The journey your player takes is crucial to the success of the game. It may be a twisty journey with side quests and diversions and possibly dead ends (I’m not a fan of dead ends myself, there are no dead ends in Monopoly after all) – but what all journeys must have is a well-defined ending.

All games are linear, that is they go in a straight line from startt to finish, even if like Monopoly you go round and round in a circle. (It may look like a square but it’s circle really.)

(Game dev Amy Claussen’s gives a great GDC talk about how all games are linear which is well worth a watch.)

It’s important to understand that all games go from A (the start) to B (the action, the middle) to C (the end).

In a previous post I talked about the importance of understanding your ending and what success means, now I want to talk about the middle.

Assuming you’ve defined the beginning and the end, what does the middle of your game look like? This is the bulk of the game where all the action takes place. (Even if your game consists of three friends chatting in a coffee shop, all the stuff that happens between the games starting and ending is the ‘action’.)

So here’s how I decide what my middle is. I take a box, an old shoe box as is happens, a cheap plastic pen and the cheapest supermarket A4 pad of paper I can get. Then I write all my ideas down of what happens during the action; the good things, the bad things, the loot, the companions, the weapons, the clues, the treasure, the monsters, the NPC’s, everything!

Then I rip the ideas out of the pad and put them in the box. And then make myself a drink before I return and pull all the ideas out of the box and start putting all these things into like piles. Weapons with weapons, perils with perils. etc

The pile I want you to focus on is the peril. The things that make your player’s life difficult – the obstacles that must be overcome in order to win.

Place all your peril in order of ascending difficulty, because every great game, novel and film has one thing in common. They all make the life of the player/protagonist/hero increasing difficult in exactly the same way a Monopoly board’s property board gets more expensive the closer you get to ‘Go’. 

Your job is to make your player’s life hell, and importantly – and this is the golden rule – your job is  to make your player’s life increasingly hell. 

You see can decide how I well I accomplished this by playing Game of Runes by clicking the link below

http://tinyurl.com/GameOfRunes

I’m thrilled to say my gamebook Game of Runes is also available as a paperback, and is on sale via Amazon!

Game of Runes is a fun and fast-paced fantasy solo adventure which is easy to play yet difficult to win. With original art, a unique combat system and the occasional terrible pun, you’ll encounter traps, monsters, magic and characters that will test your wits and courage to the limit!

Search ‘Game of Runes’ in your local Amazon online store!

Nemo’s Fury is the thrilling first gamebook, and is available exclusively from Amazon. Join the mysterious Captain Nemo on board his remarkable submarine the Nautilus and experience a wild voyage of monsters, mayhem and murder!

You can order your copy of the book with this button: