Dev Log 5

Okay so there won't be a whole lot discussed in this dev log.  Last month was a doozy of a month for posts (obviously), and if you haven't read any of those, here is the quick tl;dr: I had to cancel my TTRPG session last month due to a huge real life thing happening (good news, not bad).  I managed to talk about the game, though, so that's a win in my book.  None of the things I wanted to fix from last time got done, since I was busy balancing everything else I'm doing — but this month it'll happen.

I am currently redesigning my PDFs that I post on Ko-fi.  I think this marks week three of my Ko-fi shop being down, because I want to do them all at once.  After all this time, I really hope you guys like the new layout.  Along with this, I'm thinking of offering two types of files that you can purchase: one printer-friendly and one digital-friendly.  They will probably end up being a bundled zip or something like that.  I haven't really checked what file types Ko-fi accepts past PDFs, haha.

I want to mention that I know my weekly bestiary entries have been posting a bit late, but hopefully this week will be the last time.  Right now I'm trying to get back to "normal" scheduling and finding whatever little time I have to finish the PDF redesign.  I just found out, like 20 minutes ago, that I never actually made a template for the rest of the PDFs.  Now I have to go back, make the template, and redo the ten or eleven that I've already updated.  It's definitely a process.

What I have left to do for this month's game prep: create maps, pull out and set up the creatures for the two expeditions, and get a list of the classes that my playtesters are playing.  And, like I mentioned earlier, I need to fix the little problems that have been there since last time.  I don't think those will take long to fix, honestly.  

Once I get feedback from my playtesters on what days they're available, I'll schedule the next session weekend.  Then the rest of the month gets filled in with the other community events I hold, such as Guild Wars 1, Guild Wars 2, and Warframe.  

I think that's it for this dev log.  Sorry it wasn't super info-filled, but seriously, go read the entire Blaugust posts.  I feel like those were fantastic for me getting my dev log experience in, just in small daily blurbs. 

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 

 

Prompt #26 for #RPGaDay2026

Regret

I have a poster of Darth Vader in my room that I never fully opened.  It is titled Regrets that I got from Gamestop with those store rewards before I left USA.  Every day, I see it when I walk in here, ready to do my work one way or another.  It sits on a shelf, next to my Spawn figures, still in the plastic wrap from the mail.  That was ten years ago and I don't plan on ever opening it.

What does this have to do with my game?  It reminds me to not have regrets in life.  I've been through a lot, including a car accident that almost took my life.  That was a wake-up call that life is too short, even more so if you live it with regrets.  No one can make the game I see except me.  If I don't start it, no one will.  This year alone has been full of fun, exciting times for me and this game.  I've got a solid foundation on my local FoundryVTT,  making modules and testing things out.  The five playtesters that have been helping me test things out and providing feedback have been fantastic.  My creativity with my weekly creatures has keep flowing, although last week was a bit weird and this week might follow suit (I've got a major real life thing going on right now which is eating into my time creating those creatures, but after this week that should be back to normal).  Heck, even this month's Blaugust and the #RPGaDay2026 has gotten me motivated to talk about it daily, even when the word prompt was hard.

If I don't make my game, it would be a shame if the world didn't experience it, and that would be a regret.

 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #25 for #RPGaDay2026

Familiarity

I think the word for today's entry is fairly easy to discuss.  Obviously I'm familiar with my game world, but I'm pretty sure most people will be to a point.  Since it is based off of the world in the past, the divergent aspect of that world would strike familiar tones with people — generic buildings, roadways, structures, vehicles, just overall settings.  It isn't set in a "traditional fantasy" setting like the infamous "you all met in a tavern".  My playtesters all met each other informally while they were responding to a bounty board, in which the target NPC was actually trapped inside a mall (a real one, from my hometown — obscure enough that you've probably never heard of it, but it's got a familiarity to me that I like leaning on), too scared to leave due to the Porcelain Seer that was doing it's thing (if you want the full writeup, it's got its own entry — https://www.patreon.com/ches_ge/posts/week-22-monster-159885442).  Next expedition is going to be a little bit similar.  I don't expect my players to be familiar with one another, but I do hope they instill a sense of familiarity amongst themselves as the game progresses.  

