Content Warnings: mental health, disability, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective / psychotic symptoms, suicidality, hearing voices, dissociative disorders, electroconvulsive therapy, partial psychiatric intake programs, COVID, PTSD / CPTSD, loss of resources, loss of function, grief
I try to consider the ways my life could have gone differently sometimes, but there is one way that things did go that may have gone worse. It’s been altered again very recently, and I don’t know how to cope. I feel afraid of what is to come, and with all I’ve lost, I don’t know who I am anymore, even if I am not angry at where I am.
After several years of struggling with my most notable head injury, new diagnoses, mental illness, multiple harmful relationships, and losing or having to sacrifice the use of my degree, my careers, and the ability to do many things I once enjoyed, I found myself at the onset of a mixed bipolar 1 episode with schizoaffective symptoms yet again. I was struggling with the impact of PTSD on my life and function. Also trying to answer yet-unresolved questions about the impact of COVID on my body that has led to constant physical discomfort and symptoms that left me justified in being paranoid about my wellbeing.
I participated in a partial inpatient program that helped with my mental health, but the mixed episode was stubborn. I was barely sleeping, borderline suicidal on a daily basis, and not unsure whether this would be the last run for me. I’d learned coping mechanisms and addressed my trauma more deeply. Unfortunately, when you’ve done a lot of therapy and also tried and failed a lot of medication, options become limited to stop a train like a mixed episode. I’ve had episodes lasting multiple years that were almost life ruining, and I couldn’t bear the thought of going through that again.
Containment and Categorization of Emotions & Memories
by Beau Jágr Sheldon, 2023
In the green and overgrown hills and valleys, there are a series of caverns beneath the ground. Many years ago, these caverns were carved out and made into a secure storage location. Inside, there are full size locations with marble stairwells and arches, document archives, even some legendary vaults with highly desired media within. In this ritual, you are now the owner of this colloquially-called Arn Mountain and within it, you can store all of your memories, emotions, and experiences in whatever form you deem appropriate.
You can traverse it in your golf cart, stopping at each location as you need, and take things out or put things inside the various safes, secure locations, or display shelves. When you’re done inside, you can exit the facility, locking the door behind you physically and electronically. The facility is huge, and even if you recorded every moment of your life, you would never run out of space for each record, and it is almost as if the space expands as you need it to hold what you must.
This location is one of the most seismically and natural-disaster secure locations in the entirety of North America. No outside force will interfere with what you put inside the mountain. It will not be shaken, broken, burned, or invaded, and is truly a safe place. No one else can enter it without your permission, and you can revoke access to it for anyone, at any time. Because of this, you have complete power over the mountain, and can go into it whenever you wish, or keep it locked and protected when you prefer.
For this ritual, you will either describe or conceptualize Arn Mountain, identify how you will store some of your memories and emotions within the mountain, and you will also identify some key items you keep in the Glass Globes protected inside the mountain.
The lines after each prompt can be used as pacing, with a breath in or out for each line, when read aloud. The headers are guidance for completing this as a written, nonverbal prompt, and do not need to be read aloud.
Like many in my generation, I saw Fight Club (1999, dir. David Fincher) as an impressionable teen growing up in an era where terms like “toxic masculinity” were becoming increasingly common. I grew up in a supremacy culture – white supremacy impacts rural, insular communities deeply, and men were and are still the most privileged, particularly white men. Evangelical Christianity was the majority and the most influential of religions – to the exclusion of most others – in the Pennsylvanian towns I grew up in, and that culture likewise elevated largely white men. But, the internet and major media had given voice to rising progressive and feminist perspectives.
Fight Club itself would likely never be included in progressive media as something of value, while the original book by Chuck Palahniuk may have more to say than the film. I haven’t been able to read the book for reasons related to this writing, and while I have seen the movie several times since my original viewing, it is harder every time. The hypermasculine violence is visceral and distressing, yes, and complex misogyny by The Narrator and other characters towards Marla, the only woman featured in the film and (to my knowledge) book, is always unpleasant. As someone who considers their religious upbringing cult-like, the indoctrination is also challenging. However, my reasons for a lengthy love/hate relationship with Fight Club are more than that.
This is bleak, to a degree, and will discuss: the COVID-19 pandemic, mental & physical illness & disability, politics, nihilism, financial details and sales, and community-related trauma (perpetrators of harm, business ethics). However, I want to be transparent about my motivations for leaving the capitalistic, financially relevant industry of games and my step back from the community around it.
This is bleak, to a degree, and will discuss: the COVID-19 pandemic, mental & physical illness & disability, politics, nihilism, financial details and sales, and community-related trauma (perpetrators of harm, business ethics). However, I want to be transparent about my motivations for leaving the capitalistic, financially relevant industry of games and my step back from the community around it.
by Beau Jágr Sheldon, 2021
The State of It All
The world, contrary to some song lyrics, is not a vampire. It is a wasteland we have made ourselves. The world is not sucking blood from us, we have instead reaped as much as we like and never sown anything not dripping with toxic waste or colonial intention. The “we” here is obviously largely white, largely capitalist, and disturbingly fascist even if we struggle to fight against it.
