The Gaming Den

Most threads discuss the flaws in a game designer's designs.

So, who is one that you think is good at his job?

I've always liked Champions, so I'll vote for George MacDonald.

Steve Long also did mostly good things in his tenure as Champions.

Jon Tweet has put out a bunch of awesome.

James Earnest's microgames for Cheapass were largely gems, as was some of his earlier stuff.

James Wallis gave us both Baron Munchausen and Once Upon A Time, so he belongs here; even if his obsession with killing Mister Cavern is a bit weird at times.

Robin D. Laws gave us Feng Shui and a bunch of useful insights about the actual at-the-table experience for other games. I think his patter is stronger than his design, but he's still pretty good.

At the moment, my Puzzle Strike obsession has made me a fan of Dave Sirlin - although most of what he does seems to be less "design" and more "synthesis and internet monkey management" - which is a rarer talent.

Mike Pondsmith wrote Teenagers From Outer Space, which mitigates his trying to use the R. Talsorian system for other things.

Tom Dowd, Jordan Weisman et al. should be elected Gods for their creation of Shadowrun. Even though the first edition was as deeply flawed as all the others, it's still my favorite game.

Lead designers for SR1 was Charrette & Hume. Who did a pile of other games, mostly for FGU. SR was the least flawed of the games they did. Aftermath, Bushido were theirs also, and were not as successful. Aftermath had a combat system that required a flowchart and Bushido combined the worst aspects of D&D and RQ.

I'd offer Sandy Peterson, who did Call of Cthulhu for Chaosium. Then he heard the call of the Dark Side and joined id Software as a level designer. A good choice, his bonus check for Doom paid off his new house.

Last I heard he was a professor at Southern Methodist University teaching video game design.

Josh_Kablack wrote:James Wallis gave us both Baron Munchausen and Once Upon A Time, so he belongs here; even if his obsession with killing Mister Cavern is a bit weird at times.

It's Fucking James Fucking Wallis, Fuck. And he sank your fucking barge.

Pretty sure I have never owned a barge, please elaborate?

My contention is that, to my knowledge, James Wallis has produced two good games and one truly bizaire slideshow rant. I further contend that those games are enough for me to consider him a decent designer, even if the rant is weird enough that it makes me want to avoid interacting with him.

kzt wrote:I'd offer Sandy Peterson, who did Call of Cthulhu for Chaosium.

I don't think the rules for Call of Cthulhu are particularly great, even though the campaign material is. Likewise for Ringworld and Stormbringer, two other Chaosium games.

Straying away from RPGs:
- Richard Garfield designed (among other games) Magic, RoboRally, Netrunner and Jyhad. That is pretty damn solid, even if all of his games I never played are rubbish, which I doubt.
- In the same vein John Wick designed Legend of the Five Rings (the CCG), which is one of the best examples of a simple yet deep game I have ever seen. Don't ever let the man design the rules for a RPG though.
- Whoever was responsible for the gameplay in Kingdom Hearts 2 (presumably Tetsuya Nomura, at least partially) is a genius. The story is mediocre, the graphics adequate, the game is way too easy for anyone serious about console games but the actual gameplay is smooth, fast, never frustrating and always rewarding. I wish they'd use something similar in other action games.

hogarth wrote:

kzt wrote:I'd offer Sandy Peterson, who did Call of Cthulhu for Chaosium.

I don't think the rules for Call of Cthulhu are particularly great, even though the campaign material is. Likewise for Ringworld and Stormbringer, two other Chaosium games.

Well yeah, he used a simplified RQ, which was the Chaosium house mechanics. The SAN statistic was fairly clever. And one thing about playing CoC (Like Paranoia) is that most games didn't have to worry about long-term character development.

Despite his limits, I still like Monte Cook. His mechanics may not always be the best, but he seems to be the only DnD designer who ever realized why something he did was a mistake.

I liked him even more after he basically told the 5e design team to suck a barrel of cocks.

