Assignment III: Capstone Ideas

My apologies for the late blog post. I was ill all weekend, and so was my cat. But while I won't pay the $20 co-pay to visit the doctor for myself, I apparently have no issues with shelling out $256 to find out what is wrong with a sick cat. She's doing much better though. Anywho..

The first idea I've started kicking around is to redo how my map is laid out. I at first wanted to go with two sides of a map that while a little different here and there were basically just mirrored images of the other. I was wanting to keep game play equal for each side. I've decided this project is more about being creative than having a tournament quality layout. Also, my map style was pretty flat and confined. I've decided to move away from that and make a more dynamic play field with hills and valleys to explore. Getting to locations should feel more like a journey and not just a flat sprint across the board despite how pretty the cover objects might be.

This is probably a no-brainer but I really need to distance myself from my seat-of-my-pants planning style. I kind of despise doing rough drafts of anything or setting up schedules and time lines. It's freakin' totally like pulling teeth with me. I'm not even very excited about doing concept art. Sooooo.. We'll see if I can work on that. >>;

 Hrmm.. Other things? While I have several ideas and tons of resources to pull from since I'm sticking to a Christmas and Halloween themed map. One thing I should pay more attention to I think would be to add some more randomness of encounters on the map. I need more crazy in The Kettle of Crazy: Holiday Edition. What comes to mind when trying to explain it is like in Monty Python's Life of Brian where Brian is running from the Romans. For those who have never seen it, the movie is a comedy about a man who is born the same time as Christ and the whole movie is set in the Middle East during the occupation of Isreal by Rome. Brian is running up the stairs from some Roman soldiers and has apparently chosen an incomplete tower to run up. He gets to the incomplete top and accidentally falls off the tower to what should be his death, but instead of dying he happens to crash through the roof of a passing space ship and goes on a brief outer space adventure before being dumped back off on Earth. It's totally outside the movie you think you're watching. You're left to wonder "What the Hell just happened?" And that is what I think I need more of for my game. I need more "What the Hell?" for my players.

Eh? Things that inspired my ideas for this post? Umm... First I guess my desire to re-tool my map would be from just seeing a variety of maps that look more natural and not planned. Second on planning? I think I watched too much Holms on Homes while I was sick on the couch this weekend. He plans everything in super detail. Lastly? Umm.. More "What the Hell?" I think that was already in the back of my mind, but an inspirational episode of X-Play on the new Penny Arcade RPG might have brought that forward. They're pretty random. Also, I've been watching a lot of Adventure Time on Cartoon Network. It'll rot your brains! >.<