Welcome, this is my first post in a series dedicated to TTRPG game design. While it will focus on general advice, I will use the games I am working on as examples. Any resources I reference will be footnoted, but know that Tales from Elsewhere and Bent Wizards by Runehammer have both had large impacts on my ideas.
Today, we’ll start with clarifying the ideas for your game by interrogating its purpose.
The most important part of Designing a Tabletop Roleplaying Game is your vision for it. Are you trying to make a game about cosmic horror a la Call of Cthulhu? What about a new addition to the Old School Renaissance or a comical game of inside jokes for only your closest circle of friends? While a comical game focused on Lovecraftian horror that hinges on careful resource management could absolutely be a blast, unintentionally arriving at the combination could derail your project and confuse prospective players.
Thus, vision is essential. However, when considering it, you must question your purpose behind the game. Only then can you align purpose, vision, mechanics, and all of the art and speech contained within a ruleset.
Here, I will introduce two case studies that I will return to throughout this series: Ruins Primeval, and Mosaic. The former, I have considered for years, being the first TTRPG I began creating and one that is still, very much, in progress. The latter, I am just beginning and its name is as much a work in progress as its mechanics are nebulous.
Get out something to write on, ideally something tactile , and write the why behind your game: Why are you making it?
This is what I ended up with:
Now, you might notice that two of those points were essentially the same. “I want to challenge myself” was written word for word on both, and something unique and something bespoke mean essentially the same thing. No matter what you write, if something feels arbitrary, too vague, or not quite right, try to cut it into smaller pieces:
As you can see, you start moving both into requirements, and vision, pretty quickly. Requirements are statements such as “Make it publishable” or “Players and game-master swap places,” while your vision includes “create a more roleplay focused game” or making it high fantasy.
Arguably, my third point for Mosaic was already part of my vision rather than my purpose, but thinking that thought on a run was what made me start creating the game, so I included it at the start. As you go deeper and deeper, with more and more levels, you will eventually have a list that you can refer to on all future decision.
Using this list, I now know that Ruins Primeval will be a large game, probably comprised of two or more books (players guide and GM’s guide) that will focused on dungeon-crawling and wilderness exploration. It will have high character customization that allows for creating powerful, but not game breaking, combos of abilities, and it will be intended for your classic high-fantasy setting. Given that I want to challenge myself, I should try to make core systems different from those of Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Hunter: The Vigil, and other TTRPGs I have played or at least mix and match their mechanics in interesting ways.
Next article, when I talk about resolution mechanics, this will be a guiding light. If I just copy the d20 roll of D&D, I’ll be betraying my own purpose, making the project less enticing and likely less fun. This is not to say, however, that you must strictly follow the outline made above. You may come to a crossroads and after considering it, comparing it against your vision and purpose, decide to take some new, exciting, or sadly necessary path. In those cases, don’t fret, as long as you made your choice with intention, its likely a good choice, and either way, you can always change it later. There are some systems in Ruins Primeval that I’ve changed back and forth countless times!
So, we now have a list based on our purpose for creating the TTRPG. It hopefully also explains part of your vision for it, at least in broad strokes and includes some requirements to follow. Next, I would recommend writing down any mechanics that are central to your game.
For me, having the players and game-master swap places frequently was the core of Mosaic, luckily, its already on my list. However, I was also considering a setting/settings for the game when I first conceptualized it. I wanted each player to bring in their own genre or setting, causing the swaps to hurl characters from cyberpunk dystopias into whimsical forests of speaking animals. If you have further concepts, including mechanics, that don’t appear on your list already, write them at the bottom.
The next step is where tactile writing is the most important. Now that you have all of your ideas, you can start connecting them, drawing arrows and lines, grouping them together or highlighting their tensions. As you do so, new ideas may come to mind or you might manage to further refine one of your existing concepts to a purer form. If you’ve been charging ahead this whole time, doing this all in a single session, now would also be a great time to sleep on the project, go on a run, or simply let your mind wander, allowing your brain to do its work in the background, sorting through all these exciting concepts.
Finally, I’ve found it helpful to try to write a short introduction to your game at this point, tying together as many of the themes of your game as you can. For Mosaic, I ended up with the following:
Mosaic is a collage of dreams. It is a tabletop roleplaying game in which every player is both GM and character. Within a given world, you may find fantasy, science-fiction, the modern-day, cartoon-physics, or gritty realism.
The players are within a collective dream, one that randomly shifts, materializing and fading as reality is both forgotten and built. Sprawling sewers might open up into a cozy village, or characters might chase a jewelry-thief into the midst of the Cretaceous.
Characters in Mosaic attempt to reach the monolith, the only way they can escape their collective dreamscape. While each reality has its own problems that will bar the players’ way, one threat prevails amidst them all: Nightmares. These monsters haunt past realities and guard the monolith. Only by harnessing the tapestry of realities they find themselves in, will players be able to escape.
While what you write will likely need further tuning before it could appear in a book (if that is your goal), it helps further synthesize your ideas and gives you a springboard. You’ve already started your rulebook!
That’s part one! Hope it was helpful. It can also be applied to other types of games, books, art, worldbuilding, or any kind of creative endeavor. As I mentioned earlier, this is primarily inspired by Bent Wizards, so if you like it, go check it out on DriveThruRPG! Part two will be resolution systems.
The Fiction Hoard 
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