As I continue down this rabbit hole of mine, I really hope that I can bring forth some really cool things that other people can become familiar with, even if it is trying to kill them.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #24 for #RPGaDay2026

Distance

I can say my game is a bit of a distance from our reality.  True, the solid base of it is based off of the real world that we all live in, but in the lore there was an incident that happened which essentially changed the world from what we have now.  There's things that exist that we don't have now, either from the past or the future.  That's one measurement of distance, but not the only one I want to talk about.

When I had originally created this game idea, I was told that I couldn't base it off of real places; that cities were copyrighted.  That didn't stop me from working on the idea.  I wanted to work on something that I could associate a distance with.  Turns out, those people were wrong.  Obviously there's some parts of a city that you can't just blatantly recreate, like sculptures or trademarked logos or even the city name, but overall if I wanted to recreate a city I was familiar with, I can.  In doing so, it gives me a point of reference for events and layouts of things that are encountered in the various expeditions.  I mean, the reality of our world right now and the fictional world of my game would change all of those things.  I want to know the distance to provide my players with on how far they need to run away from the nasty creature that is hunting them.  

Take a real stretch of a road I know, such as Prospect Avenue.  I know where one of the bookstores were, the path it took from that place to the mall.  That distance is about 1 kilometer, so more than enough for them to look at utilizing the various buildings that are along the way provide escape options or maybe even a better advantage to fight.  Now my players have a better idea of what they are working with when I can provide them solid descriptions of what they see in the vicinity.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

 

Prompt #23 for #RPGaDay2026

Fortune

I know I'm not the only one who wishes for fame and fortune of some type, although I'd rather not have the fame that goes down in history as a bad idea.  The only type of fame I want is to be recognized as the creator of my game.  That's it.  You know, like someone mentions a game or an idea or a comic or literally anything, and a name is tied to it.  That kind of fame is what I want.  If I get it, cool, if not, also cool.  What I don't want is the sense of obscurity.  I'm putting my world out there, little by little, in hopes that it resonates with others.  It doesn't have to cater to the masses, just has to find those like me.  

As for the fortune aspect, as well as the word for today's prompt, that is a bit more of a weird take.   I'm fortunate to have the support from my community in my pursuit of game dev.  I'm also fortunate to have an understanding and supportive husband.  I know I'm not going to make it big with my game, so that kind of fortune isn't happening, and I'm okay with that.

There's a popular saying that "fortune favors the brave," and I feel like that resonates with me the most.  I'm willing to take risks and share my game world before it's even remotely completed.  There have been so many word prompts this month that had me dive into my very being, and I'm honestly not deterred by any of it.  I know there's a lot to my game and I have a long way to go.  A final saying that goes along with the word for today: the fortunes of war.  This is essentially saying that there will be unpredictable events during a war.  The war might be myself, but I know it's worth fighting for. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #22 for #RPGaDay2026

Grit

I guess one could say I have some grit about my game.  It took me a long time to convince myself that it's okay to talk about my game along its journey.  I figured most people wouldn't find my experience interesting or engaging enough to read, let alone interact.  But none of that matters in the end.  I'm chronicling this journey for myself, and for whoever does want to read about it.  

Making a game isn't easy.  I remember my professors driving home the fact that good games take a lot of time and effort, especially if you're doing it alone.  There's a lot to do, and I'm willing to put in the work.  Right now, I'm building the core foundation of mechanics.  Seriously, without my playtesters I would still be in the very beginning stages of this project.  

