Like pulp? How about horror? Superheroes? Awesome. I bet that many of you who are reading my blog have had great ideas for stories or games based on a popular genre. With fiction, you probably already write using techniques to affect the pacing, mood and feel of your story to induce that air of mystery or feeling of awe. Shorter dialogue, use of fragments and punctuation can enhance the reader’s expectations for a story. Couple that with stunning visual descriptions and you have the makings of a spectacularly paced genre fiction story.

But what about games?

Writing games based on a particular genre is a bit trickier because the people playing the game have the ability to create their own mood based on the product you are creating. Unlike fiction where the environment is more controlled, a game’s environment can’t be controlled. Or can it?

The biggest challenge in creating a genre-based game is this: every piece of writing in the game needs to have a purpose, a specific function that speaks to what you (as a game designer) want the game to be all about.

Let’s look at a few, different scenarios. Say you’re designing a fantasy game. In this fantasy world of Lis, you have four races of beings, entire continents to describe, a magic system — and we haven’t gotten into the history part yet. Now, you and your staff have decided that the investigative feel for this game is loosely inspired by The Labyrinth, where the players believe the world to be one way, but as they go they realize that things aren’t always what they seem.

So now what? You have this larger-than-life setting that the players may (or may not) know about. Ideally, your players are only able to “glimpse” the truth, because as they play they find out more through discovery.

I’d like to stop here, because it’s important for me to explain what this means. By setting a feel for your game, you are designing–not dictating–how you want the product to be created, marketed and subsequently played.

Good examples of games that successfully merge setting with a genre feel for a specific goal are: 3:16 by Gregor Hutton, Orpheus by White Wolf, Low Life: a Savage Worlds Supplement by Andy Hopp, Little Fears by Jason Blair, Trail of Cthulhu by Pelgrane Press and Don’t Rest Your Head by Evil Hat Productions. The commonality with all of these games, is that the setting is infused into the game writing to contribute to or enhance its genre. In Low Life, for example, every section of the game was written with an intent and a purpose that draws both the player and the GM into the surreal world.

Let’s get back to the world of Lis for a moment. As a writer, I “could” throw a bunch of chapters with setting into the game, write some mechanics and call it a day. Yes, it would be a game — but it wouldn’t have that investigative feel to it because the setting has been separated from the players. It’s not tangible, it’s not approachable. It might be a list of dates for the players to memorize or chapters for them to read through before character creation even begins. But it’s not going to be “investigative” unless the game design is intentionally geared toward that end.

Instead of throwing up a bunch of setting chapters, you’ll often see chapters written from a character’s point-of-view like in Battlestar Galactica by Margaret Weiss Productions as a writing technique for blending setting with genre. The world of Lis might benefit from that — but what if the entire game was written from the point-of-view of the “bad” guy, trying to convince the players that everything was right with the world by picking and choosing what he relayed to them? The GM’s chapter could engage the group’s imagination, by never spelling out “what” the truth is (which is common in a lot of great mysteries). Right then and there, players might question this world they are being thrown into before they even stat up their character.

Regardless, genre does heavily impact any game’s design simply because I believe that the content has to relay that feel without overloading the reader with facts. Just like an action movie might get bogged down by a slow pace or too many characters, once you determine a game’s focus everything — from the NPCs to the artwork and the style of the writing — should contribute to that particular mood or feel.

For a gut check, I suggest giving your game to someone who doesn’t normally play games, and ask them to read it. If you’re going for a fun, fast-paced superhero game and they’re bored to tears? Chances are, you might want to consider going back to square one.