My two rules for game design.
Two rules for game design, the Crits, the Grant, and more.
No need for preamble. Let’s get to it.
The Two Rules
Before I self-published games, I self-published comics. (Some but by no means all can be found here.) I did this for a long time, actually; I called it quits at the end of 2019 after 8 years of pouring every spare dollar and vacation day I had into page rates, printing costs, and conventions and got precisely nowhere with it. I made things I’m proud of and made a lot of friends along the way (you may have noticed every single artist I’ve worked with comes from comics) but for all it moved the needle on my career I may as well have just stuck to posting funny things on Twitter.
So after taking a year off from making things in 2020, a year in which some other things were going on as well, I shifted my focus to games. And told myself that if I wanted to risk heartbreak again, I needed to put some guardrails on the endeavor.
Here they are.
Only make what you want to make. This sounds straightforward and obvious, but a funny thing happens to a project when you’re in the murky middle passages of its creation. It’s very easy to lose sight of why you started; it’s also common for ideas that feel great in the “wouldn’t it be cool if - ?” phase to have a lot of trouble standing on its own legs. This is, essentially, permission to quit when a project reveals itself to be just another chore to complete. Life is short and getting shorter. I already take on assignments and notes and deadlines I don’t want to do at my day job, and that pays a lot better than games. If I’m going to sink my free time into this, it’s only going to be for things I truly want to see through.
Don’t lose money. Less a bid for commercialism than you might think at first blush; the rule is don’t lose money, not make money, after all. I spent way, way, way, way too much making comics, and I’m not sure I ever turned a profit on a single one. (Certainly my lifetime earnings put me five figures into the red.) I quite literally cannot afford to keep doing that, so my games have to pay for themselves. This keeps me careful with my spending; you’ll notice that No-Tell Motel is the first game I released that wasn’t mostly public domain art and laid out by me - and I crowdfunded that one. My earliest work, the stuff I made with no artists in tow, was all public domain art and free (or very cheap) fonts. I basically just had to pay for Affinity Publisher, which I got on sale for $25. Lighthouse and VOID 1680 AM cost me the cover artist page rate and not much else; I ran pre-orders on itch to pay for the initial print run.
These rules keep me sane and centered. I only work on what I truly want to work on, and I keep a financial check in place to make sure I don’t completely lose perspective. Ideally I need every project to pay for itself, but I have enough of a catalogue going that I can afford to experiment (such as with Wayfarer 1) and offer more to artists without feeling the impact*.* More money in means more room to experiment, which allows for the occasional “failure” I still had fun making.
The Crit Awards Nominations Are Open
Those are here. You can read category descriptions here. And wouldn’t you know it, I have some nomination recommendations for you.
Best Solo TTRPG: No-Tell Motel. C’mon, you knew that was coming.
Best Indie TTRPG: Dukk Borg. This title is from my pals at Gem Room Games, and it’s both a worthy entry into the wider Mork Borg family that dials up the (very dry) humor for maximum queasiness. I love it.
Best Series and Innovation in the TTRPG Space: Both Voices in the Wood and Avarice Hotel qualify for either of these categories. Voices in the Wood uses VOID 1680 AM to tell a sprawling dystopian story via radio call-in show featuring 17 actors and 28 (!) musical acts. Avarice Hotel uses Killer Ratings to tell the story of a haunted hotel, spread over three different episodes that march backwards in time. Really damn clever and genuinely quite funny.
Best Player (Indie): Darby as Sorrel, Gwendolyn Kelly as Victoria Cooper, Kelly as Maisie Hinkle, Calamity as Latrice, Oleander as Delroy, Nada/Amir as Jennah, Barnaby as Corrie Parker, and Nala J. Wu as Eve Wen all from Voices in the Wood.
Best Legacy Podcast: Read The Fucking Manual. I find myself arguing with the podcast a lot of the time, in the most productive ways. I always walk away feeling 1% smarter about games and, more to the point, my own inclinations with them.
Best Podcast Host: Sam Dunnewold, Dice Exploder. One of those things that sounds so easy and light and casual and good, which is an indication of how murderously hard it is to put together a show this loaded with great guests, veering conversations and surprising depth. I listen to every new episode the minute I can.
Best Cover Art: Shawn McGuan, No-Tell Motel. I mean, look at it.
Speaking Of: The Indie Groundbreaker Awards are on Sunday
No-Tell Motel is nominated for Best Design and is up against a slate of amazing books including, uh, Triangle Agency. That is let us say a steep hill to climb, but I do love being in that company. See you there.
Also This Weekend: Tabling at Staple! (Stabling!)
I’ll be tabling this weekend at Staple! in Austin! Exclamation point! Come see me (and my deliriously talented pal Andy Hirsch) at table 67. I’ll have my wares on hand, and I’ll be the one who looks like he hasn’t tabled a show in years and doesn’t know what’s happening.
The Bannerless Games Tabletop RPG Grant
I’ve been thinking about how to give back to the RPG design community for awhile now, and I’ve finally settled on a way: the Bannerless Games Tabletop RPG Grant. I’ll be giving five designers $250 to do what they wish with: buy fonts, pay for software, hire an artist, set up an LLC, pay some bills, pay themselves for work they did for free, whatever. Crucially, I do not want you to rule yourself out, so apply for the dang thing and see. If you don’t win one, don’t worry: I plan to do about one of these a quarter if I can manage it.
That's it.
See you next time.
