Prompt #6 for #RPGaDay2026

Reach

Reach is something I'm sure all game developers want for their passion project.  I'm no different.  This game of mine has been with me since 2010, and it has slowly grown and evolved over the past 16 years.  Only this year did I decide to actually put more effort into making it a reality, and I think I decided a little too late.  

A few prompt entries back, the word was Charm, and I mentioned that I lack that — this ties into the same idea.  To reach others, a developer needs some sort of network: friends, family, coworkers, etc.  When I originally had the idea for REDACTED (name's a surprise for closer to release), I didn't have many friends, and none of my coworkers played games.  Just the industry I was in at the time, so I wasn't expecting any miracles there.  Fast forward to 2023, and I'd built a small community of like-minded friends who play the types of games I do.  A handful of them turned out to be into TTRPGs and talked me into running a few campaigns for them — some hits, some misses, but enough to prove the group had staying power.  

What stuck with me afterward was a residual feeling from one campaign in particular.  My players kept bringing it up, even asking if we'd run something like it again.  Towards the end of last year, I decided I should do something with that energy.  I wanted to build my game, but I also wanted to keep playing with my friends — and I didn't have time for both.  Then I remembered a lesson from my first Game Design class: if you want to make a good video game, test it as a board game first.  That's when it clicked — build my game, but do it as a TTRPG with the friends I already had.  

It made sense at the time, and it still makes sense 8 months later.  I'm building a video game via a TTRPG with my friends as playtesters.  Now I've decided to share that process on social media, hoping to reach more people who want to join in.  The platforms I've picked to share my world are a hit or miss with the reach aspect.

• Patreon contains part of the information for my weekly creature bestiary
• Ko-fi contains the other part of the weekly creature bestiary
• Itch.io is new and currently gets a crosspost of my Dev Logs from this website
• Gamersesoteric.com is my main portfolio site, which is now repurposed to provide others a play-by-play for my game dev journey on REDACTED
• Byte Vorex gets crossposts from the free part of my Patreon's weekly bestiary
• Discord gets crossposts from my Ko-fi entries
• Mastodon gets creatures blurbs for the weekly creature bestiary
• Twitch has a subtle call to action graphic and a BRB screen that shares excerpts from my weekly creatures

Most of these platforms haven't given me much of a reach so far, but I kind of expected it.  I've gained a few unknowns on Patreon, few interactions on Mastodon, way more hits on this website than I have in the past, and that's about it.  I won't post to some places because either it's an experience I'm not willing to deal with (Reddit is a great example of this) or it has an audience that isn't for me (TikTok is also a great example of this).  I'm not against others talking about my creations on those platforms, but I personally don't have the mindset to handle those platforms.  

But reach, for me, isn't just about eyeballs.  I'm not trying to build an audience — I'm trying to find people who want to help shape REDACTED with me.  Every playtester, every person who comments on a bestiary entry with their own idea, is worth more than a hundred silent follows.  That's part of why the low numbers don't discourage me as much as they probably should.  

I'll admit I'm a little hesitant about opening my community up to the public — I did that once before and it didn't go well.  Lessons were learned, and more safeguards are in place this time.  Back when hate raiding was new and rampant on Twitch, I had my Discord link posted on my Twitch page.  People with poor intentions joined my community, spammed a lot of bad things in numerous Discord channels, then harassed me in my voice channel.  They then went after my Twitch chat itself, hate following me and calling me all sorts of things.  I'm not new to harassment and bullying, but it did hurt all the same.  I removed my Discord channel and won't give it out to anyone unless there has been a few solid interactions.  If a join link does happen that I'm unaware of, which is perfectly fine and I encourage my community to invite their friends, there has to be someone who vets for them.  Until they get that vetting, they have very limited access to everything.

Sixteen years is a long time to sit with an idea, and I've learned reach isn't something that happens in a single post or a single platform push.  It's closer to what happened with that homebrew campaign — something people remember and come back to, months later, unprompted.  That's the kind of reach I actually want: not a spike, but something that sticks.  

So this is me, reaching out to the rest of the internet, looking for more people who want to join my world and the progress along the way. 

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Byte Vortex 
• Cheshire Gaming 
• Twitch 
• Youtube Channels:
• Cheshire Gaming
• Cheshire_GE 

 

Prompt #5 for #RPGaDay2026

Burden

For today's word, I want to talk about the main theme, aka the gist, of my world.

Nobody in my world got the whole truth, and nobody gets power for free. 

