Hello my lovely owl friends! It’s finally December, the only redeeming month of winter to me (if the other months of winter were any good at all, they’d have Christmas in them, end of story)! I am generally pretty open about being a winter-hater, though I know full well I live in entirely the wrong part of the world for that. If you told me we had to sacrifice someone to Lake Erie every year to keep winter storms at bay, I’d give it real serious consideration, is all I’m saying.

The big thing I have to tell you today is that I have a new playtest edition of a game out! Blood of the Covenant, my oldest game in progress right now, is finally available as an ashcan on itchio. It’s fully playable, though a little barebones and likely a little rough around the edges. But I hope there’s enough there for people to read it and have a good understanding of what I’m going for with it. I really love this game, to the point of being a little more self-conscious of it than usual – for some stretch of time, I said this one would be just for me, that I’d never publish it. I should have known that wasn’t going to be realistic!

To be frank, I think it’ll be a while before this one gets updated, although I am scheduled to run it at a con in February, so it could be sooner than I think! Anyway, I would love it if people checked this out, along with my other ashcan available at the moment, for Before the Season Ends! I think next year, I am likely to focus on putting out a number of ashcans, rather than spending the money to really polish and finish something with editing and art, just because of, you know… the world. The economy. You know what I mean. 

Project Updates

Pax Deorum

So, Metatopia was earlier in November! The big one I was getting ready for for months! I brought two games, Pax Deorum and Champions of the Crystal Crown (we’ll get to that one in the next bit). I ran two sessions of Pax Deorum, and I’d say they both went really well. I took about four pages of handwritten notes after the first one (last year, I talked about how I transform playtest feedback notes into action items!), including a full page of just small tweaks that I knew I could make before the second session of it. I got a really good mix of bigger feedback items that will take longer to implement, and smaller ones that I could just change on the fly, which is always nice.

The second session, then, went even better thanks to those tweaks – I was able to confirm which of those worked and get a bit more refined feedback on the areas I hadn’t touched, because I had more clarity on them. I do think it was interesting that I got some conflicting feedback between the two groups. One of the items I wasn’t able to immediately act on from the first group was that they were interested in more adversarial play, they were looking for more opportunities to screw each other over, or play up the drama between the characters. I was still mulling on that, so I didn’t do anything, and then in group two, they told me unprompted they liked that it was more cooperative, that they weren’t pushed into more adversarial positioning! So that’s something I’m still thinking about.

I will also have to test a full session soon – the playtest slots at Metatopia are only 2 hours long, and you have to set aside some time for feedback and discussion, so we didn’t get very far into the game either time. I already kind of suspected this was going to be another 4 hour game as I have it now, and I think that gut feeling is correct. I based the estimate on The Price of Coal, which has a similar amount of character set-up, and then between 16-20 scenes of roleplay, and takes between 3-5 hours (I think we put 3-4 hours on the box. That’s a small lie. If people get into it, it can EASILY go 5). In all my prototypes, the game ends between rounds 14 and 17, so it’s comparable with one scene of roleplay (and one of the new additions from playtesting feedback, everyone getting a kind of question to answer with their actions) per round.

On the one hand, I know that the trend right now is to reduce that 4-ish hour timespan, a lot of people are preferring and looking for games in the 2-hour window, and I get and appreciate that, but also… I’m not feeling terribly motivated to trim it down at this point. I’d rather deliver a really fulfilling version of the game that takes 4 hours, instead of one that packs a weaker punch but only takes 2 hours.

Anyway, I think it’s reasonably likely that Pax Deorum will be one of the games that I put out a public playtest edition for next year. I actually already started typing it up in a kind of barebones format for a friend who told me she wanted to test it with some of her friends soon, and if I already have it started, it seems silly not to get it over the line when I can. Some of that will involve a good amount of writing, but that’s okay.

Champions of the Crystal Crown

This one I was a lot more unsure about going into Metatopia – like I really wasn’t sure if there was anything TO it, and there was a real chance this was just gonna crash and burn as soon as we started playing. Fortunately, the biggest thing to come out of the playtest feedback is that there’s a *there* there! It has bones! But because of that, I also think I came out of this playtest with a lot more things to consider than concrete action items.

