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.
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