In late 2024, I was hanging out in Farmer Gadda’s discord server, talking about tabletop rpgs (as was custom at the time). He mentioned that he had published 28 blog posts that year, and would like to try writing one a week in 2025.
As someone with a disastrous amount of hubris, I thought to myself, “writing once a week sounds easy!”. I’ve done Nanowrimo before. Surely I can make time once a week to post something online.
I struggle with a debilitating degree of executive dysfunction, so it’s difficult for me to stay productive without an external structure forcing me to do things. The simple requirement of publishing weekly was both a blessing and a curse. Through this blog, I have been able to flex writing muscles which were left dormant for years as I focused on my computer science degree and subsequent programming jobs. Blogging also gave me a sense of momentum for other projects (like the games I’m making) and helped me find community with other people who think about games. The “curse” is that sometimes life doesn’t conform to the purity of once a week blogging. I moved houses this year and it was tough finding time to write while packing and unpacking.
Despite the fact that, with this final post, I successfully made it, I don’t think I’ll be pursuing the same goal next year. In particular, I want to spend even more time working on projects, and I frequently found that all of my writing time was devoted to these weekly posts instead of making progress on longer-term things. I tried to mitigate this somewhat by writing dev logs, but they don’t feel as satisfying to me as posting something fresh.
a year of publishing
I have designed games for my entire life. I remember writing the rules for a Star Trek bridge sim roleplay in a notepad during high school geometry. For a long time, I wanted to be a video game developer, and my university education pursued that goal, where I published some games as part of various teams. Post-college, I worked on a visual novel alone, and the process inflicted me with so much burnout that I stopped wanting to make video games.
It’s been some years since then, giving me time to heal and explore new directions. I find a joy in tabletop roleplaying games that excites me on a visceral level. One of the best examples of this is the Zungeon Manifesto.
Nova’s call to action lit a burning fire in me. Anyone can make a zine. Anyone can publish. Everyone needs to be writing and publishing more and making more art. Even if it’s bad — maybe even especially if it’s bad, we need to keep writing and making stuff. This is an axiom for me.
I published my zungeon, Second Street Beatdown, in March.
While I might have done things differently in retrospect, I’m extremely proud of finally publishing something myself. Second Street Beatdown is also the first game I’ve ever been paid for, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.
In June, Anne at DIY & Dragons announced the second Summer LEGO RPG Jam. As a lifelong LEGO fan, I was immediately interested, and inspired to publish something in the post-trad space. I had begun to notice the overwhelming amount of adventures and “gameable content” published for various OSR games, and felt the need to contribute for the sorts of games I enjoy playing. This was also a chance to challenge myself with Affinity Publisher. I had used Affinity a small amount for my zungeon, but I knew that trying to emulate Lancer‘s house style would push my abilities to their limits.
I published my supplement, War in the Toybox, in August.
What I learned through the process is that even Massif Press’s layout has inconsistencies once you start examining it closely. As an indie developer, that’s encouraging! I don’t need to be a perfectionist with my own layout in the future. With that said, the project also made me realize that writing for an established system is less simple than I thought: one of the biggest challenges was trying to cut out a niche for my LEGO mech without stepping on the toes of any of the existing Lancer frames. I still want to write more for games like Lancer in the future, but I think it will be important to consider the demands of the system before jumping on an idea like I did with this one.
My final goal for 2025 was to publish a full game — something for Prismatic Wasteland’s Year of the Beta. I’ve got two games I regularly work on, but this year I spent more time working on my fantasy heartbreaker. Despite this, the project was mostly an unorganized collection of design notes until the onset of Minimalist Jam 4 gave me the juice to get my shit together.
I published the beta version of The Serket Hack in October.
Since I already wrote a retrospective on the game, I won’t get too into the details, but suffice it to say that writing a complete game was a bigger challenge than anticipated. It’s easy for me to think in terms of sub-systems or rules, but a struggle to remember to include everything a player needs to run a game without me. The Serket Hack remains one of the things I’m most excited about, and I plan to continue working on it in 2026.
shoutouts
So many people have been supportive of me, this blog, and my writing in general. As part of my end of year reflection, I want to give a few shoutouts:
- Matt, my friend without a blog
The vast majority of these posts were written during pomodoro body doubling sessions with him. He was my first reader, and I will always be grateful for his encouragement.
- Gadda, of Farmer Gadda
My blogging senpai, and the reason that I put out a blog post every week this year. Gadda was also really helpful when I was building the main website by passing along resources used by neocities members.
- Liz, of Magnolia Keep
Even beyond her blog (which is always fun to read), Liz has been an inspiration to me since the zungeon jam, where her Bloodmoon Crypt influenced the design of my own entry.
- Binary, of Binary Star Games
One of my favorite designers and the host of the annual Minimalist Jam. In the circles I frequent, Binary frequently makes me feel sane as another blogger not focused on the OSR.
- Dadstep, of To Be Resolved
Even if he doesn’t always agree with them, Dadstep regularly engages with my posts seriously and that makes it a joy to write them. It’s deeply encouraging to know that I’m not just posting into the void.
I have plenty of ideas cooking on the back burner for blog posts in 2026. I might be posting a little less than once a week, but I don’t plan on losing momentum either. If anything, a slower pace will give me the chance to write longer posts than what I can hammer out in one evening of intense focus.
Beyond blog posts, I intend to publish more games in 2026. I anticipate getting pulled into some game jams, so I’m leaving myself some room for flexibility, but in particular:
- New updates to The Serket Hack
- A beta version of Full Metal Bones
- A Fabula Ultima supplement (maybe Crystal Clash?)
I’m looking forward to it! Thank you for reading Fluorite Guillotine in 2025.
See you in 2026!