Things That I Wish Someone Told Me

When I Was New

Dear Reader,

This is a platonic love letter from me to you, courtesy of the Game

Design Essay Jam started by @LegendaryVermin on Twitter. You might be
new to TTRPG Twitter or TTRPG spaces as a whole; it is also possible that
you might be a veteran of this space for quite sometime. Whatever the case
may be, this document is going to try to encapsulate the things I wish
someone told me when I was brand-new to the space, what game design
means to me, and how to keep yourself from emotionally burning out as a
creative in late-stage capitalism.
Most of this information is stuff I’ve picked up along the way from my
peers, friends, and my own mistakes. A lot of mistakes. There’s not a single
place you can look on Twitter to get it neatly summed up for you, and my
experiences aren’t the end-all be-all. However, I’m going to do my best to try
and at least give some perspective so you can do your best to not get worn
down by an industry that has many sharp edges, many missing stairs, and the
daily discourse that appears to be an ephemeral yet consistent bad gas after a
large meal. (Well… more often than not, anyways. You sometimes get all
noise and no smell).

Please be advised: I have the following lived-in experiences; these

lived-in experiences (for better or for worse) have colored my perception on
things and I have privileges afforded to me that may not be afforded to other
creators. I am a bisexual, white, cis, femme in a heterosexual-coded marriage.
I have a day job that affords me the flexibility of engaging in TTRPGs in a
part-time, freelance capacity. I have also only been in the TTRPG space since
October 2018. These experiences are not in order of importance; they are
merely listed in the order that they came to me/what I was able to dredge up
from Twitter.

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I also want to take the time to mention that I may discuss the following
subjects with regards to my experiences only, and will do my best to not dive
into these subjects more than necessary. Please take care of yourself first and
foremost; most of these subjects are difficult.

Warmest wishes,

JessPak (@HealthPakStream on Twitter)

Content Warning:
Mike Mearls/Zak Smith, Wizards of the Coast, Critical Role, D&D, misogyny,
abuse, gaslighting, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, sanism,
mental health, slurs, stereotypes, grief, PTSD/CPTSD, sexual assault,
emotional abuse, emotional manipulation, power dynamics, power vacuums

1. Set Boundaries Early

Boundaries are important and healthy to have. I spent a lot of my time (up
until earlier this hell-hole year 2020) talking about the same few subjects and
getting upset every time something new-yet-not-new cropped up as the
discourse du jour, and not understanding why we continued to have the same
conversations around the same 4 subjects instead of learning from folks who
were most harmed by the situation and subsequently, creating a space to do
better.

2. Imposter Syndrome Happens and You Are Not Your Peers’ Output

You will have times where you feel that you do not belong in the space. You
may have some less than ideal interactions with people. It’s okay and normal
to have negative emotions; it’s okay to not be as productive as your peers.
You are valuable, regardless of how much or how little you produce as a
creator. You are more than the sum of your craft, always. Measuring your
output to your peers’ output is unfair to yourself. I know that it’s harder to
keep that in mind for yourself than it is for your friends – but you have worth
regardless of output. No ifs, ands, or buts.

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3. Toxic Positivity Is The Worst, Actually; You Should Always Curate
Your Space

It’s okay to have negative emotions, and it’s okay to take the time to process
them. You don’t need to consistently be happy about everything. In my
humble opinion, positivity threads/say something nice about someone you
know threads end up being… not really as positive as they could be in the
end, mainly because it conditions us to judge the value of our worth by the
opinion of others.

As a person who has not been on a lot of them or added as a last-minute after
thought, it’s led to a lot of self-doubt and second-guessing why I stick around
the TTRPG space. It leads to a lot of questions about why I bother speaking
up about things I consider an issue in the space, why do I bother ineracting,
why why why until I fill the sky.

I know I’m not the only one who feels like that. I know this because I’ve seen
the same names on these threads and it really makes me wonder about the
level of thought that goes into the comments of those threads. They quickly
become a list of names with nothing of significance or meaning attached to
them.

I see only names. Twitter handles. And I don’t get to see the person behind
the handle.

If you’re the one that’s forgotten or intentionally left off the list, that fucking
sucks to see – but on the opposite spectrum, nobody is ever saying anything
of value about the people who end up being listed. Actually, self-correction
time: Rarely does someone say anything of value on those threads about the
people they list.

I would rather have one person say something substantial about me, about the
work I’ve done, the work I continue to do, their excitement to see what’s

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ahead from me, than to just be another name in a list of a bunch of other
names, or being forgotten altogether.

These threads are an element of toxic positivity and toxic positivity is a

problem in a lot of spaces, but especially in TTRPGs. There were many
reasons why I stopped participating in Follow Fridays (a hashtag on Twitter)
but this was chief among them:

Toxic positivity hurts everyone.

So I kindly ask that the next time you see one of these threads come up,
consider not commenting. Consider making a tweet thread instead lifting one
specific person up. Of course, assuming that you’ve done your due diligence
to the best of your abilities and curating your feed.

Because what a lot of people don’t see are the folx quietly commiserating that
they’ve been left out (whether it was intentionally/unintentionally) or
forgotten… Again.

I also want to take the time that if you, like me, have lifted folx individually
up in the past only to be burned by those folx – I see you. I’m in this boat,
too. Your pain, your frustration, and trepidation to do that again for others is
justified and valid. You do what is most comfortable for you.

4. Some Evils Are Unfortunately Necessary In This Capitalistic Hellscape

It seems really counter-productive and counter-intuitive to write this one

down, considering that I do my best to educate and conduct myself in a
manner where I do not go out of my way to intentionally hurt others, and do
my best to use my privileges as tools to help people who are more
marginalized than me. Publishing projects in TTRPG spaces comes with a lot
of difficult to navigate obstacles – like what sites to use, how to pay people,
how much you should pay people, etc. But this specific point is to address the
things that I’ve learned about the sites used in publishing content.

