Do you do design sketches?

Last year I posted these 1 page games, wherein I would write a game that could not go beyond the  limits of one page on Open office or Microsoft word.

None of these efforts were great, but that's not the point ..

here are the links for those who are interested. 

• Wrestling with Dice (The weakest game of the bunch never played still has some good bones, but no meat.
• Dice Chess (this has been played a couple of times, I even updated it once. Neal and I made an afternoon of it once and  he eviscerated me in a couple of games. The end game needs a better definition.)
• Down on Old Mill Road: (I think this one had the most legs, but needs a great deal of tightening up. I did a solo play here.)

These are not Micro-games or even nano-games. I look at what I was doing more like sketches, or exercises.

My thought here is that every game does not need to be a  gem of game design to be a playable even fun distraction. it's alright for someone who enjoys designing games to make sketches every now and then that are not intended to be  finished works. Creating something that is simply a proof of concept can  be enjoyable, and informative.

There is also something to be said for placing arbitrary limits such as "No longer than one page," on a work. Forcing ones self to look at every thing added to the  game and saying "does that have to be here?" is a powerful tool for learning to only include exactly what the game needs.* Taking that lesson into a large project can improve the clarity of the whole design.

I am considering  getting back to this form in the next week or so, just to loosen up this design log jam I've had in my head since I stopped work on "Shards of Thimbral."

So the final questions open to anyone reading.

Do you do design sketches?
If so what do you do with them

How does it help your process?

Thank you for reading!

-Mark.

(*  This is even more true if you're an unskilled writer like I am.)