Hey,
I'm just wondering.. Do you write design document before you begin developing your game?
I'm a control freak so I need to know what needs to be done and what not. It's also easier to work when you have a goal in sight aswell. I'm in the middle of pre-production in my over-ambitious project and I constantly find myself banging my head in the monitor screaming "is this reaeaally necessary?!?!?"..
Lol, sometimes i do a brief outline of what im going to do or what id like to be down either by typing it up ion a text file or writing it down on a pad, Planning i think is nescessary in a certain way, most times you wont need to at all but it does help alot, if you plan ahead most likely the game will turn out better.
i just slap a bunch of ideas on a piece of paper. hardly a design document but it definitely works...
"Say you're hanging from a huge cliff at the top of mt. everest and a guy comes along and says he'll save you, and proceeds to throw religious pamphlets at you while simultaniously giving a sermon." - Dustin G
For RPGs, I always write design documents. I cover the storyboard, characters, enemies, sidequests, and many other things in the designing process.
Right now I'm working on an RPG. During design, it's a good idea to try to come up with characters first and a general plot. Then you can make sprites for the characters and put them into the battle system. It's always good to have the battle system 100% complete before doing anything else(except for a test dungeon). This way you can just copy and paste battle levels for different dungeons and not have to change everything in all the battle system levels when you make a change in one.
Crap, I'm gonna start talking in a whole bunch of techie mumbo jumbo sooon!
I've been in the process of writing the storyline for my RPG for quite some time now. If I have worked on the game it's usually the sprites or battle system.
It's ok to write a design document, in fact you probably have to if your game is large and complex. Just don't get to carried away with it and spend more time writing your design document then you do making your game.
99 percent chance that the above post is 100 percent correct.