Wasteland 3 - Designing Towns and another Free Game

Wasteland 3 is into the last three days and has released a couple of updates that are of interest. The first explains how George Ziets, lead area designer, is approaching designing towns in Wasteland 3 and the second update expands the free game offer to include Shadowrun Dragonfall as long as you have pledged $40 or more.

As part of our final push, we have another promotion for you guys! Thanks to our friends at Harebrained Schemes, we're offering a free copy of Shadowrun: Dragonfall to all backers $40 and above. This applies to everyone who pledges during our campaign as long as your final pledge is $40 or more - either through a reward level like Wasteland Scout, or by adding add-ons to an existing pledge!

[...]

As you may know, I'm currently the Lead Area Designer on Torment: Tides of Numenera, and I've also done writing and design work on a number of other RPGs, including Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. Today I'm going to describe my approach to designing a city or town in an RPG (and along the way, reveal some of our initial design thoughts for WL3).

At the start of the design process, the first order of business is always research. I try to find out as much as I can about the town's existing lore, dig up any maps that might exist, and search out preexisting stories, characters, and landmarks that could spark fun ideas for quests. For example, when I designed the town of Mulsantir in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, I delved into some really old Forgotten Realms sourcebooks, looked for references to the town, and jotted down notes on everything that sounded interesting. Partly this is to reward fans of the setting and surprise them with references to people and places they know and love... but it's also an effort to gather as much creative ammunition as I can. I find that my imagination works best when I have plenty of disparate elements that I can fit together in interesting ways.