Mostly about games, but with occasional detours into other nerdy territories.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Notebooks
Curiosity was expressed regarding how I come up with stuff, so here are a few pages from the notebook I'm thinking in, representing a few thoughtful days..
Do you use a notebook for each project, or are your ideas interleaved in one.
In either case, do you use a notebook like this at the game table?
I ask because for a very long time I used Moleskines and Piccadillys (thanks for the suggestion), but I realized that I often would need to add detail to an element later and would run out of room, and would certainly have problems at the game table flipping between pages. Thus began my obsession with using tools like Personal Brain, VoodooPad, wikis in general, and even Drupal at the table.
The jury is still out (and has been deliberating for about 7 years) as to whether I can find/use information at the table more quickly with these tools or a damn book. But one would think I SHOULD be able to, especially with something like Alfred to help.
I tend to interleave freely in a single "brainstorming" notebook as I come up with ideas. When it comes time to take things to the table, I prefer using more flexible resources, either index cards or a Rollabind/Circa/Arc notebook - one of the ones with repositionable pages.
Regarding your note about making names affect magic: I have to say, I love the idea of magic -- powers in general, maybe even large chunks of the actual gameworld -- being modified or motivated by the more free-form part of character creation and development, even something as basic as names. Consider the more streamlined example in FreeMarket, where the tags you (openly) give your character's skills and attributes, even his/her origin, can modify how he/she fares in a given game situation. Can a game be made, has a game been made, that allows an even more profound effect for free-form elements than that?
You are incredibly neat!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. (The caps is working for you, I think.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting...
ReplyDeleteDo you use a notebook for each project, or are your ideas interleaved in one.
In either case, do you use a notebook like this at the game table?
I ask because for a very long time I used Moleskines and Piccadillys (thanks for the suggestion), but I realized that I often would need to add detail to an element later and would run out of room, and would certainly have problems at the game table flipping between pages. Thus began my obsession with using tools like Personal Brain, VoodooPad, wikis in general, and even Drupal at the table.
The jury is still out (and has been deliberating for about 7 years) as to whether I can find/use information at the table more quickly with these tools or a damn book. But one would think I SHOULD be able to, especially with something like Alfred to help.
I tend to interleave freely in a single "brainstorming" notebook as I come up with ideas. When it comes time to take things to the table, I prefer using more flexible resources, either index cards or a Rollabind/Circa/Arc notebook - one of the ones with repositionable pages.
ReplyDeleteHm I considered this. But then there's that my writing is terrible. Yours is quite nice!
DeleteRegarding your note about making names affect magic: I have to say, I love the idea of magic -- powers in general, maybe even large chunks of the actual gameworld -- being modified or motivated by the more free-form part of character creation and development, even something as basic as names. Consider the more streamlined example in FreeMarket, where the tags you (openly) give your character's skills and attributes, even his/her origin, can modify how he/she fares in a given game situation. Can a game be made, has a game been made, that allows an even more profound effect for free-form elements than that?
ReplyDelete