Hey TRPG designers, do you use gameplay loops as part of your design work? I’ve had a lot of free time this week so I took a stab at building one for the Gamma World project I’ve been tinkering with for a while. pic.twitter.com/VvDQa9P6SJ
— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 29, 2018
A good summary of the concept here: https://t.co/6wmD3Nufcz
— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 29, 2018
I’ve seen them used primarily in mobile games, especially as part of building out monetization, but I found that for GW it was a useful exercise to find points to make the game something other than postapocalyptic D&D.
— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 29, 2018
It pushed me to consider a few things through a different design lens. For instance, I think GW wants to be a LOT more variable than D&D – wildly unpredictable difficulty, and rewards that are equally unhinged from any sort of expected loot progression.
— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 29, 2018
To put it another way – there’s no attempt to scale things to the characters. But that also goes for rewards, in that a low-level character might find powered armor and a laser rifle.
— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 29, 2018
Where in this loop are the snacks? The snacks are the paper on which the loop rests, so pervasive as to be invisible.
— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 29, 2018
Can’t mention Gamma World without getting me hyped! Do you plan on running it with 5e, or something entirely different? I’ve used the 5e rules as a foundation
— Mike Mearls, but Spooky (@mikemearls) September 29, 2018