Prompt #31 for #RPGaDay2026

Edge

Final blog post for this endeavor!  

I started this year with the mindset of getting something done — laying out milestones and goals — and then at some point I decided I would participate in Blaugust for my game. Back in July, I came across the #RPGaDay2026 prompt and figured that would be a great launch pad for my Blaugust goal.  I'm glad I chose to combine the two, because it really gave my entire game project a sense of edge.  I've been leaning on the older definition —to move gradually, carefully, or furtively in a particular direction.  Which is a little on the nose, honestly.  But being careful and gradual isn't the same as stopped.  This has been my passion project since 2010.  I'm not going to walk away from it now.

Even though I haven't been staying exactly on target for some things, I feel like I'm still doing great.  Sure, I've been falling behind on my weekly bestiary entries for these past two weeks, but there's reasons.  Life has been pretty busy for me lately — some real-life things I can't fully get into, plus the community events I run monthly, and the TTRPG play sessions eat two evenings a week on its own.  That is a lot to balance.  There's still a few goals and two milestones I'm aiming to reach before the end of the year.  Everything has been set back, but I haven't canceled anything.  It's just a very complicated edge, with a lot of pieces moving it along gradually.  I'm not disappearing after this month, either.  Updates just won't be daily.  There's still a bunch of sessions to plan, maps and expeditions to build, FoundryVTT fixes, creatures to make and balance, player skills to tune, the list goes on.  I've been doing monthly dev logs; I might start sprinkling in smaller micro dev logs between them.  We shall see.

August turned out to be a heavy month for blog posts and game dev talk.  It pushed me out of my shell a bit, talking about the game I'm building.  I don't know if it landed with anyone and I'm not going to go chasing any results.  But thanks for reading, if you did. 

Links:

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #30 for #RPGaDay2026

Pride

I'm sure, with every game dev out there, that having pride in a game that you made being out there in the public eye is a great moment.  Maybe you didn't make it completely by yourself, like more in a team environment, but nonetheless, there's still that sense of "I did that." 

Every single post I've made this month gave me pride in myself and my game.  Sitting down, typing out a blog about a game I'm developing in the spare time I've got means a lot.  It means a lot to me as well, knowing that there's at least a few people out there reading my ramblings and musings about my journey.  

I know that once this month is over, I won't be posting daily about the game using single word prompts as inspiration, but I definitely will be talking about it more.  Originally, I was doing monthly dev logs here on this site as a semi log and mind dump of what I've been up to.  After this month, I think I'll be doing more than just that.  I've gotten a new sense of purpose, I guess, to sit down and type out what I've been up to, what I'm planning on doing, pretty much anything and everything.  Sure, I might end up still pouring all of that into a monthly dev log blog post, but the smaller blips might be more worth doing for my own sanity. 

Have pride in what you've done.  I know I've got pride with mine. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #29 for #RPGaDay2026

Labour

I think there's a lot of gamers out there who could say they do some things due to a fandom.  Whether it be commission work for art, guide writing for the public, cosplay, spreading the word about the game, etc, there's a point in time it could be called a labour of love.  I've personally partaken in a few of these, such as game guide writing for the games I genuinely enjoy, convincing others to try games I've spent considerable time playing, and crafting.  Both Warframe and Guild Wars 1 and 2 consume a lot of my game time, and I've made written guides (a few video ones, too) for others to use.  I try to make the guides as concise as possible, documenting my experiences for them so that it closely resembles what others may encounter.  That takes a considerable amount of time and effort on my part, not because I need to, but because I want to.  Heck, I've even 3D printed a Lex Prime (painted and assembled), 3D printed a CL4P-TP unit and put the audio in it for reasons (I adore the little robot, okay?), a Guild Wars 2 commander tag, and even have huge cardboard pieces behind my room door for an Eternity.  These are my projects because I genuinely adore the crap out of these games.

But this isn't what I've been talking about for these past twenty-eight days.  I've been talking about my own game and the journey I've been on.  It brought me out of my post graduate slump of making games.  True, it's been almost ten years since I completed that degree, but over that time, I've always dabbled in this game here and there, writing notes and ideas down on various pieces of paper.  Eight months later, I've gotten a better idea of what I'm wanting and where I'm going.  I've closed my Ko-fi shop down for the past two weeks while I redesign my PDFs that people can get for $1 USD.  Then there's the editing of my previous posts over on Patreon and maybe Ko-fi (not sure about Ko-fi yet since those posts are generally solid and have stayed consistent).  I originally didn't want to do any of this, but since I've got bigger plans for next year, I figured I should set my templates and standards for that.  I'm usually one that likes to leave things as they are, showing the progression of my posts, but for Patreon and Ko-fi, I can't let it go.  I need to redo them.  The substance will still be there, just properly formatted into a standardized template that I've established.  In total there are twenty-four posts per platform, so that is going to take a lot of time and effort to clean up.  It's going to be worth it in the end, well for me anyways.