That’s okay, though! Since my big goal was kind of just figuring out “is this even worth pursuing further”, getting definite answers that it is and that people were intrigued and enjoying it, that’s enough encouragement to keep going and keep considering! I was really worried that the “map of scenes” mechanic would feel too restrictive to be fun, but a lot of people’s suggestions were actually ways to play with those restrictions, sometimes even adding more on top of those. I personally always feel like the restrictions of systems and rules lead to more creative play, so it was good to have that reinforced here!

I think one of the future challenges I’m anticipating with this game is how to structure GM support for it – I knew going in that it was going to kind of stretch my GMing muscles in a way I’m not used to, and that’s intentional. It’s an experiment in how different parts of the traditional GM load get allocated, so it does feel different to me than GMing other games. We only played for an hour or so, and I could already feel moments where I was struggling, not as the game’s designer, but as a GM. So that’s going to be really important to handle well, especially when it gets to the point of asking other people to run it, but even for future tests that I’m running.

Other Thoughts

Research Goals and Things I Can Control

Another thing I did a lot of this month was think about my goals for 2026… and 2027. I think 2027 still feels like a kind of hypothetical year, like it doesn’t fully exist yet in my mind, but sometimes things we want to accomplish need a long lead time, so unfortunately I am going to have to make it exist! I’ll get more into my full goals for 2026 in next month’s newsletter, but I wanted to talk about part of it now (because one of the pleasant side effects of Metatopia is making me feel really capable and also supported in trying things).

I think I’m starting to accept that some portion of my audience (such as it exists) will never quite see a PDF-only or print-on-demand release as a finalized, finished game. There’s any number of reasons for this – just strongly preferring hard copies, lack of availability in game stores, you know the type of thing. For this, and for myself, I’d like to figure out a way forward for a small offset print run, done without crowdfunding, sold through my own website and potentially a distributor or two if I can get someone interested.

I’m not committing to doing it for every game, or even for doing it more than once (or even necessarily doing it the one time, depending on how this next bit goes). And I certainly can’t commit to doing it in 2026, financially. But I’ve spoken before about setting goals that are specifically things that are within my control. If the state of the economy is not in my control (and it is certainly not!), what is? 

Well, I have a lot of questions about the whole process – the thing that’s held me back so far is feeling like I don’t know enough about the REST of the process after designing the games (I’ve had a LOT of help to get as far as I have). Writing down my questions and seeking out answers to them is absolutely something that’s in my control. The information is out there, even if it’s just in the form of “talking to my friends who know more than me”. That way, if I am in a financial position to try this in 2027, I will have the information I need; if I’m not in that financial position, then I still know more than I did before.

So that’s the major part of what I’m calling my “research goals” next year; the other is actually a return to a former habit that I somehow dropped along the way. I used to be really good about actually reading every game I bought, even if I didn’t end up playing it. For a while I was even doing pretty well with taking notes on the design and my thoughts on it, making note of mechanics I was interested in, unique ways of presenting information, things like that. I’m not 100% sure when I stopped, but I’d like to get back to that, to at least some extent.

I think what I’d like to do next year is make some time each weekend to pick a random unread game out of my collection, give it a read and make notes on it, just to keep expanding my games knowledge. I’ve been feeling lately like a lot of my touchpoints are stale or out-of-date, or that I’m missing big things happening because games are going unread even as I buy them. That’s very much in my control and very fixable.

Adapting Classic Literature as RPGs

I already talked about this a bit on bsky, so I’ll link to that thread for anyone interested before continuing. 

So yeah, one of the many good conversations I had at Metatopia was about adapting classic literature as RPGs. I had kind of made a note to talk about it further in the newsletter, but I wasn’t sure what else I was going to add that I didn’t already say in the thread until a little later.

One thing that I didn’t talk about in the thread, though it did get brought up in replies, is Good Society as specifically an adaptation of Jane Austen novels. One thing that’s funny to me is that, while the game plainly IS a Jane Austen RPG, and sells itself as such, it mostly kind of gets lumped into the category of “historical fantasy” games in my mind. A lot of times, my experiences with Good Society have felt more like something akin to Bridgerton (based on a series of modern novels set in the Regency era) rather than like an adaptation of something from the Regency era itself.

