Game Designer's Journal, Episode 32: You Cant Always Get What You Want

We’re at the end here. I’m finishing up the editing/re-writing, my wife’s scanning in all the art/designing the logo for our company (Wicked Press), and Rich will be writing a check on Friday for the books.

We’re all set. Our printer assures us the books can be turned around in 15 working days. If I really pushed, I could have promo copies for Origins. We’ll have to see about that.

But this week’s column isn’t about what I’m doing, it’s more about what I don’t get to do. I’ve addressed this briefly in the Forums, but I’d like to talk about it in full here.

A few days after Orkworld hits the streets, somebody will feel the urge to write a review. He’ll post that review on the internet, and he’ll say something along the lines of, “It’s just not what I wanted,” or “It could have been so much more.”

People who write that kind of crap have never tried writing a roleplaying game. How do I know that? Because I’ve written four of them, and I can tell you from personal experience that it’s never what you want it to be, it’s never what you want, and it could always be much more than it is.

Orkworld is no exception.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still very proud of the work I’ve done, but it just isn’t what I wanted it to be. And every time I think those words, I pop in Mick, Keith and the Stones and they remind me how screwed up that kind of thinking is.

John Lennon once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that he hated recording songs, because they never sounded as good as they way they sounded in his head. You can find dozens of anecdotes about authors who say the very same thing. Harlan Ellison talks about the frustration of making the written word soar and sing the way movies can. He’s sure there’s a way to do it, but he just hasn’t found it yet.

Game design is no different. Now, if you go to Gen-Con and ask game designers if they’re happy with their product, they’ll give you an unequivocal “YES!!!” Of course, that’s because they want you to buy their product. If they even hint they’re unhappy with every last aspect of the game, that puts doubt in your head, and that means you’ll go to the next booth and spend your money there But I’ll be honest with you. Orkworld isn’t everything I wanted it to be.

(This is the part where you say, “Well then, give it a few more months!”)

That’d be nice. Unfortunately, there’s a few problems with that philosophy. See, every day that goes by, I think of something new to put into the book. Just last weekend, I was reading Hero Wars (do I have to compete with this for Best RPG next year? Sheesh.) and came across a line that mentioned the “Lunar Empire.” That single phrase triggered something in my head. Orkworld has a “Solar Empire.” Glorantha has a Lunar Empire. Solar. Lunar. Solar. Lunar.

Then, it hit me.

What if the Solar Empire used to be a Lunar Empire? What if there are two pantheons of dueling gods, each trying to win man’s devotion. One of those pantheons currently has the upper hand – the Solar Gods – which means the Lunar Gods are shunted into underground cults.

Yeah. That could be very cool.

That also allows me the opportunity to make innate rivalries between the pantheons. They have matching deities – a God of Love, a God of Wisdom, a God of War, etc. – and each pantheon represents a counterpoint. For example, the Solar God of Love, we’ll call him Soré, represents Platonic, non-sexual love. On the other hand, his twin sister, we’ll call her Shana, represents passion and lust. The Solar God of War – Tor – is all about strategy and tactics. The Lunar God of War – Bal – represents bloodlust and carnage.

You get the picture? Pretty cool idea, eh?

Well the problem with this pretty cool idea is that I already have the Monsters chapter wrapped up. It’s laid out and ready to go. If I change anything in the book, it puts me behind schedule, which means I endanger my Gen-Con release. I really can’t afford to do that, because Gen-Con is my big chance to make some money back on this book.

(And make no mistake. I may be in this for the art, but my wife is in it for the money. That’s why we work so well together. Otherwise, we just wouldn’t eat.)

See, if I sell 300 copies of Orkworld at Gen-Con, that makes me (300 x 25) $7500. I’d have to sell 750 books through the distributors (750 x 10) to do that. Half the sales for twice the profit. In other words, selling 300 copies at Gen-Con would almost cover the cost of printing the book. I’d make nearly all the money back we spent on the printing costs alone. Not a bad deal.

