Taking Time

This past month I’ve been putting my feet up* and recovering from my time spent in the horrible land of burnout. It’s been well needed and I’ve learned a few things. Namely that resting and having challenges to complete don’t go well together. Who’d’ve thunk?

I did attempt NaNoWriMo this year and managed a respectable 27,000 words (bringing Wolf & Fang Detective Agency: Dead Again to 169 pages) but I found myself getting stressed out about getting my words done each day and ended up not really relaxing the way I should have been. It turns out that burnout really affects your ability to create enjoyably.

I’ve also been dealing with recurring pains from not exercising enough which makes exercising hard which is an annoying slippery slope.

On the plus side, I’ve been playing a lot of Arc Raiders and a tonne of retro games for our annual Retro Replay - a month where we try to play as many old games as we can. It’s been fun. Especially getting to play old multiplayer games like Left 4 Dead which I hadn’t played since 2013. It was wild to see how much I remembered the paths through those levels even after more than a decade!

Blackwell Games wise, we got the Death & Pottery Collection Kickstarter fulfilled! All 4 Zines will be up for sale on the website this weekend so keep an eye out for that :)

So I’m not going to say anything concrete here but I thought it would be worth sharing a bit about what I’ve got on my horizon.

1. Spirit Tea — My asian-mythology inspired Apothecaria hack that has you running a tea house that connects people with spirits in order to help them with their requests. Each time I’ve sat down to work on this, whole sections have come together quickly.
   Right now, my big question is how to marry the old Ailment + Reagent [TAGS] with the more broad concept of Spirit tastes.
   Once that question is answered, I think it’ll fly in.

2. DELVE: Reforged — Starting in the new year, I’m going to be working on a sequel to DELVE and providing Patreon backers with monthly updates/ early access to the game as it comes together.

3. War! — The third expansion - and final Kickstarter expansion stretch goal - for For Small Creatures Such As We is basically finished. Like Death Road Services, it has been in the hands of playtesters and I’ve been getting some feedback documents which I’ll be taking a look at next week. Once we fulfill the Kickstarter, all three expansions will be available for sale on blackwellwriter.com

4. Shirefolk — My not-Hobbit solo RPG will be coming out next year (hopefully). It’s already mostly content complete and makes me smile everytime I look at it. I can’t wait to share more of that properly

   

5. Spirit Ranger — You know that feeling when your partner is really great at something that’s supposed to be your thing and it’s both awesome and frustrating? That’s what I’ve been getting with my partner’s first solo RPG project because she keeps hitting out with such awesome mechanics that it makes me feel like I need to up my game XD.
   If you haven’t heard us talk about this before, it is a creature collecting RPG set in a world where spirits and people used to live in harmony but not a mysterious corruption has made the spirits into monsters. As a Spirit Ranger, you will need to defeat spirits in order to cleanse their corruption, build up your spirit sanctuary, and eventually defeat all of the corrupted guardian spirits in order to cleanse the world.

   We will be aiming to put out a low-art prototype version next year that already has so much gameplay in it. If you like Pokemon or Digimon then definitely keep an eye out for this one!

   And there are many more projects. Some in the idea stage, some in the “maybe one day” bucket. Who knows what next year will bring in terms of inspiration!

I have become obsessed with music that is made of weird noises and sounds and nothing scratches that itch better than Freshman Biology.

All of their tracks sound like you’re listening to a cavalcade of creatures who have turned everything and anything into instruments to tell a sort of noise story.

Part of me wants to incorporate it into a circus act, the other part wants to make a game about being in a goblin band.

Thanks for reading! :)