27.10-03.11.2021 The *Work* and the Siege

27.10.2021

I’ve begun typing and laying out the dungeon in affinity publisher. I’ve opted for a VERY simple design scheme for now, mostly just to focus on the writing and come back to change any fonts or add design elements.

When writing out the individual rooms and areas I’m trying to be as concise as I can: two sentences for the player’s description and 2-3 sentences for additional notes/details. After that there are bullet-points for things to do, treasure to be found, and dangers present. The point of the writing style is to convey as much information as quickly as possible in an order of surface level details to details that require exploration.

The “Dungeon Flow” format I wrote about actually works the same as here, albeit in a much smaller scale. The Welcome: introductory sentence and description that hints to the challenges, the Challenges: dangers, puzzles or mysteries to be overcome, the Secrets: small details or rewards, and the Vault: possible treasures for overcoming challenges.

28.10.2021

Been blasting through rooms. Trying to remember to do these journal entries for posterity and record keeping.

I’ve mathed it out that if I finish an “Area” a day (usually 5-10 rooms), I’ll have a rough draft done in about 18 days. Now, that’s NOT including plans and days off which I usually take, but who knows.

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Anyway, typed up 6 rooms today, a full area. I’ll probably show off a rough layout at some point in the next couple of dev journals. I definitely hit the “nose to the grindstone” part of this project with all this damn typing.

I wonder how much technical writing pays and how hard that would be to get into?

29.10.2021

It’s the eve of Halloween (kinda) and I’m going clubbing tonight so I’ll keep this brief.

Typed up 7 rooms for the Livestock hall, completing the area. So far I’m on track with finishing an area a day.

Also typed up my first magic item for the mega-dungeon, an item that removes the need to breathe. I’m definitely opting for items that function as tools rather than items that just give bonuses or higher numbers.

I prefer games about players being clever than exploiting some arcane math system. As well, BECAUSE this is a mega-dungeon and operates a full campaign location I want the items to be useful within the context of this dungeon. In the case of the “no-breath” item, there are several places filled with gas, flooded with water, or lack oxygen; challenges that are made easier with this particular item.

03.11.21

November approaches and apparently I am sick. I was on track to doing an area a day (tried to finish the Storage Hall today), but through a combination of illness and exhaustion I’m having trouble keeping up with that this week. So it goes.

Its a bit late, and the nyquil is kicking in, so if you will indulge me, I’m going to philosophize about work for a bit and how I try to keep up with it.

The Work – Genuinely, I love what I do. However, it is work. While I prefer my work to be effortless and more a stream of consciousness, larger projects inevitably hit a wall where I cannot breeze through or flippantly create something. Instead, I have to build it piece by piece, carefully and with a touch of meticulousness. It becomes “work,” and “work” requires a specific approach.

The most straight-forward analogy to how I approach work is “sprint versus siege.” A “sprint” project is something smaller that can be charged through, keeping the momentum up the entire time; however, this also means that there will be a time to recover afterwards, a period to breathe and stretch after an intense show of effort. A “siege” cannot be easily charged through, keeping a high momentum the entire time cracks away at the psyche and for every second of high-intensity effort, it will take twice as long to recover. I’ve watched people I care quite deeply for burn out and be ground into fucking dust by deadlines, studios, or their own impetus; it is a fate I would not wish on any aspiring creator and something I avoid at all costs. You cannot sprint a siege, you have to take it bit by bit and catch your breaks when you can get them. It is less about seeing how fast you can get through the work and more about sustained and calculated efforts to complete what you can when you can. Minutes make, hours, hours make days, and inevitably a careful and sustained effort will bring the walls down. You will be weary, but you will have survived intact.

As a caveat: privilege unfortunately plays a factor into this philosophy. It’s easy to write about “taking your time” when sitting comfortably on a pile of cash and not so much when rent is due next week. Economic pressure is a violent and crushing impetus to desperately charge through a project and while I cannot offer much of a solution to that I can only offer the advice of take your breaks when you can get them, and if you can’t get them, steal them.