“How do you get inspiration and what do you do to develop it? What kind of scenario ideas do you have now? Maybe we can make this PBEMs in the near future.” CE Good questions, with several answers. The Kaiju game, provisional subtitle 'Destroy a Lot of Monsters', developed from comments (mostly by John Kantor) after I proposed a single-monster Giant Rubber Monster game. For the Kaiju game, I'm reading, collecting information, and generally following the Marcus Young model of presenting a lot of information to provide background, TO&E information, and so on, once the game is ready for players. Some ideas, like the single-monster GRM game (whose subtitle will be based on whoever the final threat turns out to be-- Godzilla, Gamera, whoever...) start with a "wouldn't a [giant rubber monster]* game be cool? How would a matrix [giant rubber monster]* game work? This is followed by much thought, usually in the shower, or late at night when I take myself to my slumbers... I'm still pondering this one. * One could insert other phrases in this space, such as 'colonial uprising' or 'cool James Bond style' or whatever, the problem I have is remembering the idea when I'm next able to write it down. For some reason, the Godzilla game just keeps coming back to me... Other ideas, so far only the Range War game, spring full-blown from my forehead**, and are thereafter really only polished (again, mostly in the shower or late at night). Range War is supposed to be a Hollywood Western, so I assume the players have some level of understanding of the background and conventions of such, and didn't try to define it thoroughly (I wanted to do a western styled conflict, not a specific western conflict). ** I was reading postings on the list, and suddenly the whole thing just came together, from my murky subconscious... Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #29 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com