Side Quest: Delving into Development
FREEBIE: SUNLESS SPACE, a Micro-RPG of Laser-focused Rebellion
In the last several weeks, I’ve been spending more and more of my freelance time doing developmental work for a few clients, and in that time, it’s quickly become my favorite type of work I offer but also it’s the work that most people are not familiar with, especially outside of experienced creator circles so I wanted to spend this issue digging into it a bit.
Developmental work examines the very high-level, broad design and content aspects of a work, rather than worrying about specific word choices, sentence structure, and punctuation like line and copyediting I typically engage in. In many ways, it’s game design and writing consultancy analyzing the core concepts of a game system or the central themes and structure of an adventure and using an experienced, outside perspective to analyze them, rework them, and see if they are creating the designer’s intended outcome.
The first project I did development work for was Bio-Drones and Cyro-Clones, examining some of that adventure’s unique mechanics around generating and encountering the titular bio-drones, the timeline tracking and ability for a party to replicate (the titular cyro-clones!), and more. It let me come into a complete adventure and work with Chris, the adventurer’s creator, to align it even closer to their vision and give some fresh ideas to the project.
Recently, I have been doing dev work on an unannounced skirmish game and that has been really interesting since it is outside my normal work in TTRPGs. Examining the probabilities of rolls, the mechanical weight of various rules, and playtesting to see what is adding to or detracting from the creator’s vision has been really rewarding. My background in TTRPGs helps as well, letting me give feedback around the game’s worldbuilding and writing voice in ways that I think help to elevate it beyond a purely mechanical games rules text and into something that really drips with the unique style and setting cooked up by the creator.
So far, my biggest dev job is Worlds by Watt’s Cloud Empress. Already, this has been the most rewarding dev project yet. The game created by Watt and their team is already incredible (and even before I was brought on, it was one my most anticipated games of the year), but getting to really dig into the mechanical aspects of the text — the ways it differs from the Mothership core it is based on and examine the nitty gritty aspects like probabilities, character creation and more in order to ensure that they incentivize and reward (or penalize) certain aspects of play in a way that fits the world, the game’s design ethos, and more — has been really rewarding. I leave our chats feeling like I’ve taken something great and made it shine just a bit brighter which is a really exciting feeling.
So far, I’ve found this type of work to be extremely rewarding as it allows me to take another creator’s nearly-finished work and polish it into a final state even more befitting of their creative vision (and their hard work). It’s taking something good or even great and helping make it better. As a writer/designer myself, it can be hard to see all the angles and aspects of a project after you’ve been fully immersed in it for months or even years, and development helps get a fresh, outside perspective to really dig into what you’ve created and align it even more with your core vision.
It’s my favorite freelance work because often it’s the work I do that most shifts and strengthens the foundations of a game, rather than simply the final look and feel like a lot of my typical work. It may be the most invisible of all the work I do on other projects, but it’s the most substantial and that’s why I really love doing it.
If you’d like to hire me to do development work on your game, you can find all my information HERE!
Next Up: Tactician’s Academy returns with Corrupt1on 101!
NOW AVAILABLE: ORBITAL DEBRIS
My other Kickstarter project from last year’s Zine Month is now available to the public! It’s a big, weird setting/campaign book for Mothership 1e from a slew of great creators in the space. To me, it’s the Fallout: New Vegas of Mothership modules. Weird factions, wild people and places to stumble upon, survival in a junk-filled landscape, and more. I was a part of the editing team and wrote 2 of the 23 hexes in the book, The Home of He and All the President’s Mites. I’m really proud of how it turned out!
Get it HERE, both digitally and as a premium print-on-demand softcover!
Orbital Debris is a moon-spanning junkyard hex-crawl for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. A sprawling, debris-collecting moon sporadically warps through space as its ancient core malfunctions. Centuries of troubled travel have left the moon a crumpled world of junk housing the remnants of great wars, catastrophes, and the memories of countless civilizations.
Explore 23 strange environments. Discover dangerous factions vying for power and control. Meet astonishing NPCs and learn incredible rumors. Unearth horrifying alien and technological threats. Plus, much more!
Created as a community collaboration between 13 authors and 5 artists, and coming in at 98+ pages in an A5-sized format, Orbital Debris is perfect for any Warden looking for their next campaign or looking to add more junk to their universe!
