Last time, I announced that I was just starting work on a new dwarf quest. All I had back then was a blank page that I needed to fill with ideas. Since then I've spent a few days brainstorming, bouncing ideas off other developers, and covering the wall next to my desk with post-it notes saying things like "Commander Veldaban" and "Red Axe base."
I've found it harder to come up with a good idea for this quest than I have for any previous one, and I wrote down several ideas before rejecting them because they weren't right. Finally, it clicked and I had a story I was happy with.
My next step was to write this idea up in a 'concept document', which lays out the plot of the quest in broad strokes. I showed this document to Mod Mark, RuneScape's lead designer, for approval. There was no point in developing the idea until he reached a decision; if he didn't like it, it would be back to my blank page. It turned out that he did like it, so development could continue.
