Hey, it's been a bit. I've got a ton of stuff floating through my head recently, and I think a dev diary is far overdo. Lots of fun stuff to talk about, lets get going already.
I have a massive fascination with the obscure. Things that time forgot, media that was never picked up by a wider audience, weird oddities of creativity and insanity. Not all of it is good (much of it is not) but it's all got some kind of soul behind it. I like knowing about weird things that time forgot, it's a little obsession of mine. It's why I take such an interest in lost media as well, it's just interesting to learn about the stuff that time forgot.
So Bleeding Sin huh? I never really talked on the production of it much but it's been a big thing for me over the past 7 ish months I've been working on it. But that process isn't as fun to talk about, I'll put out a full "making of" post when I get the whole thing done, but all in all, it's been a crazy learning process and has really helped me understand how putting together ideas leads into full concepts. Lots of stuff that ended on the cutting room floor or never made it out of the ideas phase, and I'd really like to talk on all of it but I think I'd rather just wait until the whole project is together to talk on it all at once. What I will talk about though with bleeding sin is the production of a new version. Currently, The playtest is in version 1.2, which is a version that is fine, but has a ton of issues. Lots of stuff I never thought of, lots of mistakes I didn't account for, and most of all a really bland look to it all. So I started working on a 1.3 version a week or two ago, solving a lot of the issues with rules, lots of oversights and the sort, plus making a version that looks way more aesthetically pleasing on the eyes. Before it was literally just a google doc that I wrote the rules out on, and while that's fine for some for me it just doesn't cut it. So I'm making a simple cooler looking version. It won't be in any way the final version of the book, which I plan on having a more dynamic and artsy layout to it, but it will be much more pleasing on the eyes. It will not, however, be pleasing on printer ink. Which is why I'm also going to put out the simpler version of it alongside the cooler looking version. One will be marked "ez print" and will be more similar to what we have now, just with a few embellishments.
The pretty version will look something like this
The 1.3 version will also have tons of rules updates, including a vastly simplified (and more interactive) casting system that I'm honestly really proud of the design of. It feels way more active and has way more player expression behind it. It's much more about taking big risks and managing resources, where before it felt much more about leaving your strigoi in the back to throw effects at people and never risk anything. I've been able to test it a few times and I'm very happy about how it feels. Outside of that, some adjustments to stress numbers, rewording a few things, adding in some stuff I forgot, tuning things up and down, etc. It's a decently sized update. I'm getting together a few people to test the game with, hopefully soon. I'll make sure to take plenty of pictures, and maybe even do a battle report here, who knows. Expect that out within a few weeks (hopefully).
Outside of bleeding sin stuff, I've been working on a few other things. I've been working on writing comic stuff again, predominantly Darkeaten. I don't expect to start it again any time soon, I just burnt myself out way too much on it and I'm not proud of what I've done for it so far. I think when I continue it again (and I do mean when, not if) I'd want to start from the beginning, and cut out a lot of the fat in terms of what's up currently. More stuff per page, more covered in a chapter, etc. Mainly I think I'd want to do it in full Issues instead of a timed release. One issue at a time, maybe 1 every couple of months. I think that would help with the burnout issue. I want to make smaller comics when I have time to test style and practice layouts and stuff. I think that would be fun. I just miss the time when I enjoyed making comics, you know? I want to get back to that.
But departing from Darkeaten entirely, I think I want to talk about my next big project, and this will be a lot so buckle up. I want to talk to you a little bit about a project I call GORM: The Fool's Errand. So I've been getting really into a few things the past few months. One of those things are weird 90s-2000s era horror point-and-clicks. I love strange obscure games, always have. I enjoy quirky games that time forgot, and a lot of those fall into the horror genre. Great example, you ever heard of Harvester? The game's nuts. It's a crazy horror game that isn't afraid to go absolutely wild with it's storytelling. It's an insane trip, feels like a dream, a place where everything is almost familiar but not quite correct.
Harvester used the tagline "Yeah, Why not?" for some advertisements, which checks out
Some other games I've been looking at are games like Dark Seed, Phantasmagoria, and Erevos, all of which are trips in and of themselves. Erevos especially strikes my interest, as it's about vampires. It's a game so dedicated to it's concept that you can't play it unless your pc's clock is set to after dark, because of course vampires only come out after sunset. A very strange mechanic but it's weird stuff like that that keeps me coming back to these things. No other genre of game would do that, something so stupid yet so creative. Why would you make a game that the player can't experience for half of their life? From a marketing perspective? Psychotic. From a creativity perspective? GOLD! It really makes me think of the 28 tabletop scene, a scene driven not by what's best for marketing but what's the most unique, the most creative. It's all about trying new things, and most of the time, those things are weird gimmicks like only playing after dark.