I actually only loosely touched on this in the thread, but I think there’s a LOT of similarities between making a historical game and making a classic literature game – and the older the book, the truer that is. You know, Jane Austen was not writing historical fiction. She was writing contemporary fiction, for the time she lived in, but now that time has passed and the books “feel” historical. And I think there’s an interesting angle you could take when adapting something like that where you COULD make it fully contemporary to our time. 

The thing that I think is key for both is earnest and thorough engagement with the source material (whether that’s an old novel or simply the historical period itself), rather than taking easy shortcuts or trying to project modern attitudes backwards. I think doing either well requires a good amount of research and care, as well as clarity on your own thoughts and what you’re trying to express, which I think are a lot easier to let slip when you’re just going “wow cool adventure game”.

I also had additional thoughts on this spurred by a recent post over at Explorers Design called “Dare to Play it Straight”. Go read that real quick and then come back, so I don’t have to summarize. Okay, good? Good. So I agree wholeheartedly with that post. I want so much more playing-it-straight than we see in games right now. And for this topic, I would argue that there are VASTLY more historical mash-up games AND classic lit mash-up games than ones that play it straight, in either category, to an even greater disparity than other genres. 

There’s a LOT of historical fantasy games, which I’ve actually talked about a bit here before. The mash-up of “historical period plus magic” is pretty widely beloved. And a lot of games people might mention as being literature adaptations are also mash-ups in one way or another. To be clear, I’m not dissing these games, and I often enjoy them myself. I’m just saying that something like Hellwhalers, which takes Moby-Dick’s religious subtext and turns the story into a very literal voyage through hell, is both more common and more popular than, for example, directly adapting Moby-Dick would be.

I have a lot of thoughts about the nerd culture phenomenon that I’ve best seen summed up as “just two things”. It’s a really common manifestation of nerd content that’s literally just juxtaposition. Imagine a meme mashing up The Avengers and Critical Role! Wow! How neat! Two things you love, nerd! But they made it one thing! They’re comedically juxtaposed! But it’s Just Two Things! There’s nothing else going on, there’s no thought or insight, it’s Just Two Things. This is going to sound mean of me, but I have very very little patience for Just Two Things nerd culture juxtapositions.

And because RPGs, as a medium, are really closely tied to nerd culture (alas) there’s a lot of RPGs that are also kinda… just two things. Their entire schtick is going “haha, we mashed up two things! Isn’t that neat!” And then you play them and it’s maybe kinda funny for an hour or so, but there’s nothing actually… underneath it. And that’s fine, I guess. Not everything actually needs to have anything underneath it, not everything needs to be “deeper” or “thoughtful” or whatever. I CAN just “let people have fun”, I promise.

…But I don’t want to buy or play it myself, and I certainly don’t want to make it myself. I am considerably less interested in Just Two Things-ing classic literature when we make it into RPGs. That’s how we get Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And I know, I know. I know my friends and my readership. Some of you LOVED Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But that book is 100% Just Two Things and I thought it sucked, even when I was actually sixteen years old. When I say “I would love to make a Don Quixote RPG”, I truly mean 17th century Spain, knight-errant parody; I do not in any way mean “Don Quixote IN SPAAAAAACE!” or “Don Quix-thulhu” or any of the other nerd nonsense that gets shoved into things unnecessarily. 

(I know you nerds. Some of you just read the phrase “Don Quix-thulhu” and thought “that sounds awesome!” I will bop you with a rolled up newspaper.)

Adapting MY OWN Novels as RPGs

Oh, plot twist, I have two topics this month that sound really closely related but they’re honestly not! So, some of you may know that I used to write novels, before I made games. For a few years, they overlapped and I tried to do both with equal energy (from maybe 2017-2019), but eventually I accepted that I just find designing RPGs more satisfying as a creative outlet than writing prose fiction.

Obviously I still love novels and love reading (I’m on track to read over 100 books this year, at the time of writing!), so it sometimes feels a bit odd that – after so many years – I stopped feeling any urge to write like that at all. I was talking about it with a friend earlier this month, and one thing I noted as a possible explanation was that for a long time, writing prose was the only method I thought I had for exploring any of my ideas, regardless of what those ideas were.

I was an avid reader before I ever heard of the concept of RPGs, and I had creative writing assignments in school from a young age, so writing prose was just something very familiar and comfortable to me for a long time. I think it’s entirely possible that if I had dipped into the world of game design sooner, I also would have stopped writing prose sooner (I started playing RPGs around the age of 12-13, but didn’t start writing for them until about 20-21). 

