I poked around, but didn't see anything that really jumped out at me, so I wanted to start this thread!
When in your planning stages for your adventure games, what method do you use for planning out events, dialog trees, and puzzles? I am huge on planning and organizing things, so this part is admittedly my favorite, but I've yet to find a system that really works as well as I'd like it to. I use Scrivener for all of my writing, and with it's various features and templates, I figure there has to be a good way to organize out the various branches and trees for plot points and alternate directions... I just haven't found it yet. (Maybe using the index cards? Though I don't think you could link those out in a branch format...) SO. How do you do your planning? Have you found or made any useful Scrivener (or Word) templates for your planning? Do you use another program entirely? Figured a lot of us could use this information! :)
Step 1: Write story
Step 2: Make Puzzle Dependency Charts (it's the LucasArts way, it's easy, and it works)
Step 3: Improvise dialog
Step 4: ? ? ?
Step 5: Profit.
If you search this board for "game design" (or just "design"), you'll find a bunch of related threads. Here are just a handful:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=5978.0
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=38322.0
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=36024.0
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=50574.0
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=51305.0
Also note that there are some tools for dialog design and editing in AGS that may improve on the AGS Editor (I've never got around to using them myself).
Example design docs:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=47824.0
http://allowe.com/games/game-designs.html
https://www.grimfandango.net/downloads/puzzle-document
(http://i.imgur.com/vGQbgMe.png)
I used flowcharts!
Funny enough, I find that I actually enjoy pen and paper... (roll)
But flowcharts is definitely the way to go, as it's easier to organize (like adding new contents in the middle of what you already had, or moving something some place else).