I'd thinking about how to implement a procedurally-generated overworld. Not yet looking at individual organic-looking tile placement, god no, but instead on how to organize a random world into an interesting underlying framework.
On the topic of things being interesting, my original plan was to make an overworld of wide open areas without changing the scale from dungeons or towns, with no way to travel on a world map (see Secret of Mana). Then I realized how terribly tedious and monotonous and repetitive and dull and uninteresting and dreadful and repetitive that would be, and thought instead of having a fast-travel option. I went back and forth between a Dwarf Fortress-style zoomed-out representation to travel quickly or a Diablo2-style waypoint option and select from a list of towns you've visited. It was the former which made me realize that, given the option, most (sane) players would choose the faster zoomed-out traversal, defeating the point of trying to catch their attention with repetitively repetitive repetition in the larger representation. It would also be tricker to randomly generate convincingly, and much more painful to try and save. So I decided to go with just the zoomed-out representation, because it's easier for me and less repetitive for you. Oh don't look at me like that. If this style of overworld is good enough for Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and ADOM, it's more than good enough for me. More importantly, I doubt anyone would honestly want an alternative. Realism is only worth pursuing in videogames if it enhances the experience, and in this case it adds drudgery and repetition, not fun (a premise I'll cover further in an upcoming entry).
