I was going to create a design journal in YouTube, but:
I instead intend to use this thread to document my attempt at creating a game and a bit of reflective practice. If this helps me or anybody else then I’ll consider it a win regardless of how bad the game is 
Some design guidelines to begin with…
Daniel’s “Ten Things I Look for in a Good Dungeon Crawl and Adventure Game” video has a large cross-over with what I look for. It serves as a great starting point, and his thoughts are much more organised than mine 
Ten Things I Look for in a Good Dungeon Crawl and Adventure Game
I’m sure I’ll refer back to this list often as I try to build a game.
Constraints are a good thing, not negative. If anything, having some boundaries to push against can help with creativity. Some self-imposed constraints are:
In deciding on a setting, I’m going to try and follow the old adage “write about what you know”. As a guiding principle this should help me make the setting believable, and to generate ideas for encounters and the world. Now for the place and time…
I enjoy both kinds of games: dungeon crawls and overland adventures.
Having no life experience of dungeons, I’ll go with an overland adventure.
An overland adventure in a place that I know? There is no wilderness in modern Britain. Its a tiny island that’s been populated since the last ice age. The closest I can get to a wild country is the Peak District national park. Even then its peppered with villages that have been there since at least medieval times.
The Peak District forms a breathing space between the cities of Manchester (my side) and Sheffield, and now has millions of visitors every year. It only covers 555 square miles, so is not a vast expanse, but should be big enough for a bit of adventure. In the modern world it could be circumnavigated quickly in a car. But even a couple of hundred years ago it was wild enough to require a local guide.
To quote Daniel Defoe: “This, perhaps, is the most desolate, wild, and abandoned country in all England.”
The Peak District also has hundreds of remains of stone circles, cairns, barrows, henges, standing stones, and hill forts to act as evocative locations.
It is also the 75th anniversary of the national park this year. Happy birthday. 
The further back in time we go, the more untamed the country becomes. But I also want the Bronze and Iron age barrows to be haunted relics of a bygone age - much as they are today. I also want to stay far back enough in history to avoid gunpowder weapons.
I think sub-Roman Britain gives a good reason for the area to be wild and under-populated. 410AD is often mentioned to be the date that Roman legions withdrew from Britain, leading to the rise of small tribal kingdoms. This is a reason to define the boundary of the realm on the map.
Historians might dislike the term Dark Ages, but it is an evocative term for game lore.
I love hex crawls, but it doesn’t really give me the right feeling for a realm where the player’s character is a local tribesperson.
Hex crawling makes perfect sense in Forbidden Lands, where it is part of the game lore that the villages have been isolated apart in a magical mist, and you are exploring the area for the first time. Hexes really help with the feeling of freedom to roam as you can explore in any direction.
In my case, a point crawl feels like a better way to represent prehistoric trading routes that have existed since the Stone age. Even today I think there are remnants of Roman paving along some paths (like Doctor’s Gate).
But even that may be step too far - to stick with the idea of starting small and simple, my first version will be basic regions drawn onto the map.
Here is a modern map of the Peak District, which clearly shows the area when fitted into a rectangle (i.e. a piece of paper):
The Dark Peak is named after the gritstone bedrock, the White Peak similarly named after the local limestone.
Maybe the 3 coloured areas could be different danger levels in the game?
Either way, the map is useful in several ways:
The Peak District doesn’t have any clearly defined borders such as coast or mountains. In my hand-drawn attempt in the previous post I have instead covered the areas outside the game realm with heavy woodland, as if the Peak District realm is in land cleared by your character’s tribe.
