Seven Deadly Sins of Game Design
Over on RPGnet there has been a great discussion on game design from a meta perspective . It started as a list of things that a prospective indie/small-press game designer should avoid if they want to write a passable game. Like most threads, the first few ideas were solid; then later ideas started to waver between sheer brilliance and rubbish. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Like many threads, it also degenerates into trash talk for a while before getting focused again. I made the comment: “And that's why a listing like this one is really good. Once you know where the lines are drawn in the sand, that's when you know where to cross them and the effects to worry about when you do cross them. A lot of inexperienced designers don’t know the traps and they don’t understand why their games are falling into them. Occasionally they'll hit upon a stroke of genius, but more often than not the resultant output will be utter crap.” So, for posterity, here’s the c...