Core Unit of Gameplay: What Are Your Players Going to Do?

So, I’ve written setting.

I’ve filled the sky with ships of airy steel and swarmed the seas with gods of every colour. Horizon to horizon, I’ve created nations and empires, each with distinct and intricate cultures. I’ve written a multitude of histories, more than the players would ever read.

And I’ve written some mechanics, as you do. Skill trees have been called into existence, modelling magic and might. Systems have been put into place to model the myriad actions the characters might take, the moneies they own and the things they make.

But then, there is a question I have to answer: What will the players do?

Or to put it in other terms: What is the core unit of gameplay?

Rambling introduction aside, the point I’m trying to make is that a live roleplay game is more than a set of mechanics and a setting (the proverbial crunch and fluff), at its beating heart is the game itself.

The easiest way to look at it is to ask what I would like my players to do in uptime. It isn’t necessarily the thing they spend the most amount of time doing directly[1], but it needs to be the thing that engages them the most. This game can be about fights against other characters in a pit, or trading with them for resources, or arguing with each other in a court of law. This game can be about going on quests to find treasure, or it can be about backroom deals, political manouvering and last minute betrayals. It can be about running away from monsters in the dark, or sitting in the tavern drinking and telling stories of your glory.

It can be about many things.

But this game cannot be about all of these things[2].

Once I’ve decided what my core unit of gameplay is, I need to write around it. I need to make that thing the heart of the game and make it as important as possible (to the characters, at least). So if my game is about a cardgame, then all conflicts need to be resolved via that very card game[3]. It may require some metaphysical finesse or some absurbly monomaniacal cultures, but that is what gives my primary gameplay the weight it needs. Characters exert their agency through that very action. There’s even a well established trope for this: Duels Decide Everything.

Ideally, whatever the primary unit of gameplay is, not only is everything is built to make that important, but it should also feel good to play. The primary unit of gameplay is the centrepiece of the game and needs to be fun. If the game is about rap battles, I would want to create a space to facilitate that. My props and my crew should be focused on making that enjoyable. I would want to encourage engaging performances and drum up an audience for them wherever possible[4]. I need to not view it as an arbitary speedbump or a perfunctory lever that the player pulls. Be it pit fights, mystical rituals, or linear quests, the bones of the game need to be viscerally satisfying to engage in.

This gets a little fiddly, but I need imagine the steps required to make each action, how long each step takes and where the fun is. If this game is about doing a really big ritual, how much of the time will a player spend actually doing it? How much time will they spend writing the ritual and working out the metaphysics? How much time will they spend begging the other characters for resources to fund the ritual? How much time will they spend strategising over the protection of the ritualists? If the collection of resources or the logistical organisation of the chracters ends up taking longer than the discussion of magical theory, has one overshadowed the other?

If so, is this the gameplay desired? Does it enhance the themes of the game? Do I deem it fun?

Sometimes, it is useful to work backwards. If, for example, it has been established that the game would be set during a ball, it can be observed that most of the players would thus be engaged in gossiping and dancing.

Now, the game happen around the gossiping and the dancing. This is the case for many games set during balls. The plot is solved with a sudden duel, an assassination or a midnight seance. It is equally possible that the ball is simply the backdrop and that what follows is a fight to the death against zombies.

But the other option is to make the game about the gossiping and the dancing. This is not to say gossip now involves trading tokens or that a player earns XP for every salacious secret learnt. Those methods are crude to say the least. Gossiping, for example, is only worthwhile in a world where scandal is possible and social ruin likely. It needs a setting with sufficient sense of proprietary that there are taboos that can be violated by any given character. These social standards need to be enforceable (and not make anyone feel uncomfortable out of character) and ubiquitous.

Gossiping is often about fashion, for example, but dwelling on clothing is difficult for a short event and most are unable to change their kit last minue. However, if fashion were focused on affected mannerisms or cheap accessories, it becomes possible to much easier for it to spread within the course of a few hours or a weekend.

It may also help to think about how these things can be made more kinaesthetically pleasing to engage in. Does something feel more secretive if whispered behind fan rather than just said? Can the setting be written to encourage this?

There is far, far more that can be done to make gossiping a core part of gameplay, but more on that another time.

It is often easier to build the world around the core gameplay than the other way around. Trying to model a real culture in all its complexity can result in a mass of complex, contradictory systems that is less than satisfying to play. A game in which the plot is ultimately solved by two ritualists with superficially limitless power to rewrite the world would likely be very frustrating for all the other characters who are playing fighters and healers[5]. It can seem anticlimactic for a game if all the efforts of the playerbase are undone by a single secret deal in the shadows.

This isn’t to say rituals or secret deals or murders on the way to the toilet are inherently bad game design, or even that a single player must never be able to outwit the masses, it is that their power needs to be proportional to how important they are to my game and the core unit of gameplay. If these elements become too powerful or too interesting, they will overwhelm the game.

As such, I may have accidentally written and run a game very different to the one I had in mind. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but I may have to decide if I am content to run the game I have written or if I want to try and steer it back towards my original vision. I should not to resent my players for find that emergent gameplay more interesting. It’s not their fault. Whilst players can be predisposed to do certain sorts of play, it is important to remember that if I didn’t want them to do certain things, those things should under no circumstances be rewarding. See: Perverse Incentives.

That is to say, if I’m running a game where rap battles are the focal point, it shouldn’t be trivial for a character to magically curse an opponent with a sore throat and make them drop out. If the game is about sudden assassinations, then antidotes and armour probably shouldn’t be plentiful and they should eideally be fighting over things which are fundamentally indivisible (money can halved, but babies cannot). If the game is about trade, then ideally everything is tradeable and transferable between characters.

The point I keep repeating is that a game is what the players spend their time doing. Not every single second of being in the game needs to be rivetting, the entire weekend can culminate in a single triumphant dance off. But one can only feel so much like a dancer if all other moments are consumed by things that detract from that central experience (rather than be neutral or enchance it).

It is often impossible to judge if the core is solid from the inside, but a good rule of thumb is just asking: How long have I spent thinking about this part of the game?

[1] Ideally, if one includes the time indirectly engaged with it, either in preparation, anticipation or reaction, this gameplay should take up most of a regular character’s time.

[2] This can become rather more complex when one is dealing with very large games and what can be termed asymmetrical gameplay within them. But for most, the danger is losing focus.

But, say, I decide the game is about going on quests to defeat monsters and retrieve treasure, the fighter and the healer may be engaged in very different aspects of that setpiece, but both are still contributing.

[3] Admittedly, this may soon make my setting like Yu Gi Oh, but there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s the game I’m writing.

[4] Though it’s also worth thinking about the incentives at work here. If it’s too weighted to the audience, I may end up essentially forcing players to watch a boring rap battle for the mechanical benefits.

[5] I’m oversimplifying slightly, as it is possible that the gameplay focus could be on the big set piece fight that the happens around the ritualists rather than the ritual itself. If so, the fight needs to be dymanic and tactically complex. The game needs to be about them and their decisions to defend the ritualists more than it is about what complex arcane magic the ritualists are using to reshape the world. If the ritualists are simply reading off a script rather than writing their own, that would shift the focus of the game towards the fight. If anyone can read the script, then the ritualists are less special. It is possible for a game to be satisfying for both ritualist and defender, but it all too easy to give accidentally give one side the focus without intending to.