ALSO: BLOODFIELDS AT BLACKSTAR STATION
Darkspace pirates, THE SWORDS OF SINCLAIR, troll the vast megavoids in the tracts between systems - scanning for hyperdrives with crew in cryo, using MILITARY-GRADE INTERDICTORS to pull ships from hyperspace and shutter their drives. Crews are stolen away, still in the cold dark of cryosleep or gassed into submission during boarding, and taken to BLACKSTAR STATION. Crews awaken as contestants in THE BLOODFIELDS.
THE BLOODFIELDS AT BLACKSTAR STATION is a 40-page battle royale hexcrawl and black market space station setting zine for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG 1e including:
19 sectors to fight across at the heart of a former tourist resort
20 teams of contestants - enemy killers, unlikely allies, and more
Black market space station setting with factions, NPCs, and hooks
Evocative art by Roque Romero (Codex R, Picket Line Tango)
Edited by Vi Huntsman (MÖRK BORG, What We Give To Alien Gods)
For $25 USD, you get A LOT:
THE BLOODFIELDS AT BLACKSTAR STATION zine: 40 pages, 8.5x5.5", full color
Arena Hexmap and Station Poster - 18x24" double-sided poster
"I visited the Bloodfields at Blackstar Station... and I Won!" iron-on patch
PDFs and Digital Asset Pack including:
Printer friendly, ePub, and Google Doc versions
High-res Bloodfields Arena and Blackstar Station Maps
Poster hexmap art by Zach Hazard Vaupen!
High-res sector, contestant, locale and faction art/animated gifs
High-res winners' patch and double-sided digital poster art!
Digital Soundtrack by Jet McFin
MISSIVE EXCLUSIVE
At the very end of last year, I published A Sunless Space, a postcard TTRPG inspired by rebellion-focused stories like Andor. Since I’ve been playing a bit of Jedi: Survivor lately and am swamped with other writing/editing work, I decided to include this otherwise paid game FOR FREE to Missive readers.
A Sunless Space is a quick-to-play, two-page tabletop roleplaying game of laser-focused rebellion against an endless empire.
Download the full version (plus printer-friendly, character sheets, etc.) HERE!
Players collaboratively decide on the setting (sci-fi, fantasy, historical, modern), the form of their oppressor (a totalitarian government, an insidious AI, a powerful demon), the state of their rebellion (split factions, lone spies, soldiers), and how they will fight back (a heist, a rescue, an assassination, a jail break).
Rebel creation is quick and focused on why and how you rebel, rather than a list of more traditional skills and stats.
The game itself is played in three distinct phases: The Day Before, The Day Of, and The Day Between. What final preparations do you make? How does the strike play out? How do you celebrate the victory or clean up your mess?
Designed for ~90 minute sessions. Mechanics loosely inspired by WEG's Star Wars The Roleplaying Game (1987).
If you enjoy the game and would be up for giving it a rating or leave a comment over on Itch.io, I’d really appreciate it!
MORE COOL STUFF
I edited Perplexing Ruin’s latest adventure, designed for use with Isle of Ixx! You can check it out HERE! I always love working with PR and their art alone creates really striking worlds and interactions (this one has wonderful isometric map art too)!
I recently got a chance to play Triangle Agency with Caleb Zane Huett, one of its creators, and I had a BLAST! Recently, Caleb ran the same mission for another group on stream and it’s a fun example of the kinds of characters and stories the game can create. I’m writing a mission as part of The Vault for the game and I’m really stoked about it. You can check out the game’s Kickstarter pre-launch page HERE!
I recently started working on a silly and stupid sci-fi zine, The Shimmercheese Chronicles, based on this a silly Star Wars joke I posted on Discord. It’s definitely my third-tier project in terms of priority but it’s fun to do something more overly comedic since most folks in real life would say I’m a funny guy, even though my writing tends to be fairly serious.
The Indie Game Cooperative had me on to copyedit their latest book, Apocalypse: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Ending the World! It was my first time editing a project of this size and style and I’m so appreciative of them having me on. You can check it out HERE!
If I otherwise seem a bit behind or scatterbrained, it’s because my wife and I are working towards an eventual move to St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada later this year (if things go well)! We recently spent some time there and it really charmed the heck out of us. It’s an exciting, stressful, and jam-packed time for us!
Missives from the MeatCastle recently crossed the 1,500 subscribers threshold, and that feels like a HUGE number to me! To everyone who has subscribed, followed along, and supported my work in any way at all, THANK YOU!
Here’s to more fun stuff in the future! - Christian