Ludum ex Ludo

I wonder how many games I need to make before I stop feeling shame at the very thought of talking about my creative process.

Today is not that day, but let’s push through together. 

I’ve realised that some of my most productive work comes out of playing a game with my brain. I got onto thinking about this in more detail after my conversation with Amanda, especially in relation to one of her choices (no podcast spoilers here).

I thought I’d share a few that I’ve noticed myself using. They don’t need to be complex solo games, just anything that invokes a feeling of playfulness, tricking the brain into not realising it’s doing work.

I’ll start with the big three categories that cover countless specific techniques. 

Restriction
Set a hard limit on something and follow it (until you’re sick of it). 

• Make this relatively complex game idea only use d6s.
• Write seventy-two character classes, all wizards.
• Fit it all on one page.

Randomness 
Introduce an element of chance to your process. 

• Write a list of 20 types of location then roll for two of them, combining into somewhere more interesting.
• Start each sentence with a random letter of the alphabet. 
• Open an unrelated book to a random page and find a phrase you can use in your current task.

Iteration
Start with a boring idea then iterate on it over and over until we’re far away from the original concept. On each step do one of the following:

• Pivot: Change a bit
• Invert: Reverse a bit
• Expand: Add a bit

We’ll even combine it with an arbitrary restriction (we stop after 10 steps) and randomness (picking two random letters to start with “VG”)

1. VG
2. Vogons (the bad poets from Hitchhiker's Guide)
3. Good poet (invert)
4. Good artist (pivot)
5. Good sculptor (pivot)
6. Good sculptor of giant statues (expand)
7. Good sculptor of tiny statues (invert)
8. Good sculptor of tiny statues who can’t make them anymore (expand)
9. Good sculptor of horrific statues who can’t make them anymore (pivot)
10. Angry sculptor of horrific statues who can’t make them anymore (pivot)

The point isn’t to end up with a fantastic NPC  ready to go, but we’re now at a place to start crafting them into something usable. 

All popular techniques, but the next one’s newer to me, and the one that inspired me to actually write this post. 

Mise en Place 
(Urgh, French and Latin in the same blogpost?)

You know how before a chef starts cooking they get all their equipment out and chop up their ingredients into tiny separate bowls?

Do that, but with writing, and also you don’t know what meal you’re cooking. 

I found myself doing this with music making. The idea of creating an entire piece of music is daunting, so I tell myself to just mess about with a synth and make some cool sounds, saving them in the presets. Maybe I’m just making some drum loops, keeping them aside. Maybe I record a vocal sample and play around with effects to make a weird noise. 

Of course, many of these sit unused to this day, but often once I’ve created an ingredient I like I find myself inspired enough to start putting a full track together. 

For game design or writing this could be a small, seemingly useless mechanic, an NPC without a world to live in, or just an evocative phrase that sounds good.

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