The past US presidential term, this US presidential term, & the pandemic have shown me, a disabled, queer, trans, nonbinary, neurodivergent, mentally ill person, that most people do not care if I live or die. They do not care if I struggle or stress. They don’t care if I have healthcare, a safe home, a functioning set of lungs, or food to eat. Not just me, but anyone who is marginalized, and especially Black people, people of color, and indigenous people.
As someone who grew up conservative, I had grown to know that people who were different were treated badly and weren’t respected. What really shocked me in the past several years is that even protecting the whole of humanity doesn’t matter to so many people, even protecting themselves doesn’t matter, so long as the status quo is maintained, money is made for those with the most of it, and white supremacy maintains its stranglehold. Conspiracies, lies, and harm that I had seen in many small ways was clearly on a much larger scale – alongside the rising anti-trans sentiment, constant violence against Black people by police & civilians, anti-Indigenous action including violence and neglect, the handling of immigration & refugees, anti-vaccination movements, pushes against fair labor practices within organizations, and rampant sexual harassment and assault are just the endless nightmare of the world we live in. Oh, also our oceans have literally been on fire, along with endless acres of land.
I’ve talked before about my personal state – mental health struggles, physical disability, having to basically give up my career plans after spending tens of thousands of dollars on school, being repeatedly affected by the actions of perpetrators of harm, & unfair pay. I have fucked up myself – between my health making it hard to fulfill project promises at times, my struggles to communicate & my loss of function during illness resulting in offense or misunderstanding, plus inability to cope with technological issues & cognitive struggles resulting in miscommunication or missed opportunities. No matter how much I want to be doing well, even with therapy, attempts to apologize or account for my errors, medication & treatment, I can’t exist in the world like I want to, because of who and how I am, and because of how the world really is.
by Beau Jágr Sheldon, 2021.
You might ask, what the fuck does this have to do with games?
Let me be clear, it has fucking everything to do with games.
Game design is a creative space for me, and when I am feeling like shit, and constantly living in fear, exhaustion, pain, and shame, I can’t do creative stuff like I want to. It’s so hard to survive in this world, especially when I know that to be successful, not only do I have to navigate all of the predatory behavior & bad business ethics that are just painfully rampant in games, but I also have to put on a façade that hides everything I’m struggling with, try to avoid offending or annoying any of the people with actual power and influence in the industry, AND figure out how to magic up energy to be constantly promoting, constantly looking for more work, while constantly trying to improve all of my skills (and develop new ones, which is super challenging for me now).
And like, yes, every fucking game designer or artist or freelancer lives this shit. The challenges for some of them are far greater than me, for others it’s not as much. It’s very exhausting and stressful and the financial & success disparity between the larger companies (many of which engage in practices or business decisions I disagree with & do harm to the industry and gamers in general) and small creators is a slap in the face, especially when I see a lot of smaller creators who end up either needing to or feeling like they need to just suck it up and suck up to try to get a single fucking scrap of that success. It’s not fair to them and it’s unnecessarily beneficial to those up top.
Everyone in this industry also gets the constant threat of harassment, constant battles of social media & internet debate and discourse, and that ever so exciting commentary about how indie games are so overpriced while people drool over luxury sets of hardcover books filled with shoddy photomanips or prejudice laced narratives, sometimes both, maybe with some extra “this can’t be shipped until after the cardboard shortage” components. When so many designers I know are literally just trying to afford a fucking meal, it is vile to watch, and I have lost the capacity to fight it actively and to watch my colleagues suffer deeply while I’m also struggling.
I have had some boons in the past year – my spouse has a slightly better job, I found a way to exchange some work to help afford massively helpful medical treatment, & I have avoided direct COVID impact (I lost my grandmother, and my dad got COVID, but we’ve been lucky). We’ve still had a lot of health & wellbeing issues (for all three in my polycule), repeated issues with our ancient house, and everything feels constantly delicate – like even the slightest thing that goes wrong will destroy everything, because there is no support, there is no infrastructure, and I can’t even keep up with design work or work a regular job to help contribute. It’s exhausting and terrifying.
by Beau Jágr Sheldon, 2021.
The Plan
Next year, my goal is to not work towards capitalism. While I will continue my work at the resin shop I help at, & I have some small admin type tasks I do, any creative work I do will not be targeted towards sales or income.
I am extremely aware that this is a privileged choice, but I also am aware that even with all of my disabilities & mental illnesses, I can’t get on disability, and I also can’t fucking work reliably. I’d still like to try to build skills, continue my recovery (recoveries, really), and do creative work, even if I can’t contribute to society or my household in any meaningful way. I’d like to find even a scrap of joy in daily life, or in my activities. Trying to market my work, which is necessary to make sales, or market myself, which is necessary to get hired, feels hopeless, exhausting, and hasn’t succeeded much so far.
The things I hope I get to work on?
I still want to do game design, I have some projects that I’ve been slowly working on but too exhausted to engage with deeply. Carheart Nosferatu, some Script Change stuff, I dunno. We’ll see, but it’s on the list.
