Hey how do you learn a new handwriting style as an adult? I already know about "just pick one and practice, duh", but is there any more advanced advice on how to best do that, or what not to do?
I used to be a huge handwriting and font nerd in Highschool, and practiced writing in different fonts using my homework and diary. I was really quickly able to adapt to different handwriting styles because I kinda. Didn't have the time to be doing the shit everyone else was?
Like I said, I would practice in my homework and diary. This means I wasn't writing the alphabet over and over again, I was using the letters in context. This is important, as it will help your brain connect the dots of This Is How We Write Now.
When I was actually writing, the way I judged my handwriting in terms of accuracy was identifying specific things that I was aiming to recreate. Comic Sans, for example, has a really pleasing lowercase "e," so that was the first one I really tried to nail. Once you nail one letter, it's easier to translate the handfeel to other letters, and taking it one at a time. Eventually, you'll start to write the rest of the alphabet in the same style without thinking about it because you've already identified core stylistic attributes of the font from the other letters.
Finally, write in different sizes. By varying the size of your handwriting, you'll be ensuring that this becomes an actual skill that will stick around rather than a habit.
Forming a team and splitting the profits has the benefits of being able to accomplish exponentially more of everything, but it has the downside of apparently some people thinking we’re a “corporation” with a CEO and rich board members and office space instead of like a handful of people for which this is a varyingly crucial source of income.
We allow the vast majority of our projects to be downloaded for free, and just ask that if you have the means, you give us some money so the member(s) who are dependent on this “business”’s income can, like, have money and keep providing you and everyone else with free and high quality TTRPGs instead of falling behind on bills and shit.
To those of you who sent messages in the past couple of days expressing having a problem with us, like, asking for more money when we’re struggling, because just setting the option to donate beside the download links hasn’t been cutting it the past couple of months, without even setting mandatory payment on our projects, I really dunno what to tell you. Do you yell at buskers on the sidewalk too? Are they “unprofessional?” Is this behavior “professional?” Do you talk to people like this in-person at all?
artfight anon again! i'm so sad you had bad experiences with it :( but no worries, i totally get it. i'd love to draw your little guy if you ever decide to participate again!
Feel free to draw any of my characters, I love seeing other people's art. You don't even have to do it through artfight!
i love your lancer pilot!!! do you have an artfight???
I do not! I have participated in ArtFight in the past, and while it was fun, I also had some experiences that were very not fun. That is to say, I've been discouraged from continuing to participate in any way.
If any of y'all had tips for aspiring TTRPG creators, what would they be? I'm hosting a "How to Make your own TTRPG" panel at a con this weekend, and anything to show folks from a fellow indie studio would be great!
Yeah a bunch. Each one of these could basically be its own post, but here are the condensed versions.
Social Media
You need social media. No one will ever hear of your game without a strong social media presence. And as much as it sucks, your best bet is probably tumblr. It’s the only populated social media site that allows your posts to be widely circulated without you having to pay, and also long form enough to actually include information. I dedicate one day a week entirely to social media and that’s just about the only reason we make any money at all.
Also, when using tumblr, the first five tags you put on a post are the most important, those are the tags that make it show up on people’s dashboards. The first twenty tags are the ones that make it show up in search results. Don’t put the name of your game in the first five tags generally, because if no one has heard of it yet, no one is following those tags.
Don’t Paywall Your Game
You deserve to be paid for your work if you indeed did any work at all (we’ll get to that), but that just isn’t the world we live in. Unless you have an advertising budget to essentially trick people into buying a game that might end up being crap, you need something to prove that your game is worth spending money on. Without an advertising budget, that proof has to be your game. Setting your game to pay-what-you-want, or providing “community copies,” lets people try your game before they buy. Plenty of people will buy up-front when given the option, and others who can’t afford it at that moment will download it for free then come back and pay later. Some people will never pay, but what that means for you is that they either never experience your game, or they pirate it. People experiencing your game, showing it to their friends, and talking about it is one of the most valuable pieces of advertisement you can ever have. It will ultimately lead to more people who are willing and able to pay learning about your game.
Start Small but Not Too Small
Do not make a one-page game for your first game. Do not be like us and make a 700-page game for your first game. Try to aim for something between 20 and 200 pages, especially if you’re one person or a small team.
Play and Read a lot of RPGs or Your Game Will Suck
Would you watch a movie by a director who had only ever watched one movie? Would you read a book by an author who had only ever read one book? Hell no, those would suck.
Read many rpg rulebooks, from many different genres and decades, play as many of them as you can (by the rules) to understand how the rules work and why they’re there. This will give you the creative tools you need to make something that isn’t just a weaker version of the last RPG you played. No, listening to "actual plays" does not count.
