{"id":539,"date":"2017-01-25T03:26:26","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T03:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/idea-to-thing-2-building-on-the-idea\/"},"modified":"2023-02-23T04:09:22","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T04:09:22","slug":"idea-to-thing-2-building-on-the-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/idea-to-thing-2-building-on-the-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Idea to Thing 2: Building On The Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, you\u2019ve woken up the day after having your initial idea<\/a> and (1) you haven\u2019t completely forgotten it and (2) you don\u2019t think it sucks yet. Don\u2019t worry, before it\u2019s over you\u2019ll think it sucks at least a few times. That\u2019s part of the process. But for now, it seems like a pretty good idea. Time to get to work!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not so fast, Sparky. You\u2019ve still got some work to do before you can just dive in. No matter how high-concept and straightforward an idea seems, there\u2019s still a lot of stuff you\u2019ve got to work out before you can do anything useful. If you\u2019ve decided to write a game* about Space Sharks, you\u2019ve got to decide whether that means the PCs are Space Sharks or if the PCs are people who have to deal with Space Sharks. And if it\u2019s the latter, what kind of people are they? Are they the inhabitants of a planet that\u2019s being invaded by Space Sharks? Intergalactic merchants who must brave the Space Shark-infested trade routes? Space game wardens? All of these possibilities will require a slightly different approach when it comes to turning the thing into a workable game. If they\u2019re playing Space Sharks, you\u2019re going to have to figure out what Space Sharks spend their time doing, what Space Shark culture is like, and lots of other really detailed information about Space Sharks. If they\u2019re being invaded, you\u2019ve got to detail the planets. If they\u2019re merchants, you\u2019ve got to make up a whole bunch of planets and figure out how the relationships between them. And if they\u2019re intergalactic game wardens, you\u2019re going to need to create a whole ecosystem of space flora and space fauna, figure out how the Space Sharks fit into it, and then figure out what kind of adventure opportunities that creates for the Bureau of Space Fish and Space Wildlife.<\/p>\n

While a few game designers get so wrapped up in their world that they create dioramas instead of game settings, most games answer the big question of \u201cWhat do the characters do?\u201d They fight the evil empire or pull of heists or try to save the Space Dolphins. Sometimes that\u2019s enough, but unless you\u2019re writing a kind of game everyone basically knows how to play (dungeon crawl, monster hunting, space pirates), you\u2019ve also got to ask yourself \u201cHow do they do it?\u201d Hobomancer<\/a> is a good example, and also probably the game that drove home this point to the Hex crew. Before we got around to actually trying to play the game, we\u2019d spend months (or maybe even years) talking through the basic concept. We had a lot of the Songlines mythology figured out, we knew what kind of powers Hobomancers had and what kind of magic they used, and we knew what Hobomancers did: they protected the songlines to keep reality from falling apart. Then we sat down to make players and someone said, \u201cso what happens in a Hobomancer game?\u201d and we weren\u2019t entirely sure until we talked it through and started figuring out how Hobmancers protected the songlines.<\/p>\n

While most games have a wide range of stuff the characters can do, you\u2019ve got to have a baseline of stuff that characters in the game are generally expected to do. It tells you what setting elements you\u2019ll need to focus on, what kinds of characters will make sense, and what sorts of things you\u2019ll need rules for. Without some kind of \u201cdefault setting,\u201d there\u2019s the risk that potential players will see your game as a neat idea they\u2019re not really sure what to do with. Some designers try to get around this with a kitchen sink approach that tries to be all things to all people, but without some kind of focus that\u2019s often just as hard to figure out what to do with as a game that\u2019s too broadly-defined.<\/p>\n

Ok, that was a bigger RPG-specific tangent than I\u2019d intended, but I think it\u2019s an important one. Even though answering the question \u201cwhat actually happens during the game\u201d seems like an obvious step, it can be really easy to just sort of assume that the core idea answers the question when that\u2019s not necessarily the case.<\/p>\n

Anyway, as you start to nail down what the game\u2019s about, you\u2019ll start to figure out what you need to pull it off. That\u2019s when you\u2019ll start committing the great Idea Debt<\/a> sin of creating Books of Lore. You\u2019ll start making notes, putting together outlines, making lists of reference sources, and maybe even writing up some stuff. You\u2019ve now go idea debt, but that\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing. You\u2019ve already made it farther than a lot of people who have ideas and then give up when they realize that bringing it to fruition will require actual work (even work as simple as opening a Google Doc and making some notes). Whether your Book of Lore turns into good idea debt or bad idea debt depends on what happens next. We\u2019ll talk about that next week.<\/p>\n

*A lot of this series of posts could apply to any creative thing you want to do, but I\u2019m going to focus on games because that\u2019s the thing I\u2019m most familiar with.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

You can see some of my Books of Lore by supporting me on\u00a0Patreon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, you\u2019ve woken up the day after having your initial idea and (1) you haven\u2019t completely forgotten it and (2) you don\u2019t think it sucks yet. Don\u2019t worry, before it\u2019s over you\u2019ll think it sucks at least a few times. That\u2019s part of the process. But for now, it seems like a pretty good idea….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2000],"tags":[62,1749,1750,1791,1792,1793,2127],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-design-ramblings","tag-game-design","tag-writing","tag-publishing","tag-creativity","tag-creative-endeavors","tag-idea-debt","tag-creative-process"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3327,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/3327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}