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 1

Dusting this blog off after a long time.  I won't go into the boring details of where I've been and what I've been up to.  Every month will have a progress report here.  I don't plan on going super in depth for things (obvious reasons) but I do want to keep a blog/log of my overall progress.  So without further delay, let me talk about this game!