I am doing some more hands-on work, like drawing, painting, and making miniature diorama type stuff, as well as working in the shop. I’m hoping to get better at them! I built a fairy house that I’m planning to gift to friends, but want to make more! Plus I miss sculpting a lot.
I want to work more actively on my photography, doing more boudoir shoots for the kind of people who don’t normally get that kind of opportunity but absolutely deserve it, plus more nature photography, and maybe trying some video work. I even have some ideas for some Leading with Class video work, which would be amazing to get back to.
All of this with hopefully less time being absorbed in stressful online conversations, less paranoia & anxiety about who to trust or whether I’m fully understanding complex conversations or whether I’m failing to communicate effectively (and my career depending on it), and hopefully a lot more time to spend with my partners.
A Reflection on Financials
I wanted to just have a bit here to give context to what I’ve actually been earning in games, because that is very relevant to the weighing of scales I’ve done leading to the decision to step back. I’m going to share some data in text, plus some in screenshots in slideshows that I hope will actually work.
The first thing is my sales on DriveThruRPG. I didn’t download this year’s data in part because it’s, uh, kind of painful to look at, but from our tax downloads last year, I calculated that all of my games resulted in me receiving a $40.09 payout for 2020 (around $300 in sales went to The Trevor Project directly for sales of Of the Woods, over 30 copies), with 3 sales of Turn/Towns Like Ours and one of Let Me Take a Selfie. I will likely be putting up my upcoming Turn supplement on DTRPG (with work from Fabby Garza and Jan Martin, among all the results of the Kickstarter rewards like new towns & archetypes), intended to be a charitable project donating to an Indigenous charity, and DTRPG is so far the only place I know that can donate directly instead of me having to juggle it. That’s the biggest value for me.
For all of my sales at Indie Press Revolution to date, I have had a total of $1173 in sales (that’s gross, I think). That was around 60 copies of Turn, and one copy of Behind the Masc. I am very grateful to be able to distribute through them, and for all of the promotion IPR has done on my behalf, so I’ll still be keeping my print copies & bigger project PDFs there.
Finally, my itch.io sales, which are… a mixed bag. Script Change does pretty well, but that’s most of it, and I’ll let the screenshots here do some of the work. I’ve included screenshots of my payouts, each game or product I’ve released with its dashboard showing the graphs for the longest period of time I could of views/downloads/etc., and all the bundles I participated in (all but the BBC Bundle, the Queer Games Bundle, the Epimas bundles, the One-Shot Megabundle, and the Disabled Designers bundles are charity bundles I did not receive funds from), plus sales, payments, etc. over the past year..
All of Beau’s payouts for itch.io.
Totals for all products on Beau’s itch.io.
2021 Monthly gross revenue.
2021 payments.
Downloads and views for Beau’s itch.io.
All of the bundles Beau has been in.
Dashboard stats for Beep.
Dashboard stats for Behind the Masc.
Dashboard stats for Behrend Bernhard, Esq.
Dashboard stats for Your being dumped by your catgirl girlfriend
Dashboard graphs for Dice4Dad.
Dashboard graphs for Ears are Burning.
Dashboard graphs for Gonna Make You Nut.
Dashboard stats for The Handshake.
Dashboard stats for In Other Lives.
The Let Me Take a Selfie dashboard stats.
The I love you and I adore you dashboard stats.
The Man and The Stag dashboard stats.
The Millennial Tragedy is Basically a Comedy dashboard stats.
The I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream dashboard stats.
The Script Change RPG Toolbox dashboard stats.
The Secret Lover dashboard stats.
The thatlittleitch dashboard stats.
The Towns Like Ours dashboard stats.
The Tribute dashboard stats.
The Turn dashboard stats.
The Vore Your Dungeon dashboard stats.
The What’s In A Ring? dashboard stats.
Could it have been better? Yes, if I’d worked harder and marketed better and made better products. Could I have worked harder? Actually, no. Could I have marketed better? Also a no. Could I have made better products? I dunno by whose fucking standards to measure that, but I don’t think so. I poured tons of hours and lots of my own money, plus hiring other people, into many of these products and I was proud of a lot of them until I got the dead air and lack of sales and lack of engagement that people give. Script Change has absolutely done well, but I definitely struggled to maintain my rights to my work & recognition for it in the process. It is immensely valuable to me, but it is the only thing people will ever remember I did, if people don’t wipe my name from it when I stop constantly monitoring and engaging.
The reality is that the games industry takes more work than is reasonable for most people to do, even with the support of partners or fellow creators. You’re supposed to be a designer, a writer, an editor, a graphic designer, a layout artist, a marketing specialist, an accountant, a hiring manager, an illustrator, a social media expert, a public speaker, and also have an impeccable reputation with no mistakes and the blessing of every white asshole who calls themself a legacy, and my whiteness was enough to prop me up for a while, and I know it still benefits me. But it’s not enough to override my other marginalizations when it comes to who is the favorite, who gets the job, when there’s oodles of other white people without those marginalizations (or with ones people think are prettier or who can mask better), and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of competition. I barely even play competitive board games, like fuck do I want to run the rat race IRL.
by Beau Jágr Sheldon, 2021
What Happens Now?
