sinful.games

Category: Far Lands

  • Far Lands update: Filling the gaps and learning to rest

    Last month, I wrote about how I had completed more than half of the work that I expected me to take all year. As of today, I’ve I’m almost completely done with my initial layout pass! All that’s left is the long-form sample of play and the appendix. But there’s still a lot left to be done after this initial pass! Alignment, consistency, copy-editing, and accessibility are all extremely important.

    This post is going to be shorter because it’s a short month, and also because I’m going getting ready for some travel. But I still want to share some of what I’ve learned this month in work on Far Lands

    "Crash" scenario, detailing
    One of the quick-start scenarios

    What I missed

    Doing layout for Far Lands has forced me to reckon with every single word I wrote, and it’s been revelatory. I have noticed a lot of gaps in the manuscript I had totally missed. Tables with empty slots, TODOs I’d forgotten, paragraphs that I’d intended to re-write. I am very grateful that this process has forced me to look over every single part of the game. If I had passed it off to someone else at this point, those gaps could have presented a real problem!

    I talked last month about using white space in your game design, but this space was not intentionally left blank. Oops! But it’s been exciting to re-engage with the game design part of the process

    Leaving the best (worst) for last

    When I started, I laid out my plan for the year, putting things in an order that I felt made sense to me. That order changed a bit as I went, but I realized at some point that I had put them in order of my confidence.This helped in some ways… and hindered me in others.

    The first sections I laid out I was very confident in the text, the rules, and had a clear vision of the layout. This really helped me build my familiarity with the tools. I was able to implement my vision without worrying about having to edit the text too much. By the time I got to the more challenging sections, I already familiar with the tools and the style of the book. As a result, the work shifted from figuring out a visual identity to figuring out how to organize a challenging text.

    But it’s also meant that as I go, I’m feeling more tentative about the text. I knew the narrative journal entries were going to have to be edited for length to fit on a page. I knew some of the scenarios needed content filled in. I knew some of the tables were going to be challenging to make readable. And so the work got harder to engage with. So I needed to give myself a bit more grace. Which brings me to my next point:

    Don’t push too hard

    I talked in my previous far lands update about weaponizing my perfectionism to make steady, incremental progress. I mentioned that I was worried I would push myself to burnout. I’ve been continuing to approach this system cautiously, and as expected, I started running into the limits. Some days, I just end up fully booked with things that are very important to me. Trying to push through to get just a little bit done will keep me up too late or pull me away from stuff I will really miss if I have to decline. And on those days, knowing that I haven’t gotten it done weighs on me all day. It prevents me from fully enjoying stuff I know I could otherwise enjoy more!

    And what I realized is it’s not hard to see those days coming- from looking at my calendar, it’s not hard to know what days I’m going to struggle to fit it in time-wise. So I can designate a day when the reminder doesn’t pop up and know that’s a “rest day.” Or more realistically, otherwise occupied. Because it’s not really a rest day. And that’s kind of a problem…

    Gas, Steam, and Battery

    There’s a theory that I’ve seen a lot about how do deal with limited energy called spoon theory. A lot of folks may be aware of it already, but it breaks down to the metaphor that each day you have a limited amount of metaphorical spoons. Each task costs a spoon, sometimes more than one if it’s a hard task! And every day you have a different number. It’s a practical metaphor that really helps conceptualize how you’re spending your energy and how much energy different tasks take.

    I have a personal distinction I like to make between three different kinds of tired: Out of gas, out of steam, and out of battery. They map pretty well to classic TTRPG stats (and philosophy, but we’re here to talk about ttrpgs) of body, mind, and spirit,

    Out of gas is physical exhaustion. You may want to keep going, but your body says no. This could be in the form of tired muscles, your natural circadian rhythm telling you it’s time to sleep, or the body shutting down when you’ve carried too much stress for too long.

    Out of steam is mental exhaustion. You are out of willpower, have no more drive to continue. Whatever you’re doing isn’t fun anymore, and any effort you put in is going to be halfhearted or pull from internal reserves that borrow from tomorrow. It’s hard to make choices or take decisive action.

    Out of battery is social or sensory exhaustion. You don’t have the battery left to engage with people in the way you want to. Conversations get hard to follow and it’s easy to get overwhelmed or confused. You may still want to be around people and be interested in what’s going on, but just don’t have whatever it is you need to comport yourself or keep yourself together in the moment.

