Alright y’all might have seen that this account’s been starting up for the first time in a while. We’re actually going around and doing stuff, cool.
There’s one simple reason for that, and this is me, Lexi, the one behind this whole thing talking:
I’ve decided to cut out all the toxic people in my life and extend my vetting for letting new people in.
(queue this music because I’m allowed to have musical overlays on my textposts it’s tuesday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_ohWuaNPWo )
If you’ve been reading my other posts you can probably piece it all together, but in the last 6 months I found myself a decent friend group at college... at least I thought I did.
See, originally it was just me and this real chill guy who I won’t say the name of because internet, so I’ll just call him E. E and I met up near the start of the school year because E was just such an approachable person that even I could overcome my big NPC energy to talk to him. We got to talking, and decided it would be cool to start up a club for RPGs at the school, so that players and gamemasters could draw from a pool of people to make sure everyone got the experience they wanted. Then came D (again, not their name because privacy, but also y’know, I can’t resist calling him a D because he’s a d i c k), he was originally pretty chill, but almost immediately he ripped the club idea from my hands and decided all on his own without any input from me or E or anyone else that the club was going to include all tabletop games. Alright not at all what the club was supposed to be about, but okay.
So a month rolls by, and D has determined that the club is going to do RPGs at most once a month. You know, the thing we were designed around in the first place, not ‘each campaign once a month’ which I could vaguely see to prevent burnout but nah, nah he means ‘one official club campaign session spread across all campaigns per month’. What. The. Fuck.
Then it’s October, and I’ve got this cool idea, reverse trick-or-treating, you know that thing where you go door to door and give people candy? It was gonna be nice, and cool, and I told the whole friend-group about it at the start of October.
Other shit happened in October regarding people I look up to and the discontinuation of my absolute favorite show, so there’s that.
But the important thing to this post happened on Halloween, that day when they all said they’d join me going around giving people candy, and we’d all have a good time. I’d arranged it for six... six rolls around, no one’s there. I check the group discord, and I’m like ‘hey, where is everybody?’ only response is from E, saying that most people are at dinner and we should probably reschedule to later. I reply that it’s understandable and rearrange for 8. I get a message from B (only time she’s mentioned) saying she’ll be able to show up for sure.
No one showed up. Only one person at 10 who came to console me because I kinda exploded in the discord server because I’d been planning this all month and no one fucking showed up. Yeah I cried myself to sleep that night, don’t judge.
So now it’s November, and I finally put into action a plan I’d wanted to work on since the start of college: A larp league at the school, only problem is I’m going to have to craft the system from nothing. Alright, I’ve got inspiration from said favorite show ever that was cancelled in october, I’m going to base it around that. I then tell everyone in the friend group and they encourage me, I tell them I’ll be running a christmas event after thanksgiving break, they say that’s awesome.
That’s when I realized I’m going to need to make over 1200 abilities because each of the 40 classes needs 33 abilities. I asked them for any suggestions, got a grand total of 0.
So I worked my ass off, far more than is healthy, and got... absolutely nowhere because there was no chance in the first place. Right before thanksgiving break I tell them ‘hey, there’s no chance of me finishing the whole system in time, we’ll use a simplified edition i’ll come up with now’ they gave approval.
I made a whole mini-system on 3 hours of sleep. I went home for thanksgiving break and caused my whole family extra stress during their move by needing to make swords for this event.
So the day of the event rolls around, I’ve got everything set up, I’m out of the field, waiting. The event starts at 11, and that’s when i get there.
No one’s there. ‘That’s okay’ I figure, ‘they’re not exactly punctual, they’ll be here in 15-20 minutes’.
They are not. At 11:30, E shows up, I ask him where the fuck everyone is. Turns out B is still asleep despite giving me confirmation she’d be here last night, D and the rest of the group are at breakfast and have no intention of showing up despite being 25 seconds away, and E doesn’t see anything wrong with this.
I waited until noon, still no one, so I gave up and headed back to my dorm, I’d informed them on the discord that if no one showed up by noon I’d cancel.
And I fucking seethed. These people didn’t give a single fuck about me, or my time, or my effort. And after a few hours of calming down, past the tears, past the attempts at breaking things, I got onto the discord server, and I told them, in no indirect terms, that repeatedly encouraging people to devote time and effort to projects for the group, to get them excited for their events, to say that you’ll be there, and then all ghost without a word was absolutely abusive and I didn’t want that in my life. Instead of even a single attempt at an apology, or even a bullshit excuse, they all started yelling at me and kicked me from the server, the club, and the friendgroup.
So that’s where I am. I don’t give a single fuck about people who disrespect my time. I don’t give a single fuck about people who think that just because someone has bigger problems than me my problems don’t exist. I don’t give a single fuck about people who bail on plans without a warning or remorse.
And I feel so free.
So I’m turning all the effort on projects I was making for those toxic assholes inward, I’m making the shit I love, and if you don’t enjoy it, you don’t have to be around me or use my stuff. Sure the first few apprentice games and such will be free, and the proof-of-concept for anything will be free, but if I’ve put in serious effort? If i’ve put in 150 hours already (like on a certain larp system...) and it’s not even a tenth of the way done? You bet your left buttock that I’m not giving that away for free. If I’m going to make something I want to get something out of it.
So there’s that.
And just because I know I need help here, I do have some open positions:
Sabrina needs a pilot, and that’s the fancy lore way of saying I desperately need an artist, because my art is shit and while I have no idea how to make UI-interactive games, I’m going to try my best to learn.
Elluwen needs a pilot, and that’s still a fancy way of saying I need playtesters. I’ve been relying on my friend groups too much for this, posting a message about this new game I’ve got that’s nearly done, and waiting 2 weeks to get a single person to even try to play it. Meanwhile I’m playing it repeatedly to try to find bugs and their version is almost completely replaced.
and several more... honestly to just put it clearly: I need reliable people in my life, and if that means setting up a patreon for people to see sneak peaks and be playtesters through, wonderful! If I can find an artist willing to be on call for my projects, and of course still pursue their own endeavors, I can’t afford a full-time artist, that’s amazing.
