Doing a TTRPG game jam changed my life

'The Roaring Age' is available today, for free. Go download it now!

Today is the release day for my first game, The Roaring Age. I’ve been playing D&D since the age of… 9? That’s 25 years. Today is the release day for the first game I’ve written.

As I said when I debuted the project in May, this is a game I had stuck in my head, bouncing around for about a year, a hack of Liminal Horror that would let you play classic Call of Cthulhu modules but with NSR rules and principles, using the chassis of some of my favorite modern games games.

When I saw the Twisted Classics Jam, I knew that was my opportunity, even though my entry is barely what they were asking for, for this jam or in general. It was a big task, and it was going to challenge me to finally learn professional design tools and get creative after a long time away from creative productivity. I quickly noticed two things at once:

• I am, incidentally, getting married in the next year, and possibly even having children.

• I am not sufficiently organized in my life in order to be both a creative and a parent.

I had about 3 months to write a game and learn all of the tools to lay it out, and so I had to tidy up my organizational habits. It began by:

• Finally giving myself permission to set aside responsiblities I’d grown tired of to laser-focus on a product.

• Further permission to invest in a new desktop computer that could run the necessary software.

• A deadline-sensitive motive to finally learn a little bit of basic project-management skills.

Here’s the really dreaded trap. If you start to do this thing, little by little, you will begin to feel astounding about what you’re suddenly capable of. And you will want to apply these reforms in your time, attention, and self-management to more parts of your life. Suddenly, I wasn’t just writing pieces of a game, I was finishing large chunks of it. I wasn’t just toying with new software, I was using it fluently. I wasn’t just making time in each day to get it done, I was entering creative flow states. I’ve been in one now, for about 4 hours.

I decided to take it further:

• I made a habit of digital note-taking — mostly using the PARA method — to track projects and clear my mind so that I was jotting down and clarifying ideas more often. Once you get shit out of your head, you’re just making room for a more constant flow of ideas. I’m actually already play-testing my next game.

• I decided to shed a lot of other baggage — all of my old reading lists got sorted into an excel spreadsheet and I got rid of over 100 books. I turned all of my payments and Metrocard contact-less and don’t carry a wallet anymore. I turned my physical habit tracker into a little mini app I made from Google Sheets. Had to teach myself to do that, too.

• I decided that if I can get this stuff in line, why not try my stagnant job? I started applying my more-developed project management skills and calendar time-blocking to my work. For the first time in 4 years, I felt equipped to walk into my boss’ office and ask for a 50% raise. They immediately agreed it was overdue, and are working out terms.

• I invigorated new life into my community organizing, and have no only been mentoring more often but have even been GMing more games while writing The Roaring Age as well as other creative projects that are continuing to pour out of me.

In short, I decided to pick up a weight so heavy that I had to get stronger in order to lift it over my head. I won’t belabor the point.

‘The Roaring Age’ is here!

I’ve got a lot to say about making this game, not just design stuff, but things like:

• Lots of what I’m adding into Liminal Horror with The Roaring Age comes from my experience not just with games like Mausritter and other NSR games, but from my first PbtA campaigns, like Monster of the Week or Brindlewood Bay, and how natural it felt to work in fiction-first mechanics into NSR-style games.

• For a 1920s game, I did meticulous research into capturing what it means to emulate another period in history. (My two main non-fiction sources are Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday, and New Work Coming, by Nathan Miller.

I’ll get to that eventually. For now, I’m just all gratitude.

Thank you to Goblin Archives Josh Domanski for making Liminal Horror, and then making a community around it. You make great things possible by planting seeds that carry on the wind and grow in unexpected places. Thank you to anyone who’s made a game, based on a game, based on a game, or made any game at all.

Thank you to my friends and players who cheered me on, particularly

Joseph Krausz

, a profoundly encouraging and collaborative copy editor. Who cares if he edited Cairn 2e and Beyond the Pale and Block, Dodge, Parry and a hundred other amazing things? The thing most people don’t know is he actually does bring the best snacks to every game, and even if that weren’t true, everyone he knows would still be impossibly fond of him.

Thanks to everyone who, at any point, said “Wow, this project looks so cool, I can’t wait for it!” Every single one of these comments was noticed and internalized, and made it all possible. And thank you to the Explorer’s Design Community, who gave me a boost every time I was struggling to find a decent font foundry or fighting with Affinity Publisher.

What comes next for The Roaring Age? Well, I’m thinking a few conversions for popular Call of Cthulhu modules, and then maybe an original adventure or two? I’m thinking The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh meets Boardwalk Empire. Eventually, it’ll come. More and more is coming every day, it seems.

The Lord is marvelous.