I’ve been honored to be a part of the Ultimate Micro-RPG Book, edited by James D’Amato, which is currently on PREORDER! Preorders are a great way to support the product and the idea if you like it, because it lets big box stores know that there’s demand, so they’ll order more AND it lets the publisher know there’s a market for these kind of badass products! Check it out!
I would love if my readers who love my games would pre-order this awesome book filled with games by myself and other designers we know well like Alex Roberts and Jason Morningstar but also newer designers on the scene like Ben Chong, Jay Dragon, and Jeeyon Shim, and some rad entries from people like the popular Dread Singles/Hottest Singles writer Jordan Shiveley! I’m ecstatic for this collection!
My entry is a game about werewolves and is a mostly-solo (with option to interview others as part of the game!) game called Lycantree – here’s the blurb:
In Lycantree, you play the youngest member of your werewolf pack who is exploring the history of your Lycantree—the events that created your family. Your pack is a biological family that collectively raises young, and are very long-lived. You can trace over lifetimes the individual stories and the pack’s legacy by interviewing family and reading their journals. By doing this, you will find your own path through the visions of the Lycantree!
A new sale on itchio of my games! The Wouldn’t It Be Nice? sale hopefully will cover any of my COVID-19 testing costs and related expenses. Wouldn’t that be nice? $40 for all my games on PDF!
Runs the length of a quarantine so get it while it’s good 😉
I have been working on the Turn Kickstarter since October 2018, and it has been quite a challenge. The Behind the Masc Kickstarter went so smoothly, with so few issues! Turn, on the other hand, had production changes, shipping challenges, and was all complicated by my continued health issues, both mental and physical. The project was a mountain, in a range of mountains so high I have been struggling to overcome them.
My remaining responsibilities for the Kickstarter are fulfilling some books that have been returned, some of which never were returned but never reached the customer (hooray, shipping!); fulfilling the Snake and Cougar backers, which I’ve only just started on and it’s been a snail’s pace – I feel extreme guilt over this, tbh; and completing and releasing the stretch goals, which are nearly done except for the border town supplement which was a late addition and is now on the back burner until everything else is complete. We legit are doing the final edits on the stretch goals, putting the cover on and touching up art, this weekend! It’s just so much more work than it seems, even when you go in expecting to climb Everest.
The reality is, there are always taller mountains.
Not only have I encountered issues with my head injury recovery, but I’ve also dealt with recurring back problems, required pelvic rehabilitation therapy and treatment for digestive and dental issues, and also fought constantly with Medicaid – not to forget struggles with depression, my bipolar disorder, and PTSD. My immediate family has struggled too, and I never manage to be there for them. All of this while I’m still trying to figure out how to contribute to my household – at this point, I struggle pointlessly.
I have taken on editing jobs, sensitivity consultation roles, and small game design jobs, but I’ve had to step out of a few, and those I have finished like the code of conduct used in a number of Pacific Northwest game design playtest groups are ones I don’t really see the fruits of – though the financial benefits were enough to stress out Medicaid.
I’ve supported the Homunculus Assembly Line Kickstarter regularly and will be doing writing and design for it, and hopefully working closely with a partner will make it easier. It’s just a frustrating pattern that there’s work and work and it’s always more than it seems, always this bigger mountain, and when we get to the reward at the end, it’s always smaller. Turn has been out for a while now, and few people have really recognized that – this is not a complaint, this is a recognition that I haven’t reached out to podcasts or reviewers and sent out copies to try to get their attention, because I’m too damn tired.
I’m going somewhere with this, I swear.
The reality is there are ranges of mountains we climb over every day, and let’s be real, the privileged, able, rich people will be able to get over them so much more easily than the rest of us. But it’s easier to do it together, tied together with some rope for safety, trusting in each other. When we fall, we can help each other up.
