2018 has been the year of Loreshaper Games. It's been around for a few years now, but it only truly started this year, with the publication of games and our presence here on Steem being a major catalyst for our growth.

2018 in Review

This whole year has been the year of Hammercalled, in a sense, because it's been in such heavy development. It's grown a lot to achieve its own identity over the course of this year, and as much as I've been frustrated by constantly finding things I want to change that's also been good in its own way.

velotha's flock

In February we published velotha's flock, which was perhaps a hallmark example of having something that you can do that you shouldn't necessarily do, but I've always had fun running it (even if it's never gone as planned). There are a lot of things that I think it shows off really well; the players' abilities keep the action flowing really smoothly and there's a strong central conflict. However, it's also never really been finished; there was a player's guide that never got finished because I couldn't come up with enough good example characters and I don't really feel like the core rulebook got all the attention it deserved.

velotha's flock cover

I ran velotha's flock at the first con that I GM'ed at (and the second con I ever attended), and it went really well even with total strangers. Then again, perhaps part of being niche is that you wind up with people who really like what you do.

Personally as a developer, one of the things that I gained from velotha's flock is that I really went into symbols and discovered things there that encouraged me to build deeper games, and will be useful in future projects.

Steem

We came to Steem near the end of March. Since then we've made 314 posts, which is slightly over a post a day on average. I won't get into too much detail here, but I think the accountability of having this public blog in which I talk about what I'm doing is great to keep me on task, though it's important to note that not all of my crazy wild ideas that come out here make it into games in the end.

Hammercalled Quick-Start

Fast forward to June, and you have the Hammercalled Quick-Start. I think that this is really what perhaps best shows off my development as a game designer over the course of the year; I've grown a lot since then but it hasn't really found its way into published projects.

Hammercalled Quick-Start cover

I think that I perhaps released the Quick-Start too early, and it'll need some major revisions to get it back in line with the new Hammercalled ruleset, but those revisions should also make it a lot better. However, I'm still proud of it and think it stands out as perhaps my best work of the year in terms of showing off the skills I learned.

An Interlude

After doing the Hammercalled Quick-Start, I spent a lot of time working on a couple projects that didn't come to fruition: the Paradise Incident, which just didn't feel compelling enough in any of the forms I developed, and some Othenar/Unsung Gods stuff that just hasn't borne fruit yet.

This was most of the July-October time, though I'm going off of memory here and my memory is about as reliable as a broken watch. Day job stuff also kept me a little busier than I would like (yay for extra drama).

Waystation Deimos

Waystation Deimos came out in December, and it was a 48-hour game Sparked by the Resistance Toolkit (affiliate link) that also powered Spire, my Game of the Year.

Waystation Deimos cover

For a 48-hour game, I think it's really impressive. Looking back at the games I used to do for game jams, it's a definite evolution, and I think that it shows off what using a system can do. I made it primarily to stretch my legs let myself have some rest before finishing up Segira and to get more familiarity with adapting a system.

It's a sketch by necessity, but I'm proud of what it's a sketch of.

Segira: 1985

One of the bugbears of my game development style is starting, then not finishing, too many projects. Segira: 1985 is only a little older than Hammercalled as a concept, but it took me a long time to actually finish it.

Segira: 1985 cover

I'm happy with it, but as with any really large project it's sort of a bittersweet one; there were more things I would do, if there were no limitations in time and resources, and it's definitely suffered from having too many clashing visions over the year and a half it was being worked on. It's all pulled together well.

The Year Overall

Our games have been downloaded more than six-hundred times on DriveThruRPG, and December is responsible for more than 300 of those downloads! That's a great and tremendous amount of growth, especially since some of that is still coming from the release of Segira just a few days ago and I think that's going to continue to be a bump for a while into the new year.

I'm really happy with where we've come, and a lot of that comes back to the wonderful people here on Steem. I try to make sure to express my appreciation for you all as often as I can, because I've met some awesome people here and it's been such a pleasant place to hang out.

Community outreach and making Loreshaper Games known to the world is a pretty big part of what I've been doing that I feel has been paying dividends.

I'm not a master game designer, but I'm working on it, and part of that is having a community to give feedback to me and learn from.

Historically I've been really bad about keeping clear lines of communication on Twitter, our Discord server, and our official website, but I've been better about it recently.

Resolutions for 2019

Next year I hope to keep up my increased productivity that I've seen this year and combine it with greater skill and the work that I've gotten done this year. Hwaet and Genship Exiles should be finished before the summer, along with the new velotha's flock, and I think that'll be great for letting us focus on the Hammercalled system games (Othenar and Hammercalled) for the rest of the year.

If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's to make working on games part of my daily posts. That's not always possible with some of the things that go on, but having that added commentary preserved with the rules that I'm working on is a nice touch for me when I'm doing stuff later and I think that there's some interest in it being out there.

Also, increased production value should be a thing. I've had the pleasure of working with excellent freelancers, and the one I'm working with most closely on Genship Exiles is absolutely fantastic.

Ultimately, some of this depends on money. I'm not an artist, and I've been outsourcing for artists from day-job money. As a hobbyist, that's fine. I enjoy making games, and I'm willing to consider it an investment in the future (or, at least, a contribution to my own personal legacy, which is something I'm oddly head-strong about). However, how much I can invest will ultimately depend on how much I can make, and I can't guarantee that I'll have overhead to spend on making games in the future.

Here are my three resolutions for next year:

1. Work on at least a section of rules from a game every day. Even if it's just a sketch of a random piece of a game that will never be finished, write it down and post it.
2. Build our community Discord server and Twitter presence.
3. Publish a quality product at least three times. Hwaet, Genship Exiles, and the velotha's flock remaster are expected to fill this role; I'm not sure when Othenar or other full Hammercalled mainstream products will be ready.