Introduction to (Tabletop) Role-playing Game Design

This brief (4.5 hour) course introduces you to RPG design. (No course of this length can pretend to be comprehensive, of course.) The goal is for you to understand the fundamentals of RPG design (which is a subset of game design). For example, what are you really doing when you "design an RPG?" There are at least three parts to that.

The three main sections are an introduction to game design (mainly "Need to Knows"), an introduction to RPG design, and a discussion of the business of RPG design. The primary purpose of the last is to help you understand why RPG design, especially tabletop, is very unlikely to earn you a living.