I figured it might be a good time to give some explanation about the slower update schedule as of late. As some of you might have noticed, I authored an article over on the Rathe Time last week. Back in early January, Kirk Bushell (creator of The Rathe Times and FaB DB) got in contact with me about writing for the site prior to its launch, and, after hearing his pitch, I decided I was on board. My, now monthly, State of The Market pieces were originally conceived of as Rathe Times content. When The Rathe Times debut was pushed forward, the first two instalments of the series got posted here instead because they were time-sensitive. However, now that The Rathe Times is up and hosting content, the State of the Market articles will move over there as originally intended. The reasoning behind my choice to split my content across multiple sites was primarily about tone. The pieces I’m pitching to the Rathe Times tend to be more focused and a little less prone to getting weird in tone or presentation. The State of the Market series, for instance, will have a fairly similar form month-to-month. I think that they’re still identifiably my writing, but it’s a different style than what I do here (I copyedit those, for a start). Additionally, they’ll be a little more focused and polished as opposed to the stuff I usually publish here where things are a bit looser, the tone is more casual, and I’m more prone to diving into niche topics.
So that’s one of the contributing factors to the reduced release schedule around here. The other is my side gig. Actually, I guess selling cardboard and writing articles is my side gig. Is there a phrase for a second side gig? Anyway, as I was saying, a while back I was invited into a group of tabletop game designers, and we’ve since formed a worker-owned co-op, so there’s been an influx of dull work like getting paperwork filed, writing bylaws, establishing procedures, etc. I’ve done game design work on commission before (usually writing-related), but I never really had the cash to pay the upfront art and design costs to get any of my own projects to a Kickstarter level back in grad school when I was actively designing full games. In addition to the recent influx of boring work, there is also the time spent on actual game design. The co-op model means different projects involve different people and types of design; there are several games in the pipeline that have a primary designer and I have no major involvement in those aside from occasionally helping to playtest, offering suggestions, and existing as one more person to bounce ideas off of. However, there are a pair of games that are being collaboratively designed by several of us that I’m fairly actively involved in. One of which has been doing some game jam and unpub rotations for a fair while and is hopefully going to hit Kickstarter Q3 of this year, though we’ll see how the US continues to handle the pandemic.
I’ve also got a few other projects, kicking around as well, some writing, and a nebulous goal of producing video content for this site at some point in the next several months, though a fair bit of that revolves around when vaccines happen in my area. I have a hard time doing things by half measures, so if I do add video, I need to get a lighting , audio, and video setup that puts it at a sufficiently high level of quality. I have a friend with some expertise in these areas who would absolutely help me sort it all out, but alas, COVID. So anyway. That’s a little bit of context for the recent slow down here. I’ll probably cross-post announcing my State of the Market article when it goes live on the Rathe Times (should be soon) since this is the first month it won’t be hosted here. I’m very earnestly hoping to have my long-neglected third installment of the Telling Stories Through Cards series done before the end of the month, since I want to talk about the things I want to see FAB do before MON spoilers start. People have been asking me about my takes on the print run info, and while I wrote about it a fair bit in the upcoming State of the Market, I likely will have a piece here in the next week or so looking at some of the more speculative and long-reaching implications of this news. Anyway, thanks for sticking around, and I hope to have more content for you soon.
*Header Image – Red Amazon Danbo on Brown Wooden Surface by Burak Kostak under Pexels free-use licensee
FAB with Freyja 