later in our process, as we returned to the ur-text, reading about the overthrow of the Titans by Zeus and his fellow Oympians, we cast the events as a revolution, and we might decide that we need to read historical accounts of revolution.
As we work on our game, we return again and again to our ur-text searching for meaning, ideas and personal responses. In this process, ur-texts act as the source from which the other two forces flow, like a river dividing before it flows into the sea.
Inspiration
Inspiration is the ephemeral catalyst that fuels our alchemical reactions. Inspiration is a volatile and ephemeral reagent. It is the exciting idea that spurs a designer to put proverbial pen to paper, but it is also the energy that sustains the reaction over time. Ur-texts serve as a primary source of inspiration. When we are fatigued or blocked, we can return to the source of our inspiration to renew our stocks of energy and rekindle the fire within. Inspiration can be fueled by our internal purpose, secret desires for play, or dissatisfaction with the games we have played. Inspiration can be as simple as yearning to play a game that features cultures true to the South Pacific, rather than Western interpretations of them. Inspiration can be as complex as the drive to create a game that asks the players to make impossible moral choices. Even a dream can be inspiration. You may record it as a design goal. You may have a higher purpose in the world and culture, or you may have a simple focused experience goal for every human who plays your game.
When we look for inspiration in the world around us, we might identify a feeling we wish we could communicate through our work, or a situation we want to allow others to explore. We could want a game that feels like a brisk walk on a spring day. We find inspiration in our responses to an Ur-text. We may read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin and yearn for a game that tackles the loneliness of a journey, and the battles we face within ourselves. The desire to share excitement in ideas, feelings, and situations becomes the catalyst we need to unlock our game from the ur-text.
For example, if we are sparked by the loneliness of Sparrowhawk’s flight, we can return to the world of Earthsea at large. Where else do we find loneliness and internal struggle in it? What sparks these feelings? Perhaps the darkness of the Tombs of Atuan, the breadth and danger of the ocean or the unfathomable eternal mysteries and the journey into death. Our inspiration mines meaningful elements of the ur-text and begins a process of synthesis we use to refine the raw material of those texts into definitional facts about our game and our world. Thus do we feel the force of Truths.
Truths
Truths are ideas that simply must exist in the game in order for it to be faithful itself, its source or its inspiration. They are facts about the world of the ur-text that are critical to the development of your game. Many truths are self-evident. In The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, we find Dwarven adventurers, stodgy hobbits and a mysterious wizard. Later we find trolls, magic swords, a strange man named Tom, elves, goblins, a Gollum, a magic ring, giant eagles, shapeshifters, giant spiders, corrupt forests, more elves, humans, a dragon, treasure, an arkenstone and a magic arrow.
Patterns emerge as we sift through these elements. If we were designing a game based on The Hobbit, we must develop the game to support its truths—though we might choose to omit some and focus on others.
When dissecting an ur-text for truths, we identify an element of the text, like Gandalf using a magical fire to ignite pinecones. Then we ask the question: If this is true, what does it mean? If it is true, what else needs to be true? In this example, we could interpret that to mean Gandalf has cast a minor spell and therefore, he is a wizard, though of apparently small means. If he is a wizard, then spellcasters exist in this world, as do spells and magic.
Once we have that basic set of truths, we look for other truths that are dependent on them. We ask further questions: If Gandalf claims to be a gray wizard of some power, why is he so cautious and limited with his power? Or we could ask that question in a more systemic way: What are the costs and limitations of sorcery in this world?
Follow the Pattern
By following this chain of truths, questions, truths and deeper questions, we begin to establish the rules of the setting and the limits of our own game system. We will also likely encounter themes as we see truths and their associated questions and answers repeated throughout the text. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir asks the question on everyone’s mind: If the One Ring is a source of limitless power, why not use the ring to destroy their enemy, Sauron? The author, in effect, is asking the question through the character for the reader to articulate one of his central themes: Power corrupts. Textual alchemists that we are, we must investigate this critical juncture further: Are there examples of the corruption of power in Tolkien’s works? If we make lists of the characters of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, we can see that Gollum, Denethor and Saruman stand as stark examples of this theme.
Next week we conclude our Elements of Roleplaying Game Design series with a discussion of the Five Elements contained in every roleplaying game.
If you enjoyed this essay, you can listen to more of us rambling on far too long about game design on our podcast, The Hypothesis.
These elements you outlined I find to be identical to the elements I use for art and writing.