And people do this for me every day – my partners, my friends, my colleagues. I know I can be a goddamn disaster, but I also know that my openness about my pain and struggles gives people the opportunity to support me and help me, whether it’s through bundles that get me to conventions or gifting me from my birthday wishlist or just a DM to make sure I eat a goddamn meal today.
The mountains are cold and lonely at times, and we will starve if we try to climb them alone. We don’t have to be some sort of superhumans, and we shouldn’t have to be. We should strive to support each other in a network of creators and consumers, loving and caring for one-another. We don’t have to cannibalize each other if we plan for the storms and listen to what wise people say.
That reward at the end won’t be as small if it’s shared between us and used to grow more and greater gardens. We can keep going! We just have to stick together, and find the beauty in the mountains together, and not turn back when it feels impossible.
This is what I’m telling myself, as I keep climbing. Will you tie your rope to me, and hold on tight as the winds blow?
Content Warning: Mention of suicidal ideation, self harm, online harassment, face to face harassment, reference to racism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism.
Photos by Brie Beau Sheldon Copyright 2019.
The games “community” or “industry” – I’ve taken to calling it a “scene” because lordy, the drama – is constantly full of nightmarish amounts of discourse, especially of late. This happens. We have stuff to discuss, which I get. We got a lot of shit going on.
However, there’s some stuff I need to address because I have been in the indie scene specifically since around 2012 and some particular behaviors I’ve seen of late are not acceptable. Here are a few things I have heard of or seen happening that I, as a person in this community who tries to promote the good works of others, don’t want to see:
the purposeful triggering of others with legitimately triggering material or falsified/exaggerated materials for any reason
public naming of marginalized individuals in a manner that put them at risk for harassment, as well as outright doxxing of individuals for assumed (and falsified) differing political views
the goading or bullying of others to pressure them into making public statements or engaging in public or private social discourse with people who may or may not have greater social power than them
the further growth of a culture of fear for marginalized people in the name of “art” by implying, outright stating, or falsifying the bigoted or fascist perspectives of people or organizations with power in the scene
the reinstatement of typically men who have done harm into positions of power or the passive acceptance of their continued control of organizations or social groups in spite of their lack of repentance and lack of changed behavior, especially in light of continued bad behavior
the brushing under the rug of bad behavior and bad management at conventions and organizations that particularly affects marginalized people (like people of color, Black people, disabled people, and queer people) for reasons unclear
These are just like, the tip of the iceberg. This is just what I can remember right now, without doing excessive research. This is just the stuff that recently has been sticking in my craw. And you know what, I’m a white person! I have a safe place to live and some security. There are people in less privileged positions who are at greater risk and have probably encountered far more issues than me, been hit far harder with discourse sticks, and who have fewer places to escape to.
I am ashamed of this scene right now, for the actions I’ve seen in the past few months. These kinds of behaviors are not acceptable, they’re incredibly harmful, and we are extremely lucky that no one has died because of it yet – and I am not being an extremist when I say this. I have been in communities that lost people because of discourse. I have been, because of this scene, pushed to self harm and suicidal ideation.
At the start of this year, we dealt with a massive, horrific trauma as an industry,* and it’s still ongoing. We are scarred and constantly bleeding from reopened wounds. We are cruel to each other in ways that are so unnecessary! We do not need to hurt each other like this.
*I’m referring to what some people call our “Me Too” moment that doesn’t even come close to covering all of the predators in our industry.
I am begging, as this year comes to a close, that we try harder to do better. Look at your life, look at your choices – what harm have you done, and how can you undo it? How can you instead do good going forward? Do better, and operate with care and passion and love, not vindictiveness, siloed group secretiveness, and desires to keep yourself and your favorites elevated at the cost of the wellbeing of others.
We could blossom. We could grow, and flourish, and become something more amazing than we’ve ever been, but we will not if people start turning inward, hurting themselves in self-loathing and desperation, abused by their own fellows and afraid of falling short or worse, doing well enough that people demand more of them.
I am not a perfect person. I have fucked up so colossally and terribly, and I have tried to make amends and become better. I am still trying. I’m asking you to try with me. We can operate with hindsight. We can develop some foresight, even, with just the slightest bit of introspection, into how we could improve.
I will do better. Please hold my hand and do it with me.
I recently attended Big Bad Con 2019 at the grace of many generous purchasers of a bundle that funded my attendance. Big Bad Con is my favorite con, and I’ve talked about it in the past on Thoughty with a lot of passion and enthusiasm, as well as interviewed the staff. It is a con that I truly feel has a caring ethic to their design, and I love being there a lot.
The Big Bad Con welcome pamplet’s Community Standards.
A brief personal note
This year I was traveling in the midst of some personal crises – at home, I found out mid-con my kitchen was mildly flooding, and the following week, I had a mild-but-anxiety-inducing medical procedure that had basically blocked my mind from functioning. On my flight in, I sustained a mild back injury that made my participation in the con limited. It was really frustrating, stressful, and I feel like I let a lot of people down by letting stress get to me and by not being able to keep my body going.
I am super grateful to everyone who supported me by helping me get medication and supplies to get through the pain I was in (shout out especially to Jeremy Tidwell, Lucian Kahn, and Vivian Paul!). I apologize that this con report isn’t Super Exciting and Full of Games! I was simply limited by my own realities, and it is a dreadful thing, to be sure.
Also big thanks to Anders Smith who managed to get me a gift when he wasn’t even here.
What I did
I arrived a day early on Wednesday and spent most of that day meeting new people and getting into my accommodations. We initially feared a power outage, which sent me into a tizzy, but it never happened. I still tried to be prepared, and in doing so, I spent a lot of time around the lobby keeping an ear out and seeing who arrived.
Some of the amazing people I had the chance to meet were Sangjun Park, creator of moonflower; Luke Wildwood; Sidney Icarus (who I hope to someday have guest write on Thoughty for approachable theory!); and after that it starts to get real busy. See, Big Bad Con this year did some amazing things – one of the biggest things is that, combining scholarships and the very vital Babble On Equity Project, they had guests from all around the world, including Australia, Korea, and Malaysia, and even had a guest from Trinidad, Brandon O’Brien, who I got to meet later that day. Brandon said some very kind things about Turn, especially about A.J.’s poetry. It made me so glad!
Later in the week, Big Bad Con also hosted the PoC (People of Color) dinner and meet & greet, focusing on supporting and connecting people of color in the gaming community. It was really awesome to see! I was lucky enough to meet a lot of amazing designers of color from outside of the U.S. and from inside the U.S. too. It was incredible to see such a presence at the con, to see so many people there who deserve to be heard and given opportunities, as well as allowed space to show the amazing work they do!
EVERYONE who got a scholarship, attended the PoC events as a person of color, or was supported by the Babble On Equity Project at Big Bad Con is rad as hell and their work is worth investing in.
HELP THEM THRIVE. Do not fail this whole class of designers and creators by dismissing them or ignoring them. Look them up, research them, hire them, pay them, buy their games and art, interview them, promote them, and when you do those things? Respect their identity and their backgrounds with care and generosity and do NOT let them down.
On Thursday, I co-hosted the Soda Pop Social with Meguey Baker and it was a great success! We had a really good turnout and lots of people were super enthusiastic for the sodas we’d selected. I again had a lot of comments from people grateful for a welcoming space for non-alcoholic networking that was still fun and had recognizable people to meet and get to know, so that was great! I love the social, even though it keeps me moving for a couple hours without significant breaks, because I get to kind of be one of the first faces to welcome people and to share something fun and lighthearted with them!
So many sodas! This wasn’t even the ones in the fridge!
I also did my first Ranger shift! I volunteered at the con this year to cover my badge and my shifts were both at the Tell Me About Your Character Booth, which is really cool! I got to listen to people talk about their cool characters they’ve played and see the resident artist at the booth draw a portrait for the guest, and donations for the booth went to Doctors without Borders! It was really great. I did provide feedback to the con about improving the accessibility for those of us who have to be seated for our shifts, and for guests who need to sit. We worked out some more comfortable arrangements on my shift the next day, too, so it was good overall! I’m hoping if I volunteer again I get to do the booth and, if I’m lucky, do the booth with one of my artist partners so I can listen and they can draw!
Friday, I did the Terror in Design panel with Meguey Baker, Whitney “Strix” Beltrán, Misha Bushyager, and James Mendez Hodes, moderated by Rachel Bell. It was a fantastic panel, and some notes were taken by a guest and can be found here. We discussed a lot of things, especially consent, boundaries, how consent and boundaries can make horror more interesting, creating ambiance through design, where we find horror, and so so much more. It was a really interesting panel!
I actually really dig horror and I don’t talk about it as much as I’d like to because I’m also incredibly picky about horror, and have a lot of triggers, squicks, and general issues to watch out for. For example, on the flight home I watched the Hulu In The Dark film New Year, New You and got through the film with few issues because it’s altogether not too trauma-heavy for me, except for the references to suicide. But I watched In The Tall Grass on Netflix tonight and had to look away or distract myself multiple times because there was a pregnancy as a major focus of the fiction and horror. As I have tokophobia, that’s a no-no. It’s tricky, that lizard brain.
Big Bad Con actually has Script Change as one of their recommended safety tools!
I also did a second shift at the Tell Me About Your Character Booth on Friday, a little more successful this time around. 🙂
By the time Saturday ran around, I was 100% burnt out. I’d been dealing with a lot of emotional stress, so after a lot of weaseling around I elected to drop out of two games I’d been dying to play – Lucian Kahn’s Visigoths vs Mall Goths and Kieron Gillan’s DIE. But, I was in no state to play. So I just visited people most of the day, getting to hang out with a ton of people and talk about games and the industry!
The only actual game I played over the course of the weekend was a portion of a game in progress by LiteralSoup, who is great. It’s a mech game, and gave me the mech name of Challenging Hope, which sounds about right! I thought it was super cool, and I really enjoyed hearing of other people’s mech names – if you played Soup’s game, please tell me your mech name! I want to know! We need to cancel the apocalypse together! <3
All throughout the weekend people were stopping to have me sign Turn or Script Change for them, which was amazing! I loved that so much – I loved being able to sign books for the first time really and it meant so so much to me. I really appreciated everyone’s enthusiasm for the book and for Script Change! I’ve worked hard on my projects and it means a lot to see people show love for them. <3
Did I mention I got a copy of Undying from Paul Riddle and DIDN’T have him sign it? *headdesk*
Late in the night I went to the Big Queer Dance Party hosted by Jackson Tegu, which was super fantastic! While I don’t dance much anymore, I really enjoy attending the dance party and listening to music. I was hugely impressed by the workshopping on consent, communication, and care that Jackson (assisted by Anne Ratchat) provided to help people ask each other to dance, accept rejection, provide rejection, and be comfortable in the space. It was so amazing, and I love that Big Bad Con allows space for events like these!
Many people who attend USian gaming conventions might not have had the kind of access to places to dance and be comfortable in their body that people from other subcultures or even just cultures in general might have had, and there’s also a huge number of queer people at the con who are given a space to express themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of games or mechanics were thought up just in those flashing lights on the dance floor as we all listened to music. Goodness knows I thought of some!
I stayed up ungodly late talking to a fantastic person (Soup) then got up earlier than I wanted and flew home on Sunday.
Not before I grabbed a copy of Vivian Paul’s Elder Song…and also forgot to have her sign it.