That grit got tested a couple sessions back.  I had built the market vendor module, and it worked fine for me as the GM —made sense in my head, it ran smooth when I interacted with it myself, everything.  But once the players got their hands on it, it fell apart.  It turned into a chaotic mess, and I started losing track of everything happening at the table.  I walked away with pages of notes and a lot of feedback.  Most of it I've already fixed.  There's still a handful of things left, but nothing game-breaking, at least not yet.

I probably won't be done with the core foundation until the end of the year, maybe in the first quarter of next year, and I am perfectly okay with this.  I want this game to be exactly as I see it in my head.  My bestiary is kind of a supplement that keeps me going, and hopefully resonates with others who aren't running as playtesters.  I've temporarily closed my Ko-fi shop for the weekend while I revamp my PDFs.  They were originally a temporary look anyway, but now I have a much better concept of how I want those to look.  I aim to reopen the shop on Monday.

I'm willing to put in the time and effort for my game.  I have a pretty strong resolve, and maybe a little courage, to keep talking about it to the world — even if it is to a small few. 

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #21 for #RPGaDay2026

Charity

This word is a hard one to discuss.  According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary: generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering; benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity; a gift for public benevolent purposes; lenient judgment of others.  I'm going to be honest right here and now that this post is probably going to be more like word-vomit because I have absolutely no idea how to even tackle this, haha.

Yesterday's post was about "promise", in which I mentioned that I don't rely on Patreon and Ko-fi solely for the monetary exploitation of others.  Those platforms are more for providing a gateway for people to become involved with my game, joining my community, and even partake in feedback for creatures.  I never wanted to be viewed as a "charity case" for my passion project, and I refuse to have that happen now.  

I am genuinely a person who likes to help others, regardless of any return.  It hurts at times, but it is what it is.  I've been in the dark recesses of humanity, and I rarely judge others because I've had to make decisions I wasn't proud of.  Some aren't as bad as what others have experienced, but for me it was pretty awful.  I won't go into the details, since that could be a plethora of situations listed, but I've made it out of those dark places and am doing much better now.  There are people in my community who are battling their own monsters, and sometimes they just want someone to listen to them.  Thankfully, having ADHD can be a bonus.  Sometimes I don't retain a damn word they say past that conversation, but then there are times I remember a lot and just kind of dismiss it, shoving it back down into the filing cabinet of theirs.  

My game kind of reflects this part of me.  Depending on what kind of interaction an NPC or even a creature has with a player, it could change a lot of future situations.  I believe I touched on this in another post earlier in this month, but if a player chooses to be nice to an NPC, that NPC could influence interactions with other NPCs.  If a player chooses to be nasty, then obvious repercussions are on their way.  Another example is the Calamivox Ingratus interaction that both parties were involved with.  Both befriended one, and I can't wait to see what they say once they realize that being charitable to it was a great decision.

In the end, charity goes both ways in my game.  Players can be good or bad, and they'll have to deal with their choices later on.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

Prompt #20 for #RPGaDay2026

Promise

Okay this is a good word for today's post.  As many gamers have come to know, promises made by big game companies can be a hit or miss.  I can think of two video games right now that fell short on their promises: No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077.  For No Man's Sky, that game was epic in falling short of everything they had shown the audience.   We were shown true multiplayer, cool fleet battles, various wildlife ai, and the various planetary physics in showcases that led up to the release date.  Once that day came, all we had was a really minimal deliverable.  What we got was nowhere near the expectation.  For me, personally, I was really interested in the procedurally generated planets but my experience was mid at best.  Yeah, they were cool but it became very repetitive very quickly and I noticed how assets were reused in some of the most uncreative ways possible.  I never played Cyberpunk 2077 but a lot of my friends were upset about the initial release of it.  Every week, more complaints about what they were expecting versus what they were sold.  Thankfully, both No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 earned their brownie points back through years of fixing their games.  

