Two Projects, One Week, Four Years
On Monday, my Mothership adventure Time After Time released. I started working on it in the winter of 2021, during grad school; I Kickstarted it in February 2022 for ZiMo ’22, which I also helped organize. It was supposed to release December 2022. I rebooted the project almost from scratch in late the summer of 2022 (when it was about three-quarters done), taking it from the intended 36 pages to more than double that.
Today, Wednesday, my toolbox setting guide Seas of Sand released. I started working on it in spring 2020, during my last semester of undergrad. I Kickstarted it during the summer of 2021. It was supposed to release May 2022. After struggling a lot during the fall of 2021, I scrapped my original master’s thesis and focused all my efforts on Seas; I wrote many of the 1d100 tables in the appendices over Christmas. I finished the writing, editing, and graphic design, about 80,000 words and 264 pages, in time for the thesis showcase: my little booth had an art-less version printed out on regular school printers, held together with too-big metal rings. The covers were made from folded-over red construction paper. The illustration-less PDF went out to backers just a couple weeks before I finished my master’s.
I finished the rebooted draft of Time After Time in early 2023, some 30,000 words, about a month after I’d originally told my backers they’d have the whole zine. It was that fall, 2022, that I started teaching university courses. I finished the illustrations for Seas of Sand in the early summer of 2023, about a year after the writing and graphic design were finished, in time for the “one year late” mark. That, too, involved a reboot—I had about 40% of the pieces done, and then decided the style wasn’t working and threw almost all of them out. The graphic design of Time After Time took longer than expected: I’d taken the wear-and-tear look of Lowlife a step further, and each spread required about a dozen Photoshop layers superimposed over the InDesign spread working together to get the final look. I ended up outsourcing most of the illustration work to Locheil, an internet friend who did excellent work, because after all the illustrations in Seas I just didn’t have another couple dozen large pieces in me.
After finishing the art for Seas, I took it to Jarrett Crader at Space Penguin Ink for publication. It took us a while to figure out the specifics, but we ordered proofs by the end of summer—I had the proof in hand by September. That book’s still full of my notes, catching typos and issues. Loch finished the art around the same time, and I sent out complete PDFs to my backers in the early fall, 80 pages in total. It took quite a bit of searching and hunting around to find a printer willing to print and bind a zine of such length, but I found one. There, I turned to Spear Witch, a retailer I’d worked with before, for distribution; I had the proofs of Time After Time by the winter. At the same time, a thousand copies of Seas were being shipped across the Pacific on a slow boat from China: they arrived shortly after the new year. After the BackerKit ran for a month, we got copies out to backers by early spring of 2024. The copies of Time After Time made it to Spear Witch from Canada in March, and went to out to backers at the end of the month.
This week, both of them released to the public.
Since I started these projects, I moved three times; received two degrees; taught seven courses; started two blogs; gained a brother-in-law, two nephews, and a niece; went back to therapy again; made and spent tens of thousands of dollars; cut my hair; picked up a couple dozen editing and graphic design gigs to make rent; accrued several hundred social media followers; ran about a half-dozen RPG campaigns to completion and several more to incompletion; and started many, many other projects, only a few of which ever have seen the light of day.
Rarely a day went by where I didn’t think about both projects. And now they’re done.
What have I learned? Mostly what not to do. Don’t run a Kickstarter before you have a complete draft finished. Don’t plan to illustrate dozens of pieces or write tens of thousands of words in just a few months. Don’t piss off the Kickstarter backers. Try not to overhaul projects halfway through. Try not to start new projects in the middle of previous ones. Try not to get yourself in a situation where you’re compelled to lock yourself in your bedroom and work for months without really being able to show it to anyone.
But lots of other things, too. I know vastly more about Photoshop and InDesign than I did four years ago. I know how to publish hardcovers outside of DriveThru. My editing skills are much, much sharper. I have a much better idea of what GMs want from their books, and how to give it to them. I know more about games, play, and roleplaying than I perhaps thought possible.
And, despite the trials and tribulations, I am still making RPGs—there are few greater joys. Keep your eyes open.
Seas of Sand is available in hardcover at Space Penguin Ink, and in digital at itch.io and DriveThruRPG. Time After Time is available as a zine at Spear Witch, and in digital at itch.io and DriveThruRPG.