Something happened to our world.  The once shared, singular version of reality broke, and it turned our world upside down.  In the scramble that followed, people reached for whatever they thought would keep them alive and only through trial and error did they learn what those choices actually cost them.  

One of my core mechanics is built entirely around that idea.  It's a resource every player carries, and it's meant to be the thing that gets you through a fight you'd otherwise lose —for a price.  Right now, at the table, my players are still in the "hey, this is cool, what does it do" phase.  Not one of them has really pushed it far enough to find out what it costs yet.  A binder in my group decided to bind a creature to her pants mid-session and nothing bad happened.  A mediator talked a Digosfrag into just...leaving them alone.  Both were very confident in their decisions because both were very low on stakes so far.  That's on me though.  I haven't finished tuning the abilities to explain what happens when someone leans too hard into it.  This is exactly what the next expeditions are designed to do.

 But the bestiary already knows what it looks like on the other side of that line.  Take the Cockatrice Effigial from a few weeks back.  Its petrification gaze only fires when it's cornered and completely out of options.  It can't control when it happens, and every account of it happening shows the creature just as wrecked afterwards as whoever it hit.  My players haven't gotten there yet.  Their characters for sure will.

That's the burden this world runs on and it's coming for all of them eventually. 

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Byte Vortex 
• Cheshire Gaming 
• Twitch 
• Youtube Channels:
• Cheshire Gaming
• Cheshire_GE 

 

Prompt #4 for #RPGaDay2026

Charm

When I saw today's #RPGaDay2026 prompt was charm, I laughed, scratched my head, and sat here thinking about it.  You see, I'm not a very charming person in real life.  I'm a very forgettable person with the personality of a rock.  This prompt gave me some thinking to do from a game developer's perspective.  

The longer I've worked on building my game, the more I've realized that charm and charisma aren't exactly the same thing, and that's an important distinction to make during game development — especially for a TTRPG like mine.  

For a game developer, charm is the quality that makes someone want to keep poking at the world after the mechanics have already made sense.  It's those strange details that stick around in your head after you've closed the computer down or left the gaming table.  It could be the abandoned festival grounds where brass bells still ring in the wind, or the creature that watches the party leave and looks satisfied.  That's charm to me and the world I'm creating.  

Making my world feel believable, alive, even livable, is the goal.  I'm chasing that every time I write a bestiary entry, plan the next expedition for my players, or design the maps they'll be playing on.  Most of my creature designs come from what I call "waking dreams."  If you've checked out any of them, you're probably going to ask if I'm okay.  For me, these creatures feel almost as real as anything else when I encounter them.  They're vivid, and they stick with me.  Take the creature from a few bestiary entries back — it waits there, motionless until a player makes the first move.  I take notes, write descriptions, build lore and situations that end up translating into the game world.  Luckily I'm a horror fan, so most of these turn out cute or adorable to me somehow.  Don't ask me to explain that one.  If you've ever caught one of my streams and just chatted with me about my interests, you'd probably get it pretty quickly — there's even an old room tour video buried on one of my YouTube channels that gives a glimpse into it.  

I want my game to feel like it existed before players arrived and that it keeps thriving after they leave.  If it has any charm at all, it won't come from smooth dialogue or clever one-liners.  It'll come from curiosity — that moment when a player connects two seemingly unrelated pieces of lore and realizes the world runs a lot deeper than they thought.  I've already watched this happen at the table — one player stopped mid-session just to ask how a piece of the world's lore actually worked.  That kind of genuine curiosity is exactly what I'm chasing.  

That's a kind of charm even a rock can aspire to.  

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Byte Vortex 
• Cheshire Gaming 
• Twitch 
• Youtube Channels:
• Cheshire Gaming
• Cheshire_GE 

 

 

Prompt #3 for #RPGaDay2026

Poise

This word brings a fun topic to today's post. Poise deals with balance and equilibrium. As a game developer, this is one of the biggest focal points for my TTRPG — and honestly, for just about everything I do in general.

Technically I could roll straight out of yesterday's post about stature, since I was already dabbling into playtester classes there. But I won't. Instead I want to talk about how I'm approaching the whole balancing-abilities-without-breaking-things problem. Especially since I have between 7 and 9 abilities per class, and 27 classes total.

Yes, I know that's a lot of classes. But it makes sense, I promise.