As for TTRPGs, I haven't personally had any interaction with any that fell short on broken promises.  I'm not saying there haven't been any, because I'm pretty sure there have been a decent amount.  Let me explain.  A lot of TTRPGs in the past decade have been crowdfunded.  One of my many reasons why I will never put REDACTED up on a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter is because of the reputation games have there.  I've seen so many video games and RPGs and TTRPGs gain a lot of support and traction, just to see it all come crashing down on the supporters.  I like mech kind of things and two of the ones that caught my interest were Mekton Zero and Robotech RPG Tactics.  Thankfully, I was broke at those times and couldn't support them but I did follow their progress.  Needless to say, promises were broken and it hurt the supporters.  I don't want to be like that.

Which is where I'm at now.  This is going to make me sound like an absolute lunatic but here I go.  This game of mine is a passion.  It's been with me since 2010 and I'm now working on making it a reality.  I'm not going to stop working on it, even when times get tough.  Right now, I've got milestones and goals to reach.  Real life is a thing and I am only one person.  I've got my fantastic playtesters, running my expeditions and giving me solid feedback.  I've also got support sites like Patreon and Ko-fi, which I know usually get side-eyed as money grabbing platforms.  That isn't how I use them.  On Patreon, anyone who pledges is actually part of making something for my world.  It isn't an empty promise, because I give back in the form of the game itself.  This is either a creature they designed/inspired or an NPC.  Ko-fi is more about giving supporters a usable creature for their own games.  There isn't a lot of math involved yet, since I'm still working that part out, but they get a lot of info on the creature, like attacks and stuff, so I guess it's more like a template right now.  And there's a milestone on Ko-fi too, for anyone who's just nice enough to donate and support without needing anything back.  Every week is a new creature for my world.  This week has been falling a bit short because I'm redesigning my deliverables and I might have to bite the bullet and post the older formats.  This game is being tested as a TTRPG first, working out all the issues and the kinks.  Eventually, it will be a video game.  If I haven't quit on this since 2010, I'm not going to quit now.  I want to share my world with others.  This is my promise.

Links: 

• Patreon
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Twitch 

 

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 

 

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 

 

Prompt #9 for #RPGaDay2026

Privilege 

Privileges in a TTRPG are strange.  I've actually encountered a GM at a table once who had some weird vendetta against me.  I'm not sure if she felt like I was expecting some kind of privilege because I was dating her friend, so she made it her top priority to ensure I didn't want to keep playing.  Kind of funny, that one — because in the end, she was creating her own privilege against me.  

There are countless times I've come across someone talking about a GM from hell, or fellow table-mates who decided they were going to take matters into their own hands.  These are prime examples of people wielding privilege when, in the end, they're simply ruining the fun for everyone else around them.  I think it's worth naming the split here: GM privilege tends to look like power-tripping, so using the position to control or punish rather than facilitate.  Player privilege tends to look like spotlight-hogging, main-character syndrome, or needing every scene to revolve around them.  

I aim to create a high-trust kind of setting, where I as the GM build the world and provide the information, then wait for my players to decide what to do with it.  In practice, that means session zero isn't just a formality — it's where we actually talk through expectations, boundaries, and what everyone wants out of the game.  It means if something's not landing, I'd rather someone tell me than quietly grit their teeth through it.  That trust goes both ways, and it's what keeps the table from turning into the kind of horror stories I mentioned above.  

That said, I have had a player in the past who seemed to partake in a subtle form of privilege.  I could even call it main-character syndrome.  That got shut down relatively quickly, and he hasn't returned for any further games.  

Other than that, I haven't really encountered anyone at a table who expected privilege in a game.  Most of my players have been really into the game at hand, wanting more lore and consistently providing feedback.  I guess if anything, I have a sense of privilege because of my amazing playtesters.  Maybe the only privilege worth having at a table is a good group.  

Links:

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

 

Prompt #8 for #RPGaDay2026

Resolve

I think this is probably one of the better prompts I've encountered so far for #RPGaDay2026.  My resolve, as a game developer, finally kicked in late last year.  I graduated with a Bachelor's in Game Design and Development back in 2016 and haven't really done anything with it since.  Yesterday's post touched on part of the reason I decided to pursue this TTRPG, but it goes a bit further than that.  I really want to make this game.  It's been with me for over 16 years, and I genuinely want to do it now.  It's almost a need at this point.  

