Have you ever wondered why Game Designer positions vary so much in qualifications? 3 years and an art degree in one basket, 10 years and a best of show award in another?

If so, you’re in luck, because my unconscious need to apply game systems to everyday life has come up with the answer, courtesy of 4th edition D&D!

Fighter-Designer: The Fighter-Designer is the classic meat-and-potatoes of the industry. Rising up through unlikely means, we fight the good fight for our designs, clashing and cooperating with the engineers and artists in our midst. The Fighter-Designer has to keep his eyes on the design, enlisting Producer-Mages to rally the troops while they get in close and wade through the hordes of timing, budget, and doubt in order to create design documents.

The flipside to this, of course, is that you have to follow the plan. Fighter-Designers often have great freedom over the minute details, but little if any input into the project at the concept stage.  This can prove troublesome, as your reputation is only as good as the project itself. Still, overcoming the hordes is worth a lot of experience points – i.e. shipped games and reputation - and a decent monthly salary to boot. The trick is just figuring out how to class-up. (Historically, the best way seems to be as the number 2 on a ship, see: Harvey Smith following Warren Spector or, perhaps, Cory Barlog following David Jaffe.)

Warlord-Designer: Not as well known but perhaps as prevalent. Rather than dual-wielding the swords of design and documentation, the Warlord-Designer is essentially a producer, filling in bits of the design but essentially acting on orders from above, managing schedules, and rallying the troops whenever possible with their communication powers. These designers aren’t meant to be front-line troops, but rather to be the face of the project; the financial, press, and publisher interface that nobody else can be.

Warlord-Designers are pretty common at studios with Japanese owners (such as Nintendo), where design orders may come from far above, or at studios where a secret executive brain-trust develops the game concepts (I’m told EA credited producers like this for some time.) I have my doubts about Warlord-Designer as a career path - particularly those that try to be a producer first and then make the class-change – but jumping the other way is a powerful – and perhaps inevitable - result of reaching the executive tier. (Hideo Kojima in some ways can be considered an example of the latter.)

Ranger-Designer: The one, the lonely, the indy designer! Ranger-Designers are an interesting lot, namely because of their hit-or-miss quality. There are thousands of Rangers out there that I have never heard of, but the ones who hit it big seem to stay in the public consciousness for a long time.  (It’s not unheard of for Rangers to join parties, either; see Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark of thatgamecompany, or Kim Swift of Valve.)

If somebody asked me the best way to become a designer today, I think I would suggest the Ranger class. You won’t have the monthly income of the Fighter or Warlord classes, but all you need is one truly great game to get the industry cred that other classes strive for over their entire career. Unlike the Fighter-Designer, you can go with your own idea. And if you do need a monthly salary, a finished game serves as one heck of a resume.

Priest-Designer: Basically the cross-engineering disciple. It’s very rare to see a Priest-Designer as part of a large studio, because typically they can – and will – build their own games without relying on other design input. This in turn means the Priest-Designer can often be confused for a Ranger-Designer; patron saints of the class include Will Wright and Richard Garriot, both of whom managed to dual-class effectively before finally ascending to the executive tier.

This is a great dual-class specialty if you can pull it off; most don’t, simply because the pay scale is far better on the engineering end. Some that try are also vulnerable to being lured back engineering full-time in order to resurrect projects or lay hands on troubled ones. Still, it’s a quick ladder to climb if you can find it.

Mage-Designer: Just as there is a cross-engineering disciple, there must be an artist counterpart, and that is the Mage-Designer, better known as the Level Designer. Typically, the Mage-Designer is exclusively responsible for building levels, either abstractly or object-by-object, but they are nonetheless magicians interwoven into the design process.

Typically, the Mage-Designer job description is tough to nail down. For some studios, level designing is like a specialization-branch, leading to Blizzard-like commandos who will exclusively build levels as long as their studio produces games needing them. For others, it’s an art process, melding full-time artistry and texture work with devising the play and shape of an area. Finally, there is the third path, actively designing mechanics while working in an abstract environment (say, a development engine like Source).

It’s a class best suited for those unsure whether they want to walk the art or design roads (or who insist on basking in both – in some genres they really are inseperable).

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Well, there you go. Five classes, and an almost frightening line-up with how the industry works today. Which designer class are you?