This article was originally posted on May 10th, 1999, and it was the first ever article posted in The Designers’ Forum. I have seen it cited numerous times by countless individuals as canon, typically advising newbies. I have also seen it critiqued in many circles, although not to the same extent, but by highly recognized authorities within the BOE Community, including no less of a designer than Brett Bixler himself. (What’s that you say? Brett and I disagree?!? What a shock!!!!)
Of course, since this time, Brett and I have come to symbolize the this article in its complete truth and absolute falsehood. The first scenario I designed never saw the light of day, the first scenario Brett designed sits on Spiderweb’s Solid Adventure Table. Obviously, he is still programming, and has compiled a body of work in BOE rivaled by few if any.
Despite this, I still believe in the advice articulated in this article. New designers — your first effort is likely not to be any good. Realize this going in. BOE has lost too many potential programmers because their first work was not well received, and thus not well responded too. But if you realize that your first work is nothing but a trial run, and that it’s the second and third etc.. works that really count, we’ll all be better off.
To wit, the article in its original form:
It’s perhaps a temptation of most Blades of Exile beginner designers to design a grand epic consuming all of Exile (or some other world) about a dark and mysterious foe that threatens the entire universe. In fact, the very help file to Blades of Exile anticipates this. The Blades of Exile help file reads : “Good scenario design is a time consuming thing. Each of the Blades of Exile scenarios involved a month of full-time work. Start small at first, such as with a small outdoors and 4 or 5 towns. Put the massive Exile-sized epic off for a little while, or you risk putting a month of work into a scenario you will never finish, and which nobody will ever see. There is little more satisfying than getting an E-mail saying how much fun someone had playing your scenario. Alas, you never get such an E-mail until your scenario is done.” It’s a warning that’s repeated many times throughout.
I completely disagree. Well, maybe not completely, let me elaborate. The first scenario I began work on was called Kaleb’s War, a massive epic spanning blah blah blah. I fully intended to complete the scenario, and spent a LOT of time working on it. But you know what? The farther along I got, the less I liked the scenario. Each new town, each new dungeon was better designed, with more efficient use of special nodes. I tried to go back and correct some mistakes I had made, but there was only so much I could do. Eventually, after about two months, and 65 towns, another idea crept into my head. After taking over two months, and getting maybe 25% of the way home, I designed and programmed On A Ship To Algiers in a 26 hour span. And you know what? It was a TON better than Kaleb’s War could have ever been. My work on Kaleb’s War increased my skill with the scenario editor exponentially, I learned what I could and couldn’t do with the editor, and the best way to do it. I learned what town and dungeon designs worked well, and what didn’t.
Here is my advice to new scenario designers — program the epic! Or at least, start to. But keep this realization in mind — you will NEVER finish it. The work you are doing now is purely for practice. Design towns, dungeons, outdoors sections, etc.., and make each one different from the last. Play through your scenario a lot! This will make the work easier — you’ll get to enjoy the dungeons, tricks, and traps without having to complete an entire scenario, and you’ll learn what works well and what doesn’t.
Finally, although you might feel differently, your work WON’T be wasted. Everyone can come up with a thousand ideas for a scenario, but as powerful as the scenario editor is, it can’t accomplish all of them. Working within the editor will give you ideas for scenarios that CAN work. Not to mention, you can often salvage MUCH of this early work. Whenever I need a dungeon or town, and suffer from design block, I look over my early epic, and pick out the parts that work, and adapt and improve them to fit in my new scenario. In fact, my next scenario is built around a rather large dungeon that I am salvaging from Kaleb’s War.
What if I had never worked on the epic? I never would have thought of On A Ship To Algiers. I never would have known how to make Of Good And Evil work. Even if I HAD finished a shorter scenario, it probably wouldn’t have been any good. If you are starting out, design an epic, and program (some of) it! It can only make your future work better.
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