Game Design vs. Setting Design

I’ve mostly been thinking of what I’m doing with Shadow Town as setting writing and world building, not as game design. But I keep receiving advise along the lines of “think about what type of game you want to make/play” and “think about what sorts of stories you want to tell through the game.”

My knee-jerk reaction is that I’m not making stories or games, I’m making blocks for other people to make stories. I’m excited to put it out there and see what people do with it.

But of course I’m doing game design. If I were making a custom level for Super Mario Brothers, I wouldn’t be inventing the game mechanics from scratch. But I would still be thinking about what elements go into making a fun level. It’s not enough to say “it would be fun to make another underwater level for Mario.” I’d need to think about what to do to make that level unique and fun. That’s game design.

Thinking about this also raises the question of why I’m even worrying about systems instead of just creating a generic setting book. The answer is that I want to make things as easy for GMs as possible by stating things out, and I’ve always planned to include a few sample campaigns and story ideas. That surfaced the realization that making things easier on GMs is a design priority for me. But so is making things as open ended as possible for players. One concern is that making things too open ended could make things a lot more work for both GMs and players, or simply lead to less fun experiences.

That brings me back to thinking about Powered by the Apocalypse, which seems to do a good job of a few key things: making things easy for GMs, while giving players lots of freedom to roam and co-create the setting. The trade-off is that there’s limited set of character types and “moves” available. Maybe that’s a design contraint that’s worth it. On the other hand, Fate games tend to do a pretty good job of allowing a lot of player freedom while keeping a lot of things simple for the GM.

All of which leads me back to the question of what types of games I want/expect people to play in the setting. Anyway, it seems like I need to zero in on my goals a bit more, and play some more games.