PORTFOLIO OF CHRISTOPHER DUFFY AUSTIN
Skrap Packs Tabletop Role Playing Game Case Study
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Developed Tabletop Roleplaying Game where players get items in the form of cards, and must make a case how they can use those items to solve different problems.
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Testing revealed players needed incentive to grow attached to their items while also learn to experiment with new ones.
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Introduced new rules that rewarded crafting fragile tools and using items recklessly for a bonus, along with a character title system that encouraged creative narratives about relationships to items
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Currently have over 500 downloads of print-and-play version, and investigating physical release.
Like with UX design, the goal of game design is to create an emotional experience specific to the product's theme.
For the past decade or so, I've been designing tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs) for fun, always trying to find ways to provide narrative experiences to players they aren't able to find elsewhere.
When I recently was confronted with the possibility of a career change, a couple of software developer friends told me that my skills in game design would be an excellent fit for user experience design. In my studies and experiences designing products, I've realized they were correct. I thought it would be a neat exercise to go over how game design skills cross over into user experience design, and how knowledge of both makes me stronger in the field.
UX design should create an enjoyable experience so that the user is satisfied in every step of achieving their goals.
Games & UX Design?
Every experience -- from using an app to ordering food, to checking out a funny video on YouTube -- has an emotional component to it that can be influenced by the design of the users' path and the design of the interface.
Below, I detail my process for creating my TTRPG Skrap Packs, and how it changed through market research and user feedback into its current form, as well as details of the next steps.
Market Research
Whenever I find a new emotional experience I want to give players, I first look around to see if there's already something that fills that specific niche. My first foray, in fact, came from wanting to play a TTRPG that gave the same experience as the film Pacific Rim.
When I can't find something that offers my desired emotional experience, I study the market to see what games already come close.
The whole field is rich with creative designs, but I'll use some classics to help explain how game design can help facilitate emotional experiences.
In a fantasy game, you want to feel empowered; swinging swords or casting spells, breaking the laws of physics to accomplish legendary feats! Game systems like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) are built around giving players options that cater to different play styles based on character class:
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Fighters can take multiple actions to take on hordes of enemies like action stars.
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Sorcerers cast from a library of spells that offer unique effects.
Class rules are like puzzle boxes with pieces that click into place through specific play styles.
Call of Cthulhu (CC), is an eldritch horror game based on the writings of HP Lovecraft that casts players as investigators in the real world during a specific historical time period, investigating alien or mystical threats.
CC has players choose from a suite of skills rather than choose a character class, reflecting their background:
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A journalist has skills for history, charm, psychology, or antiquity.
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A police detective has skills in firearms, intimidation, and understanding the law.
Instead empowering players with abilities like in D&D, skills in CC provide bonuses to performing the actions the skills contribute to. Rather than being an empowering mechanic, they are a supportive mechanic:
If the journalist and police detective are in a fight, they can't use magic or martial prowess. But the police detective's firearms skill lets them use a gun competently.
In both games, players roll dice and apply modifiers to the result to hit a target value. The players in D&D don't know the target value, but have a lot of bonuses and abilities to reach it. Players in CC know the target value up-front, but with almost no bonuses or abilities to reach it.
The CC player will always have this knowledge of how close they are to success, so every dice roll is a harrowing experience.
D&D is about empowerment and adventure
CC is about disempowerment and survival.
Both of these games have good UX because they are able to play into a particular fantasy of the player.
The rules are designed to put them into a specific headspace and rewards them for playing to the desired emotional experience.
And what is UX design but rules for how a user engages with a system?
Applying These Principles
Skrap Packs, is a TTRPG built around capturing the emotional experience of creatively using items to solve problems.
I got the idea from times in other RPGs where players would find a unintended use for items, often to the surprise of the game master (GM), who arbitrates the narrative.
For example: in D&D, a group of players in a game I was playing managed to turn an antagonist into a rat by tricking them into reading a magic scroll during a scene where they were making a proclamation.
I took ideas from a variety of horror movies, which often have characters improvising weapons or solutions to various problems, often tying into some skillset or prop that was identified early in the story (see Evil Dead's gearing-up scenes).
The game is run by a GM, similar to D&D and CC, but using a deck of cards that represent items found in the setting. The narrative is created on-the-fly based on the cards drawn, inspiring the things that the players encounter and the rewards they get for solving problems or searching the area.
I often pitch the game to people as being about "convincing the game master you can use any item to solve any problem." This is incentivized by:
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Rewarding players for noticing things about items in the game.
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Rewarding players for making a compelling argument about how they want to use the item.
For #1, there needed to be clear information about each item. Most RPGs are theater-of-the-mind, relying on players collectively agreeing on the logic of the world. This is great for narrative, but difficult for solid mechancis.
At first, I had players all make their own cards to collectively create the setting. The items only had names that the players would use to determine their use.
These cards were shuffled by the GM and used to generate the narrative, later given to the players for solving problems and exploring.
Some of the first cards designed for the game. Once I realized players making their own cards wasn't feasible, I set about making unique items I thought could appear in a horror setting.
For #2, I created a list of criteria for how players could use their items; each criteria they met would give them a +1 bonus to the move. This is the "wielding bonus," effectively rewarding them more for giving a more robust description. This list is referred to as the "wielding bonus" The criteria are:
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Are you using tool(s) for this task? (+1 for this criteria regardless of the number of items the current character is using for this action)
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Are you using the right tool(s), or tools that are particularly effective for this task?
