How to build your product like a badass RPG item
A fun RPG-inspired workshop exercise to ensure you’ve thought your product idea through, and to brainstorm improvements with a bit of lateral thinking
Suppose you were presented with these three items. Which one would you pick?
Depending on your experience with role playing games, it might be more or less obvious.
While playing the amazing Divinity: Original Sin 2, I noticed that a lot of my time was spent improving my characters’ equipment, which means a lot of looking and comparing item descriptions like these.
It might not look like it at first, but item descriptions are an incredibly dense summary of what a product is, and I found it interesting to try to apply the concept to other types of products, as it closely reproduces the decision process consumers go through.
By interpreting the RPG concepts and adapting them to find real life equivalents, I found that coming up with an item description card for your product was a great brainstorming exercise, as well as in interesting derivation of the now common Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) approach.
Let’s go through the different parts of an item description and see what questions it can prompt for you and your product.
1. 🏷 Item name — Does your product have a badass name?
The first thing in the item description is the name of the item.
Much like product names, item names can range from the most mundane to the most badass-sounding.
The name of your product is a good contender for the title of “First impression your product will ever make on a potential customer.” Before people even visit your website or see your landing page, they’ll probably hear your name or see it in the URL.
As such, giving your name a little thought isn’t the worst idea.
In RPGs, basic items tend to have generic names like “Crossbow”, while items you pick up as you advance in the game get more unique names. In the examples above, the difference between the basic crossbow and the other two
Similarly, you probably want to imbue your product with a name that conveys more than the category it belongs to (more on that later).
One way to think about it is to borrow from Kathy Sierra’s Badass: Making Users Awesome and ask yourself: What would a badass user name their favorite tool?
How might we…
- How might we ensure our product doesn’t have a generic name?
- How might we name a product that will be used by a badass user? (E.g. What would a badass manager name their favorite spreadsheet app? What would a badass journalist name their favorite writing app?)
Even if it may seem easier to think of badass weapon names due to their inherent badassity, thinking of your product as a weapon for your user might give you some interesting ideas to explore.
2. 💪 Action Points — How much effort does your product require from me?
The second element in the description of an item is the number of action points.
To give a bit of context for those who’ve never played a turn-based RPG, action points are the cost of using something. Every time you want to shoot your bow, slash an enemy with your sword, or cast a spell, you consume actions points.
Since you only have a limited amount of action points each turn, you must be careful about using them strategically.
It follows that, ceteris paribus, items that require fewer action points to do the same thing are more valuable — a sword that would require half as many action points could be used twice more often in the same round, with the possibility of dealing twice the damage.
Some items don’t require any action points: for example, shields and armours just do their job passively, without requiring any action from the player. In a sense, they “automate” the job they do, requiring no direct effort from the user.
How does that translate to your product?
Since people have only a limited amount of energy, you can simply take into account the effort required to use your product. Ideally, you want your product to require as little effort as possible (assuming people do not derive pleasure or value from the effort itself) to provide the most value.
For an app, that could be UI/UX improvements that make getting value out of the app require fewer clicks.
Note that you can look at it through the lens of attention (another limited resource that your product will deplete) rather than that of effort.
More generally, can you find a quantitative way of measuring how much effort your product requires to deliver its benefits? It could be a number of clicks, but it could also be the amount of time it takes to get there, or reach the “aha moment.”
How might we…
- How might we quantify the amount of effort required to get a result from our product?
- How might we make the product require less effort from the user to get the same benefit?
- How might we find a better trade-off than what’s on the market? For example, could we provide a bit less value, but require a lot less effort? What about provide a lot more value, even it requires a bit more effort?
- How might we entirely get rid off the “action points” and make the product require no effort whatsoever, by automating something that used to take action points?
3. 🗂 Item Category — Does your product belong to a clear category?
Much like real products, each item belongs to a category: crossbow, wand, shield, dagger, spear, staff, boots, two-handed axe—you get the idea.
Thinking about your product category is important for at least two reasons:
- As soon as you define your product as belonging to a precise category, you will pick your immediate competitors, as well as some of the marketing channels your customers will use to reach you (e.g. say an Amazon category page, or a Google results page when people search for a particular type of item).
- Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the side-effect of doing that is that you might be tempted to artificially limit your thinking to a particular category, when your product should really belong to a different one. For example, you might think you’re building a mobile app for time tracking, but what if that problem is better solved with a different kind of product?
Really important point: your product category only narrowly defines who your competitors are.
