This month has had some controlled chaos for me. I’ve been kept quite busy with big changes in my day job and technical issues with my laptop, but I’ve made a lot of progress on some important but tedious steps in the layout for Far Lands. But the most important news: on Thursday June 25th and Thursday July 2nd, I will be streaming Far Lands with Open the Gates Gaming on their twitch page.
Open the Gates is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making accessible content and tools for TTRPG players, facilitators, and designers. I was lucky enough to meet them at Pax East this year and they had some amazing input into how I can improve the accessibility of the Far Lands book.
The first session, on the 25th will feature discussion of the game and some of the worldbuilding steps, and the second on the 2nd will feature gameplay. I couldn’t be more excited to share the game with them and with the world!
Accessibility features
It’s thanks to the folks at Open the Gates gaming that I knew what to do once I was done putting all the text of the game onto the book pages. I want everyone who’s interested in bonding with friends on the trail, making discoveries, and witnessing the sublime to play Far Lands, and that includes people who don’t experience the book in the same way I do.
It’s been important to me from the start that the book be both readable front-to-back and usable as a reference manual during games. For a long time I struggled to know how exactly to strike that balance. But it turns out, a lot of the same features that help people with different accessibility needs than myself will also make the book better for everyone.
First page of the Table of Contents for Far Lands, showing the introduction, game setup, and a selection of scenarios
Navigation features
As of this month, I now have a table of contents, and index with clickable links. I have a glossary of terms, and clickable page cross-references. It’s not perfect, but it exists, and that’s all that’s needed for this stage.
I’m currently working on adding a mini-table-of-contents to each section that summarizes and provides links to each of the sub-topics of the chapter. I’ve also added mini versions of some tables when they’re referenced in multiple places in the book, so that you don’t have to flip from one place to another as much.
Readable fonts
I’ve downloaded a few fonts designed for readability: Atkinson Hyperlegible and Lexend are my favorites. These fonts were designed through study and experiments of what makes text more or less readable by a diverse range of individuals. And the result is fonts that honestly also just look good to my eyes. While I’m not using these fonts everywhere in the book, having these available will help me make sure the text is as readable as possible.
Alt Text
For next steps, I will go through and add alt text to all of the art and images in the book. When I spoke with the folks from Open the Gates gaming, I learned that alt text for images can be more than just a literal description of what appears in the image- it should ideally serve the same purpose that the image does for a reader / listener. If the purpose of the image is to convey a feeling, the alt text can be written to accomplish the same!
“Bare Bones” / “Ashcan” edition
Finally, taking a cue from MÖRK BORG, I’ll be releasing a version of the book with a significant amount of graphic elements stripped out. While it’s not as strictly necessary as for MÖRK BORG, a game known for its bombastic and overwhelming visual style, it lets me accomplish a few things at once:
A minimalistic, high-contrast version of the game for folks with visual impairments or who use screen readers and don’t want to deal with alt text or funky page formatting
A stripped-down but fully functional version of the game I can use as a freebie for folks who want to try before they buy or can’t afford the full game (and don’t want to take advantage of community copies)
A quick, lightweight reference document with a smaller file size
This will also be a benefit I can provide to backers of an eventual crowdfunding campaign quickly after funding, as it will be easier to put together than the fully-featured version! It will still feature all the navigation features I described above, but the art and graphic design will be dramatically stripped down.
What’s next?
Over the next month, I plan to continue filling in holes as I find them and polishing up the accessibility of the game. I also have a few variations and minor tweaks to the rules to playtest, so expect some exciting updates as these pieces all come together!
I hit some huge milestones this month and have some amazing stuff to share!
Layout first pass is done!
Every bit of text I had written for the book is now laid out! For the first time, I have an approximate page count at 132 pages. I expect that number to change as I create the index, finalize the appendix, and add in the final art pieces.
As I approached the end, getting through the final section was tough. Even knowing I was approaching the finish line, it was difficult to press on because i had saved the work I was least excited about for last. When I finished the last page, I expected to know right away that I was done, but it was hard to convince myself that I hadn’t forgotten something! I went back through the book and discovered that I was, in fact done.
It feels amazing to have hit such a large milestone so far ahead of what I had anticipated. So now I’m planning out my next steps.
What’s next?
For now, I’m taking a short break. Nothing too long, just enough to refill the well. I’ve been inspired on a board game project and wanted to practice making and playtesting with paper prototypes, a skill which is very relevant for all my game design!
But for Far Lands, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Polish: My first pass was rough in places, and it’s going to need a fair amount of polish. Text and page element alignment, style consistency, spot art, copy editing, and filling in a few blanks I left. You can see a few rough spots here:
Final testing: I am planning on playtesting some variants and tweaks to streamline the rules and terminology slightly. Now that the rules are all laid out visually, it’s easier to see that some of the terms I use are clunky, or ideas that could be explained more concisely.
Sensitivity reading: In the near future, I hope to contract a sensitivity reader to look over a few specific passages as well, as I want to make sure to communicate clearly and compassionately about the real-world history of imperialism, colonialism, and exploitation of indigenous peoples by historical “explorers.”
But in addition to this polish work, I have a few exciting events to talk about!
Upcoming live stream!
In late may, I’m going to be streaming a Far Lands demo with Open the Gates Gaming on their twitch channel. I met them at Pax East late last month at an accessibility office hours event they hosted and they had a lot of amazing advice I am excited to put into practice. Expect more details as the date approaches!
First convention demo
I facilitated a game of Far Lands at Somercon over the weekend! It was my first time running a convention game, and the nerves were intense, but I could not be happier with how it went!
The players created an archipelago of islands caught in a time loop. They scaled the crystalline cliffs of the island they believed to be the source of the loop, were lured into losing time relaxing a hot spring cavern, and finally found and slew the Time Worm that was slowly devouring the world.
