Howdy!
what's new
So this issue's a bit different, because there's actual news to share rather than "hard at work in the back room."
A few weeks back I posted online a wee review video of The Chaos and honestly didn't think much of it. There's a fair chance you saw it and that's how you found the game. It's now closing in on 29k views. Timing was terrible though, in the best way. It went up while I was on holiday, and I came back to a backlog of orders that sold out the first print run before I'd even properly caught my breath. We're now on the second run of the game, which has blown me away given that the rules are free on the site!
Also managed to pick up a decent review from Geek Native, which basically summed up part of why the game seems to be clicking, noting that the system eschews sprawling manuals in favour of a single, tarot-sized deck, and honestly, that's the whole idea in a sentence.
I want to be clear about something though. None of that happens without the folk who playtested this thing when it was rougher round the edges, caught the bits that didn't work, and stuck with it while I figured out what The Chaos actually wanted to be. A lot of you reading this are those people. So genuinely, thank you. This is as much your milestone as it is mine.
Apologies also to those of you who ordered the game while I was offski. I've processed hundreds of orders on my return, so hopefully your game will be with you soonly. Thanks for your patience!
what's next?
Right, with that bit of noise out the way, here's where things are actually headed.
Patreon's getting a proper expansion. The exclusive roll generators (Hireling Broker, Town Event Table, Faction Rumble, Ambush Setter, and a few others) are already live for patrons, and I'm adding to that list along with the hundreds of maps I'm pulling over from the original Patreon. If you've not poked around Patreon yet, that's where the deeper toolset for the game will live. You can find that here.
Scraps of the Chaos is the next big piece. Two-page adventures, ready to drop-in and run for each location in The Realm, built the same chaotic way as everything else. So far there's Them Bleedin' Woods, Breakin' The Tide, and Stone Cold Sleepin'. More are on their way, as ideally I'd like numerous adventures for each location, and over time I'll be looking for your own one- or two-page adventures to use for the game!
The plan, same as it's always been, is to keep building out The Realm in small, usable chunks rather than one big slab you have to wade through. Patreon's where that work happens first.
There's so much more on its way but I'll leave it there for now - after processing all those orders in the midst of pretty sizeable jetlag, I'm off for some rest!
throwing your OSR creations into the wild
With The Chaos out there in the multiverse, I've been asked a few times some version of the same question. How did you actually do it? In other words, the doing, rather than the mechanics. The part where an idea in your head becomes a deck of cards or a game in a stranger's hands.
So here's the honest version. I don't think there's one way to do it, but I'll give you a bit of here's what it actually felt like, in case you're sitting on a design of your own and are wondering if it's worth pushing out the door.
the idea's the easy part
Everyone's got a house-ruled version of something. A weird little system scrawled in a notebook that only ever gets used at your regular table. That's not the hard bit. The hard bit's deciding that the thing in your notebook deserves to exist outside your notebook.
For The Chaos, that meant asking what the game actually wanted to be, rather than what I assumed a fantasy TTRPG had to look like and what people might fancy. I needed to think about how it might be different to other games. So ultimately, no d20s. No sprawling manual. Just a deck of cards and some d6s, because that's what felt right for the kind of quick, chaotic, drop-in-drop-out play I actually wanted at my own table. Once I stopped trying to make it look like other games, it got a lot easier to make it look like itself.
playtesting will humble you, and that's the point
I'll be straight with you, some of the mechanics I was proudest of in the early drafts didn't survive contact with an actual table. Turns out the thing that's elegant on paper isn't always the thing that's fun when someone's rolling dice and waiting on you to explain it for the third time.
The playtesters are the reason The Chaos works as well as it does now. Not because they were kind about it, they weren't always, but because they told me when something dragged, when a rule needed three read-throughs to understand, when a mechanic sounded cool but just added friction. If you're designing something and everyone who's played it only ever tells you it's great, you don't have enough playtesters yet. You want the ones who'll tell you the arcane weavin' rules just dumbfounded them, or that a session ran too long because of the laborious watch roll tables.
launching is genuinely terrifying, and you do it anyway
As I mentioned above, that video review ended up leading to a mountain of orders and a sold-out print run. That's not a brag, it's more that I want to be honest about how little control you actually have once a thing is out there in the wild. You can playtest for months and still have no idea how it'll land until strangers get their hands on it.
The bit that helped me push past the fear wasn't confidence that the game was ready. It was accepting that it would never feel fully ready, and that the alternative to launching an imperfect thing was never launching anything at all.
a few things I'd tell anyone sitting on their own design
Finish the ugly version first. A complete rough draft is worth more than a beautiful half-finished one. You can't playtest a game that only exists in your head.
Find playtesters who'll actually argue with you. Friends who like you are lovely, but they're not always useful here. Look for people who play a lot of OSR stuff and have opinions about it.
Cut before you add. Nearly everything I removed from The Chaos made it stronger. The instinct when a rule feels shaky is usually to patch it with another rule. Try just taking it out instead.
Let the community shape the game, but not steer it. Listen hard to what people struggle with. Be a lot more careful about changing things just because someone would prefer it done differently. Those are different signals.
Ship it before it's perfect. It won't be perfect. Mine still isn't. Ship it anyway, then keep building.
so, go on then
If you've got a system rattling around in a notebook, or half-built in a folder you keep meaning to get back to, that's further along than you think. The distance between "notebook" and "game in someone's hands" is mostly just deciding to close it.
Happy rollin', and if you do put something out, I'd love to hear about it.
thanks so much!
for your support & inspiration
Please share the game with all & sundry, spreading The Chaos into every dark corner its flickering torches haven't quite reached. My aim is for the game to grow like an invigorating fungus on the minds of the OSR community and beyond, and I can't thank you enough for being a part of this.
Meantime, if you've not yet joined The Realm discord, here's the link for that, and I look forward to seeing you there! Be sure to let me know any suggestions you have about what to include in the next issue, or about the game itself, and enjoy the rest of your day. :)
Best,
Scott
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