Inspitation from the creator of Fallout

Getting inspiration from other RPG designers is one thing, but I like casting my net a bit wider. Articles, like this one, help to give me the feeling that I'm on the right track with my design theory. 

I've mentuoned a few times that running games and workdbuilding are both like developing a recipe. A single ingredient is linear, monochromatic, even boring. A pair of ingredients adds interest, especislly if they vary in proportions through the dish. Three or fout msy add further imterest and depth... but when you add toi many, or add conflicting ingredients, the various dlavours start working against each other and you end up with a mess.

This kind of idea is a decent chunk of the t3ason why the guide to my current game system us called the "SNAFU SRD and Cookbook". Knowing ehat goes together, how it goes together, and what can go wrong if the wrong things go together is the key to producing something classic snd memorable. This is not to say experimentation is bad...on the contrary. If u know how things will imteract with each other, you get predictability, and that can be stable yet boring. If you throw something new into the mix, it will probably react in recognisable ways, but add something of it's own to the result. Add too msny new things and it confuses people... it might become condidered a classic later on, but thst's a different consideration eorthy of it's own posts.

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