March 2014: System Design

March 2014's topic is System Design.

How does a game designer create systems?  What are the nuts and bolts of balancing such a system?

Ian Schreiber alluded to the challenges of creating balanced systems in his articles on Pacing and Bud Leiser mentioned in his article, You Are A Game Designer, that the "mysterious" job of game design may include wrangling with Excel spreadsheets.  For would-be designers, system design may be one of those big mysteries. 

I welcome articles on the topic.  As always, submission guidelines along with submission procedure can be found on the right hand side of the blog.  Topic suggestions and articles are appreciated! 

Some questions:

• What is good (or bad) system design?
• How can formal theories guide system design?

Feel free to add more questions in the comments.