November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I strongly recommend you all give it a try, at least once. For those of you more interested in games than novels, though, why not use November as your very own National Game Design Month (NaGa DeMon). Commit to creating, writing and playing (at least once) a boardgame, wargame or RPG of your own. Start your planning now, think about what your game might be about, what system you might use and how many pages / words you are going to aim for. I wouldn’t put a page/word limit, but would recommend aiming for a complete game, with some nod to setting, rules for character creation, action resolution and advancement. Check out Rob Lang’s awesome Guide To Organsing Your RPG for ideas on what to include and how to, well, organise it all. You can also check out the Stockade for ideas, links and info on creating your own game.
Idea #3: NaGa DeMon
I’m definitely going to be doing the NaGa DeMon thing.
My focus for the month is going to be integrating a series of “actual play” examples into my most recent game “Walkabout”, offering a few more explanations in the text… and then giving the whole thing a good proof read, edit and refine the layout.
Dividing roughly into 4 weeks.
Week 1: Refine and correct the play examples (while I get feedback on the procedural text from a pair of proofreaders). Work on five pictures.
Week 2: Provide explanations and refine rule procedures in the core text (and insert play examples at relevant locations). Work on five pictures.
Week 3: Maybe generate more flavour text to flesh out the setting. Proof read procedural text and play examples. Work on five pictures.
Week 4: Layout text and integrate fifteen pictures into layout.
That’s the plan, but I’m notoriously bad at following plans.