A new approach constisting of defining a design plan

This is another theoretical/philosophical thread about how to approach game design. I have been testing some new design techniques lately for some of my games and I am trying to see if I could make a theory out of it. The goal would be to define a procedure that will create some sort of game design plan which could speed up development by reducing the need for mechanic searching and keeping the integrity of the game through it's design (for example, making sure the mechanics always match the theme).

Lewis Pulsipher said in one of his book that game design can be approached from 5 different facets: Theme, Constraints, Mechanics, Components, System/Genre. I would personally add "Experience" as a 6th facet. Now as he mentioned, you could start designing your game using more than 1 facet, but with the technique I am trying to design, you would need to define all of them.

Another important thing is that creativity spawns more easily when there are restrictions, this is why it's so much easier for me to design variants because there are already restrictions in place, like components available, look and feel of the game, etc. to deal with. So the goal of the design plan is to add restrictions to the design process.

So the technique I am trying to develop is to define those 5-6 facets that would act as a game design plan which would setup the necessary restriction while designing your game. Each facet is detailed below, There is no specific order in which to define them, but one thing for sure, they are all interrelated to each other. So you define the easiest facet which will help define the other facets.

Theme: Pretty simple to define when it's your first approach (ex: make a game about pirates). The general idea is to make sure that the rest of the mechanics and experience makes sense by setting the game into a theme. IT does not needs to be a rational one, You can have pretty whacked up theme, as long as you make your player believe that this is how the game's reality works.

Constraints: These are physical or external constraints to the design of the game which could be the price of the game, the size of the box, the development time, etc. My personal constraints is to design almost only 4S games ( Simple, Short, Small, Social/Solitaire ). So the rest of the facets would be influenced by those constraints.

Components: Without having a clue of how the game would work, I am trying to imagine if my game was on a store shelf and I picked the box and turned it around to see the picture of the game components, what would I see. I think it is important to CHOSE right from the start what components you expect the players to use. If you make a game about pirates, do you have a map with ship pawns, do you have a board with the ship layout, does rum comes with the game, etc.

Genre/System: It's a facet I have not really explored yet, if you decide to use a game system, yes the system will impose you certain restrictions. As for genre, it's more for classification purpose, personally if you could break the genre and make your game unclassifiable, I would say do it. For now, I don't consider this facet to really work with my idea of design plan.

Experience: Lately I attached a series of experience I would like the player to have while playing my game. I could be related to the decisions or tasks made while playing the game. Or it could be related to the interaction between players or how they feel through the game. For a pirate game, you could say for example: Risk Taking, Discord between crew members (players), Leadership and respect of the captain (or not), Resource management, Betrayal, etc. This will influence a lot the kind of mechanics you are going to use to simulate that experience.

Mechanics: This is one of the thing I try to define last since I rarely approach a game by mechanics. The idea is to select mechanics, or group of mechanics according to the other facets of the plan to make sure they simulate the right experience, respect the constraints, use the desired components and are explainable by the theme.

So by choosing all those facets that define the game design plan, you are creating a playground that you can use and explore to design your game. While you remain in the defined area, all the facets should still make sense with each other. If you exceed the limits of your plan, then you could get inconsistencies. Of course, you could change your facets during game design if your ideas and objectives change during the process.

I want to know what you think ... or if what I have just said make sense. I am going to try this approach in my upcoming design and see the results. I Hope it will be positive.