Behind the Scenes: Game Loops

When designing games, the systemic approach means you take things and break them down into game loops and systems. The is a huge oversimplification of a very detailed discussion, but I sat down to re-examine the game loops for Of Hearth & the Harrowing recently.

What I found were some gaps that needed filling. They were implicit actions that I had been taking as a gamemaster when running the game, but I realized that they were not called out specifically in the book.

This allowed me to go back and start looking harder at specific systems, and I realized I had not put enough of emphasis on certain areas that completed the loops.

Today, I'm showing off the outer game loop. This tackles the three phases of the game: Adventuring, Hearth, and Harrowing.

This diagram helped me put into a bit more detail what the heroes are doing in each of the phases. While almost every adventure tabletop RPG has a loop of go adventuring -> get rewards -> get stronger -> go on another adventure against harder things, I wanted to call out what role the Hearth phase and Harrowing phase have on the game.

The Hearth phase (which technically includes advancement after an adventure) is how heroes get better. They take the trade goods, loot, and survivors, and put it all to work at building the hearth (there is whole other diagram for a later post there). The better the Hearth, the better gear heroes can get. This allows them (along with making XP rolls in advancement) to take on stronger foes, go on longer expeditions, etc in the next Adventuring phase.

The Harrowing phase has both a faucet and sink in it. A faucet produces something the system needs, in this case its everyone's favorite, adventure hooks! For this reason alone, I'm tempted to up the amount of Harrowing Events that happens in the Harrowing phase.

Currently its D3. One happens at the Hearth, while this is important, it could be seen as not creating an adventure hook. While in reality it should be an immediate hook, I've often defaulted to just playing it through at the system level. It really should be deeper than that. It is an opportunity for new adventure, right inside the Hearth and should be used as such! What can I say, when I'm in playtest mode sometimes my GM skills suffer as I'm focused on the design.

Upping it to D3+1 means at least one event happens outside the hex, generating a rumor the heroes can go after. These are as interesting as the one that happens in the Hearth to me. What is the effect on the hex it happens in? Does it change it? How does the event and the hex interact? What will the heroes find if they go there? What will happen if they don't?

Finally, there is the sink, something in a system that removes things from the system. During this phase you have to make rolls to protect the Hearth. Failure here means damage or destruction to Hearth buildings, loss of trade goods or food, or even worse the injury or death of villagers.

In a later post, I'll go into more detail about some of the inner elements and systems.