Design Notes
Game-design notes from Dyvers Hands Productions — reflections on the craft behind our games, the ones in print and the ones still taking shape.
The Power of the Prompt
(a Design Diary)
A Design Diary — on writing a question that does three jobs at once.
A while back, my friend Deanna got me thinking about exposition — about how a storytelling-game prompt can hand the players a whole world without ever sounding like a lecture. I’d been treating exposition, character, and plot as three separate jobs: three things a good prompt had to take turns doing. Her way of looking at it knocked that idea loose for me. What if one question could do all three at once? That single shift reorganized the way I write prompts, and it’s the thing I most want to pass along here.
The Power of Constraints
(a Design Diary)
“The Power of Constraints: Embrace limitations and boundaries as a source of inspiration. Appreciating the obstacles helps you see more fully how to overcome or adapt to them. Accepting constraints, they can morph into useful forms that open up new possibilities, spurring creativity.” [^1]
I’d like to discuss some design choices in my Tableau Games system that set it apart from other storytelling games you may be familiar with.
One striking difference is the presentation of the entire game’s rules on poker-sized playing cards. This idea was inspired by a periodic challenge I set for myself as a designer, in which I picked a design constraint (usually length & size) to explore my creativity.