I am a believer that there is no such thing as a bad game. There are games that I will never play and I think are not that well designed. Despite that I see it on target shelves so obviously people are buying it. In the end, your game could still suck to the point where only people who “get the idea” will play it.

Usually when a game sucks it usually doesn’t mean the game has to be shelved. Unlike another post, 5 Reasons Your Tabletop Game Fails, I’ll be focusing specifically on tabletop, role-playing games and the common things designers forget about.

Player Onboarding

This is something that even I did not think about when designing my game Corrupted Frontier. Onboarding doesn’t mean your book is being ordered in a particular way, your rules being clear, or anything like that.

A lot of tabletop RPG‘s tend to be dense books loaded with information. More than that you’re not just onboarding a player, you’re also onboarding a game master.

Onboarding new readers is never something that initially crosses your mind as you were too busy trying to make sure the game is playable in a rule sense. This is why if you’re in early development this should be something you delay until you start playtesting it with people outside of the people you know.

For more information on overall onboarding I recommend checking out The Importance of the New Player Experience on Game Developer. The article focuses on onboarding in video games but the concepts translate over.

You Need a Hook

Something you may notice in some tabletop role-playing games is the open up before any rules usually giving you some kind of but almost seems like a session transcript. This is usually about a page showing a group of players in character doing something sometimes with rules/rolls being referenced.

This is not just some padded flavor/sizzle text for the designer to show off their game’s OCs. This shows off the theme, tone, and expectations.  

Potential players don’t have to read through pages of rules to see if this is something they may enjoy. The story bits let imaginations run, which then engages readers.

For your game, there’s only two necessary moments when you need to add a story. The first thing the reader sees after looking at your game and another right before your combat section. These are two moments you want your reader to visualize before they fully understand the rules. You need to give them a reason to continue reading. As an indie designer, you’re not just crafting rules. You have to be a writer as well.

Without adding these hooks your game would need excellent art to do the same thing. So unless you’re an artist, writing 500 words is a lot cheaper.

You Need a World

This is something I have gone back-and-forth with myself a lot in my time designing. My current project leans on the world heavily while my first ever project I made it a design goal to add zero world lore.

For any of you who have played Dungeons & Dragons you know that most games played do not take place in the Forgotten Realms. Unless the game master is usually a module book, they usually craft their own custom world. 

I should know because I am a forever GM who owns module books, yet I only run homebrew campaigns. If that’s the case, why am I saying you need a world?

The big one gives game masters a place to start from. Using Dungeons & Dragons as an example, Game Masters do make up their own world, but stuff like druids or magic they tend to use the core books explanation. 

More than that, if someone has never been a game master you are now not forcing that person to craft an entire world. There are places, points of interest, and threats that the would be game master could use. 

This is also a must if you’re not choosing a theme that most people are familiar with. Dungeons & Dragons has a medieval fantasy theme that most people are familiar with. Someone hears that they’re already thinking of knights, wizards, and dragons. If your game’s theme is sci-fi witches there’s not a lot for players or game masters to come up with without a little bit of help.

But now all I wanna see is a sci-fi witch game so if you design that, please email me.

You Need an Adventure

Those last two topics are extremely important but when you merge them together, you get one of the best onboarding tools. Having a premade adventure or more is a perfect way to elevate your game no matter what.

Similar to my point of creating a world, having a premade adventure is a great way for a game master to start playing quickly. It acts as a tutorial that coaches the game master, and players how to play the game and create expectations.

The quicker you can get people playing your game the more likely they’re going to play it again. That’s why in these premade adventures you want to highlight your core gameplay loops and mechanics.

So let’s say for that sci-fi witch game you’ve been creating your premade adventure to highlight its three core loops of role-play, investigation, and combat. So you decide your premade adventure is going to be a murder mystery which is the investigation part. The role-play comes from talking to potential suspects. Finally, you ended off with some kind of big combat encounter which highlights the spell crafting combat system.

You know you have a good pre-made adventure where both the players and game master are familiar enough with the rules that they can play again without needing to be reminded of every rule.

You Need a Toolbox

Finally, we have something I call the toolbox, which is going to basically be a rapid fire of a couple of small things that you should add. 

• Character Sheet: The hardest thing in the most frustrating for me has always been character sheets. You don’t need a beautiful character sheet. You just need something for players to build their characters on. Without one it’s still possible to play your game, but just makes things a lot harder and less accessible for players.

• Reference Sheets: These are probably the easiest thing you can design. You can make some combat rules and conditions cheat sheets. By creating a few simple sheets, players can easily look at them as guides making a great quality of life addition to your game.

• Premade Characters: We talked about premade adventures, but premade characters are also great. While a lot of people‘s fun comes from making their own characters, giving them the option to make a premade, helps them get in game and play. 

• Maps: Now the last thing I would recommend is maps. I can tell you now I tried to make maps and they were bad. Inkarnate has a great tool for making maps. However, if you are skilled with art or at least know enough to make some simple maps this is a great tool. 

Does it make a Difference

Like mentioned at the very beginning I only recommend adding this stuff when you start sharing it with people. All of these things are tools to get potential people playing.

If you were making a tabletop RPG for just you and your friends, a lot of the still stuff is not required. But if this is something you want to share or even attempt to sell, these things are extremely important. 

New player onboarding will be the thing that everyone will unconsciously recognize. And if you wanna see a post on how to craft any of these on boarding tools, let me know by leaving a comment and a like. Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter, so you never miss out on another tabletop guide.