Soft drinks don’t just compete with soft drinks — they also compete with water, with anything else people can eat or drink in front of the TV, and so on, depending on what people want to achieve with their soft drink.
As Alan Klement puts it in his book, sometimes coffee competes with kale (check out this cool sketch notes version if you want the tl;dr).
As we’ll see in the next section, what really determines your competition is what problem you’re solving, what need you’re trying to satisfy, or what “job” you’re trying to do for your customer.
Product categories are the superficial incarnation of the deeper reasons why people buy items, and thinking about what you’re building in terms of categories amounts to confusing problem space and solution space, one of the big product management no-nos.
You need to use categories strategically, or forever be outsmarted by your real competition.
How might we…
- How might we be more strategic about the category we’re picking?
- How might we ensure we own a competitive advantage that will help us dominate the category we picked?
- How might we solve the same problem in a different category where we would have an advantage?
4. ⚔️ Item Damage — How do you measure the value you provide to your users?
This part of the description is probably the most important one: it tells us what the item does for the user. It’s the main purpose of the product. It’s the job it performs. It’s its raison d’être.
If categories define the borders that separate different countries, that metric is the tectonic plate over which all the boundaries are defined.
For a weapon, that purpose is to deal damage. For armour, it is to protect the character.
Conveniently, those benefits can easily be measured in Divinity by using damage points and armour points.
Everyday products also have similar core purposes, and attaching a quantitative value to them, although complex in some cases, is a hugely valuable exercise.
The important point here is that this metric defines the core benefit of all weapons (and armours). It’s the single thing that defines the deep structure of the market, and all the products you’ll be competing with.
Crossbows don’t just compete with crossbows — they compete with everything that does damage.
So, how do you beat your competition? Do more damage. Or… provide more bonuses and benefits that compensate your lack of advantage. As Des Traynor puts it, find a way to make that job faster, easier, cheaper or more accessible.
How might we…
- How might we measure the core benefit of our product?
- How might we put a number on how well we’re performing the job our customer wants to perform?
- How might we pick a metric that will be persuasive for our audience?
- How might we improve on the state of the art when it comes to that metric?
- How might we provide other benefits if we’re already the state of the art?
5. 🍏🍎 Item Bonuses — How do you differentiate your product?
Based on what we just saw, it might seem easy to pick between two items: just choose the one that offers the best score on the metric that matters! Get the weapon that does the most damage, the armour that gives you the best protection, and so on.
But what if two items offer the same amount of damage, or the same protection?
That’s where the bonuses come in.
Bonuses are things the item does for your character on top of the core benefit. By looking at that differentiating element, you can more easily choose between otherwise similar items.
The interesting part about bonuses and differentiators is that they can sometimes overshadow the core benefit. A weapon that does a little bit less damage than another may still be more interesting if I provides many bonuses for your character.
Similarly, someone might choose to use their smartphone as a camera, because the camera’s good enough (even if there are better cameras around), and it comes with all this other stuff on top!
An important point to understand here is that underneath what might look like a simple bonus is another benefit that that bonus offers. Products in general are just (re)mixes of different benefits, some more important than others, and consumers pick the ones that satisfy their needs the most.
Sometimes, a certain set of such benefits coalesces into a “job” of some kind that requires a precise mix of benefits : for example, you want to do damage to your enemies and you want to do it at a distance. A crossbow will have the right mix of benefits (damage + distance weapon), while a sword won’t (damage + melee).
Understanding exactly what your customer wants to achieve and what their requirements are is fundamental to creating the right mix of benefits and bonuses, and thus, to creating the right product.
How might we…
- How might we give our product secondary benefits that differentiate it from the competition?
- How might we add bonuses that are relevant for your product?
6. ️☹️ Item Penalties — What are the downsides of your product?
Unlike bonuses, penalties are the negative aspects of your product.
Although you might not want to admit it, most products have some downsides in one way or another.
Sometimes, consumers make a voluntary choice to accept the downsides of a given product to get its benefits when they feel they outweigh the penalty.
In this example, players opting to use a crossbow incur a movement penalty that makes them move slower.
Some players might choose to accept that penalty, because crossbows tend to do more damage than standard bows.
The penalty must also be understood in relative terms — all crossbows in the game have the same penalty. As such, the penalty becomes expected, and people will look at other characteristics to make their decision.
Such tradeoffs are by no means deal breakers, as they often reflect the “technological” possibility frontier — if it were possible to create a product as good as yours but without the penalties, it would probably exist.
