My first use for this is tabletop RPGs, in my case Dungeons & Dragons when I was a dungeon master. The DM must make decisions about the state and present or create the adventure. All these questions are related to game design, so what you say helps you understand how this will affect the motivation of the players. If your partner wants to jump into the mischievous lantern in the middle, back to the bottom, and then slit his throat, it’s bad to say “you can’t do that” or “well, the giant is dead.” ". solutions. A good solution is to request one or more tests and accept some kind of bonus, such as an automatic critical success if you succeed. You want to be rewarded for this, but don't want to set a precedent for a powerful, simple and repetitive action.
But I also use my knowledge of game design to change games, which some people call cheating. Cheating is hard work: for example, some video games have cheat consoles that allow you to activate an invincible "god mode"; in most cases this is not a good idea because it can easily kill all the fun of the game. But even when you understand game design, you understand that some things can only be in the game because of it. . If some element of the game is routine, I am not ashamed to change it. I recently saw a YouTube video where someone said they didn't like the Tainted Grail board game because it takes the fun out of the normal standing stone burning game again. I haven't played Tainted Grail yet, it 's on my board games shelf , but I already know how to play it. Standing stones are very important in the game, I won't remove them, but if I changed the rules I wouldn't be upset if they lasted longer and gave players more time to explore. Tainted Grail is a $100+ board game (and more expensive in the US); If there are rules that don't make your game fun, would you like to change the rules or stop playing?
I feel the same way in some video games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey where I hate collecting wood because it wasn't part of the game for me. But there are programs like Cheat Engine or WeMod that allow me to painlessly cheat and change these elements of the game.
The routine involves changing the complexity of the complex instead of removing elements. Unless the game is PvP (and I rarely play PvP games), issues with board and video games can be a bit arbitrary. You never want to change them to make them completely pointless, but different people have fun at different difficulty levels. Video games have made great strides in game design over the past decade, which is why, for example, games with a lot of story and exploration often offer a "story mode" where complexity is minimal. . For people who play storytelling and exploration, this can be the perfect solution, and for others, play with the problem and choose one of the hardest paths. Different levels of difficulty in board games are less common; but changing the rules of a board game is easier than breaking a video game. You need to have a good understanding of game design, such as not changing a healing potion to restore it again if there is something that will make the game a little easier or if it does not make sense.
The purpose of the game is to have fun. Either because of a mistake in the game design, or because of a game design element that might be interesting to other people but not to you, the game may not be interesting. We live in a world with so many games where if something isn't fun, it's tempting to move on to the next game. But in some cases, I think it's better to change the game to make it more fun than to give up.