    An excerpt of the Far Lands team sheet showing the resources - Health, Supplies, Morale, and Orientation, plus a list of conditions for each
    Far Lands uses Health, Supplies, Morale, and Orientation as the resources. Though I’m actually in the process of playtesting a change to simplify this system down to a single track!

    This system has served me well in deciding when it’s time to head home from an event- am I out of gas, out of steam, or out of battery? The way I recover from those is very different! Out of gas I can stretch, drink water, eat some food. Out of battery I can step outside and get a moment of quiet. Check in with myself, do some solitary activity until I feel centered enough to re-engage. Out of steam, though, is often the what signals the end of the night, or just means I need to shift to a new activity. Many times I’ve found myself tired and disengaged, out of steam, but found myself having a conversation with someone about one of my passions and suddenly be reinvigorated.

    The only way this works is to check in with myself, to determine which I’m feeling and know how to respond. Like the spoon theory, I have a different amount of gas, steam, and battery each day, and different activities take a different amount of each, and like spoons sometimes they can be easier or harder to recharge.

    Expanding the theory

    I’ve been reading Structuring Life to Support Creativity, by Sandra Tayler, which has a lot of amazing advice and journaling exercises for creative folks. Some of those, I have found instantly useful. After taking some time to identify my priorities, personal values, and the core pillars of my life, one of the exercises had me list tasks and rank their cost on five categories: Willpower, decision fatigue, tracking, emotional burden/guilt, and anxiety. Another had me categorize tasks that refilled my creative energy or drained my creative energy.

    It’s always the case that some days leave you feeling more drained than others in energy, focus, creative juice, and passion. And some days might be draining in different ways. A day full of stressful news might leave me emotionally exhausted. A day of meetings might leave me socially exhausted. A day of solving complex technical puzzles might drain my creative energy.

    This system struck me as really similar to my Gas, Steam, and Battery theory, but it has a few more categories. I don’t have clever metaphors for those resources though. I’m going to have to keep thinking about how to poetically categorize the different types of mental energy that those represent!

    Refilling the well with intentional rest

    Putting the pieces above together, moving forward I want to build in for myself periods of intentional rest. I mentioned above that it was hard to enjoy things because I felt like I was falling behind on my goal. But in the same way, it was hard to rest and refill my creative well, my spoons, my battery, my steam, because I felt a degree of guilt and/or shame that I was leaving some work un-done.

    So instead, I’m making an alternate “win condition” for my daily goal. Either make progress, or intentionally rest. And some days are going to be set aside for one or the other, based on what I feel I need. One day I might decide to do more because I’m energized to work, but one day I might designate as a rest day because I’m feeling burned out.

    But what is intentional rest?

    Intentional rest is distinguished from unintentional rest. Which is to say, not accidental, and with a set intention. It’s different from just taking a break, because while that can give a needed respite from an intense or boring activity, it can often lead you to activities that don’t really recharge you. And often these breaks can feel like a failure, like something shameful. But with intentional rest, you are setting yourself up for success, because it has a goal.

    Imagine dedicating yourself fully to rest. Lower the lights. Put on comfy clothes. Get warm. Make your favorite tea. Settle down with a book or a show. Whatever you do may be mindful or mindless- whatever works best for you to refill. But the important thing is to acknowledge that this will help you achieve your other goals. This rest isn’t an embarrassing failure, it isn’t something you’re forced into by running yourself ragged, and it isn’t a shameful indulgence. It is strategic and necessary (to quote Everything Everywhere All at Once).

    Self care, as I have been trying to internalize for quite some time, isn’t selfish when it helps prepare you to care for others and fulfill your other responsibilities.

    Customize your rest

    Eating well, sleeping well, chatting with friends, whatever mindfulness practice you care to implement, different activities recharge different types of energy. And you can build your rest time with that in mind. Consider for yourself which activities cost you the most of your different types of energy, and which activities replenish different types of energy.

    A lot of activities will have a cost in one type of energy but replenish a different type! Hanging out with friends costs me social energy, but replenishes my creative energy, but writing is the opposite! I run low on creative energy… but get excited to talk about what I’m writing, so those activities complement one another perfectly!