I am always grateful for every sale, for every five star, for every compliment, for every share, for every single bit of praise and positivity that’s been sent my way. Truly! But I take the bad stuff far harder than I internalize the good, and that’s just trauma and reality kicking my ass. I hope to release more creative work of many kinds, and I will try my hardest to still support other creators & speak up for what I believe is right. I just need to not tie a dollar sign to that as a necessity.
I will happily accept donations (ko-fi.com/thoughty is the main space for that, plus members get access to my Discord, which I would like to see grow) & I always love gifts (my birthday is in February and I celebrate both all holidays and none), plus I will be keeping my stuff up on DTRPG, IPR, and itchio. I don’t expect support, but I appreciate and value it. I am also hoping that eventually I can be healthy enough mentally and physically to start doing business again, but I don’t know what form that will be in.
The Turn supplement will be up when I can get everything compiled and edited and maybe figure out how to make some art happen. Script Change will hopefully be getting an audio version and some minor updates next year! I want to work on Carheart Nosferatu, and maybe some cool setting stuff with some art from the Assembludo (teamed with Thomas) projects, AND I want to especially support John in his release of Roar of Alliance and help it succeed, because it’s utterly amazing. (Seriously, go get it now! It’s in beta but as it grows, so will the value.)
I will still be available for Script Change consultations to help with integrating Script Change into people’s games, for online conventions (no face to face until COVID is done, & only as a paid guest for f2f when that happens) to do panels & workshops on safety & leadership, and so on. I want to work more with The Bodhana Group as well, as they’re doing awesome stuff! I’m also working on a book chapter about calibration/safety tools for a German publication, which I am hoping will go over well.
I’ll try to post here when I make stuff (photoshoots, art, and probably Leading with Class stuff if I can get it going) and release any games content I make online (I’ll put it on IPR or DriveThruRPG if I can, but I mainly upload to thoughty.itch.io because it’s easier – though the Turn supplement will go to DTRPG only for now). I also plan to put up collections of photos on itch that can be used for game covers, interiors, etc. with credit! I have thousands so I might as well!
I know this post is HUGE but I wanted to cover a lot and give a full explanation for what’s happening with Thoughty, with my work, with my reasons for disengaging, and so on. I also wanted to give some transparency on the financial side of things to give context to what happens with the impact of mental & physical health issues, trauma, and stress on the ability to keep up in an industry like games. I don’t want to be done with games, but if I don’t step back, I genuinely don’t know if I can make it through the next few years, and goddamn it, I would really like to make it to 40.
If you choose to stick around, follow what I do next, I will be so happy to have you here. I hope you’ll be happy to have me as I am now, and hopefully as I continue to heal and grow and find my place. In the meantime, I hope that the world is kinder, more caring, and more willing to do the work to help you flourish, even if you are struggling just as much as me or more.
This weekend I finally had the opportunity to have the photoshoot I have dreamed of for some time, which included a couple of important logistical issues – like finding a place to dig a shallow grave, and arranging a time in near-winter where it wasn’t too cold to lie in it.
In this photoshoot, I’m styled in cowboy inspired clothes much like I wore as a kid equestrian, but styled up a little to my modern tastes. There’s a little bit of a narrative to the photos, so I hope you enjoy it!
The photography in this shoot is by John W. Sheldon, and myself and Jennifer Hill (a.k.a. Jaydot from Shop Jaydot) are the models. The shoot was conceived by me, styled largely by me, and planned by me and John. It is extremely meaningful to me, and I am super grateful I was able to experience it. This may be highly pretentious, but it is very special!
My world has changed a lot over the pandemic, and starting next year I’ll be changing my work & this site to be a combined approach under the Thoughty brand, but in more of a hobbyist mode with more emphasis on my personal art. The archives of Thoughty will remain, and I hope to still post about a variety of content, but this is just a notification that yes, times are changing. You’ll see photography, maybe writing, games content (hopefully), and maybe more!
I am working on a few things! I have some Turn content to release sometime in the nearish future, I’m doing some small games work, some more official games education work, and I continue to try to boost creators however I can. I am even brewing up some hopeful Leading with Class content for next year – fingers crossed!
You can support my ko-fi.com/Thoughty account to help my work continue, as this continues to be my only means of earning personal income & reinvesting in my work & the community (I still have a Discord accessible through Ko-Fi too!). I accept monthly and occasional donations!
Thank you, as always, for your continued support of my endeavors! I’ll update more as I can. I’ll be posting a new photoshoot tonight! It marks a turning point, so I hope you’re excited, too!
Hello all! Today I have an interview with Jan Martin, creator of Crow Island Funeral // PROCESSION! I’m so excited to share this interview, Jan is an amazing creator and Crow Island is SO cool!
Jan: ” I wanted to have this section of the overall story play out as a game because it underlines the importance of surviving the trip in a way that a short story couldn’t do on its own. Being able to fail, actually fail and lose and not make it at all, would have huge implications in the universe. There’s no telling how the future would have unfolded if that group didn’t survive the trek to the City of Seven Nations. “
Hello all! Today I have an interview with Jan Martin, creator of Crow Island Funeral // PROCESSION! I’m so excited to share this interview, Jan is an amazing creator and Crow Island is SO cool!