How might we…
- How might we reduce, remove, or compensate the downsides of our product?
- How might we preempt objections about such downsides in our communication?
7. ✅ Item Requirements — What are the requirements of your product? Who can use your product?
Some items have requirements that must be met if you want to use them.
As you can see on the left, your character might need to be a certain level, or have certain attributes (be strong enough, be smart enough, and so on) before being able to use the item.
Real world products also have similar requirements of all kinds: software will only run on a given OS or platform, physical products will only fit in spaces of the right size, most products will require skills of some kind to be used efficiently, and so on.
Being aware of what the requirements for your products are can help you bridge the gap that will help you reach a larger audience. Think of the massive efforts that are made in content marketing to educate buyers. They’re done in part to overcome such (perceived) requirements, and the customer objections that come with them.
How might we…
- How might we make the requirements for our product less demanding to reach a larger audience?
- How might we bridge the knowledge gap to make more people capable of using our product?
- How might we make the product better in a “Pareto efficient” way, not making anybody else worse off?
- How might we decide to make it a lot better for one target audience and specialise our product for that audience?
8. 💎 Item Rarity — What market are you aiming at?
Divinity items have different “rarities” : common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, divine, and unique.
As you can imagine, divine items tend to offer far better bonuses that common items.
Although that part of the item description isn’t necessarily the most interesting one, it can still yield interesting questions. Building a common item can still be a viable strategy, assuming you are targeting unsophisticated customers, and you have a cost structure that allows you to make a profit pushing an entry-level product.
However, it’s more likely that by making your product “legendary”, “divine”, or “unique”, you will be able to command higher margin more easily.
Items in the “higher” categories tend to be more aspirational, and the object of consumer fantasies (think sports cars made by Ferrari). That’s not necessarily a benefit in itself, but something to take into consideration when deciding what you’re building, or who you are building for.
How might we…
- How might we add something to our product to make it more unique, legendary, divine?
9. 💸 Item Price — How much is your product worth to your client?
Since we began by talking about purchase decisions, it comes with no surprises that items in Divinity have prices.
Unsurprisingly, items that have the best statistics tend to be more highly valued by players, and thus, cost more money.
Pricing is obviously a topic far too complex for this article to cover thoroughly, but you can still gain some insights into the question.
For example, based on what your competitors (i.e. people providing the same core benefit) charge, do you think your price is fair? Could you charge more?
Is your price consistent with the type of market you’re going after (people hunting for “divine” items or newcomers looking for their first few items)?
If you’re able to quantify your core benefit, you can also see what kind of pricing you can get away with, depending on how much people are willing to pay to get increased performance along that metric.
How might we…
- How is your price compared to the value you provide? Price/Value ratio of your competitors?
10. ➕ Item Runes — What kind of add-ons does your product allow?
Like many other RPGs, Divinity items have slots that allow you to insert runes that will provide your items with additional bonuses.
Similarly, if you think of your iPhone, there are many similar “slots” that allow you to equip it with additional capabilities: you can add a case, a battery pack, a camera lens, bunny ears, and who knows what else.
In software, a similar concept would be integrations. Through integrations, your product can fetch from and push data to other applications or sources of information to increase its power.
These little add-ons increase the value of your product to your users since they allow them to combine things they already own to get more value out of them, or to add more bonuses to their items.
How might we…
- How might we make our product more extensible by allowing others to combine it with accessories and increase its value?
- How might we plug our product into a larger existing ecosystem to make it more valuable?
Try it yourself with your product
To help you jump start a little workshop based on those questions, I created a worksheet you can rely on.
Start by filling in the worksheet with your current information about your product (or product idea).
Then go through the “How might we…” questions above, and compare them with the information you have about your product right now.
More Reading on Medium
Naming your product
Naming products isn’t easy. That’s why consultancies like Interbrand and Landor charge crazy amounts of money for that service. But you can get by with a little bit of reading.
Finding your product’s real purpose
Although there are different conceptions of Jobs-to-be-Done, and even though I have some caveats about the theory, it’s still a good mental model to master when thinking about your product.
Differentiating your product
Finding what makes your brand stand out is fundamental as soon as you want to attack a competitive market. As Jack Welch used to say, “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”
Pricing your product
Hi, I’m David, the author of The Landing Page Cookbook, a practical guide for startups , marketers & designers who want to create better landing pages, faster. I write more about landing pages on my blog, and about other things over here on Medium.
