One of the biggest obstacles to being a new designer is not being familiar with the volumes of mechanics that have already been used in games. I’ve been fortunate to have played a ton of games and to have access to friends who have played even more so that when I’m working on a new design I can immediately jot down myriad possible approaches. Most new designers aren’t so lucky.
I’ve started working on a pattern library to help new (and not so new) designers of storytelling games. It’ll contain plenty of design patterns and mechanics from format of the game to ways to structure play and player dynamics to safety tools. These patterns will be accompanied by rich examples and considerations for when to use them.
My hope is that it’ll help new designers go from idea to playtestable design much more quickly and to help them generate different options that they might not have though of otherwise.
I’m in the early stages of getting it set up but I’ll share it here as soon as I’ve finished a complete rough draft. The first version will focus on larp and American Freeform but I hope to expand from there to tabletop games, design processes, and taking a game to market.