Don Bisdorf @dbisdorf@dice.camp

For those of you who've published TTRPG's without either selling to a publisher or going through Kickstarter: how have you acquired publicity and funding?

Struck up a conversation with a random bicyclist this morning about capitalist myopia and our unfinished writing projects. That's peak Ann Arbor right there.

Toying with Scribus, in the off chance that I release an ashcan preview of Save the Universe. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1U7C4t8YvTqDm4r5hbOdN1yyqgr_0VFJx

This looks like a great opportunity and a lot of fun: https://www.ashleywarrenwrites.com/rpg-writer-workshop

I'm toying with some ideas for a quick setup, quick playing build of Cortex Prime, taking a cue from PBTA playbooks: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NjO_l44aEHRgpxxw-dIUdbdoZeK1ojFU

Starting today, I'm trimming the Save the Universe text to make it cheaper and easier to publish. Moving the sample settings/missions to their own doc saved me 5K. I'm at 19783 now and I'm editing for conciseness and clarity. Let's see how low we can go.

We have survived Origins! All went well, though I nearly had a disaster when only two people showed up for my scheduled run. Fortunately one of the players ran off and recruited a couple more players to round out the group. That's the kind of experience that puts me off running anything at Origins outside of Games on Demand, where I've never had trouble filling a table.

Today: print out all sorts of GM material. Tomorrow: Origins!

Today's Save the Universe session demonstrated that asking the con artist of the party to impersonate the commander of the Resistance Fleet is the easy part. Convincing them to *stop* impersonating the commander of the Resistance Fleet is the hard part.

It's not my new favorite system, but given a group of players who understand the system, Cypher would let you put together a new game in just about any genre quickly. I guess my least favorite element is the cyphers themselves, which are one-shot powers you're supposed to hand out like candy. Remembering to give them out constantly is a non-intuitive task for me.

I enjoyed my first Cypher run. Chargen is essentially simple and the "mix and match predefined flavors" system lets you easily assemble a unique character in practically any genre. The math involved in task resolution is weird but it's not difficult; once you understand it it's quick. Competent play requires a bit of system mastery but not as much as D&D5E, and doesn't require as much "game design on the fly" as Fate.

It's been a while since I've gamed with a "I read your setting stuff but can I have a lightsaber shotgun arm" crowd.

Going to run Cypher for the first time this weekend. It's an odd beast, with it's point pools and giant lists of character options, but I'm hearing good things about it. We'll see if it suits me or not.

Some cool roleplaying stuff available here. Scroll past the dice and you'll find some amazing hand-drawn character sheets and worldbuilding tools. http://www.r-n-w.net/

This is more of a personal fault than a fault with 7th Sea. I just need to break the prep habit.

We had a fun 7th Sea session today, but I'm starting to crave running a far more low-prep spur-of-the-moment game. I want to break my habit of writing a hundred years of history to prep for a three-hour session.

Just had someone drop out of my 7th Sea campaign, which is a bummer. If they're not having a good time, I'd certainly rather let them step aside than drag them along. But now I wonder if and where I went wrong.

Looks like my Save the Universe session at Origins is sold out, which is both gratifying and terrifying.