First of all, how did the concept of The Age of Decadence emerge? Was it a single flash of inspiration or the ideas formed gradually?
Gradually. RPGs are less of “wow, I’ve got a great idea” and more of “these are my thoughts on game design”. So, once the design is set, you slowly build the rest and take your time to figure out which piece goes where.
For example, we wanted to have several non-combat paths through the game, which means that the game should have several non-combat endings (you don’t want to give the player non-combat skills and path, but force him to fight at the end; it kind of throws the entire non-combat design philosophy out of the window). Non-combat endings are a tricky thing. You can’t just throw in a “why can’t we all get along?” persuasion line and be done with it. It should be enabled by certain decisions and in-game pre-requisites, so you sort of work backwards – once you know the different ways to end the story, you go back and build the conditions and choices the player will make in order to be able to end the game a certain way.
