Skip to main content

Q1 2021 Report: State of the 'Mancer

Well, there’s less than two hours left in the week (less than fifteen now that I'm actually pressing Publish), so let’s try and get a post together, since I need to feel in control of my life.  There’s a lot that’s up in the air right now, and I’ve just been utterly unable to do much game design stuff outside of this blog.  So today’s going to be a roundup / quarterly report, and I’ll also see about pre-writing tomorrow’s Out of Mana.  I think my goal was to write ten of those? And I’ve already done 6, which is genuinely shocking, to me, but I have been pretty single-minded in my commitment to updating this blog (Perhaps! To the detriment! Of my other projects!) so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.  But put aside tomorrow’s post for a moment, and let’s focus on this week; it’s not quite three full months of 2021 down, but we’ve got some definite data, so let’s just dive in.

Now, I took the last week of 2020 off, so I didn’t actually do a quarterly report, just various deranged end of year roundup-y type things of a different flavour, so I need to go back to September for the last plan I made.  Now that was six full months ago, surely all of those plans have long since been realized, right? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

  • 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
    • ^ Did this one actually
  • 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
    • ^ Did it, but not games related
  • Performance Draft of Other Rockpools (September 26 [23])
    • Same as above
    • ^ Again, did it but not games related
  • 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
    • ^ Managed this, have written enough about it
  • 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
    • ^ Did it, not games related, did not get together a reading of said Act 1
  • Build a Beta of FFGMGM
    • This can and should happen some time in September
    • ^ Boo.  Failed.
  • Edit/Curation/Draft of TNC Audio Play
    • Sooner? Rather? Than later? October? Early to mid?
    • ^ Neither games related, nor ever released, despite being finished.
  • 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
    • ^ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA not a damn finger lifted on this one
  • 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
    • ^ Oh well good attitude to have there Past Fin as you’ve done fuck all on this
  • 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)
    • ^ HAHAHAHAHA nope
  • 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.
    • ^ Nooooooooope.
  • Also nutso: Identify sections of blog that would make a good book
    • Last priority, even after BURN
    • ^ Good because haven’t even thought about this

Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but mostly because I had some external deadlines, and half of it was non-games-related, which doesn’t excuse my games-related failures but does sort of account for what I was doing with at least some of that time.  I think… that I have, or am approaching, the limits of what this routine/habit are doing for me.  The blog, I mean.  I’m getting all sorts of dopamine for talking and thinking, and it’s de-prioritizing the actual doing and making.  Maybe - maybe I finish out ten entries of Out of Mana, and then any writing I do goes into a buffer, as I take an entire quarter, after I’ve moved, after I’ve finished with grant-writing season, and take the time each week that I’ve been writing, and spend it on prototyping.  Because while these blog posts ARE worth something, and some of them are a pretty long way toward being a complete small/short design, I’ve done enough small games.  I need to finish something bigger - I need to develop an idea farther.  And I need to commit time to executing a plan, one piece at a time.

Wowzers, this is farther than I thought I’d take this.  And I think that’s all still a ways off; the rest of this quarter and the next will be spent finishing up Out of Mana, some planned TTRPG Tuesdays, and making an action plan for each game - not to mention I do still have tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of funding to still write grant proposals for.  But come July - look out, physical world!

That’s all for this week.  Tune in next week! Most likely tomorrow.  Bye!

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