trying new design approaches (from Vincent Baker)

[davidberg]

Vincent Baker has designed a bunch of RPGs, including two I quite like in Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World.  Currently, the amount of money he's making off selling his RPGs would be enough for me to live on.  So I'm extremely interested to find out how he's achieved what he has.  One part of that is understanding how he thinks about what

Comments

[lumpley]

Well, this kind of blank page brainstorming is something I do a lot, but I've never gotten a game out of it directly. I fill notebooks with this kind of stuff. But all the games I've actually designed start with a compelling-to-me synergy between insights, out of the blue, not with this kind of grasping.

Is that what you're asking?

[lumpley]

Hm. I'm afraid of seeming crankily dismissive! What I mean to say is, yes, I do things like this a lot, as part of my overall creative process, exactly like this is part of yours, but no, it's not how I start a game for reals, just like how you're probably not going to finish this one.

[davidberg]

No sweat, a lot of my friends work that way, starting their best stuff from inspiration out of the blue.

I'm not sure whether exercises like the above make inspiration more likely, or mean there are more tools and solutions at the ready for when inspiration strikes, or something else. You got any thoughts on that?

For my part, I have plenty of inspirations for bits of games -- a setting, a die mechanic, a social structure (e.g. 2 GMs) -- but never for a game concept built out of multiple ideas.

[davidberg]

Now that I know you don't start for-real games with "Fringe might be fun, lemme brainstorm some insights on that", my main question is, "what about the rest?"

After you've had the sort of inspiration that does get you making a for-real game, how similar is the process I wrote up (starting from "The Players' Natural Best Interests" header, I guess) to what you actually do?