Skip to main content

Retrospective and Scheduling Out the next Quarter

Welp, it’s the end of the next week! And my teeth are gone, and the ruins of my mouth mostly healed.  Don’t go to Lincoln Park Dental Specialists! That’s enough personal content.  Onto the game design personal content.

I’ve been looking back over my posts during this pandemic, from when my world abruptly changed in March, to when things normalized enough that I laid out a Bare Minimum+Ambitious+Realistic plan in May.  Interestingly, I’ve long since hit the “3 months of a game design post every week” milestone, though progress has been much slower than I’d hoped on FFGMGM Beta or an Alpha for another game.  Qualifying that: BURN is my most ambitious design and extraordinarily difficult both to build and to test; I’m very pleased with my fuck-it-all playtest of Amberlodge and all the theoretical work I’ve done but it’s been difficult to synthesize those two things into a full build; FGM-squared has been a great ride in terms of the meetings I’ve had with collaborators, but that’s also kind of forestalled the actual practical iterating work, in favour of fun ideating work.  The RPG goal has had its hiccups but has gone okay all things considered, especially seeing as how it turns out my actual deadline for that is next month, and I have just about everything I need now to start writing a first draft.

I may be well served by starting there, with my most tangible deadline, and then building out a calendar for the next three months.  Something missing from my BAR plan was due dates, which I think contributed to a lack of urgency and a restless moving around from project to project.  Of course, I have to factor my playwriting into this, because to pretend my games writing isn’t affected by the demands of playwriting is absurd and sets me up for failure.  So.  Let’s take my most Ambitious plan, break out the milestones, and see when I need to focus on each one.

Games Writing Ambitious Plan:

  • Complete a working Alpha prototype for BURN
  • Complete a working Alpha prototype for Amberlodge
  • Build a Beta of FFGMGM
  • Complete a draft of the DOLLIE scenario (September 30)
  • Write at least one game design post every week for three months
  • And now to get real crazy: Build a 5-week game design class curriculum
  • Also nutso: Identify sections of blog that would make a good book

And let’s add in the playwriting milestones I need to hit:

  • Pre-Rehearsal Draft of Other Rockpools (September 20 [17])
  • Performance Draft of Other Rockpools (September 26 [23])
  • First Draft of Act I of Project Hercules
  • First full Draft of Lossless Compression
  • Edit/Curation/Draft of TNC Audio Play

Man, most of the time I forget that I surrogate-wrote a whole-ass play called Long Canoe that I essentially handed over and never looked back on.  I worked on that thing all through my 2017 London/Scotland trip.  Wild stuff.  Anyhow, let’s order these.

  • Write at least one game design post every week for three (more) months
    • This is a given and a background activity so let’s start here
  • Pre-Rehearsal Draft of Other Rockpools (September 20 [17])
    • My top priority right now, especially as I’ll need to turn around a week after and do it again
  • Performance Draft of Other Rockpools (September 26 [23])
    • Same as above
  • Complete a draft of the DOLLIE scenario (September 30)
    • I can start sooner but I need a first draft of this pretty much once I’m done editing Rockpools
  • First Draft of Act I of Project Hercules
    • Should only take two or three writing sessions to fill in the gaps on what’s unwritten and order/edit it into a coherent first half.  Let’s add this in as another September goal
  • Build a Beta of FFGMGM
    • This can and should happen some time in September
  • Edit/Curation/Draft of TNC Audio Play
    • Sooner? Rather? Than later? October? Early to mid?
  • Complete a working Alpha prototype for Amberlodge
    • Can be physical or digital, but it’s got to have at least most of the systems, let’s say this is due by Halloween
  • First full Draft of Lossless Compression
    • No one is asking for this, and it may be best to just truly put a lock on that shelf while I try and get through a busy season
  • Complete a working Alpha prototype for BURN
    • The scope of this deserves its own dedicated lengthy period of time.  Perhaps I work on this in the deep of winter or come Spring, or once I’ve learned how to digitally build either FGM^2 or Amberlodge (or another of my designs)
  • And now to get real crazy: Build a 5-week game design class curriculum
    • Before or after BURN.  Timing TBD but probably something that I’d want to work on when I get ready to teach my other class again.
  • Also nutso: Identify sections of blog that would make a good book
    • Last priority, even after BURN

Alright, there’s a couple things in there that overlap, some that might move around a bit, but that’s helpful.  It’s good to see it all laid out in front of me, and to have as a reminder that even should I feel inspired to work on, say, Lossless Compression, because my Choward’s mint samplers came in, I shouldn’t do so if it’s at the expense of my more urgent priorities.

Mmmm, Choward’s mints.  Dare to be old.



I think that’s plenty for now.  I’ve got my marching orders - Other Rockpools is first up, and I’ll probably do one last TTRPG Tuesday about the DOLLIE Extraction before I dive into trying to make a first draft.  Til next week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for Alice, left for Cat) and thro
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Minimum Viable Product for WWDW?

Hello and welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! I’ve put together a barebones introductory document for We Won, Didn’t We? and, well, I think it speaks for itself.  Check it out HERE ! This introduces the skeleton of the game, as well as walking through the steps; I’d say next up is a rudimentary character sheet, and maybe I can bring this to a Playtest Zero session and see what folks think of character creation within one of the starting Bulbs.  I’ve opened the doc up for comments, so if you have thoughts dear reader, fire away.  Brain fried, go read the doc, til next time!
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Beliefs as Roles

  Hello from high above the Rockies, as I make my way back to Chicago from Big Bad Con 2023.     This was my first con in five years, and only my second ever.     I had a better time at it than I did at GenCon, which I understand derives largely from this being an industry con vs a consumer show.     I made a modest number of purchases but it was easy to stick to the constraints of my limited luggage space, which was fine; shopping and new releases were not the attraction here.     Gaming, panels, and (as I soon learned) networking were. This con was certainly less overwhelming and I think my expectations were clearer and my FOMO much lighter, but I’ll readily admit that I had a lot to learn.    I misunderstood or made mistakes regarding almost every event I signed up for, including happy accidents like sitting in on the wrong panel only to learn a ton, or expecting a mending workshop to be about fixing one’s writing when the application was rather more literal, which was a fascinat
Post a Comment
Read more