K wrote:Despite his limits, I still like Monte Cook. His mechanics may not always be the best, but he seems to be the only DnD designer who ever realized why something he did was a mistake.

Is that before or after he put out Arcana Unearthed/Evolved (which was an uninspired rehash of 3E, but with more dog-men and lion-men)?

Don't get me wrong -- I think the team that came up with 3E did an impressive job. But trying to sort out each individual designer's contributions is like picking fly shit out of pepper.

Murtak wrote: - In the same vein John Wick designed Legend of the Five Rings (the CCG), which is one of the best examples of a simple yet deep game I have ever seen. Don't ever let the man design the rules for a RPG though.

Wick was the story guy for L5R, not a rules guy.

Arcana Unearthed had a number of revolutionary ideas. The only problem is that it tried too hard to be compatible with 3e and not cover any ground already done by 3e.

That's pretty much a formula for bad concepts and convoluted rules. He would have done a lot better if he'd just used Rogues and Fighters and not weird concept stuff like those Akashic guys.

His limits as a designer seem to be "needs a good editor to tell him when he went off the deep end" and "needs a good editor to give him permission to fix rules."

Josh_Kablack wrote:Pretty sure I have never owned a barge, please elaborate?

Huh. Thought pretty much every gamer knew about Critical Miss. Perhaps I just dated myself here.

It's a pretty funny story, though - you can read it here:

http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/jame ... ined1.html

and James' response:

http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/jame ... lies1.html

Referring to pretty much any boat as a Fucking Barge was a minor meme back then in my gaming circles. Maybe it was just us. *shrug*

Edwin Lowe probably belongs here. Although he didn't really design either of them, he's pretty much the only individual of the 20th century to have more than one long-term successful mass market game to his credit.

He gets bonus points for hiring a real mathematician.

K wrote:Arcana Unearthed had a number of revolutionary ideas.

It had exactly the same ratio of good/bad/meh ideas that every 3E/3.5E book had.

hogarth wrote:

K wrote:Arcana Unearthed had a number of revolutionary ideas.

It had exactly the same ratio of good/bad/meh ideas that every 3E/3.5E book had.

Not true, or do you seriously say that AE is on the same level of suck as Complete Warrior, or Cityscape? Especially compared to all the other 3rd party d20 releases, I think AE gets off lightly.

Antariuk wrote:

hogarth wrote:

K wrote:Arcana Unearthed had a number of revolutionary ideas.

It had exactly the same ratio of good/bad/meh ideas that every 3E/3.5E book had.

Not true, or do you seriously say that AE is on the same level of suck as Complete Warrior, or Cityscape? Especially compared to all the other 3rd party d20 releases, I think AE gets off lightly.

I am seriously saying that AE has the same proportion of good ideas and bad ideas that Complete Warrior does. I can't comment on Cityscape.

Revolutionary ideas are necessarily just good or bad. It's something novel or innovative.

Complete Warrior... does not innovate. It shits upon Sword and Fist with prestige classes redone badly and makes canon a new rule interpretation which hampers warriors. Cityscape also does not innovate. It is mostly fluff and what isn't fluff is bad crunch. City damage. Jesus.

AE does do innovative things. The spell system is a new approach while remaining somewhat familiar. The witch classes (with oodles of customizable powers) and racial classes (with playable tiny/large characters as core) aren't completely novel but they are executed in a much more viable fashion than previous implementations. Akashic was innovative, but I can't say I liked it.

erik wrote:Revolutionary ideas are necessarily just good or bad.

Right. That's why I judge a good designer as a designer who makes good stuff.

And notice that K only stated that AE had a few revolutionary ideas, not good or bad?

virgil wrote:And notice that K only stated that AE had a few revolutionary ideas, not good or bad?

And notice that the thread is about naming a designer "that you think is good at his job", not revolutionary?

If we're not limiting ourselves to RPGs, I propose Richard Garfield.