Design Document.

1. Why do you think there is so much variation in the structure of each design document?

A design document is very specific to the game it's about and the designer, so there is no right way to write one. Each Design document has been made the way it has for a reason.

2. How much technical information is contained within the design documents? Would a programmer be able to pick up any of these design documents and create the gameplay based on only the information presented within the design document?

I think a programmer could make the level designed in Technomancy, as there are pictures of the map, as well as decriptions of the overworld. Captain claw had a much smaller description of the worlds, so whiole a programmer could make it, it is unlikely that it would match up with the picture in the designers head. It has very good descriptions of the fighting though, so the characters and combat would be easy to do just using the design document. In comparison, Technomancy has very little description of characters or combat points, merely listing them and moving on. The most descriptive it gets on characters is that the Shadow warrior is female.

3. Discuss a few good points about these example documents, and then identify a few areas which you would improve in your own design document. For example, you may want to reduce some of the long paragraphs of text in some documents and present that same information as a bullet list to make the information more accessible.

My design document will make good use of bullet points, and try and use short paragraphs, for easy reading.
I'm not sure I'll be able to go into as much detail as these until I've finished the game, as if I plan something to the last detail beforehand, and it ends up not quite working, or looking different, it will drive me crazy. Nobody will need to make my game until I've finished the first version anyway, so in future I plan to make a design document after making the game, to help anyone interested in making it replicate it, but anything I make or design is likely to change part way through, or have bits I didn't plan in advance, as I tend to start off with the rough outline of something and see where it ends up, fleshing it out and filling it in in whatever way makes sense.