The Official Ingredient Thread

[George Austin]

Come up with either a game design constraint or requirement, or a one-word ingredient to spark creativity. Previous ingredients were chosen using the following method:

Pick up a nearby book. Turn to page 187. Count down 15 lines, count in 8 words. Pick that word or a word next to it. That's an ingredient. Everyone do this and send in the word. Contestants pick 3 words to integrate into a game.

EDIT: Here are the ingredients so far, including the recently revealed Secret Ingredient:

Secret Ingredient: "Write your game for an audience that's never played a role playing game before."

Other Ingredients:
Listed in the order they were suggested:

* "Chains" - Mel
* "Opened" - Ron
* "Second" - Buddha
* "Mesencephalon" -Stephen
* "Through" - Jeff
* "Counseling" - Elliott
* "Initiated" - Nick
* "The game must involve a randomizer that is neither dice nor cards." - Buddha
* "The game must have an explicit losing condition." - George
* "Pain " - Stephen
* "The rulebook must exist both in the game world and in objective reality." - Arpie
* "No Numbers" - Kevin
* "Seized" - Ashock
* "Bond" - Mike
* Your world, characters, or rules must be inspired by two of the following works, all of which were consulted in an attempt to generate ingredients:
Fahrenheit 451
The Princess Bride
[a neurology textbook]
Superpowers
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Flatland
The High Frontier
Designing with Type
Understanding Media
Stone Kiss
The Freemasons
H. P. Lovecraft Omnibus #2
How to Read and Understand the Financial Times
-Ron

[Arpie]

The rulebook must exist both in the game world and in objective reality.

[Ron Stanley]

Perfect for post-apocalyptic scenarios set in our world... "While looting a suburban ruin, you come across an ancient manuscript... oddly, it has your picture on the front, though the hair color is wrong on your second head. Even more bizarrely, it seems to have a description of your early adventures, though the manuscript is clearly centuries older than you are."

[Kevin Allen Jr]

No numbers.

[Ron Stanley]

That's a good one... I won't be able to use it, though.

[Ashok Desai]

I'm a bit late coming to this site, but I'm going to do this anyway. If it's too late just ignore this entry. Let's see, my book is... er... not long enough. Let me find another. Ok, here we go, the Princess Bride, and the word is... a conjunctive. That's no good either. Erk. Ok, We'll try H. P. Lovecraft Omnibus #2, and the word is: Seized.

Ash

[Ron Stanley]

You're not too late, Ash, and you can use nearby words if the word you selected is too mundane to inspire anything.

[Ashok Desai]

Thanks, but I think Seized is good enough for the purpose :)

[Ron Stanley]

I'm not proposing these as ingredients, but I noticed that most of the campaigns and games I've worked on include these elements.

1. Salvaging
2. Mental health
3. Non-fatal combat
4. Makeshift weapons
5. Low-powered (or no-powered) characters

I think this is more a comment on my personality and interests than anything else. Perhaps it's also a list of my strengths and weaknesses as a game designer.

[Mike Olson]

From How to Read and Understand the Financial Times, by Gerald Warfield:

bond

[Ron Stanley]

George’s secret ingredient seems simple, but it has a lot of implications. I’ve tried to list some of them below… there are certainly more.

You cannot use the term “hit points” because it doesn’t make any sense, and anyone who’s never played an RPG will not be familiar with it. If you use that concept at all, you have to call it something more intuitive, like Health, Life, Body Points, Power, or Aliveness Points.

You cannot use the terms RPG or role-playing game. If you feel you need to explain how your game is played in general terms, you can say something like, “This is a game where the players act out the roles of different characters.” It’s unnecessary to explain or defend role-playing games in general—you’re just trying to get people to play your game.

You cannot use any abbreviations unless you explain what they are.

If you capitalize a word that is not normally capitalized, like Love, Fate, Health, Madness, First Aid, or Turn, you must define it, because you’re obviously not using it in the same way a person outside the gaming community would use that term.

You cannot use the terms “dungeon,” “level,” “experience,” or “boss” in the senses they are used by the RPG community or computer game designers unless you define these for players. A dungeon is the bedroom of an S&M enthusiast. A level is a tool used in masonry. Experience is what you get when you take LSD. And a boss is Mr. Dithers from the Blondie comic strip.

The rules must be easy for at least two of the following people to understand:
1. Ron's mom
2. a bright nine-year-old child
3. a drunk college student

And perhaps most difficult, your game must appeal to people who don’t want to kill orcs.

[George Austin]

I'd wager that "hit points" and other such terms have crossed further into the mainstream via video games than that, but you've got the right idea. Who knows? Maybe the Hobby-Game/Adventure Game industry adopted a "Best Practice" of defining one's terms before using them in a rules context.

[Mike Olson]

Keep in mind that AD&D was a game meant for non-gamers. As was Traveller, Rolemaster, Exalted, Champions....

Plus, as George said, most of these terms have crossed over into the mainstream thanks to CRPGs.