When you look at how a tabletop game fails, it’s never as simple as the game is not fun. Almost any idea you have has an audience. The real killers to that game idea you have can be subtle and won’t emerge until it feels like it’s too late.

I’ll be lying if I said I haven’t made almost every mistake on this list. I blame number four for why my first project was taken to a farm upstate. Understanding why games fail allows you to better look at your project and correct or even prevent a lot of these issues from happening.

1. Adding Bloat

I want to make a Tabletop RPG game with crafting, permanent injury, deck builder style skills, family tree based stats, with a system where you need to calculate calorie intake or take damage if you are not meeting your vitamin needs. There is a lot to track here.

The surprising part is that to some of you, that may sound fun, and it could be. The game Campaign for North Africa is one of the most complicated games that takes over 1500 hours to play. That’s 60 days, but there is still an audience for it. 

The real problem I referred to as bloat. These are games that are not complex, but are just filled with disconnected rules that stray away from your game’s loop. When designing any kind of game, your rules should feed into each other. 

If you want to make a card game, it’s important to note that where you use cards to build a medieval fortress, you do not want to add rules that focus on fishing. NOT EVERY GAME NEEDS A FISHING MINI-GAME.

This is probably the most common issue, but it is the easiest to fix. A lot of the time, bloat in games is easy to get rid of. 

2. Designing a Camel

Ever heard of the saying a camel is a horse designed by a committee? It’s ridiculous to say, but this is important whether you’re a game designer, artist, or any kind of creator.

When designing games, you’ll be getting a lot of feedback from people who read it or who have played it. Any feedback is extremely important, but you need to remember that not all feedback needs to be addressed. At the end of the day, it’s your creation.

If you make changes based on everyone’s feedback, you can end up creating what I refer to as a “camel”. For anyone who’s a Parks and Rec fan, S2E9 shows the characters taking all their ideas to make a new mural, but because they’re taking ideas from everyone, it ends up being an ugly mess.

Don’t make a camel. Not everyone is going to understand your game concept. You need to look at the overall feedback to tell if something needs to be fixed or added. 

This has to be one of the hardest things to understand as a game designer. It’s going to take time for you to understand the difference, but a good way to do that is by understanding what they are talking about that adds bloat or affects the game’s loop.

3. Forgetting Game Loop

It doesn’t matter if it’s an RPG, a board game, or a card game. Game loop matters. 

Figuring out your game’s loop is integral to making a cohesive product without any bloat. Wizards of the Coast’s Magic the Gathering has a perfect game loop that allows the chaos each card can create.

Each round consists of three phases. The play phase, where you can place cards. Second is an attack/defence stage that can lead to damage. Finally, there’s another play phase where you can play any additional cards.

Every card they create is based around that loop. Without that game loop, the game will lose structure and may be more difficult to understand. The beauty of this is that at the end of the day, as long as you understand those three phases, you can play the game, no matter how familiar you are.

Pick up any tabletop or even a video game, and you can see a game loop that is followed throughout the entire playtime. Understanding your own game loop lets you hone in on those elements to make the game easier to understand for new players.

This is something so important, I plan on doing a full breakdown of how to create and understand game loops for all tabletop genres. So sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already.

4. Polishing before Finishing 

This was one of my biggest issues with my first project. I was in the middle of playtesting, and I was constantly adding new things to the game to make it feel more like a complete project.

Naturally, since I wanted to show the game off and get more people to play test, I wanted the project to look professional. I am not lying to you when I say that was the biggest mistake I made. 

I didn’t understand game formatting yet. I barely knew how to use the software at the time. I became divided between running play tests and designing so that everything that I was changing or adding was being divided into two different parts. Not to mention every change meant certain pages of my “professional“ look would have to be updated, which could throw off everything I’ve already done.

There is nothing wrong with a Google Doc during playtesting. If you want to give people an idea of what the end product may look like, make a couple of mock-ups. 

5. Avoiding Playtesting

Playtesting is one of the best and scariest parts of any game. Will they like it? Is my game even fun? All the fears you could have during your first play test.

Playtesting is the most important part of game design. This is the part where you learn what works, what’s unclear, what people want to see, and to gauge whether people are having a good time. In theory, a lot of things work. The thing you have to remember is that you know exactly what you mean. 

There have been times in playtests when I realized that I had a rule that I never actually finished, but I did in my own head. I have also had people tear my games to shreds. Despite all of that and the tearing apart, I have been able to make my games even better. Games are meant to be played.

Those who are afraid to fail, will never make anything great. – World‘s Greatest Philosopher/Genius/Ladies man A.K. Spry

Looking back on creating a camel, not all feedback will be useful. As a game designer, your job is to gather as much feedback to make your game better and repeat. Minimum or no play testing will create a product with potential, but no polish.

Snake Eyes

I wasn’t lying when I said this list comes from personal experience. Even making this list has allowed me to look back at my current project and understand some things I can do better.

Please share a comment if you’ve experienced any of these or something I didn’t list. If you want to see more posts like this, please sign up for my newsletter so you can be updated with every new post.