As for the remainder of this year, I've got like eighteen weeks left, meaning I've got 18 more creatures to create and share.  My sketch artist (my sister) had to back out of this project due to real life circumstances.  This setback leaves me without that nice addition to my posts.  I really don't want to go down the route of using AI for the sketches, so I'll probably dust off my drawing tablet and have a go at them.  My original goal was to have sketches and maybe some actual illustrations done by the end of the year, but due to losing my sister in this, that most likely won't happen.  I'll still have creatures done and I'll start cataloguing them for a future release, just not when I originally hoped for.  Next year has a new compendium on top of my bestiary, so that's exciting for me.  I plan to have my TTRPG far more progressed than it is now by December.  Thankfully September is almost here and I can go back to getting my playtesters to try things out, test out my modules and gameplay.  My creatures are itching to see what my playtesters come up with, as am I.

This game is my labour of love.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 
• Game Guides (Cheshire Gaming) 

 

Prompt #28 for #RPGaDay2026

Devotion

Okay, this is going to be a tough word to discuss, mostly because I'm not sure how to approach this or where to go with it.  I know in more well-established TTRPGs, there's usually a class or two that have some sort of devotion that entails their entire identity.  For my game world, I don't really have this because it kind of is just...weird...I guess.  

I have a total of twenty-seven classes, of which four have something that could be considered slightly related to "devotion".  Without giving out names (might change them later): there is one who negotiates pacts/debts with spirits, but that is more of a transactional situation; another houses/contains unresolved spirits as a custodian, so this is more like an explicit duty or even co-habitation and not exactly reverence; then there's the "custodial power" class which sees protection as a sacred duty, but this is more directed at guardians/allies/ground things and not a deity; and finally there is the class where it actually has a sense of "devotion" as a possible source of an emotional rupture that releases a mechanic.  Other than these four classes, there's nothing that comes to mind for devotion to anything.

Which brings me to the next topic.  So this year has been my starting year for actually sitting down and getting the work started for my game.  I have my Bestiary 52 goal that is still going strong, albeit I haven't posted publicly over on Mastodon my daily posts about my creatures but Patreon and Ko-fi have been keeping the pace.  I did post this week's and last week's creature entry late, but as I've mentioned countless of times already, I've been super busy with something unrelated to my game that is taking higher priority right now.  Next year is going to be a bit more involved, I hope.  I will continue my Bestiary 52 project, but I might roll it back into a bi-monthly or monthly post (so 12 or 24 creatures would be my yearly target).  To replace it, I plan on introducing another compendium project that goes hand-in-hand with everything so far: a Theogony.  Without giving out too much info, mostly because I haven't gone too far into it, my world will be dealing with deities and sorts.  I figured I should probably create something to contain all of the things.

There's a lot to my world, this is obvious.  I've got devotion to making it a reality for me and others to experience.  The road ahead is still just starting for me. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #27 for #RPGaDay2026

Hunger

I could talk about hunger in my game, such as making sure my players have food and drink to prevent starvation and dehydration, but I'm not sure if I will actually develop that fully.  It really isn't a high priority on my list of things to do, let alone I'm not sure if it would be worth it.  There's games I've played before where simple life sustenance got really annoying really fast.  I would be out there, running around gathering materials or beating up baddies, just to get a notification that my character was starving or dying of thirst, thus breaking my immersion.  

On the flip side, I do feel like in order to really get into a world, things that relate to hunger and thirst are kind of needed.  That extra milestone that really hammers home the thought process of actually being there, in that world.  A group of players could be tiptoeing past a Warmth-Seeker or even a Rotbringer, when someone's stomach growls and triggers the awareness of the wyrm.  Wouldn't that be a fun event?  Right now, I have food items in one of my vendor's wares.  Since my game operates on expeditions, the players go out on an adventure, return to the central hub, sell their wares, buy things, fix items, then next expedition.  I don't plan on these expeditions to take in-game weeks to complete, but definitely a few days.  

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle this mechanic.  I could have a bit more lore-driven situations where the players sit down, have a meal while planning out their expedition while also getting to know each other.  There is also the possibility that they just auto-consume when a day passes and the game just factors that in.  I guess when I get to that point in my game dev journey for this world, I'll have a better idea of how to combat hunger.  There's always a chance to feed a wyrm.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch