DEV-TALK 001: Doing Too Much
Exhibit A: Making This Art Banner Thing
It was about this time last year that I decided I really wanted to publish my own homebrew. It was also around the same time that I realized how much more comes with publishing homebrew tabletop content besides, well, writing it. I think it started the same way it does for most; I was running a game in my setting and had made a particularly clever (or at least I thought it was and my friends were nice enough to entertain me at the time) encounter and wanted to share it. Not being much of a social media maven, I decided to throw it on Reddit. In the process of doing this though I started looking at a lot of the other content that was being published and IMMEDIATELY felt insecure sharing my poorly formatted Google Doc, and instead figured I would write it all out in Homebrewery since that seemed to be the easiest means of writing something in a more 'official' looking format.
Now at the same time I had been on this big writing kick to flesh out my world in World Anvil, working out populations and all the fun little bits and bobs that GMs fiddle with if only for their own obsessive desires. As I was working on both these things, I had this weird feeling of insecurity about a lot of what I'd made, primarily because it wasn't at the level of detail that I wanted. I'd been playing a bit of CyberpunkRED at this point and fell in love with the level of detail and personality that each neighborhood and section of the city had.
His Sweat Scares Me
So instead of just sharing an encounter, I'd tie to a location in a neighborhood, that was a part of a larger city. If a pattern of behavior hasn't made itself apparent to you yet, that's okay, it took me until about a few months ago to realize this myself. So for the last year I just started building a city, neighborhood by neighborhood, and then with accompanying adventures. By this time I'd brought on an artist to make some NPCs & monsters, a friend of mine as a fellow writer, and my brother to help with my design and balance as it remains an area of growth for me. So for about 6 months I was purely focused on experimenting on locations, writing styles, tools, and just about everything.
I soon realized that releasing single-serving neighborhoods and adventures without much playtesting or additional context was (unsurprisingly) not the way to approach a project like this. This catches us up to the last three months or so, when I had the rather disheartening and humbling experience of looking at all of my original content with fresh eyes and a friend of an editor. I still had the same goal, but the execution over the last year or so was significantly lacking. So, for the first time in Calamity Punk Publishing history:
I held a team meeting.
It Looks Like They’re Going to Crush Her Head
We divided up roles, set touch points, said synergy a few times. As much as I hate to admit it though, it worked. We started talking publishing plans, quality, and how this kind of project SHOULD work instead of one guy writing like a maniac and forcing his compatriots to try and play catch-up with a madman. As part of this, I've decided to create a site that less focused on selling my random musings and capture the journey of a small indie TTRPG team from the chaos of random creation to the publishing of our first Kickstarter in six months or so.
This means if you're into game design, TTRPGs, or just like reading weirdly intimate pseudo-journals with Gifs baked in, you're in the right place. I've made a pact with myself to write here a few times a week; going over what we're working on, my thoughts, lessons learned, and questions for myself for future reflection. Thanks for reading this, and I'll be seeing you in the next one space cowboy.
