This Friday, I wanted to talk a little about how a “dungeon” was designed by leveraging randomness.

This particular dungeon is a forest, a natural dungeon. Since forests aren’t constructed by humans, how could I – a human – design it? I needed an influence outside of myself to help shape it.

Randomness can be a very useful source for ideas. Enforcing randomness and contending with it can spring forth ideas that would not otherwise come from within our rigidly logical minds.

Here’s how I used randomness to help shape this forest:

• Tear up scraps of paper haphazardly
• Scatter the scraps on the map so they represent clusters of trees
• Arrange the scraps to create pathways between the trees
• Use your own judgment to curb some of the randomness so the dungeon pathways flow in a way that is more meaningful to the player.

This isn’t the only way you can use randomness to think outside the box. You could even come up with your own game idea. Imagine two six-sided dice. On one die are your six favorite games from the last ten years and on the other die are your six favorite games from the 1980s. Roll both and see what you get!

I hope this was kind of interesting at least! Next week we ride to the halfway point of this Countdown. And I will tease this by saying it will contain my favorite Countdown post of them all.