
Role:
Product Manager
Tools:
Acrobat, Photoshop, Figma, Survey Monkey
Timeline:
August 2018 to May 2019
Team:
Sophia Miller, Tahirih Brown, Kristine Cordy

What is Night Side?
Night Side is a tabletop RPG set in a magical version of the 1980s. Players play as Charmed, characters were were fated to die but instead survived by some magical intervention. They frequently act as mediators between the world as we know it, referred to as the Day Side by magical creatures, and the seedy magical underbelly to the world, the Night Side. The game boasts the lowest barrier to entry of any RPG currently on the market, requiring a six-sided dice to play. Night Side promotes character development over multiple sessions, giving players the experience of a longer form game over a shorter real world time.
Survey Says…
I had met a surprising amount of people who wanted to start playing RPGs, but were intimidated. So, I surveyed my university to discern what barriers to entry most people experienced. At first I sat at a table at the entrance to the student’s covered eating area, then I moved the table to the student union, then I set up an online survey and circulated it through Facebook. The results were fascinating.
The Money
More than 80% of respondents cited the price of rulebooks for more popular games like Dungeons & Dragons or Vampire the Masquerade. Apart from just the rulebooks, people were afraid they would purchase the necessary polyhedral dice and be unable to return them once they didn’t enjoy the game or couldn’t find anyone to play with.
The Math
Over 91% of respondents in some way cited difficulty with math or a perceived difficulty with math in their reasoning. The most common sentiment was that the most popular Role Playing Games like Dungeons & Dragons required a large degree of algebra to play. Potential players didn’t want to engage with Algebra in order to play.
The Learning Curve
Close to 90% of respondents claimed there were too many rules to most RPGs, and they were afraid to make a mistake. Considering the average length of a core rulebook had hundreds of pages, I wasn’t too surprised by this. New rules can be intimidating. New players didn’t want to memorize a large amount of new rules.
The Challenge

After pouring over my survey results, I got together with a classmate, Sophia Miller, and started brainstorming solutions. Our key insights were clear, the equipment needed to be accessible, the math needed to be simple, and the rules needed to fit in a single volume. We just needed to decide how.
Competitive Analysis
I started by reviewing other tabletop games that relied on very simple math, and understanding what experience they were trying to elicit mechanically. I then compared these findings with the experience we were trying to elicit with Night Side. Due to our push for simplified mechanics, most of the competitors we found trying to elicit a similar experience were board games. I found valuable inspiration, here.

Yahtzee
Despite it’s probabilistic complexity, Yahtzee has a recommended age of 6 years old. Yahtzee accomplishes this by requiring primarily on matching numbers, rather than any math. While this could not be the basis for an entire RPG, it turned out to be a useful mechanic to emulate.

Risk
Risk mostly involves comparing dice values to each other rather than actual addition or subtraction. While this mechanic can restrict the amount of possible outcomes from the player’s perspective, their mechanics around competitive rolls were invaluable.

Betrayal at House on the Hill
While this might seem like on odd entry into this list, Betrayal includes very comprehensive rules on how to decide rolls between players or between a player and a monster. What makes Betrayal unique is that these rules are very mechanically light. While none of Betrayal’s mechanics were used as direct inspiration anywhere in Night Side, the experience it was trying to evoke was something we constantly referenced.
Playtests!
Playtests!
Playtests!

Averaging four playtests a week for about a year, our team played through more than 100 playtests with deliberately diverse groups of users. The three axis we tested for most consistently were age, level of RPG familiarity, and gender. It’s not a secret that RPGs are a very male dominated hobby and I wanted to understand that divide better.

Key Insights
Players greatly enjoyed a critical mechanic that was divorced from the resolution mechanic for dice rolls. The idea that you could achieve bizarre, special effects on any roll regardless of success was enjoyed by most groups.
Lower experience groups found they weren’t sure what to do next. The Traits mechanic, a series of conditionals that spell out your characters next moves in a given situation, often made these players more comfortable.
Younger characters did not enjoy counting up six sided dice results. When asked to elaborate further, most players claimed it was due to how long the process took, rather than how difficult any of the math was. We responded by using a conflict resolution mechanic between characters akin to Risk’s dice Battle resolution mechanic.
Low-Fidelity Prototypes


Key Takeaways and Future Projects
My User Research found an untapped market of people who would be playing tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons who are turned away due to various barriers to entry. There is clear need for games that are easy for a first time player to enjoy.
Due to constraints, we focused on addressing the price, mathematic complexity, and mechanical complexity. There are other difficulties first time players mentioned that we could not address, due to the constraints of the project timeline.
Working with my team of designers throughout the project has been a valuable experience. During this process, we acknowledged the project’s limitations, and chose to focus on the challenges we were best equipped to address. As the project evolved, we also discussed a future for Night Side and improvements we could make.
- A more diverse list of skills to reflect different characters.
- A leveling system that emphasized long term character development.
- A hardcover and softcover print.