Twelve(ish) RPGs Later…
A Reflection on My 2024 Project
If know of my existence outside the substack, you may have read this already.
So one year later, I have completely my sidebet. I have successfully managed to pen 12 different single page TTRPGs. Or well, 11 different single page TTRPGs and one that I cheated on that ended up being 16 pages because there was *art* and *design* and *a collaborator.* And besides, as is the main modus operandi of my entire existence, all rules are arbitrary to begin with.
I like games a lot. I like playing games. After an entire year of trying to make games, I’m not sure I’m quite as endeared to the process, but it was fun and I think there is a deeper appreciation of the medium. The amount of work it took to create a simple prototype was moderately exhausting to begin with and I didn’t even do things like edit properly or playtest. All of this was conjecture and vibes. So let’s talk about this from a few perspectives: the act of creation, the love of games, and what happens next.
Creation
At any given time, I have an excess amount of free energy that needs to be converted into some sort of creative endeavor and my “sidebets” have been a way to portion and direct that need to something specific and concrete as a sort of valve to let me do all of the writing I need to do. One page a month is a much reasonable pace than a lot of the other mass production content. Conceptualizing and writing a single thing is a more streamlined process than the constant production for thirty days in a row. It still takes effort. It still takes inspiration. It still requires a follow through and acceptance that not everything will hit the same way.
You see parallel trends to something like NaNoWriMo and 30/30. A strong start, a strong end. Random dips in quality in the middle. A strange correspondence to the event’s in one’s personal life if you overlaid the calendar on top. I’d do something like this again. I don’t know how productive it was, but it was fun and it did generate some good ideas if nothing else.
For the love of games
My first ever console was a Gameboy Pocket. We used to play Scrabble as a family. I learned to type with Mario Teaches Typing. I had an on-and-off relationship with Magic: The Gathering. I never actually played a TTRPG properly until undergrad (I think I did a couple one-shots here and there). I played Mass Effect so much on an unoptimized HP laptop that the graphics card melted. I am currently playing in one long on-going Starfinder and somehow I think I’m going to become a GM for three different games in 2025 because I miss that too.
Games are fun because games force you to think differently. Games open up possibilities. Games engage you in a way that reality is not always able to. Making games is an art. Making rules, leveraging systems, keeping things cohesive. Repetitive design makes you cognizant of these things if nothing.
The Future
For now, we put this PDF out in the world. We’ll let things simmer and sit. We’ll consider playtesting some of the things we like a lot. We’ll make a Vol. 2 for The Several Lives of M. Slice because well, that’s just a cool thing to do that only *we* (royal we? Me and Alain? Yes?) could do. We’ll have a deeper appreciation for game masters and rule hackers, improv artists. And we’ll find some other things to invest creative free energy into come 2025.