Prompt #16 for #RPGaDay2026

Composure

Composure is something that I tend to have a great sense of during both gameplay and development.  I'm one of those people who thrive off of controlled chaos, so when my players are panicking, I'm smiling on the sidelines.  There are GMs out there who aim to punish or hurt their players, even going to the extent of a TPK, but I'm not one of them.  The reason I'm smiling is because I enjoy seeing the gears turn, the troubleshooting chats shared between them, and the reasoning they come up with.  Seriously, sometimes they get really creative and it impresses the hell out of me.  In fact, sometimes they come up with wild ideas that derail most if not all of my prepped plans.  During my first homebrew campaign with my current group (utilizing D&D 3.0/3.5 rules), they were really adamant about going down one particular route.  I didn't have the map prepared at all because I honestly expected them to pass it by, go back to town for preparation, THEN go back out and get to that map.  No, they didn't do any of that.  In fact, they bypassed a lot of things and immediately went straight for it.  I had to MS Paint the images on the fly, and they gave me a good ribbing for it for months on end.  To this day they still mention it from time to time, generally when I'm discussing my progress in preparing sessions.  If I didn't have my composure set for that session, I would never have been able to continue it.

As for a game dev perspective, I'm usually cool as a cucumber.  When I work on my modules and systems in FoundryVTT, I get to see my playtesters' honest reactions to what I've created.  If something doesn't work like intended (which does happen), I try my best to fix it right then and there.  Sometimes that doesn't fix the problem, which then turns into an issue I need to solve.  Active testing of what I'm building is genuinely one of the finer things in life.  

Keeping your composure during the best of times and worst of times can be rewarding. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #15 for #RPGaDay2026

Endurance 

There are a few different angles I could take on this one.  

The simplest is just the endurance of sitting down every day and typing about my game dev journey for my TTRPG.  It's definitely more than I'm use to, but it isn't something I'm regretting.  If anything, it's given me more motivation to keep working on it, even if there isn't a whole lot I'm willing to share right now.  I'm pretty sure I'll keep writing about my game even after Blaugust and #RPGaDay2026 have run their course.  Maybe it won't be a daily thing, but more frequent than the monthly summations.  

Looking at endurance through my playtesters' lens is probably a bit easier to break down.  Since the game is so new in development, I feel like my players and I can really push the envelope on endurance, both in-game and out of game.  In-game would be like abilities, sense of progress, losses and gains  — the usual stuff that shows up in a typical session.  Out of game, it's more like "hey, who's got time constraints this month" or even "I'm thinking of holding the game sessions on these dates at these times, can everyone make it?".  A great example is actually from this month of August.  I had originally scheduled both groups on the 8th and 9th.  Then something amazing came up later in August (the 22nd and 23rd) that meant rearranging events across my whole community.  After shifting dates around, I ended up having to cancel my game sessions completely, moving them to the beginning of September.  I'm not mad about it — if anything, it gives me more time to iron out issues, implement new things, and slack off a little.  Scheduling TTRPG sessions has been an endurance trial since the dawn of the hobby.  

Speaking of the dev process itself, my endurance has held up pretty well so far.  I could push myself harder, but I don't want to miss deadlines, milestones, or forget key things I've got planned.  I already stretch myself pretty thin between running a small community, streaming, content creation (blog posts, Mastodon stuff, weekly creature creations, etc), real life maintenance, and self-care.  Since I've got ADHD, I tend to thrive a bit on living on the edge, but I do need to take breaks and switch focus from time to time.  For example, I've had my TTRPG on the back burner for the past couple of weeks.  I've been working on Byte Vortex posts, improving my stream, and setting up community events (ARK:SE has a big boss fight event coming up next week and we are sooooo unprepared).  On top of that, I do amigurumi commissions for clients on Sundays at my market venue, and both this month and last have been mostly restocking after a wave of purchases.  None of this means I've stopped working on my TTRPG, though.  I still create a new creature every Monday and I still post five times a week over on Mastodon about them.  In the back of my mind, I'm working through how to tackle the current issues and fold in the new features.  Next week will probably be when I get back into dev work proper. 

Having a sense of endurance is essential in today's game dev environment.  I'd say even more so when you're an indi dev juggling this and many other things that life demands at the same time.   

