This month’s update is rainy, short, and sweet. Time for game design work has been minimal, so I’m hoping to focus on game development tasks. And also relaxing. This past month consisted of work on PREQUEL and Chain×Link.
PREQUEL
James and I onboarded our illustrators and layout artist while we continue with iterating on playtest feedback. We’ve received some sketches of the cover art which have been exciting to see. I’ve been assembling a preview packet that we’ll be including as part of our Feb 2025 crowdfunding campaign. The preview packet will contain the basic rules, a few Origins and Callings, and an Evil for folks to start playing. Slowly, but surely, we’re moving towards making this game a reality! Remember to sign up to get notifications at https://bit.ly/prequel-rpg.
Chain×Link
I spent a week last month reviewing my playtest notes and making rules changes. It’s still a little rocky, but I definitely feel that narrowing in on the complete rules text. An interesting development for me was deciding to take out the magic sub-system. I had multiple playtesters tell me the magic sub-system was too brutal for little benefit. Instead of trying to make it work, I realized that it made better sense to simply eliminate magic as a player-facing sub-system. After all, if players take on the roles of imprisoned rebel leaders, magic would not be something afforded to them. One of my design philosophies is to always look at how I can achieve a design goal with the mechanics I already have introduced before bringing in new mechanics. Interestingly, I think I’ve achieved a design goal by eliminating a mechanic altogether! (Or at least, from the player’s access, magic is still very much a thing in the world of Chain×Link).
I added a Faction Turn to the game as well to emphasize the “faction leader” aspect of the game. It’s still clunky, but I’m on the right track. I have this habit of falling into the rabbit hole of information design before I’ve even finished writing the game, which is a less efficient way of working. I know down the road I’ll need to revisit the information design of the rules-text, but I have to keep reminding myself right now that I need to get the rules down first before I can edit them. This game has a lot of the trappings of a classic dungeon crawler, but this resolution system is so different from a classic dungeon crawler it requires a lot more rules explanation than what I originally anticipated for a zine-sized game. This game will benefit from a lot of examples and graphics. Funny how even a small-scoped game can feel near-insurmountable at times. I definitely am at that stage now.
Year-End Reflection
2024 was a positive year for me, game-design wise. I started the development and playtesting of two small games (Chain×Link and Drawn from the Wellspring) and released three one-page games (HIT DIE, Spells Sold Here!, and Six Arrows to Sunset). (You can find all my games on my itch.io page) I also continued to freelance, which included my first production credit and opportunities to work with game designers I greatly admire. 2025 is going to be the year where I’m working with a lot of illustrators and layout artists as I transition my games from just words in a virtual doc into something more “polished” and “professional” others can play.
In terms of game-playing this year, I was mostly occupied with my two Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and the Avatar: Legends campaign I’m a part of. I had to bow-out of all my games back in October, which is unfortunate, as I miss playing with my home groups, but I’m realizing that I don’t have a lot of free time, and it’s a sad truth that long-term campaigns are quickly becoming less viable for my current point in life. I typically play new games at conventions, but this year I spent most of my time playtesting my own. One of my goals for 2025 is going to make sure I leave more time for just playing and running games, specifically short-form 3-6 session mini-campaigns. I certainly have a lot to choose from. This past week, I received my physical copies of Triangle Agency, Brindlewood Bay, and Spire: The City beneath. These are all games I’d love to play, just have to make time for it 🙂
End of the year reflections are a good opportunity to review the year and hone in on what my goals are for the next year. Game design is a hobby for me, and one of the things I’d like to meditate on is what that means to me. As in, how “seriously” do I want to do something I primarily want to do as a form of self-expression and what standards I want to hold my projects to. Hopefully I’ll be able to think about those bigger-picture things in the last two weeks of the year as we head into 2025.