    As a result, your personal intentional rest may not look like rest to an outside observer. For example, I find intense puzzle games very restful, despite requiring a lot of mental energy and focus. But because the stakes are low, it recharges me emotionally to deal with anxiety and difficult decisions. Running costs me physical energy but recharges my focus. Doing chores diffuses anxious jitters but costs me some willpower to get started.

    What does your rest look like? How do you recharge different types of energy?

    Next month, I hope to report back with the approximate final page count of Far Lands, but currently it’s just over 100! That’s about half the length of Masks: A New Generation. I’m interested to see how much that changes as I go through the next stages!

  • Far Lands update: Overcoming perfectionism

    Late last year, I set myself the goal of finishing the first draft layout for Far Lands by the end of 2026. I have now realized that I was very,very over-cautious with my timeline!

    So far, I’ve completed what I expected to be five months of work in one month. I’m almost halfway done getting all the text from the manuscript laid out and looking good on the page. And I’ve learned so much from the process! There’s a lot I could talk about when it comes to layout, writing, and game design that I’ve discovered from working in this form factor. But the biggest difference in my day-to-day life has come from what I’ve learned about overcoming perfectionism.

    I won’t pretend this is will be applicable to everyone, or even anyone other than me! This is as much to keep myself accountable and to record what I’m learning for myself as it is for anything else. But if any of this resonates with anyone, I’ll consider that a wild success.

    Perfectionism is the real enemy

    Starting out, I had a lot of fear that I wasn’t going to be able to live up to my own expectations- that I wouldn’t be able to get it looking how I imagined in my head, that I would burn myself out trying to get it done and lose my excitement for the project, that it would prove impossible to translate onto the form factor I wanted. And this fear was stopping me from even starting, making it feel insurmountable to even think about getting started.

    This is, it turns out, textbook perfectionism.

    The cycle of perfectionism, showing how unrealistic goals for onself leads to anxiety and fear of failure, avoidance, then failure, and committing to do even more.
    Found this with a quick image search, since blog posts with images every now and then do better apparently. source

    I didn’t even realize that this was perfectionism at all. It masqueraded itself as a genuine feeling that I didn’t know how to do this. But at the same time, I couldn’t bear to not be able to get it done.

    So… how did I get here?

    A page titled "Explorers" with two columns of text describing the characters for Far Lands. It is decorated with art of maple seeds, and an insert box with rules for solo expeditions.
    The introduction page for the Explorers chapter of Far lands

    Step Zero

    Doing some research, it seemed like one of the ways to break the nasty cycle of perfectionism was to change how I set goals.

    For most of my life I held a great degree of skepticism for goal-setting. It seemed so easy to set a goal and so impossible to follow through. Goals seemed to just be a guaranteed source of shame and guilt looking back later. Everything I wanted to accomplish just seemed impossible. How would I even begin? What do I do when I get stuck?

    So I’d given up on setting goals and would just… wing it. And a lot of the time that worked! But over time this method required more and more external support and I just kept getting stuck and burned out not knowing what to do all the time.

    When I was approaching a big part of the project and didn’t know what to do, I would freeze- paralyzed because I didn’t know the next step. It turns out this comes from perfectionism. I felt like I couldn’t start until I know what I’m doing. Because I might mess it up. And thinking about this is when I unlocked the first part of the problem.

    My process didn’t account for step zero

    Step zero: Figure out what step one is

    This idea came from the concept of “Session Zero” in running an RPG campaign, and it’s exactly the same idea. Before starting to do any work, spend some time dedicated to figuring out what work needs to happen first. Set expectations, outline the bounds of the work, choose tools, and so on.

    This is now the first thing I do for every project. It feels obvious in hindsight, but before this some part of me always expected that I’d be able to sit down and intuitively know what needed to happen without planning because… sometimes I could do that, especially in the school system growing up when the steps are often much more clearly spelled out. But that was an unreasonable expectation for myself.

    But…

    I started using step zero. And it worked! At first, this made it easier to get started, but I still struggled to follow through. I would sit down, try to break off a piece, and then do that piece immediately. But it was so, so hard to see how that piece contributed to the final goal. The monolith still seemed infinite and impenetrable!

    A sample explorer, Twine, showing their playbooks, description, and art
    One of the first spreads I laid out because I expected it would be one of the hardest

    The monolith is made of bricks

    So how do you go beyond just the first step?

    My day job has been extolling the virtues of SMART goals for long enough that some of that sank in. I finally realized the problem: My goals were too big, and much too vague. I had no idea how to start doing layout for Far Lands, or any project of that size, because there’s no way to complete a big project in a single step. I need to break it down, and the pieces need to be small. Way smaller than I thought. And just one step at a time isn’t enough.

    This dovetails with something else I learned about myself recently. Some tasks are “derailing,” others aren’t. A derailing task comes with opportunities to veer off onto something that seems more urgent… which means the original task will rarely get finished. Tasks like checking email or making a to-do list ballooned out of proportion because they came with all the spin-off tasks they spawned. And breaking down a large project was no different. This is why I only ever got as far as breaking off the first piece before I started trying to work on the project!

    A train bursting out of the back of a train station and falling down onto the street below
    Me when I get an email

    But if I go into a derailing task with the intention of just writing down all the little tasks, rather than jumping in to doing them right away, it suddenly becomes possible to complete the whole task.

    So this time, I tried something different. I broke down the whole thing in one sitting instead of one piece at a time.Without any intention to actually do any of those pieces immediately.

    Make a plan without trying to act on it immediately

    This totally changed how I’ve been approaching my projects. When I finish a task, I know exactly what needs to happen next. Of course the plan changes over time, but there’s plenty of room for that. It’s completely different from how I’ve worked in the past and it’s unbelievably refreshing.

    The weather page for Far Lands, describing how the weather pile works and what storms do
    One of the most recent pages I laid out.

    But how can you completely plan out a project without knowing what unexpected hurdles you’ll run into? Well… you can’t. But there are no consequences (in this case) for false starts and experiments. In fact, it will actually help refine the final product by allowing you to explore the space of what’s possible and learn tools and skills. Starting out with some low-stakes exploration helps refine the plan as you go.

    Failure is actually part of learning. Who knew?

    It feels obvious, but I feel like it’s finally sunk in for me that it’s ok for the first draft to be rough. In fact, it’s better that the first draft is rough because it’s going to need polishing anyway!

    So I had my milestones, but how do I go about accomplishing them?

    The bricks are made out of atoms

    My secret so far has been to weaponize the same perfectionism that prevented me from getting started. Using an app for tracking habits, I made a daily task to “do a bit of layout.” My requirement is very, very small on purpose. Literally any small amount, even a single word, will let me check it off the list. But it bugs me if it’s left incomplete at the end of the day. I hate it.

    And that’s something I want to be careful of. I don’t want to slip into feeling guilt or shame if I can’t keep it up every day I never want to feel like I’m falling behind some imaginary standard I set for myself. But as a weapon against avoidance, it’s worked. There must be a balance to strike, but if there is I’m still in the early stages of finding it.

    Weaponize perfectionism against itself (carefully)

    Activation Energy

    There’s one more trick to this method. So often what stops me from doing something I want to do is just resistance to getting started. Gathering the activation energy required for task initiation. But committing to doing the minimum amount of work gets me to open the document. But often just opening the document is the biggest hurdle. Once that document is open, it’s easy to do just a bit of work.

    And that’s enough. The very minimum is enough to check it off the list, and with that win comes the motivation. Once I’ve done a bit of work and had that first win, it’s easy to keep going because I remember that it’s fun. Or, when it’s not fun, I remember that it’s progress towards a long-term goal, which is at least satisfying. But it’s that tiny atom of a goal that gets the whole thing going. It primes the pump and gets the metaphorical creative juices flowing.

    Prime the pump with an easy win

    So what’s next?

    It finally feels like this is something I can make real. And more than that, I feel capable of accomplishing that myself. And I’m way ahead of schedule! So where does that leave me?

    For one thing, I’m not going to adjust the timeline. I’m going to keep checking things off the list as I get them done. Leaving myself a lot of time to work means I can account for changes in circumstances later. For one thing, I’ll be doing some travel in a few months that will affect my schedule. For another… it feels really good to be so ahead!

    But the more practical consideration is that realistically speaking, none of the individual chapters of the book are actually done done. This method has helped me to leave the rough draft rough on the first pass. So once I finish putting everything on the page, that’s only the beginning.