Thank you for the interview, Jan! You have been designing games for a while now, but for people who are new, could you tell me a little about yourself and what gives you passion for games?
Jan: I think the biggest thing for me with games is I love how they can help putting together a good story. Every great TTRPG session would make a great TV show, film, book, comic, whatever medium. That’s a magical thing to me, a book with some rules and ideas, in the hands of a group of humans, leads to great stories. Stories that come together organically, with lively characters and compelling scenes. I’ve spent my life writing fiction and I’ve never been able to come close to the kind of story you can make with friends around a table.
It’s that idea that I might be able to craft a game that can help people create compelling stories of their own that really excites me. Game designers have an incredible power in this way, and I guess I’m always trying to chase that same power. To facilitate stories full of laughter, drama, and intrigue between friends with a book of ideas is amazing. That’s what gives me passion, is the pursuit of the dream that I too can someday make a game that can do that.
Beau: Today we’re talking about your solo game, Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION. It is a really well put together game with a lot of content, & I am excited to know more! What excites you about Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION?
Jan: This is the first introduction to a much larger world and Universe that all my games and fiction are set. This game takes place in the same location as seen earlier this year in a short-story I wrote for Wizardpunk by Sandy Pug Games. That story was set in the modern day. In Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION players explore that area in the early years of civilization on the planet. It’s the year 349, exactly 10 years before the discovery of Spirit Trees and Spirit Magic. It introduces some names that will show up again and again, Asogomas and Naad, as well gives a peek into early culture.
Anyone who picks up my games now and follows from here on will keep seeing familiar details and learn more and more about them. I’m really excited to be able to share these bits of the world, and even more excited to see peoples reactions as they learn how things end up. I’m also a little worried, because the deeper it goes, the wilder it gets and I run the risk of alienating some people along the way. The expectations of what this world is and its place in the Universe it lives aren’t obvious at this point. I’ve got some plans to try and keep people onboard and interested so hopefully those work out.
Beau: Creating a world in which your games are set sounds really awesome! Having read through your game, I feel like there’s a lot of richness there. What is guiding your planning for this world and what are some ways you can see it in Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION?
Jan: It’s a combination of things, a large part of it is making sure everything fits within the larger Universe. There are a lot of different planets and even Universes involved so it’s a challenge to keep everything organized. For Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION in particular a key part of keeping organized is a timeline of the planet that starts when Crow Island itself is in year 1, when it created by Kiskik the Creator.
The timeline goes all the way up until current day, the year 13,425, which happens to be the year the larger game in the series is set. You can see this in the game itself through some of the lore, for example the two paths you can take. There’s the Path of Asogomas and the Path of Naad I mentioned before, but another example is the location Mudgash River. This is the location where the story in Wizardpunk is set, and will be an important spot in other games and stories. Some of the areas on the map will come up again more than others, but pretty much everything you see in this game will be present or referenced in future ones.
The map from Crow Island’s text with a zoomed in focus on East Central Crow Island, featuring a legend of the landmarks and settlements, by Jan Martin.
Beau: Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION has a really cool card mechanic and I love the structure of it. How does the design of the mechanics interrelate with the world building and the fiction of the stories you tell in the game?
Jan: The mechanics are meant to reflect the uncertainty of life while still being predictable. This ties directly into the world which is very similar to how my people lived pre-Colonialism. We had great understanding of the land and how to move through it and survive, but there is always that element of unpredictability, random chance, chaos, whatever you want to call it. It makes it so even the most skilled individuals must take care and have constant respect for the dangers of nature. Having the cards always have the same set of resources available, just presented in different order thereby taking something predictable and adding tension.
At the time of me typing this the game is too easy, and I’ll have to tweak things a little bit to better reflect the dangers of travel through the wilderness. The dice mechanic is similar when fording rivers, technically it’s possible to get through river obstacles without issue, but it’s highly unlikely. Basically I wanted to have the mechanics reflect two things, that you are experts of travelling through this wilderness, but despite that, it can still kill you. This is important to get right because future games will be difficult but for different reasons. I want there to be a strong contrast between how things were tough “back in the day” versus modern day, but keeping it clear that both times were rough.
Beau: The timeline of Crow Island seems very significant! Designing your own universe sounds like a big task, but what are the best parts of making something so big but accessed in individual play experiences?
Jan: It’s really nice to be able to zoom in on something in your Universe and have people pay attention to it on a deeper level. Originally this was all going to be a sprawling science fantasy novel series, with endless lore and backstory. That felt too tedious to subject readers to, even if I enjoy that sort of thing myself I don’t have the writing chops to deliver that kind of content in an enjoyable way. Anything I wrote sounded like a history text book and I wanted something immersive. Breaking the Universe up into separate experiences allows me to share a lot more about a particular part of it without worrying about people getting bored. It’s also really enjoyable to have a Universe just sitting there to think of like a sandbox. Anytime I’m feeling blocked on progress in a game, I can just hop into the Crow Island Universe timeline or map and find a new thread to pull.
