Great White Games

In the course of hanging out of the Forge (pardon me for not hyperlinking that, but I do it all the damn time, and its on the linkbar, anyway), I see a heck of a lot of game designs. And, particularly, I'm seeing a lot of two types of game designs, both of which you might expect to see a lot of on such a site. The first are games that the poor designer has been developing alone, generally scorned by their play-group, for a decade or more. The second are games developed by people who come in, see all the cool theory and activity and interesting games being done on the Forge, and go "wow, cool, I'm going to design a game, too, and it's going to involve every bit of theory I can find."

Neither of these games ever get finished. Ever. And for this reason I call them "Great White Games," after the famous Melville novel.

Why is this?

I think it is mainly that the people designing them lack the craft to bring them to completion. Completing a long creative work -- not to mention one that involves a lot of serious analysis, like a game design -- is a humongous endeavor. It is something that requires training and, most especially, practice. These designers have never written a game before, but they are invariably attempting to do something like "a generic engine for all mythology" or "a realistic system for modelling any world, but most especially my home fantasy world" or "a complicated political manifesto about nested social structures."

Half of these games are simply doomed. Their authors are trying things which are simply impossible to do in the course of a game. These folks can be likened to a rainbow chaser or a dog chasing its tail -- we might feel sorry as we watch them go round and round, accomplishing nothing, but there is really nothing that can be done.

The other half of the games, though? Lack of craft. Fundamentally, these are complicated and difficult projects, that require rules finesse, theoretical insight, and years of research. And the people trying to design them, don't have it. So they just keep moving around, writing draft after draft, trying to figure out how to make it work.

Here's a dirty little secret: We all have Great White Games. Everyone has, in their heart, the game that they want to make that will be perfect and revolutionize the world. I know I do -- two of them, one of each type -- and they are named Chorus and Tactics. Chorus is a fantasy setting like Polaris, but 800 pages long, runs under 5 systems at once, and has a cosmology that includes eight or more detailed universes. Not planes, like D&D, but universes. With different physical laws. Tactics is simply the realization of all theoretical and technique development in the context of a multi-lateral Gamist campaign-play game.

Sound awesome, don't they?

But they never will happen. At least, I don't think so. I have a theory.

What is the secret to finishing your Great White Game? Let it go. Stop working on it. Do something else

The hardest thing to do as an artist is admit that something is beyond your reach. I literally cried when I dropped Tactics development in favor of Polaris. Polaris was smaller in scope, smaller in size, smaller in rules and much less revolutionary. Polaris was just smaller: less glamorous and less perfect. And I hated it for that.

Let's think about this for a second: Tactics was beyond my reach. And I loved it for that. Polaris was in my reach. And I hated it for that. I loved the project that I couldn't do, I hated the project because I could finish it.

I want you all to take a moment to reflect on how stupid that is.

Groucho Marx was talking about anti-semetism when he said "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member," but it has much wider-ranging meaning. Things that are doable by mortals seem just smaller and less important than things that are doable by the gods that haunt our minds.

I want to borrow, for the community of game designers, some ideas that traditional craftsman have used. Most importantly is the idea of a journeyman work -- the one piece of work that proves you are capable as a professional. It is not your masterwork -- that proves you a master of the craft. And it is certainly not a life's work -- that is the greatest thing you create in your life. Rather, it is a technical piece to show your competence, training, craft and skill. And teach you a lesson about finishing something good.

Every game designer should print and sell a journeyman work before they start their masterwork. Every game designer. That means you.

At the very worst, you'll have a good game on your hands afterwards.

(The only exception to this rule that I can think of is Ron motherfucking Edwards. Again.)