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Are the tool(s) used to perform this task overkill (is this a particularly mean or effective use of this item, especially against this target)?
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Are you performing this action against an unsuspecting target (do they see this attack coming or even know that the player character is there)?
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Are allies sacrificing their turn to help perform this action? (+1 for each ally and +1 for the item they provide)
For every "yes" answer, the player gets a +1 to the action they want to perform, so they're encouraged to push themselves to be creative in their descriptions.
They add this value to a dice roll, and if the value meets the target that the GM determines, they are successful.
A user flow for how someone might perform an action in Skrap Packs.
Testing
I carried over a lot of my game design skills into UX design, specifically user testing at conventions.
Testing Skrap Packs showed me I was on right path for the desired emotional experience. Players lit up when they searched the environment and pulling a random card that could be anything from a double-barreled shotgun to a full watermelon.
They also liked the need to explain the how they used different items, and how they encouraged them to elaborate on the context the item is used in.
The playtests also revealed a suite of new issues:
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Players combined items to make new ones, a creative use of them, but there was no incentive to craft items outside of the novelty or new context (an attack with a bat covered in nails made it "overkill").
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When they did make something useful (ex: a character built a sci-fi weapon using a unique item card), There was no incentive to seek out new items.
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Some players were scooping up items with abandon, even if they weren't using them, creating overwhelming options and bloat.
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Players felt no attachment to their characters. There was little to work with outside of the items they carried and the scenario they were created for.
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Artifact cards were unique and meant to drive the plot forward, but players wouldn't use them over mundane items.
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Players weren't feeling rewarded for creating unique moments that got a laugh out of the group or when they did something particularly clever.
These issues could be surmised in a problem statement:
Players need mechanics to encourage them to be invested in the items they carry because they aren't being incentivized to experiment.
This can be broken down even further into some How-Might-We's that we can address individually to solve the larger problem:
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How might we encourage players to switch up what items they use?
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How might we encourage players to combine items into new ones?
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How might we make players consider what items they acquire, use, and when they do so?
Testing & Validation
This was all done in my free time over the course of about two years. Some solutions came from ideas from players or through observations.
Here are some of the changes that were implemented to address the above findings:
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I added a new rule to the Wielding Bonus: +1 to using any crafted items, making them inherently more useful than a non-crafted item.
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Crafted items also had limited uses.
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Encouraged players to named their crafted tools to get them invested.
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Another Wielding Bonus rule: +1 to using any artifact items.
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More mechanical benefits to some artifacts. Ex: a gun that would reduce the attack power of things it shot.
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The Evil Monocle artifact, which allows the wearer to know what facedown cards are without flipping them over.
The Wanting Eye, an artifact card that lowers the user's maximum hit points to make it easier to find useful items.
Bottomless Goblet card, detailing how anything put in it will turn the goblet into an infinite font of that substance.
The Evil Monocle artifact, which allows the wearer to know what facedown cards are without flipping them over.
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"Titles" Mechanic: Players would come up with a short description at character creation ("The Jock," "The Nerd," "The Mechanic," etc.). Players can reroll dice on failed rolls if they are able to make a case their title makes them proficient at the given task.
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For example: A character with the title "Failed Businessman" can reroll trying to stab an enemy with a pen by explaining that a "Failed Businessman" would be skilled at using a pen as a weapon because one of their deals in the past went bad, and they had to fight their way out of a mobster's limo with a pen he had on him.
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Add to the Wielding Bonus: Do you want to exhaust an additional usage of this item? If they used their item with reckless abandon they'd gain an additional +1 with a chance they could lose that item.
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The temptation of a numerical bonus encouraged players to be reckless, and lose items as a result.
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I created a limited inventory system: A player could only have access to 3 items on-hand at a time, with the rest off to the side in a pack that could only hold 4 items (that could be expanded).
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This mechanic forced players to consider what items they put priority on, even combining them to make room.
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I introduced the gumption mechanic: similar to character inspiration from other TTRPGs like D&D, the game master can reward players who create unique and memorable moments with an in-game currency that can be spent for a bonus.
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This offered a mechanical incentive to players for engaging with the system on a narrative level, such as making jokes tied to game events, or coming up with a creative name for their newly-crafted items.
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The inventory tracker from the current character sheet.
Reception
These changes were positively received, and the lack of actionable feedback for more changes led me to move into publication. I started with a print-and-play format (Over 500 downloads in the first month), with a demo version available through Tabletop Simulator.
I've been encouraged by users to look into creating a game master's guide as well. This will be released on the Itch.io page when it's completed, and be available as a free supplement.
Skrap Packs played in Tabletop Simulator.
The print-and-play format can be very intimidating for those looking for a quick and easy game to play (Skrap Packs' target audience), so I'm also looking into a physical boxed version in the future.
Based on feedback I've received from outlets, another card-based TTRPG, Fiasco, has been proposed as an example to follow in terms of packaging.
Fiasco, a card-based TTRPG from Bully Pulpit Games
Epilogue
Emotional experience design in UX can have a lot of impact on the buy-in for a product, which is why research and experimentation into how to best grab a user's attention can have a big impact on adoption.
I'm working on several games, each with their own theme and ways the mechanics cater towards the emotional experience associated with it. One such game is Alter Arms, a game based around transforming super heroes ala' Power Rangers and Sailor Moon. You can read an early case study on my process with that game here.
You can also read about my work on service design with my HealthTech Hang Case Study, and how I redesign my local gaming store's website here.