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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 9801605" data-attributes="member: 6993955">Some design jibber-jabber[SPOILER="Spoilery things"]So I think I may have just outsmarted myself here in the last round. I'm quite happy with the adventure I wrote, but one particular piece of ingredient design that I hung pretty much the whole adventure on seems to have slipped under the radar. Odd as it sounds I hung my whole adventure (basically) on the shrimp heaven ingredient. I did mention actual shrimps as well, but that wasn't the core usage. Before I go any further I see this as entirely my fault, and not any fault on the part of the judges. I looked at Shrimp Heaven for a long time and didn't have any ideas about how to use it. Then I thought about the possibilities of synonym use (which isn't ideal, but better than nothing). So I settled on Paradise as a promising mean-alike for heaven, and eventually went with little as a synonym for shrimp (shrimp as an adjective for something small, not a tasty crustacean). So Little Paradise sat there with a question mark after it on my scribbled notes while I did other stuff. Shoulder pads was the initial reason I went with Cy_Borg, and the RIFD chips, and the inevitable failing of disguises, and impostor syndrome all came together as feeling very heist-y and that's the core of the action. But I didn't have a hook or inciting moment, and I still had Little Paradise sitting there sticking its tongue out at me. So what are some cyberpunk things? Well, corporations (which is where AlgaLabs showed up), and ... huh ... rogue AI. What if Little Paradise is an AI? Or what if it's a sliver of an AI? That explains the little part. So Little Paradise is a sliver of an AI. From there is was easy to set the AI up as the quest giver (very Cyberpunk, very William GIbson). But I still hadn't used Paradise is any meaningful way other than just as a name (which is weak sauce). That's when I hit on the idea of this sliver wanting to get its whole self back. It sounded like a solid use of paradise is fleshed out right. I have no idea where the idea to use Milton's Paradise Lost as a framing device came from other than just the word paradise, but when I thought about it it all seemed very appropriate, and Milton's climb ouf of the dark into the light worked directly with the original specific 'heaven' part of the ingredient. So I used Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained, as titles and headings, and stuck in a quote about the long journey up fomr the dark into the light. In the heat of writing I thought this al hung together very cleverly. In the lgiht of day, I'm not surprised that the dots were a little too far apart to hand togther the wqay I wanted. I just wanted to paint a snapshot of my design process so people could have a little window into how I funbled the ball on the two yard line (a little anyway).[/SPOILER]This edition of IDM was super fun, so thanks to everyone involved.</blockquote>

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