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sixfold-origami committed Dec 10, 2023
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Expand Up @@ -35,16 +35,16 @@ One of *my* earliest design projects was basically just taking a boring JRPG tem
I've also seen *a lot* of homebrew for *Dungeons & Dragons* that falls into this category.

To be clear, this is distinct from taking *inspiration* from previous work.
Firstly, inspiration is generally more removed than the process being described above.
Firstly, works which inspire a game are a bit further removed from the game being made.
When designing by stumble, the inspiring work is used as a *starting point*.
It's like taking a whole painting and then painting on your own additions over top of what's there.
Healthier inspiration is more like taking the outlines or broad strokes from a painting, sketching it on the canvas using a pencil, and then using that as guidance.
Healthier inspiration is more like taking the outlines or broad strokes from a painting, sketching it on the canvas using a pencil, and then using that as *guidance*.

More concretely, when a skilled designer takes inspiration from other work, they typically start not by hacking on it, but by *analyzing* it.
The first stage is focused on determinging which parts of that work were effective, which parts weren't, and *why*.
Instead of grabbing mechanics and ideas uncritically- those ideas are evaluated against the project's *goals* to see if they would be a good fit.

And that really is the key piece here: design by stumble isn't defined by taking functioning pieces from other works.
And that really is the key piece here: design by stumble *isn't* defined by taking functioning pieces from other works.
It's defined by a lack of *goals* and *vision*.

And, to be clear, there's nothing inherently *wrong* with that!
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