WILD Dev Diary 1

Synchronicity has a knack of sneaking up on you and before you realise it, the universe has given you multiple signs that all point to the same thing.

First of all, I'm back to working on WILD. I'd had a bit of a break from it while I did some commissioned work on Doctor Who, but now I'm back to getting my head into the dreamrealms. Returning to it when I've had a break from it, I started to see ways to fix it, make it work better, and that involved tweaking the game system rather dramatically.

Second bit of synchronicity came from reading a handful of articles and listening to a couple of cool podcasts about game design and publishing. Most of them included a comment about keeping people interested in what you were working on by publishing a regular "Development Diary", so your potential audience and players could see how the game was progressing, the thoughts behind your design decisions and so on. And while I've been posting the odd update here and there about how WILD was progressing, these articles and podcasts lead me to think I wasn't doing it regularly enough.

And then, the third bit of synchronicity came on Sunday. It rained. I mean, it RAINED. It looked like the fight scene at the end of The Matrix Revolutions. It was hard to actually see through the rain. And, being the fool I am, was walking home from the dayjob in it. No raincoat, no umbrella. Just my suit jacket. And a hat... By the time I got home, my clothes were plastered to me. I hung my jacket up, and it dripped so much water I had to put newspaper under it. Two days later, and it was still wet, and will need a clean.

Inside that jacket, in the inside pocket, was my notebook. An A6 Moleskine-a-like made by popular stationery chain Rymans. This notebook as not left my side in many years. It is where I started formulating the ideas for WILD, making notes of how the game would work, how dreams work, key ideas of dream research, psychology, and inspiration from all sources.

It's like a backup of my brain - all the many ideas that I need to write down so I don't forget, they're all in there. And after the downpour - after my complete drenching - it was a little damp.

Luckily, it was just the black cover that was wet, and the pages were untouched. Lucky.

This reminded me of something I'd planned on doing for many moons - writing up some of my ideas and thoughts as a Developer Diary, so not only you could see how my brain got from "Wow, I should make a tabletop RPG of dreamshare technology" to where I am now, but also so I have a backup of what I've scribbled down, and can remind myself of ideas I noted down many years ago that I may have forgotten all about.

And so begins my Dev Diary posts. Hopefully, this will be fairly regular - and it'll get me writing and thinking more and more about WILD.

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 Let's make a start, and look at the first page in the Dev Diary! This is really going back a bit. I have a distinct memory of coming out of the cinema after watching Inception and my head was full of ideas of dream sharing and why there wasn't a game that did that.

I was reminded of the game I ran in my late teens that was based on A Nightmare on Elm St, and how obsessed I was with the third movie - Dream Warriors - and how the characters all appeared in one dream to tackle the evil. And how I loved Dreamscape, and The Matrix, and how I really wanted to write a cool game that captured that feeling.

So I bought this notebook and started jotting down some ideas - each idea has a little box next to it to categorise it so I could keep track of which ones were [Game System] or [Setting], and so on.

A lot of these notes were made sitting in the library, opposite my dayjob, when I'm desperate to escape from the mundane work on my lunch hour and just think about what I'd rather be doing.

That first spread (and the pages that follow) are me randomly writing down ideas that I needed to remember:

[Game System] Do dreams have a number of points for their stability? The more fantastic the elements in the dream, the more likely the dreamer will realise it is a dream and it will collapse, but is this just for people who are untrained and unaware that they are asleep? What about people who have gone in fully aware?

[Note] How much of a dream is remembered upon waking? Some seem to be lost instantly, while others can always be recalled.

[Why?] Why are dreams being explored? Is there a Collective Unconscious? Maybe not so much Sandman-esque dream-realms, but maybe more like Tron - where multiple dreamers, using the technology, have formed distinctive locations through repeated visits. 

[Note] Without the machines can you enter someone nearby's dream maybe through will, etc.? Maybe part of the plot would have to be getting the device onto a target without alarms. (Dreamscape)

[Note] Powerful enough dreamers bringing objects out of the dream realms into reality. (Elm St, Paprika)

[Note] Doing it without a device, only through meditation. Drugs don't work, produce impure results.

[Game System] Maybe a dream has a number of Story Points? As the players use points to manipulate the dream to their own ends, they are used until the dream collapses. A dream within a dream uses a portion of this as well. Architect can increase and replenish a little, trying to hold the dream together until mission end. 

[Note] Actives need to be classified to be different from Projections - the "scenery" characters who are a figment of the dreamer's mind. Do these Projections act hostile against intruder Actives or is that too derivative? (Inception)

[Game System] Injury and death in the dream, does it result in waking or continuing injury into the real world, or both? A threshold for injury? When hit or injured a character needs to make a roll to resist waking... lighter injuries are ignored, but more severe injuries are carried over into the real world. Fatal injuries have a chance of waking - or dying in the dream like the folklore says.

[Scenes] Start in the middle of the action, never describe going to a location. Keep players on their toes.

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That's the first few pages. More next time, which hopefully will be less segmented!