Creativity Based on Established Things.
*Flies in with a portfolio full of ideas*
Welcome to the segment "Gaming Dragon Insights!"
By: Awes The Dragon Scribe
Have you ever been in love with a game? Like a card game, or a board game. Maybe its Dungeons & Dragons, or maybe its a video game. Have you ever had a group of friends who also loved the game and you talk about it a lot?
For me, its Magic The Gathering. A friend of ours that we used to live close to and play the game with all the time got into making spoof cards for personal use as art pieces, and to play with in private. We will call her Tiger for the sake of ease and to protect her privacy.
Let me tell you a little bit about Tiger. She is a fun loving and silly person with a vast love of collecting. She is sweet to a fault and often times a touch naïve, but she is a great friend whom we love very dearly.
Recently Tiger started texting us about making these cards for fun and it kind of spiraled into chaos a little. See I am not super creative on my own. Fresh ideas are not really easy for me when it comes to creating something from scratch. Building on ideas I am given however is something I truly enjoy. I love having parameters that I can build within and stretch. MTG fills that niche in my life quite well. Unfortunately I tend to get carried away at times and if you are not careful I can swamp your ideas under mine.
I can spend hours at a time concocting new mechanics, new characters, new species even, and then hours more trying to balance it all out. It gets even more interesting if you try to differentiate it. At one point Tiger and I had come up with the idea to make a whole new card game. Alas it could not weather Life's storm and we were not able to finish it and then my wife and I moved away.
I often think about what that game could have been. Where it was coming from. Where we could have gone with it. Creativity is such a precious thing and the things that foster it are so wild and varied for each person.
Creating something new to fit into an already existing system doesn't have to be difficult. In fact it happens all the time. People like to say that we shouldn't waste time reinventing the wheel, but if we didn't then we would still be using stone wheels.
So! First up, find something you love, that inspires you. Could be your favorite game, or maybe it's a process you enjoy like robotics. Now take something basic from how it works, and think about how you can add functionality, fun, or beauty to it.
For me, it was players that take reaaaaaaaally long turns in MTG. So I decided to make mechanics that punish that practice. What I came up with was a mechanic for the game that slowly strengthens your damage output for people extending their turns past a certain point. Now in this case, it isn't something I can use to play legitimately, and that is fine. It is just for me and my friends to goof around with.
That doesn't mean yours has to be. It can very well be something that genuinely improves the lives of you and those around you. You never know what you might come up with until you try!
What do you think? What kind of ideas do you have for improving things around you? I would love to hear them in the comments!
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