This pops up if anyone not dedicated to the suckhead lifestyle attempts to play Erevos
I have a massive fascination with the obscure. Things that time forgot, media that was never picked up by a wider audience, weird oddities of creativity and insanity. Not all of it is good (much of it is not) but it's all got some kind of soul behind it. I like knowing about weird things that time forgot, it's a little obsession of mine. It's why I take such an interest in lost media as well, it's just interesting to learn about the stuff that time forgot.
Another big thing I've been exploring lately (and I promise this also times into what I'm working on) is game-oriented artbooks. Things like Vermis and Godhusk, which pose themselves as the guidebook for a game that doesn't exist. Along with stuff that's just more oriented at creating a cool fantasy settings and visual designs like Age of Rot. I really like how these things are formatted, things that feed on the idea of obscure games that time forgot. It sorta creates an interesting meta-narrative that makes the contents of the book, while being fantastical and not set in our world, feel as though they are connected to our world. But those are things that have been talked on a lot, especially in the fantasy-adjacent community. So I won't linger on them too long. They're super well put together and if you somehow hadn't heard of them yet I highly recommend you check them out.
So what's this got to do with that whole GORM thing? Well, gorm is a project I'm working on taking after those things. A project designed to revel in the obscure, the strange, and to create a weird meta-narrative with the reader. I'm still not fully decided on what exactly it will be, but I want to create a tabletop dungeon crawl experience basically. A game that revels in the obscure, and feels like a book that time forgot. My primary idea for gorm currently is to make a tabletop "rpg" book that is gm-less, and the book guides your entire journey. It'll be a sort of pre-built campaign in a book to play on your own or with a few buddies, set in a setting that takes after old dungeon crawlers and weird fantasy stuff of all sorts, and takes tons of inspiration from the weird forgotten point and clicks that I love so dearly. All of it will be through the lens of a lost rpg now revived in all it's glory. But the book will not just be your gm, it'll speak to you, the player, directly. The book will attempt to turn the players against one another, and attempt to sow distrust, and exert it's power over you. The book is in control, not you, and it'll make sure to spread it's influence in any way it can. So think a meta dungeon crawler ttrpg that tries to get you to argue with your friends.
Visually I want to invoke stuff like Waxworks, another fun horror game from the 90s
Gorm is entirely in the concept stage, I've made barely any art with commissions and bleeding sin taking up most of my time. But I hope the idea at least sounds fun, I know a lot of people in the 28 scene will be down with an rpg that takes inspiration from the weird and wild. I just want to make sure it stands out in the ever growing crowd of "old school revival" style rpgs. I kinda feel weird calling it an "rpg" because my intention is not really to create a role playing experience, but more a cooperative dungeon crawl experience. It's more of a challenge to overcome than a space for your roleplaying moments, especially considering the book is going to be assaulting the player's psyche, not the characters. I like the idea of the game having very physical mechanics based around stuff like writing or physically moving, those things getting harder as your character loses health and sanity. I think that would tie into the theme well. Still not fully sure on enough mechanic stuff to share it, as the game is still in the early concept phase. But think of stuff like what you'd see in Combat Heroes or other gm-less rpg books. Sure it's a bit railroad-y but that's what you expect going into this. You never complain about a game railroading you, some games aren't meant to be open world.
This is the coolest of the Combat Heroes books
But enough about that, you probably saw at the top of this a link titled "TODAY'S LISTENING" with a link to a song. It's obviously not required, and the song while totally end while you're reading it (unless you choose to loop it, which is the correct option) but I decided it was a fun thing to put in, as I really like music and it influences me a lot when I write stuff, like this blog post. So today I put in "Blood Moon" by Choir Boy. A good friend of mine recommended I listen to it as I was still writing this post, so I decided to listen to it while writing, and I really vibed with this song, something about it really struck with me with what I was talking about here. It's got quite a nostalgic vibe to it, so I felt it's worthy of the soundtrack of today's post. The fact that the song is called "Blood Moon" definitely helps in making me love it, but really it's just a happy coincidence. Give the whole album a listen if you like it, it's really great, there's only so many ways I can say that I just really dig the vibe they went for with it, so just trust me on it, the vibe is truly immaculate.
The cover for it is also awesome
This whole thing has been a bit of a ramble but what did you expect? This is a dev diary, not a dev press conference. I'm getting all my ideas out in one place, to share on my cute little blog. I hope to do these more often again, but who knows, I could totally go through a spell of just not wanting to make these, so I won't promise anything. Deadlines may help me get stuff done but they also lead to unnecessary stress. I missed this, lets meet here again yeah? Just a chat under the red moon at the end of the world. See you around freaks.
