Is October really half over already? Holy crap!

Also, did I really forget to do a September update? That ain’t good. Let me bring everyone up to speed. As always, I’m gonna separate out the personal shit from the actual content plan so you can skip to what you, personally, care about.

The Personal

I did drop a bit of a bomb on my supporters in a very somber and frank Monthly Live Chat last month and I totally meant to provide a summary update to all you folks who read my work but aren’t able to financially support me or who don’t feel, right now, that I’m providing consistent enough quality content to deserve support. I totally get that. No hard feelings there. You ain’t wrong.

I’m still releasing content in fits and starts, letting things go for two weeks and then suddenly belting out 20,000 words in a week-and-a-half before the month ends. That’s ain’t exactly an easy content plan to keep up with. For you or me. I acknowledged, last month, that I’ve not handled my struggles in my life as well as well as I’d like to and that, that I have been dipping in and out of very serious depression, and that, for a variety of reasons, my long-term business plan is now completely shot to hell. So, I gave myself three months — until December 31 — to get shit back on course, have a solid business plan, and to hit certain benchmarks on that plan or else admit that TheAngryGM.com and Angry Games, Inc., have run their course and it’s time to pursue something else.

It might seem like I’m already way off track because things haven’t improved and that ultimatum is two-weeks closer, but — as I have to keep reminding myself — three months to fix things doesn’t mean you fix everything on day one and then have thirteen perfect weeks. The last two weeks, I’ve fixated more on my own physical and mental health. I’ve been exercising, working with a counselor, I’ve made some doctor’s appointments, and that kind of thing. The first step to getting back on course is fixing the ship itself. If the ship sinks, I ain’t going nowhere.

There have been a few setbacks and I’ve been forced to admit I let the ship break down a lot more than I realized, but I am still aiming in the right direction. Meanwhile, I have been working on content and have even brought one or two things out of mothball to see what’s doable before January and whether it’s enough to recover my sputtering company.

Now, that’s the vague summary because I don’t want to keep dwelling on this shit. If you’re a supporter and you listened to last month’s Live Chat recording, you know a lot more of the details. They don’t matter. What matters is I am making progress. And that’s the goal. Progress, not perfection.

Content Plan

With the month half over, you can expect a flurry of Features in the next 14 days. I’m aiming to release the first Feature this coming Friday, and then space releases out every couple of days thereafter. What am I working on? Well, it’s a lot of Scenario Design stuff this month. I’m starting with the example Design Statement I promised in True Scenario Design and that’ll lead into a more detailed discussion about planning macro-challenges and adventure and encounter outcomes. That detailed discussion will probably need several Features. It’s pretty much the biggest design-level problem True Scenario Designers have to solve.

As a one-off related to the True Scenario Design topics, I want to return to the topic of attrition-based design in D&D, how it relates to the game design concept of Inertia, and what True Scenario Designers can do with that in their designs. If they can get their giant-ass, egotistical heads out of the asses and stop sneering at attrition macrochallenges as beneath them.

On the True Campaign Managery front, I’m going to start the two-part discussion on handling character death and other, related issues.

I can’t give exact dates for everything. It’ll all release as I finish each Feature.

Live Chat and Slap Chat

Two things I can give exact dates for, though, are my Mostly Monthly Live Chat and an upcoming Slapchat. You might not know what a Slapchat is, but those who have access to it know, and they’ve been looking forward to it for a while.

Mostly Monthly Live Chat will be Wednesday, October 23 at 8:00 PM EDT. I’ll open a thread in the Discord server so you can propose topics or pose questions for me to address. It won’t be a bunch of depressing stuff about my life and failures. I promise.

I’ll also be hosting a Slapchat on Wednesday, October 30 at 8:00 PM EDT. I’ll be discussing how the Slapdash Design Statement has evolved — really, how it’s come into focus — and what I expect to deliver both players and Game Masters with Slapchat. I won’t be opening a Q&A thread as it will be a more structured discussion, but I’ll leave time for some on-topic interaction.

The Proofreader and the Readalouds

Lots of you have recognized that I’m struggling to right the ship and several of you have reached out with offers to help. Unfortunately, there’s really not much most of you can do to help me. I’ve got to fight these fights. But someone did find a way. Starting in November, I will have a Proofreader going over my shit so I don’t have to. And so, hopefully, fewer errors will slip through. It’s impossible for anyone to fully proofread their own work no matter how many passes they make.

You might be wondering what that’ll mean for the Proofreadalouds that some of you irrationally love. They won’t be going anywhere. I know if I stop offering audio readalouds of my text, I’ll have a torch-and-pitchfork mob storming the lobby here at the Angry Games corporate headquarters. They will just be less proofreadloud and more plain ole readaloud.

Of course, I will still be making occasional changes to the text and I will still be slipping, making fun of myself, laughing at my own jokes, and distracting myself with meandering asides. I ain’t gonna stop being me and I ain’t trying to become an actual podcaster or anything. I just won’t be correcting technical errors or formatting issues anymore.

The Angry Feed

Those of you with access to The Angry Discord Server may have noticed a new channel has appeared called The Angry Feed. It’s a non-interactive channel. Only I can post there. Kind of like the News and Announcements channel. Except, whereas the News channel lets you know when new posts go live, when scheduled events take place, and shit like that, The Angry Feed is just random social-media nonsense from my own head. It’s basically a TwiX — I will not call it X, but I can’t keep calling it Twitter — feed.

Apart from random observations, jokes, and glimpses behind the scenes of what I’m working on, I’ve made it point to provide updates from my exercise app and share my meal plans and shit. Apparently, there’s a non-zero number of you who actually wanted that and you told me so. I also intend — as December 31 keeps creeping closer — to use it as a way to be more accountable to my supporters. To let you all know what I’m working on and how I’m doing.

The Patreon Thing

In the chaos of the last month-and-a-half, I kind of forgot that I’ve got this looming deadline wherein I’ve got to flip some switches on Patreon to bring my support-structure in line with their new policies, especially as relates to the iOS Patreon app. I’ve already talked extensively about that so I ain’t gonna rehash it, but I did lose track of the fact that I’ve got some shit to adjust to, you know, not suddenly go out of business.

Apart from content creation, that’s obviously a really high priority. Once I’ve assessed the situation and made a final determination, I’ll announce how and if any of the changes will affect any of you. But, based on my preliminary look at the data, it doesn’t look like anything I do is going to impact anyone really heavily so I’m likely to just absorb the extra costs myself and not pass them along to the very small number of you who pledged support through the iOS App instead of on Patreon’s website.

Once again, if you didn’t specifically set yourself up to support me through the iOS Patreon app and aren’t paying as an in-app subscription processed by Apple, this shit doesn’t affect you at all. The other issues I have to deal with are all back-end issues that should be totally invisible to all of you.

And that’s it. That’s the update. Now, I’m going back to writing actual content. See you Friday with a new Feature.