I have three general categories I call "archetypes." Each one contains 9 classes, each unique in what it can do. I kind of hate games where you pick a class and get locked into one particular aspect of it, so this is my workaround. Look at World of Warcraft — why do I have to be stuck as Alliance if I want to roll a Night Elf? Why can't I roll a Troll Druid? (Yes, I played back before Cataclysm hit.) Same energy from Lineage 2, Black Desert Online, the list goes on. I don't like that feeling of constraint. So in my world, you pick what kind of class you want to play, and then find which archetype fits your style — or you flip it and start with the archetype and find your class from there. A good example is a Zerker, a Monk, and a Warrior. All three of them are in different archetypes, yet all three are mainly some form of melee or unarmed combat. The Zerker uses aether to summon weapons from their tattoos, the Monk uses traditional unarmed combat, while the Warrior uses technological enhancements to "level" the playing field.

That's the real reason behind 27 classes. In practice it's more like 9 classes with slight variances and similar results, each one reflected across all three archetypes. Because balancing.

Yesterday's post already had me admitting I haven't had much time to actually sit down and balance abilities within the classes. Once the next round of expeditions starts (this week, actually!) I'll be finessing that a lot more. Right now each class runs 7 to 9 abilities, split across different types: core, passive, risk, and some classes even have capstones. Thankfully I only have 5 playtesters right now and none of them overlap with each other. I do have a few clustered around the same archetype though, so that might make my life easier or harder. Not sure yet. I'll figure it out when it happens. I'm also fairly sure the ability-balancing process is going to end up as its own dev log eventually, especially since I'm building all of this into FoundryVTT to keep gameplay running smoothly and take some of the manual load off myself. Funny how the same instinct that keeps 27 classes from turning into 27 wildly unbalanced power fantasies is the same one keeping me upright the rest of the week.

Speaking of equilibrium — as a solo game developer, I have to pick and choose when, what, and where I do things. Outside of the game dev, I stream 4 hours a day, 4 times a week over on Twitch. Just celebrated 6 years, and I'm always chipping away at improving the setup and automation bit by bit. If you want the technical side of that (the actual implementation stuff) that lives over on Byte Vortex.

Then there's the dreaded household chores (yay, adulting), plant mom duties, dog mom duties, and then the hobbies.

Dear god, my hobbies are vast. I've had ADHD since I was a little kid, so if you know anything about hobbies and ADHD, you already know my struggle keeping equilibrium. I do amigurumi for my Sunday vending here in Mexico, plus sewing, robotics/electronics, modeling, reading, and writing/blogging — and I'm probably still forgetting a few. Finding poise across any of that is a fight with myself pretty much daily. I do my best, and that's about the best I can offer. I'm glad I've mostly learned how to live with myself and still get things done. Might not be on the schedule I'd like, but at least I've made peace with that.

This week especially is going to be a good example of poise: new expeditions kicking off, playtesters diving in to new territory, weekly schedules, the works. Poise isn't a nice idea anymore. It's the job and it's worth doing.

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Byte Vortex 
• Cheshire Gaming 
• Twitch 

 

 

Prompt #2 for #RPGaDay2026

Stature

Continuing on the theme of a game developer's perspective, this word can go two different ways via the definition: a person's natural height, and the importance or reputation gained by ability or achievement.

For my game world, all playable characters are human in some shape or form due to origination. Without going into specific details, each class has particular traits that may or may not affect the stature of their character. Since I've only begun working on ironing out the main kinks with the system, my playtesters and I haven't really had a solid chance to test out these mechanics. Of course, a lot of the classes that were chosen don't even have them written in yet. That sounds a little crazy, I know, but hear me out. Right now, I'm wanting to flesh out the basic skills first. As I work on the mechanics of the first 7 or 9 abilities, I plan on seeing what dynamics pop up. Of course, an MDA framework isn't complete without the aesthetics involved. So far, three of my playtesters decided to use an ability in the first expedition. Those abilities were a bit rough, but since I wasn't focused on those in particular, I got some notes written down and put them to the side. One highlight though: one player has a class that essentially makes pacts with things by binding to them. Since the ritual involves needing a physical item, my player decided to take her pants off mid-session just to bind it to her. Absolutely sent the table into hilarity. Hoping the next expeditions they go on can focus more on them.

The other meaning of stature is the importance or reputation gained by ability or achievement. I can't say I've really gained anything along those lines anywhere on the internet. In my corner of the internet, I have three websites that I either run or am involved in: Gamers Esoteric (my old portfolio site, repurposed for my game dev journey), Byte Vortex (co-managed with a very dear friend of mine, where we write about whatever techy/geeky/nerdy idea pops into our heads), and Cheshire Gaming (a passion project where I write game guides for the games I play, like Guild Wars 1, Guild Wars 2, and Warframe). I think the only one out of those three that might have any "recognition" would be Cheshire Gaming. When I said gaming was a part of my life, I really meant it. I like helping people achieve things without having to deal with paywalls, intrusive ads, or a chain of hyperlinks taking them down a rabbit hole until they have no idea where they ended up. This topic had me realize that even though I'm essentially a grain of sand in the vast ocean of the internet, I'm still a part of it. It's going to be hard getting my content out there, and it's been one hell of a journey since I started these projects. All I can do is take each day in stride, do my best, and keep going.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and I'm still laying the foundation for mine. This concludes the prompt for the day.

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Byte Vortex 
• Cheshire Gaming 

 

Prompt #1 for #RPGaDay2026

Discipline

I'm going to approach this one, and probably more, from a game developer's perspective. Since I'm building my own TTRPG from scratch with the intent of turning it into a video game, that's the lens I'll use here.

Discipline, by definition, can be seen from two angles: a branch of knowledge, and the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, generally backed by some form of undesired consequence as punishment.

For the first part, the branch of knowledge for me is my background in game design/development. I got my BA in that back in 2016 from Southern Polytechnic State University, now absorbed into Kennesaw State University. I've always been an avid gamer, both digital and analog — seriously, I have an impressive collection of both, and I managed to bring it all with me to Mexico.

Taking that experience — the games I've played plus what I picked up in university — the discipline I'm applying to my TTRPG is a semi-serious production stance. I started the year with a fairly "strict" timeline for myself: milestones, goals, the works. Well, real life being real life, that didn't pan out the way I wanted, and I'm currently about two months behind schedule.

Even so, I've been posting a new bestiary entry every Monday for my world. You can find those on my Patreon, Ko-fi, Discord, Mastodon, and Byte Vortex, which I co-operate. I've also convinced five members of my small Discord community to playtest the game as it evolves, and they've been a tremendous help with practically everything. The first expedition wrapped up, with both groups returning to the local hub to sell loot and buy upgrades — all documented here on the blog as Dev Logs. Each session, I aim to fix previous errors in my custom-built modules/system in FoundryVTT while introducing new things to test. Right now we're only meeting once a month due to real-life constraints, but I'd like to bump that up to once every two weeks eventually. It does give me plenty of time to fix old issues and create new ones, haha.

The other side of discipline — training people to obey rules or a code of behavior — is something anyone who's run a game with other people, digital or analog, has probably dealt with. I had my playtesters sign a very loose form of an NDA. Partly to get myself into the mindset that I'm actually doing this, and partly to give the playtesters a sense of seriousness about it.

One issue I ran into early on was having too many people in a group. Turns out three is the sweet spot for testing — two tends to feel vague, or people hold back their opinions. I haven't been able to keep four together for more than one consecutive session. Sucks, but it is what it is.

If you want to follow along with the bestiary drops or catch the Dev Logs as they happen, I'm posting weekly-ish across Patreon, Ko-fi, Mastodon, and Byte Vortex — links below.

This concludes the prompt for the day.

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Byte Vortex 

Dev Log 4

Here we are at Dev Log #4.  I'm planning on doing these a little more often since I'm getting more into bug fixing AND implementation of things.  I think the best format for these is going to be a quick list, then sections going over the list.  So here we go:

• Fixing the market system module
• Players unable to purchase items higher than Tier 1.
• Unknown as to who is purchasing what from whom.
• Players wanted to see more information on their purchases.
• Changed the .csv format for imports.
• Overhaul for the barter system. 
• Resizing windows. 
• Fixing the wiring between NPC sheets and the market system. (buttons not firing)
• Websocket failure for the storage/upgrade NPCs. 
• Compendiums
• Overwrote the previous entries
• Design intent for future interactions/upgrades
• Character classes and bestiary entries 
• Change the headers for easier to read 
• Other
• Pop up or hover over a creature token for basic info
• Players unable to access bestiary entries
• Quest tracking
• Overhaul character sheet into character codex
• Upgrades on items 

For the market system module, the fixes were mostly minor but still had to be fixed by the next session.  On initial testing, my players were unable to purchase anything that was higher than Tier 1.  I have a total of 6 tiers, so this was a bit of a priority, especially when my players are needing to purchase upgrades before their next adventure.  Turns out, I inadvertently soft-locked this.  In the past, I was originally thinking of having things tied to player levels and tiers, but decided against it due to unwanted complications that may arise.  Simply removing that fixed it.

When the players were testing everything on the initial central hub instance, there was a lot of chaos.  I built in a chat ping that told me the transaction history with what NPC for how much and what item.  What I didn't put in there was the part of WHO was buying that item.  That was just a simple field addition.  No more chaos. 

As I progress in creating the items/armor/weapons, more information and stats are getting added. Turns out, my players wanted to see these as well.  It makes sense.  Anyone playing a game would want to know as much information as possible when investing their currency.  On my end, the GM end, I could see all of the information, so I just put that to display for my players as well.

To handle the numerous NPCs that handle different vending sectors, I decided to code the market system to utilize .csv documents.  That way I can control the inventory without having to be in the game at all times.  I can just simply work on it wherever, then click the import.  Boom, vending NPC.  While working on the upgrade NPC, I found out that I needed to add in a few more fields, so tracking down 3 files to adjust that was kind of a pain, but worth it.

When players are making purchases, I incorporated a barter system.  Originally, this was going to be handled via roleplay, but after the initial test, I decided against that.  It did make for some nice interactions, but overall it was really hard to manage when everything else is handled via player interaction (scrolling through the market, purchasing via a button press, etc).  After I implemented it, I had a player test it off hours and I had the math backwards.  Quick fix via flipping words and math.

As I keep adding more things to the game for players to interact with, I got sloppy on the window displays.  It bothered me and my players that in order to see everything, one would have to resize the window manually.  I locked the sizes and now have to work within those dimensions.  Definitely a good way to keep me in check for wanting to display everything at once.

Did a fix where the wiring between NPC sheets and the market system weren't firing properly.  The players have buttons to press in order to do tasks, such as purchasing items and eventually (now implemented as of this post) installing upgrades.  Got that fixed now.

Biggest pain I have experienced this far was trying to figure out why my storage/upgrade NPC logic wasn't working.  Turns out, this has been a bug reported on Github.  I seriously thought I was going crazy because things SHOULD be working but they weren't.  I know that this is a bit dated and I thought that by now, it would have been dealt with but I guess not.  In the meantime, I have a workaround.  I had to give my players Ownership of these particular NPCs, but they can also do some edits to the text fields.  I still need to remove that from them, much like I did for them not being able to access the storage of other players.  It's stupid, but it works.  I did this by just utilizing actor flags.

I'm going to sum up the compendiums list into a big chunk of information.  My initial entries for the classes were overwritten when I redid the entire aesthetic.  It's fine because I have all of that information saved in an Obsidian vault.  In order to keep things simple and easy for me to keep up with, I decided that for both my classes and bestiary entries, why not just create a copy/paste system?  So that is exactly what I did.  I made a macro where I simply name the entry and then copy/paste my .md file.  It then takes out sections in the file and parses it into fields.  Basically, if I update/change the core file, all I have to do is copy/paste and everything updates.  Along with the rewrite of the compendium stuff, I decided to give it a more "useful" format.  Slapped up navigation tabs and have sections that my players can access in order to learn more about these creatures.  Same goes for the class compendium, just navigational tabs and sections.  Finally, I had to redo the compendium packs banner icons that FoundryVTT uses as default.  One of my players said that the white text was hard to read on the green and blue backgrounds.  I just put in a dark slate color with some edge hues that indicate different fields.

Final stretch!  My players wanted to have a hover field pop up when encountering a creature token.  I couldn't figure out how to do this, so I instead created a pop-up window that displays the important quick-decision stuff, with a dossier button that they can click and it takes them to the full compendium entry.  Along with this, I fixed the part where my players couldn't access the bestiary entries.  Not sure what the hangup was with this, but I think it got fixed with the whole redoing of the compendiums.  I wanted to change up the character sheet.  My system had a more "involved" character sheet than the default ones I've come across in the past.  As I've progressed in creating the inventory, storage, abilities, etc, I decided that a simple character sheet won't cut it anymore.  Since one of the creatures that I created is called the Shelf-Stalker Codex, it was only fair that I implement that now.  My players now have their own codex.  It's essentially all of their information in a single, journal-like presentation.  It contains their overview, equipped gear, inventory, storage log, upgrade log, abilities (they can pick and choose which ones to have equipped before going out on adventures), quest log tracking, and a general notes section.  I had to do some adjustments when it came to showing the upgrades on items because it really didn't want to display that information most of the time.  I think that got fixed when I fixed the storage/upgrade NPC stuff.

I know this is weird stuff that you might be thinking "what's the point" and that's fair.  This game is designed as a ttrpg with the future development as a video game.  One of the things taught to us in university was that if you want to make a good video game, it has to be playable as a board game or card game or some kind of analogue game.  If I can make this happen here and now, it'll be easier in translation phase.