Another way I tried to explain it to myself is that the process of game design feels like “showing my work” like in math class. If I come up with an idea and write it down as a novel, I’m writing down the one single version of that story that I think is correct and not necessarily communicating how I came to that conclusion. And I don’t think novels should do that, to be clear! I don’t want prose writers to over-explain themselves in prose! But I am personally addicted to explaining myself, you see.

Coming up with an idea and crafting a set of rules that allows disparate groups of people to walk through the thought process, to come to their own conclusion or understand better the one I came to, is really appealing to me. Making an RPG is a tightrope-walk between “making something finished” and “making something deliberately unfinished” – the creation of a formula more than a solved equation. (I’m sorry if this analogy is also gibberish, I actually failed several math classes throughout my education, although I loved doing proofs in Elementary Logic in college)

…But I do sometimes look back at all my old novel drafts, or the outlines I started but never finished. I never really think about finishing them AS novels, though. I think about mining them for game ideas, or straight up turning some of them into games. It’s interesting (to me, at least) to look at the whole breadth of things I wrote and try to figure out which of them would make good games, which wouldn’t, and why.

Some of them – especially ones that came to me later, in the phase where I was already working on both novels and games – I almost wonder why I didn’t think of them as games to begin with. These ideas are often more about playing with a narrative structure, or something that I left really open-ended even in my own notes – I was writing to find out what would happen much as one might play to find out what happens in a story game. These are things that I would say are already in my backlog of potential projects (although the backlog is enormous, so that doesn’t mean much).

Some of the novel ideas were really about exploring a setting – I’d had an idea for a world and then thought “what kind of stories might happen there?” At various points in my RPG career, I’ve thought about doing setting writing, creating a setting book for some other existing RPG system, and I’ve never really followed through on it, but maybe someday I will! I’ll admit that some of what has stopped me from doing so for the past decade is tying my own work to someone else’s in case that someone else turns out to be a big asshole or something (see also: my relief that I never tied anything to Savage Worlds officially, a game I love, when Shane Hensley was catching shit after recent political events). That barrier is still there, but it also isn’t impossible for me to make a game with its own bespoke setting and use it in that way. We’ll see! These ones are big ifs.

And then some of the old novel ideas were mostly about exploring a single character – who is this person and what happens to her (it was always a “her”, you know me, I’m not sure I ever wrote anything with a male point-of-view character) and how does she grow and change over the course of the story. These ones I consider the least likely to have anything useful to mine for games in them. If the primary interesting thing is happening to one character, that’s a lot tougher to make interesting for a group to play through (although certainly not impossible – even my own Blood of the Covenant, mentioned above, is really following a single shared character in the Paladin). I’ll never say never, but I’m also willing to let those sit in my google drive gathering digital dust until and unless I come up with an interesting angle that could be gamified. 

And now, when I have new ideas, they really don’t ever even come to me in the shape of novels. They always come shaped like games now. I don’t quite know how to express this, that an idea might have the shape of its final form already imprinted on it, but if you know, you know.

Closing Notes

Because I am never more than two steps away from my Arthuriana brainworms, I recently picked up and read John Steinbeck’s unfinished “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights”. Steinbeck is someone who didn’t click for me at all when I was assigned Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath in high school (I was actually pretty venomous in my dislike of Grapes of Wrath at the time!), but who I’ve found a deep appreciation for as an adult. 

The Acts was unfinished when Steinbeck died, but he actually abandoned work on it quite a long time prior to that – the foreword and appendix of the copy I have speculated a little as to why, but there’s nothing confirmed in his correspondence or anything. If I can be allowed a brief moment of vanity, I like to think that he went through the same thing I did last year where I gave myself an entire mental complex reconciling my love of the Arthuriana with my politics and what that says about me.

Anyway, despite it being obviously unfinished (there’s parts that are clearly more polished than others, and it “ends” on a frankly UNHINGED cliffhanger because that’s just where he stopped), it was an incredible read and I’d really highly recommend it, and I’m going to be thinking about it for a long time. (And don’t skip the appendix, it’s 80 pages of pure gold.)

So that’s all I have for you this month, and thank you for reading! We’ll be back next month for the new year!