Most actual plays stray significantly from presenting a regular gameplay experience in favor of an experience that is entertaining for an audience. If you want to learn martial arts, you should be watching martial arts tournaments, not WWE.
If you want an actual play podcast that has my “actually mostly presents a real gameplay experience” approval, try Tiny Table.
If you say you don’t have time to read rulebooks, then you don’t have time to design a good game. Studying is part of the process of creating. If you don't, you won't even know about gleeblor.
This will let you know whether your "innovation" is more like "Cars don't need to run on gasoline!" or "Cars don't need crumple zones and airbags!"
The Rules Matter, So Design with Intent
The rules matter the rules fucking matter holy shit what you actually write down on the page matters I can’t believe this is actually the seemingly most needed piece of advice on this list. The. rules. matter.
Design your game to be played in the way you designed it. The rules affect the tone and genre of your game, they affect the type of people PCs can be and the kind of stories that will result from gameplay. Bonuses encourage PC behaviors, penalties discourage PC behaviors.
Do not fall for the trap of “oh well people will just play it their own way based on vibes anyway so it doesn’t matter what I write the rules to be.” Write that you wrote this game to be played by the rules and that significant changes to the rules mean that players are no-longer playing the game you made. Write like you deserve for your art to be acknowledged by its audience. If you don’t, then there is no point in anyone playing the game you made, because if the person who wrote it doesn’t even care what the rules say, why should anyone? The people whose “playing” of TTRPGs consists of never opening the rulebook and improving based on “vibes” will still do that no matter what, but the people who would have actually tried to engage with your game will find that it sucks if you don’t even care what the rules are yourself.
Playtest
You need to playtest your game if you want it to work as intended. You need multiple sets of eyes on it. If you don’t have the opportunity personally to do so, just release your game anyway with the acknowledgement that it’s unfinished. Call it an alpha or a beta version, and ask for people that do play it to give feedback, then update and fix the game based on that feedback.
Ignore Feedback
Most people do not have any game design credibility, perhaps least of all TTRPG players. You do not, in fact, have to listen to everything people say about your game. Once you ask for feedback, people will come to you with the most deranged, asinine, bad-faith “feedback” you can imagine, and then get really mad at you when you don’t fall to your knees and kiss their feet about it. You do not need to take this feedback at face value, instead you need to learn to read between the lines and find out which parts of the rules text are being misinterpreted by players, and which incorrect assumptions players are making about your game. Then, you update and improve the game by clearing those up. Only like 30% of “feedback” you receive will actually be a directly helpful suggestion in its own right at face value.
You can’t please everyone, and shouldn’t, so appeal to the people who actually like your game for being what it is, not the people who don’t.
Read Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy
A TTRPG for deep character roleplay, realistic combat, player deduction, and secret monster antics!
Yeah this one sounds self-serving but hear me out. Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is as much a treatise on TTRPG game design as it is a game itself. When it presents mechanics and rules, it tells you what they are, why they are, how they are, and what you’re intended to do with them. This makes it an excellent example to read for anyone wanting to get serious about game design and learn how TTRPGs tick under the hood, and an excellent example of a TTRPG that expects players to play it the way it was written to be played, and why that is a good thing. Also you can download it for free.
shout out the narcissist cookbook for writing lyrics that feel so damn good to sing with a crowd. everyone who’s ever felt shitty just needs to scream “THIS IS HOW WE GET BETTER” at the top of their lungs with 100+ other people and that’ll fix it
Every action takes a certain amount of time ("beats" used here), and actions are resolved in order. Pretty self-explanatory, and adds an easy way to balance different actions in terms of resource usage.
I imagine that whenever actions finish at the same time, they are resolved according to each participants' speed stat or whatever.
OR. they are resolved in reverse order of how long the action's taken (the longer the action is, the faster it resolves)?
But then what if actions the same length resolve on the same turn? Hm.
Every action takes a certain amount of time ("beats" used here), and actions are resolved in order. Pretty self-explanatory, and adds an easy way to balance different actions in terms of resource usage.
I imagine that whenever actions finish at the same time, they are resolved according to each participants' speed stat or whatever.
OR. they are resolved in reverse order of how long the action's taken (the longer the action is, the faster it resolves)?
But then what if actions the same length resolve on the same turn? Hm.
Reference to my last account, which was banned by tumblr "lazuliisntdead"
Lazuliisntdead was a reference to how tumblr banned my previous account "Beatrice-of-the-stars." My name is Beatrice Nebula Lazuli
Beatrice-of-the-stars was an attempt to obscure who I was to tumblr, but still ge recognizable to people who knew me after my first account got banned "Nebulaaaaaa"
Nebulaaaaaa came from how Nebula was taken and I kept adding another a until it wasn't taken anymore
discoholicmusic
dededos
blakekathryn
origamiaround
dailybridgerton
annaxmalina
tangentwithtanner
