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!
Today on approachable theory we’re talking about meta accessibility tools, and we’re going to start by breaking down what I mean by that term. Read more!
Today on approachable theory we’re talking about meta accessibility tools, and we’re going to start by breaking down what I mean by that term.
A game for two players where they tell stories and play out scenes about the unusual The Man who stays in their cabin in the woods and alone… except for The Stag from the copse who wants to influence the world of man with magic. Whether this connection leads to a revelation or condemnation does truly depend on the cards. Crowdfund ends March 15, 2021!
My goal is $1000 by March 15, 2021 and with the following goals, I’ll provide more content! There’s also a number of rewards on the itch page to help me reach my goal!
$250 – Art by Thomas A. Novosel, fleshing out the interior sketches!
I released a new game today on itch.io and I hope you’ll check it out! My Patreon patrons at patreon.com/thoughty get a free copy of the game for download!
Turn has been released in PDF to backers, and has been officially released to the public at briebeau.itch.io. We hope to have it up on IPR when the print is finished, and further to DriveThruRPG soon! Keep an eye out there.
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Turn is a slice-of-life, rural supernatural tabletop roleplaying game for three to six people. Players are shapeshifters in a small, rural town–able to turn into animals like raccoons, cougars, and bears. They must balance their human lives and habits with their beast lives and instincts, while pursuing acceptance and community with other shifters – and with the mundane humans and beasts that populate the town.
Players and the Town Manager build their town together using a unique town building system, and create the characters who populate it and the wilderness around it. Turn uses the Script Change toolbox to support player comfort and consent, and explores themes of identity, community, self care, and otherness.
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Thank you so, so very much to all of you for the continued and seemingly endless support for the success of this project.
As a reminder, you can submit for a community copy if you’re in need as a marginalized member of the community. We’ll provide PDFs with no issue, and print until we run out.
The horses on the farm where I grew up in a small, small town. <3
An August tradition, I suppose, is to respond to the prompts for RPGaDAY, and the 2018 prompts have a lot going on. I figured something I could do today is use one of them as a prompt for a blog post, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about, too.
Today’s prompt is How can players make a world seem real?
Character sheets from a game of Turn I’m currently playing.
I think this can be a bit of a personal thing, but one way to do it for me is to give everything reasoning and give everything a story. NPCs, events in game, etc. all should have some flavor to their existence. It ties directly into collaborative worldbuildimg. This has been really growing for me while working on Turn, a game where everyone has loads of narrative control, and while playing D&D with my partner Dillon.
I’ll talk about Dillon first, because it’s super exciting to me. I’m not naturally a huge D&D fan – honestly, it’s a big game and a lot of the fiction bums me out. But, in the game I’m playing with Dillon, we’ve been rewriting a lot of it. The mechanics mostly remain the same, tho were using house rules and I’m playing cosmic horror investigation type fiction instead of the average adventure. But the fiction!
Dillon let me be a part of the world building for the main setting. This is something I once did in a game run by my husband John, where I got to make up dieties and religions and contribute to the fiction for the different species. Dillon is letting me do much the same thing! Collaborative worldbuilding means I get to see things I’m interested in integrated into the world I’m playing in, which inherently makes it more real to me.
For example, we were building up my character’s family and Kelt, my PC, is half tiefling, half half-orc, and I was talking about Kelt’s dad being a cleric. I said how it felt to me, due to some of the other background stuff we’ve done for the game, that tieflings aren’t demonic, they’re more druidic, nature based.
You know, more mountain goat than Black Phillip. Photo by Brie Sheldon.
Dillon and I discussed it, and he liked the idea, so we changed the way teiflings work in the game to have them even physically be more based in nature with antlers and ram horns rather than demonic horns, and it suited their culture that we’d developed, too. Now I have more knowledge about my PC’s dad’s history, the world around him, and I have a personal touchstone because I got to be a part of it!
And it reflects in that “everything has a reasoning, everything has a story” too – my character takes public transportation as we’re set in a near-industrial world, so Dillon had a newspaper I could read and gossip I could listen in on, but also he does something that’s important: when I suggest a frivolous detail for the scene, NPCs, etc., he considers it and often accepts it!
Like if I were to pass by someone and they rudely bump into me and I say,
“I bet they’re rushing off to a meeting with their mistress!”
Dillon runs with it, something like “actually, it’s his boyfriend and it’s their anniversary!”
I may never encounter that NPC again, but it feels real.
This is likewise with how Dillon’s treating Kelt’s dog, Orion, who is his familiar and tied to the Void (Kelt’s patron). It’s awesome when I play knowing that I’ll get to have my character deal with stuff like making sure Orion gets enough play time, or that his leash works in spite of his magical ability to phase through objects (lead lining helps!). Things like how Orion always wakes up to bark at the window-knocker and trolley actually make my in-game experience feel real!
So as a player, I engage back with these things, bring them up, ask questions, offer input. Making the world mine is part of the experience!
And this is all relevant to Turn. In Turn, I’ve tried to design some of this in. The worldbuilding you do with the town creation gives players deep engagement to the roots of the town and all its trappings, letting you understand the relationships and founding and themes before you start play, and you can add to it.
A town map from Turn.
You also have vignettes each session with NPCs and the town dealing with real life needs that can be stressful and risk exposure of your shifter identity, even if it’s just going to pick up milk at the farmer’s market or trying to have coffee with your cousin. When players are engaging with Turn, I’m hoping they’ll ask questions of the town and NPCs too, and give reason to things that might seem otherwise random.
As a player in Turn, I’ve been lucky enough to have all of these experiences. John is often my GM in games and in Turn he does a spectacular job executing these ideals I have for a “real” world. He is the source for my researching the Storyteller section of Turn, and will be consulting heavily on it.
I’m so lucky to have two partners who are such amazing GMs and who let me make the world real from the role of a player!
Hope you enjoyed the post today and that you find it useful!
Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
