Game designer Notes

Quiet Slayers, the Designer Speaks!

As I write up the rules into a final form I am noticing something

I spend more more time and space explaining why a rule is a certain way, or why the game of Lair is created in such and such a way.

Since I have only so many pages per issue you may wonder why I spend so long on these issues when I could just lay out the few pages of rules and be done with it.

It's because it's necessarily. There are so many roleplaying games out there, and so many ways to play them, so many types of players etc, that if I don't point out specifically why something is the way it is then people may gloss over the intent of the rule in favour of the  way the rule is written.

Lair is a very different kind of Roleplaying game and it fits it's role very well. It's for new games and old because it is not built to fit a certain mechanic or to suit a certain genre. It's built to be fast, fun, easy to learn, and just as importantly, to be easy to run.

It is the friday night game that you whip out and play for a few hours and then head out to the bar. It's the game you pull out when the drummer is going to be a few hours late to practice because he has to work second shift. It's something to do for fun.

It's a game that you can sit down and say "We are going to plough through this entire dungeon today and finally give that Sorceror guy a kick in the nuts."

Roleplaying is a game and a hobby, it's a lifestyle but shouldn't replace actual life. Lair is something you can play with a few friends after work and still make it home in time to take out the trash and put the kids to bed.

Instead of waiting until everyone has a lifestyle where all your players can gaurantee to be able to play once a week, on friday, from 6 till midnight, to actually start up a game (which will peter out in a couple of months) just whip out Lair right now, play a game, throw the characters back in the box and next time you have a few hours pull it out again. 

Instead of the endless planning of a game master, he can just whip out a Lair scenario, read the first page and you;re off and running, or play a quick skirmish. Gm can't play tonight, no problem someone else whip out the scenario and play the bad guys, it's just moving little guys around a board, being a gamemaster was never meant to become an epic level lifestyle of endless planning, building and writing.

Just Have fun instead!