Tone is the attitude that the players take toward the game: is the goal immersive role-playing, a more beer-and-pretzels experience, or something in between? Mood is the atmosphere of the story: are you telling a grim story about characters trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, or an action-packed story about kicking zombie butt? Since it’s…
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While reworking one of the Elevator Pitches for Cinemechanix this week, I had to stop myself. I almost spent a lot of time and words on rules that were completely unnecessary. This isn’t the first time this has happened, so I’ve kind of developed a litmus test to apply when I start going into rules…
Once you’ve finished all the Grunt Work, you’ll have a product suitable for publication. This will lead you to a whole new round of Grunt Work to actually publish the thing, and it’s even less fun that the final rounds of editing and layout you just finished. If this is your first product, there will…
Remember when I talked about Grunt Work a few posts ago? If you haven’t done any of that yet, this is probably where your project dies. All those exciting ideas you had at the beginning have been in your head so long they’ve become boring. You’ve now read that clever thing you wrote a hundred…
Aversion to criticism is probably the number one thing that turns things into Bad Idea Debt rather than Actual Products. You all know that person. The one who always wants to tell you about their novel or screenplay or game or whatever, but who doesn’t want to show it to anyone until it’s done. If…
So you’ve got this Thing I’m Working On, which means that sometime in the very near future you’re going to become a miserable bastard. It might not happen right away, but it’s going to happen. During those early stages when the theoretical project is just an idea, it’s lots of fun to think about and…
Last time I talked about that step of deciding whether you’ve got a viable project on your hands or just an idea that still needs some work before you can turn it into something. Once you’ve made it past that step, you’re really in danger of entering the Chapel Perilous of potential idea debt. In…
So, you’ve woken up the day after having your initial idea and (1) you haven’t completely forgotten it and (2) you don’t think it sucks yet. Don’t worry, before it’s over you’ll think it sucks at least a few times. That’s part of the process. But for now, it seems like a pretty good idea….
Since I don’t have anything new to talk about on the Cinemechanix front right now (I’m in the process of implementing all the things I’ve already talked about), I’m going to spend at least a few posts musing about the “idea debt” concept I rationalized my way out of believing in a few posts ago….