During the journey, the chronomancer Solomon used up the last of his time to hold the sands of time still for long enough for the team to reach the mysterious cabin where it all began. The soothsayer Athyar finally understood the lesson that Solomon had been trying to teach him- that there’s more to life than always preparing for the future. The vanguard Brigg finally forgave himself for Solomon’s death in a past iteration of the time loop, an event that Solomon had long since forgiven him for. And Brigg and the automaton he crafted, Tau, finally came to see one another as father and son.
The narrative arcs these players crafted really made me fall in love with Far Lands all over again. My goal has been to make a games that allow people to tell the kind of stories I love, and I think I’ve made something really great.
I did learn a lot about running convention games though! There are a lot of little things to tweak about how I get set up and how I facilitate the game when under a tight time constraint. But I couldn’t be more excited for next time.
I didn’t make nearly as much progress this month as I did for my previous updates (December, January and February), but that’s because I was occupied with the two things that inspired the game most: Travel and conventions. Specifically, I spent two weeks in New Zealand, and then attended Pax East!
As I write this now, I’m exhausted, but at the same time my mind is buzzing with ideas and motivation. But as I talked about last month, I have to let myself rest, too. This month has been a whirlwind, but it’s done so much to refill my creative well.
So I want to take this chance to talk a bit about the specific trip that inspired Far Lands in the first place.
Olympics National Park, 2021
Five years ago, I went to visit Olympics National Park, to the northwest of Seattle. The park is home to three very intensely varied landscapes: the rugged coastline, featuring beautiful jagged rock formations; one of the only temperate rain forests in the world; and spectacular mountainous alpine forests with meadows of wildflowers.
It was hiking up Hurricane Ridge when the idea first struck me. I was talking with my brother about diceless games.
“In a diceless game,” I remember saying, “The source of randomization for each player is the other players. You never know what they’re going to say. Like in a game of Microscope, you have to adapt to the other players ideas on the fly.”
“But I feel like you need some direction,” my brother said (Paraphrasing significantly- I don’t remember exactly who said what). “If you’re just dropped in without guidance, it can be really hard to come up with good ideas on the spot.”
(you may recognize this idea from my post about white space in game design)
“Yeah, I think that’s what random tables are good for,” I said after some thought. “One of my favorite things in worldbuilding games like Microscope and The Quiet Year is justifying stuff that seems contradictory. It’s what I love about random tables too, especially when you combine multiple elements and explain how they fit together.”
(This idea would eventually become the core of the way regions are created in Far Lands!)
The Distance
As we continued to hike, I mulled over that idea and looked out over this view:
I remember distinctly the feeling I had. I looked down into the valleys and wondered: what’s hidden by those trees? What would it be like to wander through that forest? I realized that, in theory, I could go find out. But the splendor of the view put into me that feeling of the sublime, that combination of awe and terror of the power and beauty of nature.
The snow-capped mountains across the valley seemed so large as to be unreal. They dominated the skyline, their presence a physical weight on my mind, as if their mass exerted its gravity on me across that distance. What would the world look like from their peak, I wondered. What would I see on the other side?
And for a moment I felt as if I was looking in a mirror. If I were to stand on that mountain peak and looked in just the right direction, I would see the very spot I was standing on now.
And as I imagined looking back at myself from that mountaintop, exhausted from the climb, I realized I would feel the same awe and curiosity about the land I was traveling through now. Everything around me would blend together from afar into one landscape, and the same drive I feel to climb that mountain would push me to explore here.
That thought spurred me to look closer at the landscape immediately around me, and what I saw was nothing I had expected.
The Details
This trip happened to coincide with 2021 Western North America heat wave (a horrifying and tragic extreme weather event precipitated by climate change). At the time when we were hiking up hurricane ridge, it was 80 degrees. We were hiking in shorts and t-shirts or even tank tops, and sweating profusely in the heat and sun.
And yet… there was snow on the ground.
The temperature gradient between our heads and our feet was unreal- I could feel the cold in the air up to the level of my shins. One clever hiker scooped up fistfuls of snow in a shirt, tied up the ends, and hung it around his neck to slowly melt and cool him off. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced then or since.
And with the heat wave came an unseasonably early bloom of the wildflowers on the mountain.
And we encountered a black-tailed deer quite closely!
A Discovery… and a challenge
As we hiked through the snow, our feed freezing and our heads sweating, we noticed something that made us worry:
We had heard rumors setting out that one or more mountain lions (cougars) had been spotted in the area. I would learn years later that only a few weeks after our visit, a hiker was attacked and badly injured by a hiker on that very trail. I don’t believe we were ever in any danger, traveling in a group as we were. The threat felt real in that moment, but it was also exciting to know that there was so much more going on in that place that I couldn’t see, revealed only by hints and clues.
The next day
The rest of the trip was just as incredible. I’ll gloss over the details, but the temperate rain forest felt utterly surreal and alien to me, and we encountered countless surprising moments that caused me to re-evaluate the world around me. A stray beam of sunlight illuminating a duckling. A waterfall producing a double-rainbow as it cascades into a crevasse, utterly invisible until you’re right upon it. A row of cairns built on the beach where they would be swept away by the incoming tide.
I came back from this trip with a large part of the game already formed in my head: a GMless game about building a map first by what you see in the distance, and then by what you discover when you actually set foot there. I wanted a game that let you wonder what will I find there, and then go find out. And I wanted a game where you could talk with your companions along the way and learn more about eachother as you discover the world around you. That’s what Far Lands is to me.
And as we approach the five year anniversary of starting to work on this game, it’s nearing completion- at least of the first draft of the layout!
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
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.
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 ofguilt 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!
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.
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?
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 forstep 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!
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!
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.
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.
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!)
January2026 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.
