Developing Story/Game concept

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Just "Winging it!" can work but only with small games, if you just go for it with something big you usually end up with a beginning and an end but nothing in the middle (you can trust me on that one lol)

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So true... which is why I actually have to step back a bit from my project and start over with decent planning. Winging it is not really an option when it comes to adventures I'm afraid.

Woah, lots of awesome ideas here
I saw articity draft before and it looks really cool (professional..), but I'm not sure if I really want to spent that much money for a planning tool as a hobbyist..
Quest and Twine look more like they are suited towards text adventures, maybe they could be used for P%C Adventures aswell, but I think I'm doing a mix between chat mapper for the dialogues (looks really cool!) and a classical game design document (Thanks for this link AFRLme, really helpfull).
I did my last project without real planning, just a few notes, so basically I was just "Winging it!" too, I think it quite worked BUT I could have saved a lot of time and work with a proper plan and for more complex games it is definetly important I think, and thats why I want to do this right on my next project

it certainly helps keep things in perspective, & yourself in focus. the only issue is that planning is just so boring... - especially if you are doing the planning on your lonesome - you end up just wanting to say sod it & dive straight into the development side of things

I call GDD (Game Design Documents) God Damn Documents as they are so boring to type up & they don't half drain away your energy/enthusiasm if you spend too long sitting in front of a screen brainstorming, or typing while brainstorming. I've been typing mine up for well over a month or so now, on & off. It's at about 14 pages so far & there's still more to add. The one good thing about them though is you can share them with team members so they have a guideline to work to, or you can send them to publishers, & other people for feedback or for potential monetary gains.

One of the other members on here linked me to the gamepitches website. Slajmboll. You can thank him for the link if you like.

Cheers lee

As far as stories go, start with pen and paper and alot of post its, and a wall. Write down all ideas on individual postits (no matter bad or good). Then make a timeline on the wall with postits. And branch the good ones out with new branches of postits (sidestories, details, dialogues). Sure, there are digital ways to do this also but naggin postits on the wall will make you reevaluate things every time you pass by it. And as far as stories go, they only get better with iterations over and over again best of luck

I agree with Slajmboll. A physical wall of post-its gives you the advantage of not staring at a monitor. For developing the concept and the ideas I always rely on paper. Taking a post-it into your hands helps you evaluating your idea than just staring at it on a monitor.

You can also use colored post-its and dedicate the colors to categories, i.e. characters, locations, props and so on. If you have decided on locations make a big enough square to fit in post-its with characters and props which gives you an idea of your world and which locations might be too crowded or too empty. This helps a lot with balancing.

One more advantage of a physical wall: It's a great conversation piece.

Once you are writing dialogue, I would give Excel (or some similar programs) a try. It helps with keeping track of what is said where (once again colors are your friend).

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I agree with Slajmboll. A physical wall of post-its gives you the advantage of not staring at a monitor. For developing the concept and the ideas I always rely on paper. Taking a post-it into your hands helps you evaluating your idea than just staring at it on a monitor.

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I was considering getting a giant piece of transparent plexiglass or something cut that I could mount on the wall & some dry wipe markers. Cheaper than buying an actual whiteboard & it's transparent so it won't look strange wherever you put it. There's also something called magic whiteboard/magic clearboard which are supposed to stick to flat surfaces such as walls & windows with static. I don't know if they are any good mind, but they are fairly cheap @ abut £20 (approx) for a large roll.

http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/ & http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/product/magic-erasable-clea...

The idea with post its is very good, makes ist a bit less boring..
These whiteboards look interesting aswell, but I'm not sure if they really work that well, would be nice to hear some experiences with them..

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The idea with post its is very good, makes ist a bit less boring..
These whiteboards look interesting aswell, but I'm not sure if they really work that well, would be nice to hear some experiences with them..

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same... why I said I don't know if they are any good.

My strategy is to change the planning tool every couple of months!

This way I went from a text editor to MS Word to FreeMind to MS Powerpoint to Open Writer to Latex to Mindmanager to MS One Note to a Taskmanager on Android to a texteditor on android.

Did I mention that my project is already 10 years in the making?

I also changed the adventure engine two times! ;-)

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My strategy is to change the planning tool every couple of months!

This way I went from a text editor to MS Word to FreeMind to MS Powerpoint to Open Writer to Latex to Mindmanager to MS One Note to a Taskmanager on Android to a texteditor on android.

Did I mention that my project is already 10 years in the making?

I also changed the adventure engine two times! ;-)

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that all sounds very knackering to me!