If I Say I'm Doing It... will that make me do it?

M.M.MMorabe

It’s the third day of the New Year! We’ve made it past that week between the 25th and the 1st where nothing felt real and time was a lie. Suddenly, we’re at the part where it’s just another day in another year and we start to settle in and that special sparkle of the first begins to fade (or at least, that’s how I feel).

I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into bookbinding and that’s taken up my attention for the past few days. (More on that later!) My big project right now is typesetting a public domain translation of José Rizal’s Noli Me Tángere which is a classic of Philippine literature that I’ve just never read. And now I’m reading it and it’s very good? (I’m sitting here, a Jane Austen fan, screaming at social commentary and drama through the lens of visiting other people’s houses, but also screaming because colonialism) (More on this later, too, probably)

But anyway, on the subject of the title of this post: saying what I’m doing so that maybe a future me will be guilt-tripped by present me into actually doing it!

I’ve been sitting on a number of unfinished Google Docs files at various stages of their existences and maybe it’d be nice if by the end of 2023, I had one of them done! These are, in my head, bigger projects than the supplements I’ve written so far, so I want to spend more time on them.

a fencing picture and text about how Win/Loss is a game about fencers and the relationship that builds up after they meet in competition many times, and also how it's inspired by my experience and struggles

In no particular order, the things I want to try to work on are:

  • Win/Loss, a duet game about two saber fencers and the feelings (and/or mental baggage) they carry to the strip. It’s got mechanics based on right of way fencing (fancy rock-paper-scissors, really) and committing aspects of yourself for extra power. Right now, I’m just working out how to simplify the mechanics and trying to figure out how much of fencing I want to simulate vs how much I want to be able to handwave and make it flow. I might have to kill some of my darlings, and that’s stressful (plus I just really care about fencing).

a mockup I made ages ago for Monstercourt

  • Monstercourt (name tbd), a framework for Monsterhearts 2 that sets the game in a court for some court intrigue, but you’re also teenage monsters. I came up with this idea after bingewatching so many court dramas one summer (Secret of the Three Kingdoms and The Clowned Clown, I’m looking at you) and then I was like, “hmm, but what if I rewatch the CW’s Reign, too?” So I started but I haven’t finished. I think it’ll have some setting ideas, some suggested Skins and inciting incidents, something in the line of other framework/playsets that have been made for Monsterhearts (see the Emerald City Drama Club, Once Again We Return, and True Beauty, all in various issues of the Gauntlet Codex zine, for examples) (I just really liked this chair, so I made a mockup)

  • untitled Death and the Maiden game, some kind of tarot-based duet game that I started, about the relationship between a mortal and the personification of Death. So far it’s prompt based, but I don’t know if I’m going to stick with that until the end (I want to do more research on tarot and also this trope)
  • Cobwebs in the Corners (name also to be finalized), this one’s probably a Good Society duet framework that I started, about being detectives with dark and tangled pasts that need to be figured out, through flashbacks probably (this one’s inspired by the K-drama Beyond Evil [the thing is that I watch many dramas])
  • and then a variety of other things I’ve scribbled notes about but haven’t expanded past a few lines: games about genii loci (the spirits of places) and a mysterious thing in my Google Drive that says “Belonging Outside of Belonging Sports Team Roadtrip Game inspired by Sleepaway”?? what even is that???

So if you know me, please feel free to bully me about these things.

Finally, like so many other people in the ttrpg space on the Internet, I am trying out a variation of #dungeon23! This is a creative challenge that people have been talking about, where you take some time each day and build out a dungeon, a city, a mall, a world, whatever you want really.

My attempt is going to be to build out a small archipelago world that I’ve been playing with in my head for a story. Each month, I’ll be describing an island. Each week, I’ll talk about a city on that island (and surrounding villages). Each day, I’ll be adding details (like the people, the customs, fun things going around).

So far (like two days in), I’ve got a bustling seaport town with a bat problem from inland caves, a valley with a community of silent contemplators, and a small village known for a big rock that a shipwreck sits on and provides a habitat for mollusks. (Are all these things scientifically sound?? I … am not sure)

It’s been fun so far, and maybe if I can do Duolingo for two years, I can do this!

Anyway, here’s to a bright new year and the energy to do things for the rest of it! And if I don’t meet all my goals, that’s okay! I’m human and progress is slow and small sometimes, and we should all remember this about ourselves.