The World Map for Crow Island by Jan Martin.
Beau: The experiences of your people are valuable, & it’s really awesome how you’ve reflected them in this game. Are there any unique challenges to designing a pre-Colonialism game?
Jan: Absolutely, there’s all kinds of worries about depicting things accurately and not viewing the past through a modern lens. Originally this game was about North America and an alternate-history where Indigenous Nations drove off Colonial forces. The more I worked on it through that lens, the more I started to feel guilty. Sometimes I will talk out loud to my ancestors and ask them about what I’m doing, they never answer me, but, just the act of asking about it gets me to think of it through their mindset. The more I thought about that the more I realized I wasn’t being fair to my ancestors, assuming I or anyone could have done anything differently to predict or avoid what happened.
As a result I ended up re-writing about 40k words or so of my “Universe Bible”, and changed it from an alternate history project, to an entirely unique Universe of its own without any of the trappings of our current history. I don’t think anyone would have taken issue with my game the way it was, but for me personally it just didn’t feel right anymore and I had to change gears. That same thing happens continually throughout this process. I’ll have some idea for the world, game, or story in this Universe and the more I talk it over with my ancestors, the more I come to realize things have to change. It’s an extra layer in the process that has no clear answers.
Unlike many problems we face in the game design process, some of the questions I arrive at I can’t look up online or even find the answers from my Elders, because we don’t know anymore. The Mi’kmaq were some of the first Indigenous peoples to meet Colonial forces and as such we’ve been subjected to the ongoing effects of their occupation since the start. So many of our practices, so much of our language, is just gone. Often the best we can do is speculate. That complicates things even further, I obviously don’t want to offend anyone living or misrepresent our culture. But more than that, I don’t want to offend my ancestors, the people who actually lived in the time periods I’m romanticizing in my games.
Beau: In playing Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION, players encounter a lot of dangers. How did you design the game to balance those dangers while still keeping players hopeful of reaching the end of their journey?
Jan: Working out mechanics is a slow process for me, especially the math side of things. Any semblance of balance the game has right now I owe to keeping the math simple. Well to be honest it’s not super balanced right now, I thought it was, but I didn’t account for my own terrible luck. I balanced everything by playtesting it myself, and historically I’m an abysmal dice roller. In games where rolling a 1 is a failure, I roll lots of 1’s.
In games where rolling a 1 is a failure *and* you get XP for it, I never roll 1’s. So in my personal playtests, the balance felt right. I lost a couple times, and most other playthroughs I barely scraped by or had some a series of close calls. But then, all the feedback I’ve received so far from playtesters has been the opposite, that outside of a few terrible run-ins with a river, for the most part they managed to cruise through the game without any problems. Balance will be an ongoing thing.
In the next update I’ll have tweaked the math a little bit to try and increase the difficulty to be more in line with my original vision. I don’t know what will happen after that, if people playtesting say it’s much harder but they’re not having fun anymore, I’ll tweak again. I want to make sure I don’t let my vision get in the way of an enjoyable experience and I’m lucky to have some people sending me this valuable feedback so I’m taking it to heart.
The Choose a Role card for Crow Island by Jan Martin.
Beau: I find the visual design of Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION approachable & really gorgeous! What was your perspective on how to present the game to your audience, & how did you work to implement it?
Jan: I wanted to capture the same sort of feeling and vibe I got from the original Oregon Trail games I played as a kid on school computers. Everything was pretty stripped down in the version I played, but it really captured the vibe of going on a road trip. To pull that off I wanted to go for really simple graphics, something like you might see on a sign at a National Park. It felt right to go a little more cartoony than that, but that was my launching point.
Beau: It’s remarkable how complex of an approach to your design choices you have, including in how you involve & respect the experiences of your ancestors. What about this medium, games, makes it well suited to telling stories that reflect those experiences?
Jan: Games are one of the best mediums to tell stories that have experiences you want to communicate in a more interactive way. It can help make the gravity of a situation meaningful in a fun way. In Crow Island funeral // PROCESSION I could have written the game as a story, but in the story they succeed in making it to the City of Seven Nations and that’s that. I wanted to have this section of the overall story play out as a game because it underlines the importance of surviving the trip in a way that a short story couldn’t do on its own. Being able to fail, actually fail and lose and not make it at all, would have huge implications in the universe. There’s no telling how the future would have unfolded if that group didn’t survive the trek to the City of Seven Nations.
In later installations of this game world, people will see that importance in a new light. It’s a small thing, but having “lived” in the footsteps of people in this world I think will lend that gravity I mentioned to how things went. I don’t mind spoiling it, but essentially the discovery of Spirit Magic hinged on the body of the Chief being examined at the City of Seven Nations. It’s a hugely important detail, and players being able to fail at carrying out that detail gives more life to the words than I think I could pull off with a story alone.
I’m excited to formally announce the Script Change RPG Toolbox rebrand/redesign courtesy of Clayton Notestine! I have dreamed of a pleasing, more functional presentation of Script Change for a really long time, & it’s here & it’s amazing! Download the new version at briebeau.itch.io/script-change today!
