Muses, Misery, and the Written Word

Soon AHP will be releasing our newest game Afterlife and since I am knee-deep in the development process I thought it would be fun to share a very brief overview of how I get inspiration for writing new games.There are a few things that get me going when I am writing a new system – first is a seemingly unending imagination for weird and dark things, second is art, and third is music.

My creative process normally starts with jumbled notes on a notebook, which at one point I painfully write out again in a google doc. After a bunch of copy and pasting – deleting everything I wrote – getting board – rewriting everything – I take a step back and head to Pinterest.

Then, I make a board based on a bunch of art I feel just ‘fits’ my new game. You can take a look at my board for Afterlife here. I’m a visual person and art has always been a huge inspiration for me – I’m not above changing actual lore in my books to fit pieces artists have made for me and this symbiotic creative process drives me and pushes me to look at how the visual world can influence my written words. Below is one of the first pieces that inspired me for Afterlife.

Salome by Takato Yamamoto

One of the most important parts of my Pinterest stage is going back through and removing artwork that actually doesn’t fit the system. Sometimes I get swept up in pinning so many pretty things, I forget what my goal is so it is crucial that I pare the board back. I know a lot of designers who will pin anything and everything that could inspire their system onto a board, using it as general inspiration, but that isn’t me. My board is my vision for the game, I’ll come back to it often, and it has to be concise.

Once the board is done I go back to writing, playtesting, and more writing. It’s around this point I get totally sick of the game I am designing. Not only do I question why I am creating what I am creating, but I start to compare it to every other game on the market. To dig myself out of my pit of hatred and despair every creator goes through, I create a playlist. Songs that remind me why I am in love with my system, why I could never give it up, why I have to finish it.

I created this playlist for Afterlife. Good music can get you through a lot and writing-based playlists are no different. Similar to my art board – my music list serves as inspiration, particularly for emotions I want my game to convey.

How the scalding sun of Tenebris feels on skin. The sweet anguish of a Break. The seduction of a the Unrequited.

Sometimes I’ll just add a song to my playlist, because I like the scratchiness of a person’s voice. Anything and everything can be inspiration if you let it.

With my playlist and my artboard in hand that is normally enough for me to carry my game over the finish line. Nearing the end of development I also request a few art pieces to use for promotion and that motivates me to finish everything up. Seeing custom are created for a setting you developed is a lovely feeling, it makes my game real for me, it says – this is happening.

I’ll close this post with a sneak preview of a sketch for the first piece I commissioned for Afterlife by the very talent Lorena Lammer. What’s you’re creative process? Let me know in the comments!