#stuff25, and what i have learned from #dungeon23 and #hex24

Following on from my #dungeon23 and #hex24 yearly RPG projects, I am now doing #stuff25.

This is an imprecise name, I am aware, but here's what I learned from the previous projects.

Learned from doing dungeon23

There's an archive of all my dungeon23 pages by the way, at least up until I just lacked the will to scan pages and make posts about them.

• I'm not really very interested in dungeons. Interesting locations sure, but just the idea of a constrained pre-written one of any size bored me, both in terms of how it would end up in play (delving the same dungeon for literally months? really?) and also because...
• I don't like working on the same dungeon/location for more than a couple of weeks. My dungeon23 entries were always at least one week per dungeon but at the end of two weeks I was getting bored with the same location, and over that, I really found it tedious. Sticking to one dungeon felt like I could never bring in any ideas I'd had in the intervening time, and never branch out, not significantly anyway. I am very easily bored.
• Scanning paper pages of dungeon maps and details ia a pain in the arse.
• Drawing maps and colouring them in is fun.

Conclusions

• I shouldn't stick to dungeons. (Even within dungeon23 I did stuff like make sector maps.)
• I shouldn't work in a structure that requires or encourages making the same thing over too long a period
  • On the other hand there's a degree to which this sort of project is supposed to train me in doing the same thing for a long period of time, so this lesson has to be balanced against that.

Learned from doing hex24 (which I didn't blog much about)

• With an overall theme but one which allows a great mix of content, I can keep going longer. I started off by populating a hexmap for the region an actual game was taking place in, so it had a specific point to it in the early stages, and then as I built out the map, it developed its own internal logic, which made every new hex feel worthwhile - except when it was just filling in outer hexes that I was sure the party would never get to and I had nothing planned for, but even those I managed to fill with mostly reasonable stuff.
• Without an overall theme, writing hexes in itself feels pointless, and coming up with themes is hard. Once I'd finished the initial region hex map I tried to start new region but the ideas I had didn't take. I wasn't engaged with them and so making hexes was just a chore - and, importantly, never got any better. As mentioned in the previous point, you can build up an internal logic within a region that starts to generate new ideas, but if you're never making anything interesting enough to do that because you're not engaged, it won't happen. I got very far behind at several points because of this, but luckily picked up the days later on, when I extended the map from the original cycle to the west - this felt like it had a point even if it was just in terms of generating more background for my game, and could have elements that related to previous ones from the original region.

Conclusions

• Have an overall plan for the whole year, or at least a structure that helps me come up with plans, to avoid having to invent a new purpose after a few months and possibly get it wrong.
• Have sub-plans connect together so that inspiration for one can be drawn from a previous one.

My stuff25 concept

I did like doing some dungeons and I did like doing some hexes (more than I did dungeons) so for stuff25 I decided to do a mix of dungeons and areas and also journeys. When I was planning this I was very into the idea of a journey-based, travelling, game. A journey between two points would be as valid as the points themselves as a daily activity.

I split the year up into seasons. There would be four regions, each made over 13 weeks of real time, and explicitly themed around that season. Winter was always going to be annoying as it's split between years, but I'll do Winter up to the end of February and then finish it off in December. The longest length of time I kept up a map with hex24 was about three months, so splitting the year up into seasons matches that for each season. Seasons also give me some underlying theme to start off with.

I made up a content plan. These are the things which exist:

By working out how many small/medium/large places you aim to create, you can then work out the number of journeys. I'm still insistent that there should be distinct journeys between different locations which are just as valid as some small locations themselves. I have my proposed counts in the third column above, which add up to 13 weeks x 7 = 91 days.

So that's what I'm aiming for with my initial stuff25 plans. I started, obviously, with Winter. The region of Winter is marked by cold and... winterishness. I don't know, there's a lot of snow and stuff. It's vaguely Nordic-themed.

Medium

I started by writing everything in either the same notebook I was using for hex24 or on A7 Foglietto index cards. These are cute but after a while I just got sick of trying to read and write on them in poorly-lit pubs, so I've moved onto digital, using my colour reMarkable which has a backlight and also lets me easily export the contents. I have some cards to write up still but not that many.

You can see the current PDF of the project here which includes a load of rough notes that I will probably remove for the final version.

And that's mostly it. I have some days to make up now but will do so. Because it's a lot easier to export digital copies for use in blogging, I plan to do this more regularly than I did with dungeon23 - once a week is reasonable. So let's see how this thing goes.