Future Projects!

It's been a while since I've talked about any sort of projects I've got rumbling about in my head, mostly because it's been so long since the creative juices have been flowing the right way. But now that the stress and stupidity has passed, here goes a couple of things I've been working on designing:

1) Sky Castles of Thlaugog: Part five in my neverending quest to become a halfway competent designer, SCoT is a pseudo megadungeon that I've been designing in my head. If you take R'yleh, float it a hundred miles above the earth, add elements of Black Tiger and, Golden Axe, you have the genesis of SCoT. A vaguely cthuloid demonic entity once held dominion over the world in, appropriately enough, a flying castle. It hadn't been seen for hundreds of years, and the castle itself was floating serenely over the ocean, and assumed forgotten. Humanity had seemed happy enough to let it alone, at least until it starts floating back over the mainland.

2) An untitled game that plays with the idea of a skill/job matrix by allowing you to basically choose your class and a "guild." Each class has certain features in common, each guild has certain features in common, and you mix and match to make it work. I'm envisioning more of a board game than a traditional campaign-based roleplaying game. Something like the old tournament modules in D&D, where here's the goal and go get it. Bonus points for these bonus attributes, so on and so forth. This is a fairly old idea, honestly, but one that I think could have some merit.

3) A video game, actually. Sort of turn-based roleplaying game. Not a tactics game, but a JRPG style system with light tactical elements. Your party is arranged on a horizontal line, and so is theirs. Your warriors get in the way, your wizards are throwing spells that the enemy can dodge if they're fast enough/left enough initiative/were already moving, your rogues are trying to sneak around and through, and basically you have a sort of jostling representation of what I think could be a fairly fun seed for a game. Working on the tech demo (soonish)- I lost my registered copy of Game Maker 7 so I'm poking around for a new game engine. I'm looking for something with fast prototyping, not a detailed game engine. Before I set about learning XNA or whatever kids use these days, I'd like to make sure that it doesn't suck in practice.

4) More Aim For The Head stuff. I want to play it with my buddies, but they're always busy .With my luck, I'll have moved away before we get to play again, but I guess that's ok. I'll just wrangle up an online group and make it work.