    There’s a lot more to be done. And I can’t wait.

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  • Far Lands Layout: Timeline, sample pages, & Lessons Learned

    As we’re going into the new year, I’ve been thinking about resolutions. After a while of putting it off to work on other parts, over the last month, I’ve built up a good amount of momentum on layout for Far Lands!

    I was nervous about doing layout myself- it’s a part of the process I’ve never done before, but after getting some practice with Affinity via the TTRPG Bookmark Jam and getting accepted to run the game at a local convention in my area, I decided to make it my resolution for next year to get the book laid out. I have a clear idea of visual style and I’ve gathered most of the assets and art I need. Now I just need to do the work!

    To make the plan loose enough to adjust to unexpected life changes, I broke the book down into sections and distributed them by month. You can see I’m already ahead, which is great, though I don’t expect to stay that way. I gave more time than I thought I’d need to a lot of sections but I expect some sections will take a lot more time than others. By keeping myself accountable to get just a rough draft done each month, I hope to keep up the momentum I’m feeling right now without burning myself out.

    Timeline

    December 2025
    Role sheets (Done!)
    Sample explorers (Done!)

    January 2026
    Party sheet (Done!)
    Order of Play handout (In progress)
    Quick reference tables

    February
    Character creation

    March
    The Team
    Getting Started

    April
    Exploring the world: Intro
    Weather
    Prologue scene

    May
    Exploration Scene
    Near table

    June
    Discovery scene
    Start challenge scene

    July
    Finish challenge scene
    Look Ahead
    Far table

    August
    Camping Scene
    Memories and Connections table
    Epilogue scene

    September
    Scenario template
    Advanced setup

    October
    All scenarios

    November
    Journal entries
    – Captain’s Log
    – Fort Serendipity
    – The Forge
    – Spider-goats

    December
    Intro
    Sample of play
    Appendix

    Sample pages

    Check out what I’ve got so far for my sample explorers pages! This is pretty rough- I’m planning to rewrite the descriptions to fit the space better and I need to substitute in the new and improved role sheets. Featuring art by the amazing Tallulah Cunningham!

    A spread of two sample explorers, Twine and Wren, featuring art. Twine is a stick-person, made of lashed together wood. Wren is a smaller man in warm clothes carrying a collapsible glider on his back with a bat companion flying over his head.

    Speaking of the new-and-improved role sheets, here are a few samples of what those look like now, featuring a few assets by Alderdoodle! I still need to do a playtest with these to see how they feel in play (I almost certainly need more space to answer the character prompts) but they already feel so much nicer than the old ashcan version.

    A spread of two role sheets for the Artist and the Cook, featuring their expertise and the types of discoveries they can make

    I’ll try to keep posting updates as I go- at least monthly as I check off various sections

    What I’ve learned

    Affinity is awesome

    It turns out Affinity is a fantastic tool for what I want to do. The “Master Pages” feature makes it so easy to create a template for a certain type of page (such as a character sheet) and apply changes to all of them at once! But I’ve also learned that tables in Affinity are… wonky. In some cases it may be easier to just line up the boxes manually, and the vertical / horizontal align tools are so, so useful now that I’ve actually found where those live.

    Lower the stakes at the start to build momentum

    But most importantly, I’ve learned a big lesson about perfectionism. I was genuinely afraid to get started on this part of the project because I worried I wasn’t going to be able to make it look as good as I imagined, but also afraid to let go of control of it and spend the money to hire someone to do it. I’ve seen time and time again the mantra “First make it exist, make it good later,” and that’s a lot easier to say than to internalize. But what really helped me was to lower the stakes.

    Instead of jumping right into the deep end learning the basics of the tools with Far Lands, I joined a game jam I knew I could knock something out for relatively quickly. Something with a deadline, that I didn’t have the same huge level of emotional attachment to. That way, I could feel safe to make mistakes without feeling the emotional burden of failing to live up to my high expectations for myself. And by doing that, I and discovered it wasn’t that hard to create something that looks how I imagine. And making mistakes on the first pass turns out to not really have consequences because I can keep revising it later. All this and reminding myself of the excitement I get from taking an idea and making it real has made it so, so much easier to take the next step. And I’m so excited to see what’s next.