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what kicked it back into gear this time.  Part of it was playtesters in my community asking me for another TTRPG campaign — I wanted to work on my own game instead, so I decided to combine the two.  There's also the degree sitting there.  I got a Bachelor's in Game Design and Development and haven't used it for much of anything since.  I don't want to look back and feel like I wasted the time and money on it.  And, well — yay games.  I like making and playing them.  So let me go over my resolve for 2026 and my game.  

I originally started thinking about how to develop this game toward the end of 2025.  I decided January would be the starting point for creating creatures for my bestiary.  That's where the idea for Bestiary 52 came from — one creature a week, 52 weeks a year.  It gets me creating a creature for my game, gets me incorporating them into my playtesters' games, and it gets me developing things.  By March, I wanted my TTRPG actually running in FoundryVTT.  I'd looked into making modules before and it seemed pretty easy.  Turns out they're semi-easy but also hard to work out.  I've been doing a decent job so far and have made a handful of modules on top of the core system.  This will give me a solid framework to turn this TTRPG into a video game later down the road — get the bugs out, make things easy to grow later.  

By June, I wanted to start being a bit more open about my game on various social media platforms, as well as start looking for more potential playtesters.  Unfortunately, I got delayed a little and am just now getting around to it.  I started my social media expansion back around July and started looking to others in my community to see if any new interest sparked.  Alas, none — so the core group of five continues.  I'm hoping by late October/early November I can start wrapping up a solid "preview" of my game.  There won't be a published version for the rest of FoundryVTT to try, because honestly I'm just using it to test out my video game preview.  If there was enough interest for a release, I might consider it — I don't know.  By December, I'll have a solid preview of my creatures.  I'm aiming for a decent collection of them, possibly for a future publication, but I have no idea if that'll even happen.  

That core group of five has stuck with me through all of this, and I owe them a lot for it.  This game wouldn't be nearly as far along without their willingness to test and give feedback.  

That's been my resolve — not just a decision I made once, but one I've had to rebuild after years of letting it sit untouched.  

Links:

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

 

 

Prompt #7 for #RPGaDay2026

Mercy

Over the years, I've read some great stories about countless adventures from people who played a TTRPG — only to encounter a horrible GM.  The ones who are merciless, who seem to aim to hurt and punish their own table.  I can't fathom that kind of gameplay, but to each their own.  

I'm a firm believer that actions have consequences, but I don't want to kill my players' characters because of a GM's power trip.  That said, I'm not one to coddle my table either.  My players have learned that if I say certain phrases — like "are you sure about that?" — or if I start giggling, the choice they just made has about a 50/50 shot of being a bad idea.  

In my game world, every action carries some kind of consequence, great or small.  If a player refuses to help someone in need, that choice matters later.  Maybe that someone was the local merchant's daughter and once the merchant finds out his daughter went unhelped, he stops selling to that player.  

A better example: befriending a Calamivox Ingratus.  During the initial expedition, one player from each group extended a hand to a lone C. Ingratus, much to their teammates' dismay.  A C. Ingratus is essentially a sentient, long Furby and yes, plenty of people would call that nightmare fuel.  But it's also one of the best companions a player can find early in the game.  Honestly, I expected one of the groups to attack it and escalate things into something far more hostile.  Instead, both players chose compassion, and going forward, my players will learn that a C. Ingratus is worth befriending: show it kindness, and it returns the favor — finding hidden caches, safe corridors, and more.  Mercy goes a long way in this game.  

Just because my setting is post-apocalyptic/dark fantasy/survival horror doesn't mean I, as GM, am out to murder my whole table.  Like the C. Ingratus, compassion and forgiveness can pay off down the road. You know, mercy.

Links:

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

 

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.