Some Potential Design Project Ideas

I just thought I would make a quick post and describe some design ideas I am considering working on, particularly for MFA projects that may come up. These are not all of my ideas, but I tend to have new ideas and remember other ideas quite randomly. This is just a list and short description of each. They are in no particular order (except the order given by headings). If you are interested in one project or another, or would like to see a different project, just leave a comment!

Illuria, the MMO That Will Never Be

This is a prose-piece followed by a look at MMO design.  If you want to skip the prose, then click here [tl;dr].

Teleah stared across the plain at the lonely, empty hut so far from the city she called home.  She knew it was empty because just a week before, she had entered and killed all three people who lived inside.  Killed, or murdered?  She wondered about it.  Sure the three were outlaws under penalty of death and the coin flowed through the mercenary’s purse like any other contract, but this time it was different.  One of those three had been a child.  Teleah couldn’t help but think that she was no better than they were: filthy murderers and heretics.

It was different, too, because they were gone forever.  Teleah had needed to carry the heads back in a sack to satisfy the bounty, but she had buried the bodies in the earthen floor of the hut.  They wouldn’t just spring back up like they did in the training days or the games.  Still, every few days Teleah returned to the hut just to check, and each day it was empty.  The mercenary looked down at her sword.  It was notched in a few places to provide speed and it screamed just before a blow landed.  She had made it herself; no one else in the whole world had one.  As Teleah crossed the barren field, she sheathed the sword, her mouth a thin line.

When she approached the hut’s opening, a wolf leapt out, vying for Teleah’s throat.  A few quick punches and a swift kick sent the wolf on its way.  Teleah knew wolves.  She’d earned that accolade on her ear when she was thirteen.  But what was a wolf doing this far south, Teleah wondered.  It must be some straggler that thought this hut would offer shelter for the coming night.  Teleah glanced around the inside and cringed.  The wolf had done some digging.

Behind her, the mercenary heard a series of yips and her blood froze.  A quick pivot and a flick of her wrist readied Teleah’s custom sword for battle against the pack of wolves she had just angered.  The wolves were no match and Teleah dined on wolf meat for the next three days, traveling into the north to see what drove the wolves away.  When she arrived there, a new town greeted her, one that had not been there on her last trip that far to the north, and run by a man much like herself.