MTV GEEK has posted part 2 of their exclusive interview with Palladium's founder and Chief Game Designer Kevin Siembieda about the rules and playtesting of the new Robotech RPG game.
Excerpt.
Geek: Can you explain the design process and what kinds of modifications and tweaks were made after playtester input?
Siembieda: When designing any game, there are hundreds of questions you and your design team have to ask yourselves. Who is your audience? What is the goal of the game (besides fun, of course)? Even price point, because that will dictate what can be put into it, and many, many other things. And that's even before you get to the nitty-gritty of game mechanics.
In the case of a license like Robotech, things get more complicated by the fact that you are translating a known world and characters millions of people love. Fans who have pre-existing expectations of about what the product should encompass. It's always tricky extrapolating one medium to another.
From the very beginning, we all agreed that Robotech RPG Tactics should be fast-paced, simple and fun. Testing new rules, variant rules, and number crunching becomes crucial. That's where having an army of playtesters becomes important, because we can send them new rules and mechanics to try out even as we are developing and fine-tuning them. Playtesters are able to help us ferret out what works best and what doesn't, very quickly.
We'd take playtester feedback (including our own experiences), brainstorm, and make adjustments. Nothing was off the table. My role involved a lot of, "Why can't a mecha do this? Shouldn't a player be able to do that? In the anime the mecha does X, Y, and Z; we need to replicate that." While I'm not a wargamer, I understand game design and game theory, and I sure as heck know Robotech and what fans want to see.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE MTV GEEK ARTICLE WITH KEVIN SIEMBIEDA
No comments:
Post a Comment