I’m excited to formally announce the Script Change RPG Toolbox rebrand/redesign courtesy of Clayton Notestine! I have dreamed of a pleasing, more functional presentation of Script Change for a really long time, & it’s here & it’s amazing!
I first want to extend my thanks to Clayton for the incredible work done on this. He was communicative, thoughtful about my design ethos, & invested a lot of effort in showcasing Script Change. His expertise is noteworthy and undeniable!
Clayton took my very rudimentary layout & organization and turned it into a functional design!
Script Change was originally written as part of [Tabletop] Blockbuster, an early design project by John & me focusing on action movie style play. I love cinematic gaming, & had been introduced to the X-card.
I wanted more for my safety experience in play, and I wanted it to be portable to other systems. I chose language I knew commonly for the tools, starting with pause, which is my favorite safe word & suited the theme.
The Pause card is vital for play & is an approachable way to introduce taking breaks in game to discuss how you want to engage with content, mechanics, or story elements.
I built on it inspired by various concepts – the cinematic fade to black (fast forward), a vibe like Archipelago’s “try a different way” (rewind), and it kept building from there. I’ve updated it often since then, & it’s a full box of tools!
There are many tools in Script Change, including some without unique cards, that help players from the start of planning their gaming experiences to post-play when debriefing and follow-up can be valuable.
Clayton took the simple text layout I had and made easy to recognize cards for the table, as well as reorganizing and at times clarifying my text to ensure it was approachable and fit the conversational intent.
The cinematic language is similar to the kind of words we use for watching videos, listening to music, and is also pretty easy to conceptualize. It carries on into instant replay, wrap meetings, & the further tools that facilitate play.
The new layout is really more usable, functional, and recognizable, plus it’s just way prettier to look at!
I love the feeling of the graphic presentation of the new design, & I am so glad to have this new look & organization to help people play games safer, with better control of content & consent! Thanks Clay!
I think about the concept of peril in adventures quite a lot, especially as someone who generally isn’t big on character death, extreme physical or mental trauma, & failing. What on earth is an adventure without those types of peril? Does a game even require an adventure, 0r peril, to be fun? (I won’t be discussing the nature of fun, that’s your own thing.)
by John W. Sheldon, 2021.
I think about the concept of peril in adventures quite a lot, especially as someone who generally isn’t big on character death, extreme physical or mental trauma, & failing. What on earth is an adventure without those types of peril? Does a game even require an adventure, 0r peril, to be fun? (I won’t be discussing the nature of fun, that’s your own thing.)
With many of my games, peril like violence or death or trauma can absolutely occur, but a lot of the time it’s only when the players choose that experience for their characters, with the consent of others at the table. This is part of why I require Script Change at my tables when I play, but it’s also part of why a lot of the time I warn people in my games about the potential for this kind of content. Many people think that a game isn’t a game if you’re not in danger, if your experience is not perilous.
Hey all, this is a fiction review because I got a copy of this awesome queer retelling of the Great Gatsby and I would LOVE to see more games with this energy (like Bro, Is It Okay to Dock? and such!) so I figured I’d share it here.
AJ Odasso’s The Pursued and the Pursuing, an alternate ending and retelling of The Great Gatsby, is one of the first books in months that I couldn’t bear to put down. It has been a while since I read the famous original text, but my memories of me definitely left me wishing for something different, something distinct, and this satisfied that among other things! Before I give any details, I will say that I haven’t seen the related film, but I didn’t feel I needed to. There are spoilers in this review, but the significant ones will be spoiler tagged!
Even as someone who hasn’t recently read the book, I felt like Odasso’s natural skill in establishing character notes shone through. We start in media res, a hiccup before the official end of The Great Gatsby, where Jay Gatsby himself has been shot. Instead of him dying, he’s rescued by Nick Carraway and while publicly Jay Gatsby dies, Jay Gatz has new life. They go on to have a life together in love, finding their passions in both their professions (Nick as a writer for the Boston Globe and novels, Jay in restoring boats – something I appreciated because after his injury, he’s established to be disabled, but nonetheless gets to live a life doing labor that he enjoys, and as a disabled person, I rarely see disabled characters get to go on to happily do physical jobs!), and later, become the caretakers for Daisy Buchanan’s daughter Pam when it becomes clear that Daisy’s wishes for Pam do not match up with Pam’s desires.
The story itself is largely about finding love and family in places that you may not expect, while also experiencing the reality of being people who are not accepted by others. I appreciate that Odasso is very clear that these characters are benefitting from financial privilege throughout most of the text, and how that privilege does allow them not only the means to live well and travel, but also to remain private in their “proclivities” as queer people. There are historical references & geographical references that help to structure the story, as well as provide context for the nature of their private identities. It feels almost like a wishful story, a dream that if queer people had financial security and privilege, and if we had the privacy granted by a world before the internet (which since I was a teen has been the nightmare of doxxing, stalking, & zero privacy), perhaps, in some spaces, we could live happy lives without the interference of the world and its cruelty. However, it does not ignore that there are bad things happening around them.
