It's...
decorative gourd season, motherfuckers.
(I learned to re-size the pics that come from my phone. Hopefully this is better in most email clients.)
It's My Favorite Time of Year
I look forward to the Fall every year. The weather, the events, the food... it all speaks right to my heart. Hell, last year I biked from Cleveland to Columbus across three rainy days right at the end of October. Fall is in my bones.
This year, there's even more to look forward to. Personally, we've got a kid now, so that means holidays are in full effect. It can be challenging to get excited for the holidays when it's just two people (especially two people with depression and anxiety). Right? At some level, you see the artifice behind it. You're taking things up to pull them back down weeks (or months, hey depression) later. You're spending money that could probably go other places. It can drag the whole thing down.
Now? Whoa, man, this kid doesn't know anything. She's only going to be four months-ish old when Halloween hits, but that doesn't mean we won't dress her up. She's never going to remember this Christmas, but we get to remember her delight when she sees the lights and colors. We get to start making all-new traditions because we're an all-new family.
I don't know about you, but that makes me so happy. Plus, I get up for making all the Turkey Day food anyway.
There's a grim shade to all of this in that there's an ongoing global pandemic and that means we won't be able to safely do some of the things we would have otherwise. I don't intend to let that stop us from enjoying what we can, though.
This Fall has even more in store, though.
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An all-new Iron Edda Project launches on Kickstarter on Sept 28!
Iron Edda Reforged, Season One - Jotunheim is a new take on the ideas of Iron Edda. Set in a Norse-themed cyberpunk dystopia, the gods have cemented their power across the realms. Their corporations keep everyone in line, worship being replaced with labor and consumption. However, the fortold Twilight of the Gods is coming. A neon-edged Fimbulwinter is on the horizon.
Ragnarok is coming, and it's you.
Your community is going to rise up and take down the gods. The all-new system that powers this game makes for easy and rich character creation. It also lets you and your group change focus characters whenever you want. You can tell the story of the fall of the gods from as many perspectives as you want, each angle adding to the narrative.
In addition, this project is going to launch with a podcast detailing the playtesting process and a video actual play series.
This is one of the coolest, most compelling things I've ever done and I'm so exicted!
Iron Edda is something I've loved since I wrote the first words of it back in 2013. One of my original goals was to see its themes and ideas expressed in different genres and contexts. This is a realization of that and I'm thrilled with how it's coming together.
I even worked with a friend of mine to make a new set of runes so we can do even more work to avoid the white supremacist bullshit that often plagues Norse works.
How cool is that?
If you want to know the moment the Kickstarter launches on the 28th, hit the link above and click 'Follow.'
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The Old Rail Line Still Calls
Last year I wanted to do something momentous to mark my 40th birthday. I'd been cycling a lot and so I decided to plan a five day-long trip from Cleveland to Cincinnati along the Ohio-to-Erie Trail. I even ran a Kickstarter to make a game called Down the Old Rail Line, vol 1.
I made it halfway there, largely due to weather (near-constant rain) and three consecutive days of flat tires. The trip was amazing, still. The plan was to finish the back half of the ride in the Spring. However, prepping to have a baby (we found out Elissa was pregnant two days after I got back from the trip), buying a house, and moving to full-time freelance work and dad-hood, put the brakes on that.
Still, I have a game to finish and I think about the bike trail a lot. Being out there on your own, in this liminal space between city and country, it's a unique experience. I've been working on the game and I'm pleased with how it's coming. All the art in the game is going to be my own drawings or pictures I took on the trail, passed through various filters on the Deep Dream Generator.
Take a look:
This will be a solo journaling game where each draw from a deck of cards brings you to a place that looks like these images. There, you'll be prompted to engage, reflect, and make choices about how you proceed. It's kind of a psychedelic, inward-facing journey through the same landscape I traveled through on my trip.
I hope to have it done in the next few months. If you didn't back the Kickstrter and you want it as soon as it releases, you need to head over and support my Patreon. Any amount a month gets you access to all of my projects like this.
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On Pivoting and Excitement
My plan last month was for the Kickstarter on the 28th to be for You are the Tavern (or Village–I hadn't quite settled on the name), the sequel to You Are the Dungeon. As I was working on it I realized that I wasn't as excited about it as Dungeon. I found it difficult to get into the text and write. I kept on for a while but something felt... off.
I sat and thought about it and I realized I wasn't as excited about the game. Not that I was doing bad design work or anything. But Tavern/Village didn't have the same hook, the same room for tone, the same... juice that Dungeon had. When I thought about Iron Edda Reforged, I felt that excitement.
It takes time and energy to prep a Kickstarter correctly. I know the steps and the moves to make. One key component for it is excitement, namely my own. In a thread I did on Twitter a while back, I talked about how I think it's important for creators to be calmly, confident and excited about their own work. You can't count on anyone else to be those things, so you need to be able to do it. If I'm not feeling the right kind of excitement for a project, everything that goes into prepping a Kickstarter is going to feel like I'm pulling my own teeth. Not ideal.
So I pivoted. Iron Edda Reforged can handle being worked out as a multi-release zine. The work on the system is 50% done and the setting is in about the same place. Because it's where it is, I felt confident in pivoting to this project. That's key. If the project weren't in the right place, this pivot would have failed.
As it is, I have a super-cool project that's ready to launch in a few weeks. And I'm still going to make Tavern/Village. Just at a different time.
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The Out
As always, thank you so much for subscribing to this newsletter! Knowing that people are interested in what I do is part of what makes all of this worth it.
Please, go and follow that Kickstarter, follow me on Twitter, and send me some support if you're able and interested.
I hope that this Fall treats you as well and I hope it treats me.
--Tracy