Things to Come

If you’ve been following this blog since it started back in 2019, you probably noticed that I’ve disappeared for about 3 years now. Great news, I have not quit the blog, burned out on writing, or been murdered! Instead, I’ve spent the last three years slowly completing probably the biggest project I’ve undertaken in my life. The gist of it is that I’ve got a pretty big (~250+ page) city book coming out for D&D-adjacent games pretty soon, and am currently figuring out what kind of budget is feasible for creating a high production print run with good art and layout. For the long version, here is roughly what I’ve been up to: 

Near the beginning of 2021, I signed up for Luke Gearing’s mentoring program. At the time, I had nearly completed a manuscript for a list of 50 magical items that can only be used once. You probably recognize the idea from a previous blog post. I was going to call it “The Disposable Tome”, and in fact might still release something like that, though only if it contains a lot of material that is not already going to be included in the other book I’ll talk about here. I pitched this project to Luke alongside another one that I had only barely started on, but which would become the focus of my RPG writing work until recently. 

The second project was a city supplement for D&D-adjacent games based on a settlement from my home game that I had prepared a ton of material for. It was called Pathika, which is the name of the campaign I ran based on the setting from around 2018 to about 2020, and is the inspiration for the name of this blog.The idea of the book is a settlement where all of the major political and economic power is held by adventurer guilds. It’s a volatile city populated by the kinds of dreamers, criminals, and would-be heroes that players tend to inhabit in roleplaying games, and much of the book describes how to run the city as a place that will change profoundly over the course of the campaign. Thanks to Luke’s help, I think I managed to write a city book that I would personally enjoy using, and which reflects my own tastes more than the standards of what RPG city books already look like. Hopefully it’ll be to others’ tastes as well. 

You can read a retrospective on this program from both Luke’s and my own perspective at the link above. Suffice to say, it was a really enriching and rewarding experience, and got me about halfway done with a massive manuscript. As all of my writing up to this point had been essays, short stories, short film scripts, and small amounts of game materials as seen on this blog, I didn’t think such a thing was possible for me. Based on this experience, I would highly recommend trying out mentoring if you’re interested in having a source of accountability to keep you motivated on longer projects like that.

At some point in the latter half of this manuscript’s creation, I pitched this book to Exalted Funeral and had the pitch accepted. Alongside Pathika, I also pitched Old School Stylish, a book some of you may already be familiar with. I released that book in the fall of 2021 to pretty good success. I probably should have followed that release up with something else related to OSS, but at the time I was completely focused on getting the Pathika manuscript done.

I finished the first draft of the book in midsummer of 2022. Unfortunately, around this time, EF underwent some pretty big changes in personnel and the project’s status was up in the air, with no contract signed, budget decided, etc. I tentatively moved the project to Space Penguin Ink with Jarrett Crader who I’d met through Luke Gearing, and turned it over to him for editing. This was completed in 2023. As a new and small company, Space Penguin had limited budget and release slots for crowdfunding and releases in general, so it looked like the book would probably not publish until this year. At this point I had written and playtested a new game called Nielsenauts in the interim, which should release maybe a month or two after this blog post goes live. If you’re counting, that now makes three zines written in the time it’s taken me to get Pathika to market! 

So here, in 2024, this is my situation: I’ve been away from the scene for three years, and probably can’t sell people on Pathika just on the strength of my name. I don’t know how many people will pledge for a Pathika crowdfunding campaign, which makes it difficult to calculate what kind of budget to shoot for and how much money can be justifiably spent on the art and marketing necessary just to launch the crowdfunding campaign. As such, I’m going to be a bit more active on here and on social media to spread the word. In the coming months, you can expect to see more content on this blog including thoughts on the creation of Pathika and articles on design theory that I’ve banked over the last few years, short form versions of this content on social media, and possibly a newsletter that will contain snippets from the upcoming book.

At some point you will have the ability to purchase some kind of preview of Pathika for cheap, and the proceeds from that will go toward funding the full book. Whether that will be in the form of a text-only document with more content, or a fancier but shorter preview with art and layout is still up in the air. I want to give a big thank you to all of you who have read and/or shared this blog or Old School Stylish, and I promise I have a lot of cool stuff coming to you soon. I hope you’ll join me on the ride!