(By the way, if anyone out there happens to have any kind of numbers on what they sell at Gen-Con, I’d be very grateful. Gotta plan a spending schedule, after all!)

Another reason not to put off printing Orkworld is a bit of a difficult one to explain to someone who’s never done one of these things from start to finish. Right about now, just when the book is damn close to the finish& you start to hate it.

I’ve had talks about this phenomenon with other folks in the RPG and computer game industries. They agree. There comes a point when you just wish the damn book was done. Finished. Over with. And the longer you have to work on the book, the greater your hatred grows. The greater your hatred grows, the more you resent writing it, and the more you resent writing it, the worse your writing gets.

I hit that point about a month ago. I’m sick to death of writing Orkworld. I want to write anything else. Which is why I was so glad about getting to re-design Warhamster – despite Mr. Jax’s rude, irrational and unending barrage of letters. It gives me a chance to get away from Orkworld for a moment or two, get some perspective, then get back on the reindeer and ride just a little bit closer to the end of the trail.

And, when I get there, I’ll look back and see what I did. I wrote over one hundred thousand words for this book. I threw away nearly half of them and re-wrote the other half before writing fifty thousand more.

(You guys never get to see the stuff that gets thrown out. If you think the only writing that gets done for a book is on the page, you really don’t know anything about writing.)

(“The secret of writing is re-writing.” Someone famous said that. I forget. Although I’m certain someone out there can remind me.)

The things I would have liked to see in Orkworld?

A bigger GM section.

A bigger world section.

A mass combat rules set.

A “strategic level” rules set (those who have played “Strategic L5R” know the language I’m talkin’.)

More culture.

More religion.

More mythology.

More fiction.

Recipes.

Of course, I have a web page. All of it can go there. And every day, I have a new thought about orks. Every damn day.

(I just figured out the ork digestive system can handle dirt. Actually, someone else figured that out for me. Thanks Rob!)

(And exactly how do orks handle madness? I know. I didn’t yesterday, but I do today. In fact, I could write a thousand words or more on it.)

When a reviewer says, “This book could have more”, the truly frustrating fact of the matter is& they’re right. Unfortunately, most reviewers don’t even have a single iota of a clue about the creative process, printing process, and publishing process in order to understand why. They just have a complaint. Complaints without understanding are annoying. People who make critical observations coupled with an understanding of this whole process are useful.

Just ask Jennifer Brandes and Chris Hepler. They read Orkworld. They gave it back to me with ten thousand pounds of red marks. It looked like my book had gone through a shredder, oozing blood from every page. I asked them if they liked it. They said, “Yeah. It’s a good game.” I asked them what the problem was. They said, “It ain’t the best &%$#in’ game in the history of man. That’s the problem.” In other words, “You can do better.”

And you know what made all that criticism worthwhile?

They showed me how to make it better. They knew how to make it better.

See, their chief complaint was the book didn’t tell you how to use the orks. I mean, take a look at them. They don’t have any reason to go out and do anything. A thraka’s job is to protect the dowmga. So what does he do? He sits at home and makes sure nothing happens to her.

Not very exciting.

It knocked me to the floor. In all the games I’ve designed, I made sure players had impetus. I made sure they all had something to do. I made sure they had a reason to be an adventuring party.

I was so busy designing a race, I forgot to make a game.

So we sat around all night and talked about ways to change that. We came up with a solution.

I re-wrote the GM section.

Now, it contains over one hundred adventure hooks. It gives advice on how to make stories, both short and long. In other words, nearly every page is a story seed.

The book is better now. I had to radically change my layout to make the ten thousand words fit without pulling anything else. The font size has changed, the leading has changed and the headers have changed. You’ll get to see the re-worked layout a little later. Haven’t made up my mind on everything yet.

But even with Chris and Jennifer’s input I’m still not entirely happy with the book. It isn’t the book I envisioned in my head. The Great and Grand Holy Grail of RPGs that has eluded me four times now.

Who knows? Maybe the fifth time is the charm.