02 February, 2009

How to plan a RPG using MS Project part 1

These days, I have so much materials to read and nourish. My class finish in next week and I have to perform my best with MS Project now or the application icon might be disappear from the frame that pops up after clicking the Windows icon on the bottom left of the computer screen. In other words, another application might take its place of the popularity.

While typing up hundreds of dictionaries for practice, I got bored and thought about using the software to do something else for fun learning. Resources (worker) are likely to be Project Manager, Analyst, Developer, Designer, Writer, Technician, etc. Well, what if I changed it to something funny? - like a Swiss Army solder, a cow, a Swiss Guard (from Vatican), and a Yodel singer. If I use these workers for something, their attribute will be like this.

Swiss Army Solder - Warrior, or Solder.
Cow - a cow is just a cow... and it makes the RPG look like humorous and animal friendly.
Swiss Guard - Cleric/Swordsman.
Yodel Singer - Bard - you can imagine how he can reduce the aggressiveness of enemies, and if he failed to convince them, you can imagine the result of increasing their aggressiveness by making them mad.

So, I got one party with a warrior capable to use guns, a cow that can make the story something unique, a cleric-swordsman who can fight the best against undead, and a bard that can really make sense of how his/her singing damage enemy's fighting spirit.

As a RPG, they need a plan of fighting against evil or something to achieve, I thought that part can be written in a Work Breakdown Structure form go through the System Development Life Cycle. Sorry about the technical words. It's just about how to make a plan or a schedule for a project. By adding story lines in a form of a project schedule, I thought MS Project might be suited to see how entire RPG looks like. Since the application can manage Predecessors for certain tasks, these characters must accomplish something before they can do something new. Now, this sounds much like a real RPG, isn't it?

I also thought that MS Project can be used as a tool to create gamebooks. When I was a kid, I was a big fan of gamebooks. Steve Jackson, Livingstone, and J. H. Brennan were my favorite authors. I thought about using the project dictionaries to show the section of the gamebook (not really a gamebook, but similar style) and the Gantt Chart to show how the story line looks like. I guess no one will upload a template for creating a gamebook to the Microsoft website. I thought it sounds fun to try it, but I was too busy for reading. Since I do not like gang stalkers to use my ideas, I post them to my blog. I still have enough creativity like what high school level kids have.

By the way, I am working on translating a popular website. My translation will be done in about 2 weeks, so I might tell what I did voluntary. Some people just take volunteer jobs that comes with some paper works for their career. I hated such bureaucratic exploitation of volunteering and activism. I might not have proper records of volunteer works by myself, yet I think that is something much like the concept of the original meaning of voluntarily. If I am not blogging, I certainly not tell what I do daily to spend my time. Anyway, I will tell the result to others who are interested in Zeitgeist movement as I want to make more people interested in it.

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