It references various concerns of family rejection, as well as detailing some of those events, as well as societal risk. Later in the book, time has passed and Odasso does address World War II,
<spoiler> including the Holocaust. While I think that it would be possible to look at this and think it’s unusual to bring up, since the main characters don’t engage, I felt that it was actually a really good way to highlight the privilege that these characters have in the book, residing in the United States, as white people (aside from Pam’s girlfriend at this time, Sylvie, who has Jewish family in Europe & is Creole) who can do little more than express how they wish they could help. Sometimes, marginalized people with some degree of privilege (but not necessarily the kind that can do things like change public policy or rescue refugees) like these characters are framed as being able to just like, rescue others in need, but it’s not often that simple, but the text presents it as just as frustrating and irritating as it feels to me. Rich queer people, with all your money, can’t you do more? In today’s world, maybe. In the era this is set, possibly not, not without immediately risking their lives and becoming ineffectual going forward. I also, having followed Odasso’s work for over two decades, know that they are not as distant from the history of the Holocaust as readers might think, so I see the importance of including this reflection on both the encroaching horror and how little was done. If they had written in this time period and not mentioned it, I think it would have done the story and the history a disservice. </spoilers>
Jay and Nick are largely presented as flawed people who are just trying to recover from a traumatic event and find some sort of life in a world where people like them aren’t accepted. They do find others like them, and have fun parties, but those parties are like blips on the domestic path they experience. One of the reoccurring themes is alcohol, obviously, as well as alcoholism, and trying to reduce the negative and harmful behaviors of their past, learn to moderate, and moderate their tendencies to fight with people they love as well.
Daisy is part of the story, and frankly is presented in the only appropriate way I felt she should be. She’s a difficult cousin to Nick, and a mother with uncaring expectations for her daughter. In Gatsby, she’s established to be someone who is a product of her environment – a desire for financial security and financial privilege, and a degree of selfishness. While Gatsby’s original presentation of Daisy may be flawed because of his own perception, the rest of the characters largely carry on the same characterization of the original text, so it makes sense that it continues with Daisy as well.
She is also characteristic of the high class, wealthy attitude towards eugenics & societal expectations in America, as characterized in her treatment of Pam when
<spoilers> Pam, in her teens, is revealed to be intersex, or the closest understanding of intersex at the time that they had. It’s a complex revelation and importantly executed. Daisy wants to have Pam medically examined through surgery, concerned that she won’t be able to have children because of her lack of a menstrual cycle & therefore won’t find a husband. Nick & Jay object, supporting Pam’s own objection, and take her in to protect her. Daisy does continue financially supporting Pam, keeping her privileged and protected and able to pursue the education she wants, but essentially (like in the Gatsby novel) she’s not concerned about having a close relationship, especially once it’s clear that Pam loves women and wants to be an educated writer. Odasso does regularly ensure that there are large elements of Daisy’s behaviors that are influenced by her difficult husband, Tom, who is bigoted and active politically, including the fact that Daisy keeps almost everything about Pam’s life after her teens veiled to Tom. There is a positive, though fraught, scene at Pam’s graduation where Tom learns of Sylvie & Pam’s relationship, & it is shown that Daisy also recently met Sylvie. It feels like a genuine presentation of privileged, conservative parents having a queer, intersex child that they don’t understand, don’t truly accept, but don’t want to feel like failures for not having gotten the child they expected or wanted. </spoilers>
The way that Odasso has Nick and Jay accept Pam as she is feels, in a way, a dreamlike, wishful thing of what it could be to have family who you love and identify with accept you and give you a safe space to exist. It made me wistful.
The book obviously also includes some really lovely, lightly detailed but very intimate scenes between Jay and Nick that are written beautifully and capture a specific sensation of need & fulfillment that Odasso is brilliant at. I have always loved Odasso’s work, but some of these scenes are ones that feel so sweet and yet as though they’ve been snatched from time and memory, like hurried moments drawn out to engage the passions while allowing leisurely return to calm. I really loved every single one, because they entice while not overwhelming or offending, & often have elements of humor (and I love that they recognize the physical limitations and aging of the characters!).
I truly loved the whole story, and I didn’t feel like I needed to revisit Gatsby to reengage with these characters or to enjoy the snippets of their life. I feel like, too often, fiction wants to fill in all the gaps, redevelop characterization or overcharacterize, but as a reader, I truly enjoy having spaces of time between scenes and open exploration of the way the characters act and experience things. I could connect plenty of dots throughout the story to find ways that the characters behaved, even in the first few scenes I knew who they were and how they were very quickly, but there was enough space for me to see pieces of myself, people I love, and elements of fiction that I adore peeking through, whether imagined or otherwise! I feel like more fiction could benefit from such a paced & thoughtful engagement.
Overall, I think that The Pursued and the Pursuing is an excellent retelling of the end of The Great Gatsby, with complex and open characters, truthfulness to the original story in characterization and setting, and queer reinterpretation and exploration that captures a dream of what it could be to have privilege, privacy, and possibilities in a time where maybe that wasn’t really too common for queer people. I can’t wait for what Odasso releases next, because I enjoyed every minute!
