Making a fully-fledged RPG in Twine

First of all, an introduction is in order - but I won't be making it.

It doesn't really matter who I am, not least because my personal circumstances have proven to be my most destructive roadblock so far. Suffice to say I have little to no actual experience in either writing/worldbuilding/game design or coding, neither do I have the support of friends and loved ones in this, since they don't know. (A personal circumstances matter.)

I'll be learning most of it as I go, as well as judging how well my reading on the aforementioned topics matches up with the practice of creating a game from scratch. Basically, I'm Tom Hanks during his first days (weeks? months?) on the island in "Cast Away". This blog will be my Wilson.

I'm undertaking this for a number of reasons:

• First and foremost, I'm an obsessive thinker and tinkerer. My mind loops around itself constantly, milling, mulling over this and that. I can't turn this off. There is a lot to tinker with in a game, especially one where text is predominant. (Though it will have a graphical layer of sorts.) Hopefully, doing this I can get my thoughts in order and bind them to a creative outlet, working towards a goal instead of tying themselves in knots all the time.
• Interactive storytelling fascinates me. I think it will influence our culture in a huge way in the years to come.
• I intend to use this work as part of my portfolio to get a job different than the one I have now. If I manage to build a particular set of skills and a mindset while working on this, I should be aiming to find some use for them.
• I'm looking to become a part of a community that might appreciate my work, or at the very least, people that would be interested to talk about it. Different communities that touch upon various aspects of what I'm trying here are dedicated and enthusiastic, so maybe I'll find good company there.

Now, about those various aspects - I have so much to learn! So much to do! I need to break this project down if I'm going to have any hope of finishing it. But more about that in my next post. For now, here's a tentative list of what I'm going to write about next:

1. What sort of game I intend to make.
2. What sort of design principles I'll be using.
3. Why and how I'm going to use Twine to do this.