A Dozen-ish Questions for Designing Your Game: In Practice

A month ago or so I wrote this post about some questions I like to ask myself throughout the design process. One of my big mantras from doing Dice Exploder this long has been “specific examples! More specific examples!” So I thought I’d come back and show these questions in action on my most recent design (check out Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter!) Let’s get right to it. If your game has scenes, who frames them and who cuts them? How are they framed and cut? Band-Aids & Bullet Holes is extremely scene-based. You go around the table taking turns, and on your turn you frame a scene. You do that by answering these questions: Which character do you want to play? What do they want? Who do they want it from? Someone picks up the “who you want it from” character, and then you roleplay it out. Everyone else becomes “the City,” a de facto Greek chorus. It’s then formally the City’s job to cut the scene, but in practice the scene ends when the main character either gets what they want…