Design Process
What’s So Good About This Places Food? was created as part of a game jam based on What’s So Cool About Outer Space by Jared Sinclair. The theme was that all games would use the same system of 2d6 + any situational bonuses – any situational debuffs. This provided an accessible base for me to make my first TTRPG as I didn’t have to focus as much on a balanced dice system and instead could focus on the theming and narrative mechanics which interested me more at the time.
As a result, I developed a unique system for creating unique food service locations that didn’t exist in other entries in the game jam. This system keeps the d6 from the main mechanics of the game but uses it with random descriptive tables to define the location, look, and special elements of the player character’s place of work.
This was a crucial part of this game for me as I wanted to create a romanticised and more enjoyable version of the food service industry for players to explore in their games. But I also wanted to allow exploration in worlds beyond our own.
This led to a complicated balance of making sure each option was distinct and interesting, while also not constraining potential stories or worlds that players may wish to create, and still fitting well with all other options.
I also had a similar challenge with the character creation system which relied on players defining their character’s look, job, tools, and two special skills. This led to each option having a paragraph of questions for the player to consider. This was intended to provide direction and act as prompts to open the player’s eyes to the possibilities for their character without limiting their creativity.
My Strengths
My strengths in creating What’s So Good About This Places Food? were the creative systems I built for the players. I’m a strong believer that TTRPGs are vehicles to help players tell their own stories rather than dictate a story to them. I focused on this when making this and wanted to enable as many possibilities as I could.
This led to some very delicate descriptive design on my part as well as using creative examples to make sure the players knew they were not limited by the real world. My personal favourite of the example stories I created is the one themed around Area 51, Men in Black, and The X-Files which has a fun blend of reality and fiction while also leaning into the tropes of conspiracy theory science fiction.
Lessons Learnt
The main lessons I learnt while making this game were about time management, graphics design, and mechanics integration. As this was a game jam I made it under a really small time frame, roughly a week, and so had to manage the scale of the project and my expectations for the end result accordingly. From this process, I learnt a lot about how much I am able to produce in a given time frame and how I am better at writing quickly than I am at graphics design. However, as this was my first attempt at graphics design beyond Microsoft Word I think I did a good job making sure the game is readable although it could be more visually interesting. Finally, I was able to experiment with taking someone else’s base mechanics and expanding on them, finding multiple uses for a simple 2d6 system and integrating it with the game’s world-building and character creation.
Portfolio | Daniel Cox 