Design Pillars

What Are Design Pillars?

Design pillars are the high-level guidelines for making the entire game — story, systems, mechanics, art, everything. They define not just what the game is but what the game intends to be. They are the foundation the entire game rests on.

Critical rules for pillars:

• Make them early. They must exist before mechanics are finalized, preferably before the setting is locked. Changing pillars two years in means you've changed the game and potentially invalidated all prior work.
• The entire team must accept them. Not just designers — artists, writers, programmers, everyone. Everyone should know, understand, and agree with the pillars.
• They're more important as teams grow. Small teams can hold a shared vision implicitly. Once people are specialized and don't talk to everyone daily, explicit pillars keep everyone aligned.

Fallout's 14 Pillars (1995–96)

Fallout's pillars were part of a "Vision Document" — the term "pillars" wasn't even used yet. Brian Fargo asked Tim Cain to write it in late 1995. Tim wrote two drafts that Fargo rejected. Frustrated, Tim handed it to Chris Taylor, who produced a document the whole team loved. It was multiple pages long, funny, and had dark humor baked in.

The 14 pillars:

1. Mega levels of violence. Stated explicitly so nobody could later claim surprise at Fallout's violence.
2. There is often no right solution. Sometimes every option leaves someone unhappy — shades of gray with no "correct" answer.
3. There will always be multiple solutions. Every major quest has several approaches (side quests excluded).
4. Player actions affect the world, and the world reacts. The end slides were a direct expression of this — showing the collateral damage of the player's rampage through post-nuclear Southern California.
5. A sense of urgency. The player should always feel time pressure. This pillar was the justification for the controversial 150-day water chip timer (which Tim personally felt was too much, and was later patched).
6. Open-ended. Go anywhere, do anything, and the game handles it — including endings for joining the mutant army or cutting off all mutants.
7. The player always has a goal. Only three main goals in Fallout: get the water chip, destroy the mutant army, destroy the Master. You always know what you're supposed to be doing.
8. Player has control over his own actions. Never take agency away. Quests were rejected if step three was "and then the player does this."
9. Good interface. They were worried about overly complicated interfaces in games at the time. Tim admits they could have done better.
10. Encounter windows. The illustrated encounter screens (inspired by playheads) were beloved enough to be made a pillar — they gave the game a distinctive vibe.
11. Wide variety of weapons, armor, and actions.
12. Detailed character creation rules with pre-made characters. Using GURPS, they had over 200 skills. Pre-made characters existed because casual players couldn't absorb all that complexity on a first playthrough.
13. Faithful to GURPS but accessible to non-GURPS players. A balancing act between tabletop faithfulness and mainstream appeal.
14. The team is very motivated. Chris Taylor put this in as a statement of fact, not aspiration. Years later, Tim realized he'd never again included team morale as a pillar — he'd taken it for granted, which was a mistake.

Arcanum's 5 Pillars

Arcanum condensed to five pillars across a couple of pages:

1. Tech that matters. Dynamic colored lighting, dynamic shadows, lighting affecting skill use — technology serving gameplay mechanics, not just visuals.
2. Rich, class-free character creation. Even more open than Fallout. Want an old crone witch? A Wild West gunslinger? If you could conceive it within Arcanum's world, you could build it.
3. Complex stat-driven game system. Complexity was explicitly positioned as a selling point. Tim notes candidly that this was also one of the reasons Arcanum didn't sell well — casual RPG players bounced off the complexity. Reviews and Sierra's sales data confirmed it.
4. Huge single-player quest lines. Where Fallout had 3 main story points, Arcanum had 27, plus side quests for every skill master training, and quests everywhere.
5. Multiplayer. Requested by Sierra, but once committed to, it was made a full pillar — including modding tools so players could create and share modules.

The Outer Worlds' 3+1 Pillars

By The Outer Worlds, the pillars fit on less than a single Confluence page. Three core pillars plus one "given":

Simple But Deep

The reaction to years of pushing away casual RPG players. Systems should be simple to engage with but gain depth and complexity for those who explore them. Example: melee is straightforward — pick up a weapon, hit things, damage scales with skill. But players who invest can specialize, unlock power attacks, combine science and melee skills, and buy synergistic perks. You can ignore all of that and still play fine.

Dark But Humorous

Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky codified their natural dynamic: "He's dark, I'm funny — together we're dark but humorous." The funniest and silliest parts of the game are often the darkest. Humor and darkness need each other for contrast.

Fun Trumps Realism, But Be Consistent

The most-used pillar in practice. Tim invoked it constantly when people proposed features. "We're making a game, not a simulation." Unrealistic is fine if it's fun — the player can jump absurdly high, phobias activate like a switch, and that's entertaining. The constraint: once you establish a rule, stay consistent with it. If falls from a certain height are fatal, don't arbitrarily kill the player from a shorter one.

Classic Obsidian Game (The "+1")

Originally unwritten because it was obvious. When team members asked "shouldn't we also do X?" Tim realized those things — strong world setting, good narrative, player customization, varied companions, meaningful choices, multiple endings — needed to be stated explicitly. He bundled them into one pillar: "a classic Obsidian RPG."

The Evolution

The trajectory is clear: Fallout's 14 pillars tightened to Arcanum's 5, then honed to The Outer Worlds' 4. The documents shrank from multi-page Word docs with tracked changes to a single Confluence page. Fewer pillars meant each one was easier to remember, easier to invoke in design debates, and easier for every team member to internalize.

Tim's parting advice: you should have design pillars. Make them early, make them clear, and make sure everyone on the team knows them by heart.

References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7b7LFXBZ9M