Some thoughts
I’ve been reflecting on Twitter about a lot of things since then, including a thread about how I learned to “hold court” at cons and how it keeps me from spending the whole con sitting by myself. I really enjoyed the con, but as I told many people there, I have a lot of challenges with conventions. They’re quite expensive, it’s hard for me to travel alone, if I get injured or ill it’s a whole mess, and I struggle to keep up with everything – plus I often feel out of place or alone.
I’m putting these facts out to the world because I want to be honest, and also so others don’t feel alone if they feel the same way. These things we do as professionals or as hobbyists to be connected with our community and our industry can be very challenging for us in a lot of ways, and flying thousands of miles to feel left out and discouraged and not good enough is hard. It’s scary and makes you feel like the world is ending. And like, there’s no real good fix for it!
I keep trying to remember the good moments of the con, like this, even though my finishing move makes no sense because I don’t know grammar terms apparently.
I want to say something that fixes it. I want to say that I will wake up in a few hours (as it’s already 4am) and feel refreshed, and like going to Big Bad Con was a wonderful, flawless experience. But it wasn’t. There’s weird industry baggage – I’ve been working long enough to have that. There’s annoying health stuff – I’m old enough and disabled enough to have that. There’s stressful home stuff – I’m old enough and low class enough to have that. There were challenges at the con with accessibility (some solved, some not), and challenges with travel with accessibility.
There were so many things I loved about the con! But I do wish I had gotten to play more games so I had more to report to you, my readers, and I wish I had more to say to you than this: there are so many amazing games on the horizon and already HERE that I can’t even handle it, and I also do not know what my capacity truly is for the situation I am in. I want to be bring you the interviews and theory you want, I want to design you games you enjoy. But I may not always be as speedy as I once was, and Big Bad Con this year showed me that.
You could say, really, that… this con hit me a little differently.
I have a big life thing coming up soon – specifically, my partner Thomas and I will be exchanging rings near Halloween to make our relationship “official.” While looking at rings and thinking a lot about love and relationships, I realized there’s just not a lot of support for polyamorous people who want to have a formal aspect to their relationship, and especially when you’re not religious in any way, it can be difficult to have a way to mark your relationship.
Someday Thomas and I want to have a more formal commitment ceremony, when things are more secure, but for now, we’re just gonna have a quiet exchange of rings. I decided to write a little game about love, polyamory, self love, consent, and commitment – and give people like us a ritual to mark their love, too. I tried to be inclusive – I hope it is inclusive to you! If you like it, consider picking it up at https://briebeau.itch.io/whats-in-a-ring and leaving a donation to help us pay for a celebratory dinner. 🙂
Love to all <3
What’s in a Ring? by Brie Beau Sheldon, dedicated to Thomas Novosel.
It’s been a big week for me – yesterday, the Turn books arrived to ship out to backers after a bundle of effort, and today, I’ve launched Homunculus Assembly Line on Kickstarter, led by John W. Sheldon! John is my business partner at Daedalum AP and also did the art direction and some of the art on Turn, as well as the layout. We’re excited to get this project live and moving!
Homunculus Assembly Line is a really fun experimental zine project focused on RPG art that will include some RPG material written by yours truly and some written by John, and focus on several illustrations by skilled and fantastic artists in the RPG scene including Juan Ochoa, Evlyn Moreau, Sandy Jacobs-Tolle, Thomas Novosel, Alex Mayo, and John himself!
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
The game industry can be a little rough. Our community just as much! I have wanted for a while to do a little recognition, a little positivity, for myself as well as everyone else. So, I decided to start something new – something you can contribute to!
The new thing is called Friday Hi-Day, and it’s going to be a weekly roundup of recognition from your submissions to the forms I’ll be posting every other month on the Friday Hi-Day page!
This month’s submission form is https://forms.gle/aLD2hAgJ99XTBgXE9. Fill it out! The first stream will be next week, at twitch.tv/BrieBeau on Friday, June 14, 2019 around 12:00pm Eastern. Come see what’s up, and celebrate each other!
