The Ugly First Draft of a Game

Why starting messy is the only way to make something real

While it’s been a little quiet around here lately (it’s overlapping “Tax Season,” “Con Season,” and “I-kinda-just-want-to-goof-around-until-spring-actually-shows-up” season), I’ve still been busy working through my one-month personal curriculum in TTRPG design, now with a bonus month!

My goal for the class was to create an 8-page solo ’zine with original artwork. I’m not finished yet, but I’ve reached a point where I have enough to share, both to show my process and (hopefully) to inspire you to try making something of your own.

My primary “textbook” has been Make Your Own One-Page RPG by Exeunt Press / Skeleton Code Machine. One thing I really appreciate about this design 'zine is that each chapter includes exercises that guide you through the design process. After the chapter on exploring one-page RPGs, I also found myself watching Kathryn Hymes’ talk, Developing Artifacts of Play for Your Tabletop Games.

I love games that create physical mementos (think The Sticker Game, Old Morris Cave or Exclusion Zone Botanist), and I’ve been wanting to design an artifact creation game for a while but when it came time to pick a theme, I hit a wall. Fortunately, SCM provides the Theme-O-Matic: Random Theme Generator™.

Unfortunately, my roll came up Prehistoric Steampunk.

Ok, sure, I could have absolutely rerolled this and got a theme that was less disparate, but my brain loves to find connections between things that seem like they have no relationship to one another.  I let it marinate for a couple of days looking for a link between these two themes and the “drawing” sort of game I wanted to create.  “Prehistoric” led me to the Lascaux caves. “Steampunk” made me think of the wild world of Victorian archaeology. And that’s when it clicked: What if this was a game about careless archaeology? That was something I could work with.

As I started sketching out ideas, I realized this wasn’t actually a solo game.  It was a two-player game about how time, environmental factors, and careless handling can distort messages from the past.

After some more noodling, I landed here. Welcome to the first look at:

The Unnamed Archaeology Game

(A Two-Player RPG)

You will need:

• 9 index cards

• A thick marker (like a Sharpie)

• A pencil

• At least 3 additional art supplies (colored pencils, crayons, markers, stickers, collage materials, paint, etc.) and an eraser

  
  

Start by marking the center points along the edges of each card to help align artwork. Then place all cards face down.

Player One represents someone from the past, communicating a story through images. They have limited tools: a pencil (light lines) and a marker (heavy lines). They begin by choosing (still developing drawing sample ideas) or inventing a story to tell across all 9 cards, drawing one card at a time in sequence.

However, in prehistory, resources are scarce. Player One has 9 resource points:

• Pencil use on a card costs 1 point

• Marker use on a card costs 3 points

They flip over the first card, draw part of the image, then return it face down.

Player Two is both the archaeologist and the forces of time, decay, vandalism, and the environment. They have at least three different art supplies and an eraser. They will alter the cards one at a time in a specific order determined by an Effects Table (also still to be designed).

Once per round, they also have the ability to swap the positions of two cards.  When Player Two takes this action, Player One gains +1 resource point.

Player One’s image must span multiple cards, and they may not have enough resources to draw on all of the cards. This forces them to prioritize what matters most. They can check and align cards during their turn but must return them face down in the same order they found them. Player Two, meanwhile, only sees one card at a time in a restricted sequence and modifies them accordingly.

Players take turns adding to the cards until 9 rounds have passed, with Player One progressing through the cards one at a time and in order and Player Two altering cards as the Effects Table says and potentially shuffling cards to give Player One more resources.

End of Game

After 9 rounds (one per card), all cards are revealed.

Player Two may rearrange the cards - like reconstructing pottery shards - and then interprets what they believe Player One was trying to communicate.

Messy Is Where It Begins

Now, none of this has been playtested. I don’t know if it works yet. I don’t know what the Effects Table will look like or what prompts (if any) Player One should follow. That’s kind of the point.

What I’m sharing here is the raw nugget of a game - the result of messy notes and wandering ideas. The next step is to actually play it and see what works, what doesn’t, and, most importantly, whether it’s any fun. Maybe it turns out to be too confusing for Player One if the cards are shuffled during play. Maybe the card swapping needs to happen at the end of the game. Maybe that mechanic can only be used once. Maybe nine resource points aren't enough. Maybe they are too many. Maybe I don't need resource points at all. There's no way to know the answers unless I give it a try.

No game starts as a polished product. I’m sharing this to show my own flawed, messy process and hopefully to give some encouragement to other beginning designers. If you’ve been sitting on your own idea because it’s “not ready yet” take this as your sign to start anyway. It's gonna start dumb and weird and ugly, and that's OK. That's where it's supposed to start. As SCM puts it, "Make stuff because it’s fun, engaging, and because you can."

Extra Note: If you give this rough idea a try, I wanna know about it! Is there something here? Where does the game get hung up? Where does it shine? I appreciate any feedback!