Opacity, Transparency, and Player Incentives in Your Strategy Board Game

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Gil Hova

Do people understand what’s going on in your game? Not just the rules, but can they tell who’s winning? If they should watch out for a dangerous player? If they know exactly how their move will impact their next few turns? Join designer Gil Hova as he discusses transparency and opacity in strategy board games. We will discuss what makes a game mechanism transparent or opaque, how they work (or fail) in existing games, and how to use them to incentivize players to make interesting plays.

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Lovecraft WTF

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Julia Ellingboe, Kenneth Hite, Darren Watts & Bill White.

H. P. Lovecraft is one of the grandfathers of weird fiction and horror. His racist and anti-Semitic beliefs are no secret. They are the foundation of his fictional worlds. They are interwoven throughout his work and for many readers, impossible to separate from the genius of his writing. Can a Lovecraft-inspired game make his work more accessible? It’s okay to like problematic things. This panel will be neither an attack nor a defense of Lovecraft’s work. In a broad sense, it will be a conversation about how designers might interpret or use source material with themes or images that are problematic.

Apologies for sound quality issues.

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Explicit vs Role-Based Knowledge

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Clark Valentine, Shane Harsch and Evan Torner.

This seminar poses the question of whether it is possible to support a detailed, knowledge-rich environment for an RPG without creating a situation where the character that should know how to do something actually does not. Where is the balance between detail and role?

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Editing Rulebooks

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Joshua Yearsley.

Your rulebook is the heart of your game, so why not give it the love it deserves? In this seminar, you’ll learn ten best practices for improving the structure, style, and clarity of your rulebook. Got any burning questions about rules craft? Get answers from a professional rulebook editor.

Additional references and a copy of the presentation is available at http://joshuayearsley.com/case/ten-things-you-can-do-to-make-your-rulebook-awesome/

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Social Media Action Steps

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Beth Rimmels.

Social media is a crucial marketing step, especially for new and small businesses. Even better, it can cost you little to nothing, but can be confusing or overwhelming. This panel will explain what’s essential, where to start (and on which social media channel), free and low-cost tools that will make your life easier, and how to grow an audience organically.

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Executing a Smart Crowdfunding Campaign

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Fred Hicks, Joshua A. C. Newman & Hannah Shaffer

How do you plan your crowdfunding campaign? How done do you need to be before you open? How do you engage your community? How do you plan for all possible outcomes? Joshua A.C. Newman (Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack and Shock: Social Science Fiction), Fred Hicks (Fate Core, Designers & Dragons, and more), and Hannah Shaffer (Questlandia) share their experiences and then ditch out on their planned talk to address your questions once they realize they can’t afford shipping.

Special Kickstarter Mentions

Sig: The City Between

Headspace RPG

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The Best Practices for Information Organization in Tabletop RPGs

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Brennan Taylor, Matt Wilson, Meredith Reitman, Krista White & John Stavropolous

Tabletop RPGs serve as both a “let’s play!” and a reference document. RPGs designers and writers often attend to one of these goals at the expense of the other. Come to this panel to learn about professional theories of information organization, best practices for making the important information in your games findable and learn lessons from experienced game designers who have made information organization innovations and mistakes in their own games.

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Learn RPG Design Redux

Recorded at Gencon 2015

Presented by Jason Pitre, Caleb Stokes and Andreas Walters 

This panel, sponsored by the Indie Game Developer Network is a fresh new exploration of how to start roleplaying game design by focussing on mission statements, the important questions of game design, and other gems. Also an absurd number of references to games including, but not limited to: Inspectres, Headspace, Dog Eat Dog, Paranoia, Fiasco and Apocalypse World.

There is a reference to cards with links to a ton of resources? All of that treasure-trove is available over here.

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Women in Game Design: Building Networks and Forming Mentorships

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Emily Care-Boss, Julia Ellingboe, Shoshana Kessock, Amanda Valentine & Avonelle Wing.

The “gaming industry” has been a brutal place to be a woman this year. Join our esteemed panelists for a conversation about the need for strong support networks and finding mentors in a turbulent and sometimes hostile industry.

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Dramatic Editing : Creating the Editing Bay

Recorded at Metatopia 2014

Presented by Will Hindmarch

How does your design facilitate dramatic editing at the game table? Do you have strict mechanisms that put editing into the hands of the players or their characters through overt metaphors or in-setting magic? Or do you provide procedures and guidelines for collaborating and revising action during play? Dramatic editing at the table allows for players to propose and explore actions without them necessarily making it “on stage” or committing it to “film” and that can be a messy freedom or a beautiful drudge. Let’s look at ways to facilitate what you want to happen at the table.

Note that the sound quality is lousy in the first minute of audio, but it gets much better after that point.

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