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #14 for #RPGaDay2026

Regard

This is a tough one to talk about from my game dev lens on my TTRPG.  By definition, regard can either be attention to or concern for something, or to consider or think of in a specified way.  In regards (not intentional here but it works!) to my game world, it isn't really hard to keep my focus set in a specific way.  I think I briefly mentioned in another post that I actually see my game world with my imagination.  While going out on real life excursions, there are things I take note of that provide me inspiration — building architecture, how vehicles park here in CDMX (way different from parking lots in the USA), parks and gardens, clothing, shopping carts, toys, etc.  Everything is just absorbed into my memory and kind of stored for later use, I guess.  

There are times where I create a scene in my head, then begin translating that into a two-dimensional board, then sit back and pore through my endless memory catalogues of stuff.  I know the previous expeditions that my playtesters ran through weren't exactly detail-oriented.  They didn't need to be.  What I was wanting to build and test at the time wasn't really about the finer details in the setting.  The next expeditions will be a little more detailed, but still not really complete for aesthetic purposes.  I need to start working on the abilities of my playtesters and wrap up the previous issues.  None of that needs a full-blown board to get that immersion.  In the future yes — but for now, no.

My creatures, on the other hand, are a bit more involved.  I see my creatures in my mind — pretty sure I've talked about this before as well.  My imagination provides me enough to see these creations almost as real as real-life things.  That's why my bestiary entries have a lot of detail in them.  My public posts don't really give a whole lot of those details, because I want it partially kept as a secret until much later.  If you've stopped by my Ko-fi or Patreon, you might have noticed that some entries have sketches and some don't.  I've asked my sister to provide sketches of my creatures, but she lives a pretty busy life and doesn't have a lot of time to dedicate to my game.  So when I create a critter, I just put a TBA image in place, and when she gets around to giving me the sketches, I replace them.  It isn't ideal, but real life is a thing and I have to consider her time in a specific way.  

Creating my world to share with others takes a lot of time and effort.  I spend a lot of moments thinking about how I can make my playtesters and future players experience my world the way I see it.  

This is my regard. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

Prompt #13 for #RPGaDay2026

Strain

Now this is an interesting topic for discussion.  

Overall, I never want to cause any kind of strain on my players.  Real life is a thing, and I understand and respect the limitations it places on others.  As for any game that I GM, player characters are definitely up for the various tests I put them through.  I mean, what’s the point if you don’t test the limits of a fictional character?  Obviously there are limits, but I’m not a GM who is out to TPK or punish my players.  

As for my own TTRPG, strain is kind of implied since it is partially a survival horror.  My playtesters understand that and are honestly itching to test the limitations of the world I’m building.  Since the game is designed in a way that resembles an extraction shooter, for lack of a better term, if a player’s character dies they can just reroll and join the next expedition.  

Obviously I don’t want characters dying to anything and everything, but I do need players to strain their characters at times.  Given that this game is still very fresh in development, I ask my players to test things, ensure that actions work, methods flow, and that gameplay is seamless.  At least as much as possible within my abilities.  After each session, I ask for suggestions, and we often discuss the best options to try during the next playtest.  

I think the next set of expeditions they venture out on will be a good example of strain.  That's where the abilities will come into play.  Sadly, I had to postpone my playtest sessions for this entire month because of some real-life events (good ones!) that ended up consuming several weekends.  Like, I had to completely redo my monthly events over in my Discord.  Also, middle and end of August tends to get hectic for some people due to classes starting up and having to adjust to new schedules.

I guess balancing the time needed for TTRPG sessions with everything else life throws at us is the real strain.  It’s worth it, though.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #12 for #RPGaDay2026

Loss

As a TTRPG player, I've never really encountered anything that deemed an emotional reaction for the loss of something in the fictional world. As a GM, it's even more apparent. What I can discuss, though, is the loss of progress in developing anything.

When I created a game for one of my classes that dealt with AI and the game Connect 4, I learned my lesson the hard way. I had the game saved, and I thought it was saved elsewhere too — on CDs, on other hard drives. After I switched from Visual Studio 10 to Visual Studio 16, I did something really stupid. It was so stupid, I ruined my game. I couldn't revert it, either. I spent years looking for the original, and I still haven't found it. It was a really good demonstration of deep search, always ensuring it chose the best possible move. I won the semester competition with it and didn't have to take the final for that class. I miss it a lot. I've found bits and pieces of it while searching through old folders, but nothing like the entire project.

That loss is exactly why I do so many things with a project when it comes to saving. When I was going through university for my BA in Game Design and Development, I encountered a lot of issues. Not with the curriculum or the assignments, but with my computer itself. That was probably the first time I ever learned to make back-ups of your back-ups. You might think I'm joking about this, but let me tell you, I'm not. This is where I learned about versioning from my professors.

