November is, traditionally for me, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). But this year I am doing something different. Instead of writing a novel I am going to work on some game design projects. I am christening this month National Game Design Month (NaGa DeMon) and I have put up a page about it here. When I proposed this idea I thought of it as an alternative to NaNoWriMo, something for non-noveling game fans to do during November*. It was also an opportunity to lightly prod all you folk participating in the Stockade project for 2010/11. BUT WAIT! It turns out, you don’t have to write a novel to participate in NaNoWriMo. You can do something different during November and be a NaNo Rebel! You can find out more about NaNo Rebels here. So now, you can participate in NaNoWriMo and NaGa DeMon in November! Hooray!
My plan is to do 4 complete game projects during the month – that’s one a week. You only have to do one for NaGa DeMon, and get to set your own goals to be a NaNo Rebel**, but I want to push myself. At this stage my four projects (not necessarily in order) will be to write the games My First Dungeon Crawl and a short generic game along the lines of TWERPS and Risus. The last two projects for the month are up in the air. One thought I had was to do “setting” books or the short generic game just mentioned. Otherwise, the plan would be to complete two back-burner projects, the RPG Labyrinth and the miniatures wargame CombatZones. That should keep me as busy as I would have been writing a novel! In total I expect to write between 18,000 and 34,000 words (the current Beast of Limfjord manuscript is about 8,500 words and is a complete, stand alone game).
Post a comment on the NaGa DeMon page if you are participating.
* Should I run NaGa DeMon again i will probably do it earlier in the year, so that all you keen novel writers can give it a go too!
** You are free to do a non-novelling project, but getting something close to 50,000 words is needed to validate, from my understanding of the NaNo Rebel sticky post.
