Emulation as Inspiration Strategy

 “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”

— Voltaire

We find inspiration in many forms, whether for our game endeavors or other aspects in our lives. Emulating things we admire is one step along the path we take creating something new. We often look to similar sources for inspiration on our immediate projects. How does one game handle this kind of mechanic? How does another simulate a particular situation or dynamic? I’ve encountered emulation as inspiration strategy throughout my creative life, even as a teenager newly immersed in roleplaying games...and inspired to create my own fanzine based on the industry publication, Dragon magazine, I admired. This strategy works for our developing games in both form and function. We look to other games to see what graphic and component elements we might adapt to our own designs. We also draw on our exposure to mechanics when developing our own games, whether roleplaying games, board games, or wargames. Having a familiarity with numerous game systems can help us in designing our own, offering inspiration from a wide field of experience to create a more accurate game simulation experience.

Over the years I’ve found game inspiration in many places, often emulating them to various degrees in my own creations. My exposure to TSR Dungeons & Dragons products motivated me, like many gamers, to create my own adventures with crude manila folder covers done in the style of TSR’s modules at the time. My purchase of some micro-scale tanks and my love for World War II history inspired my basic tank battles game in high school. And, of course, I’ve often mentioned my extremely amateurish and terribly awful efforts publishing a roleplaying game fanzine emulating material I admired in Dragon magazine.

When I started working at West End Games I learned a graphic design lesson finding guidance in emulation. I was hired to establish a quarterly Star Wars Adventure Journal featuring new scenarios, source material, and game-related fiction. The company hadn’t published anything in the digest-sized format before, so the graphic design for everything, from cover to interior layout, required some rethinking. Production manager Richard Hawran and I sat down one Saturday to hammer out the layout. (My foggy memory has a vague impression that the art director was ousted from the project over some internal office politics.) Rich had a small pile of similarly sized publications we reviewed to see how others had navigated challenges imposed by this smaller size, among them the then-venerable Reader’s Digest and TV Guide (yes, this was in the last century). We paged through each one to see how they worked different graphic elements into the digest-sized format. How many columns, where and what shows on headers and footers, manageable sidebar and illustration size options. I like to think we settled on a clean presentation that worked well for our game purposes.

Mechanics Unchained

While this method worked for graphic design, it’s also a valuable tool for game design. Looking at how different games handle specific processes — and having a familiarity with many rules — can serve as a resource exploring the right kinds of mechanics to use on a specific game project.

I recently had a chance to sit down and talk game design with my cousin, who was, at the time, taking a political science college course on conflict simulation. The class required student teams to develop games on current and emerging issues; her team chose cyberwarfare (a commonly explored issue in current serious games). After she outlined the core processes of their game, we discussed some options, approaches that might better simulate the subject as well as revisions to existing systems to add more player choice, tension, and uncertainty. I found myself drawing on mechanics from games I’d recently read or played that seemed relevant to this situation. The give-and-take in our discussion offered some options in how her team might further improve the gameplay relative to the simulation topic. Although the final game didn’t employ specific mechanics we’d discussed, it still benefited from drawing inspiration from a broad background of existing game systems.

Various institutions have stigmatized the practice of borrowing a concept from other sources and adapting them as one’s own. Some might frown on using a mechanic from one game in another of one’s own design, even with modifications.* Creators do this all the time. We draw upon vast volumes of personal experiences and exposure to different elements. We often synthesize these into new forms of media, including games, incorporating our own ideas and innovations. In an admittedly very simplified way it reminds me of the Star Trek Vulcan concept of IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

Over time the game industry and gamer culture has reconciled that one cannot exert ownership rights over broad game mechanics. One can copyright a presentation of a rules system in a specific game, but the generalized elements themselves remain available for creative endeavors...more so when modified to work with other mechanics presented in a wholly new game. In most cases existing mechanics inspire us to not simply transplant them into a new game but modify them to a different context and adapt them to work with other systems.

Game Mechanic Toolkit

So it’s fine to look to other games to see how they managed a particular mechanic...and to use that as inspiration, in a similar form or a revised version, in our own game design. Knowing we can draw on existing game mechanics to adapt to our own projects gives value to our experiences reading and playing numerous games. Some we bring to the table, others we read, sometimes we even evaluate rules posted online, ostensibly in determining whether a game is right for our play style, but also to file away interesting system tidbits. Game scholars even compile mechanics in volumes such as Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev (which I’ve wanted to acquire for a while, although current financial and instability concerns prevent this, but it’s still on my wishlists for that day when I might better afford this kind of comprehensive reference volume).

When discussing her cyberwarfare game with my cousin, I found myself drawing on similar gameplay concepts I’d encountered elsewhere that might apply in hers; in their original format (adapted to the new game) or modified to better integrate better with existing systems. How did other games handle escalating tension between players, or unexpected events beyond player intervention, or the ability to begin with assets in hand rather than depend on randomly drawn resources in the course of play? Various mechanics came to mind from a host of games; it’s up to designers to evaluate each one in the context of the game’s vision and evolving rules to see if they or some altered version might work.

Those who’ve read and played games for any length of time carry the memories of those rules, especially those they particularly enjoyed for various reasons: novelty, ease of learning/play, escalation of tension, expanding the depth of the decision space, among many others. Gamers have a natural tendency to read and play rules and then inevitably start considering how they might better implement a particular mechanic themselves. Sometimes we do this within the existing context of rules; other times we rip out entire systems that don’t work for us, replacing them with our favored mechanics from other games. These same resources aid us in tinkering with existing games as well as developing our own games from the ground up.

Having a stock of knowledge and familiarity of game mechanics at hand can prove a valuable resource at the spur of the moment or during more deliberate, reflective game design activities; but we shouldn’t limit ourselves simply to what we know at one point in time. In the spirit of the adage “Write what you know,” we should also strive to expand our horizons, through casual experience, deliberate research, and other endeavors exposing us to new gameplay dynamics.

The more games to which we’re exposed and the more mechanics we understand, the more resources we have to draw upon when designing games. A greater familiarity with the broad landscape of game mechanics can also provide the basis, however cursory, to know where to look to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding.

“Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.”

— General George Patton

* Yet Another West End Games Story: In my earliest years with West End Games the company’s management — including people with law degrees and experience with contracts — did not believe one could separate game rules from a specific game. They felt, having integrated the D6 dice pool system in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game and, presumably, the license to produce it, that the company could not legally use the game system (or anything close to it) in its original games (despite adapting major elements of it from an earlier licensed game West End published, the Ghostbusters roleplaying game). Were the mechanics, being in a Star Wars product, part of Star Wars and hence the property of Lucasfilm, who licensed the game rights? Instead West End developed the MasterBook system (based on mechanics from TORG and Shatterzone), a far-less elegant game engine with a greater degree of complexity suitable for hardcore grognards but not for newcomers to the hobby who might pick up a game based on their favorite film. Movie licenses shoehorned into this format proved the point, especially for less-popular properties. For instance, The World of Indiana Jones was perhaps the most popular of the MasterBook titles (relative to its general popularity in society at the time); but, unlike the Star Wars game, most players were already hardcore gamers who happened to be fans, not fans who dabbled with the game. When the company finally decided it could extricate the D6 System from Star Wars, using it to power other licensed games like Men in Black and Hercules & Xena, it was, probably, too late to keep West End from its death spiral into bankruptcy in mid-1998.