Vincent, could you tell us more about "colour first" design?

[Ry]

Last sentence blew my mind.  I think I get it.

[Paul T.]

Ryan,

Want to explain your epiphany? I, for one, would love to hear what you're thinking.

[Gregor Vuga]

More thoughts is good.
When I first started the thread I was thinking of colour-first design, now I understand this a lot better, especially the distinction between c-f design and a c-f game.

Another question, Vincent or anyone. What would a setting-first game look like? Are there any in existence? I find it hard to think about.

[Z in VA]

Gregor, I'm going to kick off the answering by suggesting Polaris is setting-first. I think Pendragon is, too.
One of the most central parts of buy-in is:

• is the setting for this game. Vincent, I'm deliberately flailing in the hopes that you'll correct me and give your thoughts, like before. ^_^

Personally, I am still head-aching over what y'all's revelation was, but I think I can understand what "system-first" design is now - you have an idea that's mostly "so this is my insight into human relations", instead of mostly "so Huck Finn is amazing".

[Z in VA]

Apparently bracket x bracket makes a bullet symbol.
What I meant was - "setting-first design focuses the buy-in on 'So! This right here is the setting; you reject that, and you're rejecting the basic assumption of the game."
S'like playing Polaris in the South.

[Chris]

I've read that the game came out of you (here meaning Vincent, not you) wanting to make a game FOR someone. Knowing who you want to make the game for.

So what comes first in color first design? Was AW a post apocalyptic game that you wanted to make for someone or was it a game you wanted to make for someone and that somehow necessitated making it a post apocalyptic game, through some other design concerns?

For instance, maybe I'm making a game about for someone who enjoys monthly play about intimate communities, moral depravity and love. Or whatever. And that leads to making a game about ... I don't know, ghosts who committed some terrible crime and are now tied to the cities they lived in before until they learn to somehow rectify/learn from their crimes. And they have to do this through each other. And then I look into color about THAT and it's color first from there.

Was AW like that, or was it like "I'm making a damn post-apocalyptic game and I'll shift the color to fit whoever I'm making it for"?

EDIT:Like this:

Oh, that's easy. I set out to make a game about loyalty that isn't about betrayal, that Meg would enjoy playing.

...isn't color (unless it...is?). So how does that work? When does the color happen?

[Gregor Vuga]

As Vincent said a game can be colour-first in the sense that Colour is the most important element of Exploration or it can be designed colour-first in the sense that you start the design by designing its colour first. AW is the former, not the later. Colour happens in play.

[lumpley]

For "color first" to make any sense to me as a design process, "first" has to mean primacy of place, not of chronology.

My experience is that all at once, in a flash in the shower or while driving home from work, you fit together four things: an insight into some kind of source material, an insight into roleplaying as a practice, an insight into real people and real human nature, and a batch of seed content. None of them comes first chronologically in the design process, and none of them can trump the others in importance. I mean, you might be musing about one or another of them first, but the design process can't start until you have all four, and from that point on they're coequal.

Color isn't a fifth thing, a concern to balance against those four, it's a quality of those four things. Apocalypse World's MC agenda, principles and moves are system color (and express my insight into roleplaying as a practice). The post-apocalyptic stuff in the game design isn't it's own thing, it's the color of the game's seed content.

Now, what DOES happen is that some people strip color out of their insights and their seed content, and design from a more abstract position, where other people (like me) enthusiastically embrace all that color. Dogs in the Vineyard isn't an abstract detective procedural game, which it could have been I suppose, like Shock: is an abstract social SF game.

So yeah, color first design in the sense that the color of your insights and seed content is of first concern, not that color came somehow first in the design timeline. Who even KNOWS what came first when inspiration struck.