I've got versions of my game and pretty much anything I work on that deals with programming. Each has a format similar to v1.0, where the 1 changes with every major rework or milestone hit, while the 0 tends to be minor fixes. To accompany this, I keep a changelog where everything that changed gets written down. There have been points in time where I've misplaced a version or a changelog, mostly when cleaning up disc space (I like to keep it tidy, and sometimes I get lazy). After a while, I chuck everything into a zipped folder and write it to a CD. Yes, I know, I still have a CD burner. Crazy, but I'm paranoid and don't trust my computer wholeheartedly. I've also compiled milestones into a zipped folder on my NAS, and current projects that are getting active work get backed up to a USB.

You might think this is overkill, and it might seem like it, but I've encountered real losses in projects I've worked on — the Connect 4 game being the biggest one.

Loss is a funny thing, though. It got me to version my projects, make back-ups of my back-ups, and to never take things for granted on a computer. It made me a better game developer. Maybe that's the closest I get to an emotional loss in this hobby — losing the making, not the world.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #11 for #RPGaDay2026

Tact

I'll be honest right here and now: I lack this trait as a person.  There are times where I understand that I should say or do something about a difficult situation, so I do my best at applying tact, but most of the time I think it comes across as awkward.  This post isn't about that though.  It should be about my lens as a game developer, developing my TTRPG.

One of my core rules at any table is to leave the other life behind.  That probably sounds a little harsh, but it is essentially the same as "leave your baggage at the door".  When you come to a table of mine, I don't want you to bring those worries into that fictional world.  The entire point of a game table is to get lost in another world, having fun with others while playing a game.  If you're bringing a plethora of snags while trying to figure out the best course of action for something in-game, then maybe you should sit that one out.  

I'm all for listening to people and their problems.  Most of the time I won't remember them because I've got ADHD, but I do know that just having someone to talk to about life's worries is a great thing.  Thankfully I've never had to address this kind of situation at a table.  There were a few instances where a player exerted their main-character-syndrome onto the table, but I just called them out on it.  I don't have time to beat around the bush for things like that.  My players are adults and I expect them to act like one — so if they need to excuse themselves for a session or more, that's okay.  I know that life isn't fair nor easy, and that it can get very hard pretty quickly.  

Practice more tact.  I know I need to, and I'm working on it slowly.  

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #10 for #RPGaDay2026

Secret

This is going to be a good one to talk about.  Secrets are something everyone has, whether they want to admit it or not.  In turn, I'm keeping a lot of my game's lore, mechanics, math, aesthetics, dynamics, etc. under lock and key, so to speak.  I wouldn't say it's paranoia that's driving me to keep so much secret, rather it's more that I want the mystery and surprise saved for much later.  

Right now, I'm openly talking about some aspects of my game, like creatures, some of the mechanics behind building FoundryVTT modules, and how I'm approaching things with my knowledge of game design.  I think I've even mentioned a few classes in a couple of posts by now.  There's still a lot I haven't talked about — some of it because it's being held for later, and some because I simply haven't worked it out yet.  For example, I haven't said much about the classes beyond the fact that I have 27 of them, 3 archetypes that encompass 9 classes each, and a canonical pipeline that helps my playtesters figure out which class they want to play.  I haven't shared that last piece because it's literally built to kick off the character creation process.  Closer to reveal time, it'll definitely be out there — there are still some parts I need to iron out since I've changed a few things.  

My bestiary obviously isn't much of a secret.  I've been sharing my creature creations every week across all sorts of platforms.  There's a lot of lore in them I don't share though, like the mechanical math breakdowns and other underlying details.  If you're a Patron of mine, you do get some access to the skills and abilities, mostly for discussion and, eventually, incorporating some loose math.  The only place you can really get a feel for it is in the game itself.  I'm pretty open with my playtesters about what I'm working on, since they're literally my feedback loop.  Most of my creatures haven't been field-tested yet — my newest expeditions are the first real test beds for some of them.  The previous expedition was more about ironing out the basics: character codices, environment-related things like floor triggers that reveal hidden locations, and the loot system.  Most of that gets discussed in my Dev Logs, so be sure to read those when I publish them.  

I'm pretty much an open book about a lot of things in my life, and REDACTED isn't really any different.  It might look like a lot is kept secret from the general public, but really it's more that I'm building it from the ground up and there's still a lot of work to do.  Once I've got more expeditions logged, more playtesters in the fray, and more creatures added to the world, the secrets will start revealing themselves.

I've got 20 weeks left to go to share more creatures in which then, and only then, will REDACTED start to unravel.

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch