Prompt #19 for #RPGaDay2026

Desire

Okay this post is going to hit some spots for me.  I believe every game developer ever has wanted their game to "make it big".  That desire to get your name out there and recognizable is a big dream.  I'm no different from this, but I also know that I have a long way to go before I really gain any sort of traction.  There's goals and milestones I've set for myself and I'm slowly checking those boxes.

I think the next goal of mine is to start creating more "presence" in what I've been doing.  I created a BRB screen on my Twitch which provides snippets of lore for my game.  If anyone actually pays attention to that is a whole other thing.  Every week, I change the creature part to reflect the weekly creature.  There's also the call-to-action (CTA) that is running on my main overlay.  It's just a simple Ko-fi and Patreon rotation image, so nothing super fancy.  Once I get further down the dev pipeline, I'll be sharing more information about the expeditions my playtesters are experiencing.  

I'm not a pushy person in any sort of way, which hurts me in the long run.  There's people out there who constantly talk about their projects, their social media, etc. and I just can't get myself to do it.  Blaugust, this year, has been the most active I've been on blogging, talking about my game, posting over on Mastodon, and copy/pasting the Links section below.  I guess it's just a part of me that doesn't want to be seen as "annoying" or "begging" for attention.  Mentally, it works yet it doesn't.  I know that I need to put myself out there more but at the same time, I'm fighting myself from becoming "one of those people".  

This brings up one of the reasons why I'm participating in Blaugust and #RPGaDay2026: get my content out there.  I'm hoping that by the end of this month, I'm a bit more active in participating in the blogging community, showing signs of life on Mastodon, and just working on my game in general.  Well, the game part is always going to happen, but maybe a bit more motivation to get it done.  Hell, I even enabled RSS feed on this website two weeks ago.  I didn't know it was off.  Might be too late to get it picked up for Blaugust but the fact I have one now means a lot to me.

Desire is great to have, but you have to put forth the effort in order to achieve the goal. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

 

Prompt #18 for #RPGaDay2026

Directness

There are times, as a GM, I wish my players followed the directness of the route literally in front of them.  But then again, it wouldn't create such memorable moments.  I spoke of a scenario a few days back about creating a map with MS Paint.  That was a great session.  I've been trying to up my game a bit since then because at times, it feels like I'm trying to herd cats.  This is all in good fun, mind you.  I use to command zergs in World vs World in Guild Wars 2 back in the day. That was definitely herding cats!

My playtesters are very diverse in their thought processes.  Some are trying to think outside the box, others are definitely inside it.  There are times where I've had to place an enemy token on the board just to prevent them from going down a wrong path.  Even then, they killed it or some how skirted around its presence.  Truly amazing at how things just...happen...even with high threat ratings.  I'm wondering if they'll do similar things for the next expedition, knowing that the enemies there are bit more vicious.  Well, some of the more menacing ones are.

As I develop my game further, I'm probably going to start reducing my directness as the developer/GM.  Most if not all sessions thus far have been me telling my players what I did, what I need them to test, get feedback, and then play a bit.  The more refined I get things done, the less information and feedback it'll probably require.  I can say one thing though: I have a path for my game and I'm doing everything that I can to get the results I want. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #17 for #RPGaDay2026

Intensity

Some might say my game has an intensity when it comes to situations in expeditions.  I don't know for sure, since my playtesters haven't actually come across an expedition where they were faced with some sort of strained choice.  There were a few close calls, one being a Digosfrag and the other a Porcelain Seer.  One group killed the Digosfrag outright, while the other convinced it that they weren't a viable host.  As for the Porcelain Seer, it never escalated far enough to trigger that fight.  I honestly cannot wait to see what happens next month for their next expedition.  There's a lot I have planned, but I need to introduce it in spurts.  If I don't, I can get overwhelmed with feedback and confuse my playtesters.  

As for me personally, I can really let my intensity go when someone asks me about my game.  I get like that for any of my projects.  When someone asks me about my progress with painting mini figures, how my programming for a PoE2 application is going, my crochet or sewing hobbies, my smart furby idea, or even my real life Calamivox Ingratus project — I get pretty passionate about sharing.  Hell, even when someone stops by my streams and mentions something that I'm really into, I'll share things in my room.  Usual culprit of that is anything Spawn or Alice in Wonderland related.  Sometimes I think my intensity scares people off.  That's okay.

I'm pretty sure that as my playtesters go forth into the darkness, they're going to have questions about the world.  I'm ready to give those answers. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

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