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From what I’ve seen, there are basically 2.5 big players when it comes to
publishing content. First, you have a company called OneBookShelf (known
as OBS from here on out). They are responsible for a site called Drive Thru
RPG (DTRPG) and the community program, DM’s Guild (for Wizards of the
Coast). OBS alone accounts for 1.5 ‘big players’ in the scene when it comes
to publishing 3rd party independent/licensed projects. The other site, itch.io,
tends to be more for indie creators and has a larger appeal (at the time of
writing this) indie video game developers and indie TTRPG designers
looking to publish games they made either by themselves or a very, very
small group of people.

OBS has a lot of faults (many, including but not limited to: rampant racism,
misogyny, homophobia, or the really unequal application of their rules
regarding content that is released on the Guild or DTRPG), but the one thing
that OBS has over itch.io is the fact OBS doesn’t currently have a competitor
(at the time of this writing and to the best of my knowledge) when it comes to
royalty payments on group projects. Itch.io cannot compete with them in this
way, which is why we tend to see a lot more people than we would expect to
see using OBS-adjacent sites for publishing content.

Project leads are responsible for coordinating everyone’s share. This gets put
into OBS, but each individual on that project (who is to receive royalties for
their work) is in charge of their own payouts – as a whole – for the sites their
product is on. OBS takes care of splitting the money so the project leads
don’t have to do that for every sale. OBS can take up to half of the asking
price for your product, if the project goes through community content
programs such as the Guild and Storytellers Vault. For instance, if you’re
going through the Guild; 20% of that half goes to Wizards of the Coast for IP
(intellectual property) licensing, the other 30% goes to OBS for ‘maintenance
and upkeep’ – which, as previously mentioned, is a bunch of horseshit
because they do under the bare minimum with regards to the content they
allow on the site. It’s a slightly different story if you open your own publisher
account for non-community content RPGs, such as indie RPGs and OGL

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supplements, you’ll then receive 65-70% of your asking price for your
project.

To briefly sum up, if you give OBS half the asking price to divvy up between
themselves and WotC, you’re left with a pittance to split between your 20-30
collaborators.

Itch.io, as previously mentioned, is great if you’re doing solo projects, but not
so much if you’re doing collaborations. Speaking as a person who co-made
Good Morning, Apocalypse with my friend Lily, we ran into two unique
problems, only one of which we were really able to solve by ourselves:

A. Itch.io only recognizes one person per project. All sales get funneled
through that one person

B. As a result, when we uploaded our game to itch.io, it only recognized

one of us as creator – meaning that for a while after the release of Good
Morning, Apocalypse, it meant that it didn’t show up on my own
creator page on itch.io

It’s interesting, because Lily was able to fix Problem B by making me an

Administrator on the game. It gives me the same functionality as she has (and
this allows me to manage community copies for the game) but I cannot and
do not have the ability to facilitate my own payout.

Lily and I had a conversation at length about who would put the game up on
their page, and when it became clear that there could only be One Highlander
for itch.io payments, I emphatically insisted that it go on Lily’s page [we
solved the Admin problem maybe… 3 weeks after release]. I had insisted that
Lily put it on her page because she is more marginalized than I am. Lily was
also moving at the time; I told Lily that I wanted her to not have to wait on
me for her to get her share, and that I’d much rather wait on her when she
makes disbursements.

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This decision may not be as clear cut for other people, nor do I assume that
people currently have the emotional or cognitive bandwidth to split payments
up; OBS provides people with Convenience(TM) at this juncture to make
sure collaborators on group projects get paid.

The other alternative to this… I suppose… is that people could run

KickStarters for group projects, but there’s a whole host of factors involved,
like having bandwidth to run a campaign, the literal gamble of whether or not
you even get funded – which means you can’t pay your group for their work.
Which… isn’t great.

The other, other alternative is the ol’ gatekeepery money thing where you tell
people if they want to make something with a group, they can’t enact on the
idea until they have Enough Money to pay everyone, which is a
DumpsterDive take – insofar that money shouldn’t be as big of a barrier as it
currently is to make something in the TTRPG scene (indie or otherwise).
However, money is a limiting factor for a lot of things, especially for
marginalized creators who have multiple intersections with race, disabilities,
mental health, LGBTQ+, etc.

Until itch.io or another company can make it easier to do group projects and
royalty splits, you’re going to see people put content up on OBS-adjacent
sites – for better or for worse. I don’t really have a better solution at the
moment besides my personal view of the following:

• If I am the sole designer of a game, it’s always going to be published

through itch.io. My day job allows me some flexibility to pay others up
front. My freelance editing also helps subsidize that. For instance, I’m
able to buy art outright from @ChaseMakesArt for my in-progress
game, Goddamn It, Catman!, and I am currently saving and budgeting
for an editor.
• If I want to participate in a large group project again (which I don’t
really want to, for a multitude of reasons), I’ve made my peace that it
has to be done through OBS, at no fault of the project leads.

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 • Currently, I’m only interested working with less than 5 people on a
project because my brain has been reduced to toast crumbs at the
bottom of a toaster oven, all char-burnt. This makes the decision to
‘suck up and do OBS’ or take the gamble on itch.io more viscerally
annoying because why are we going to let OBS take any substantial
amount of our asking price when we can just give itch 10% of our sales
– if we even want to do that in the first place, because itch.io gives us
this option and we can put as much or as little as we want! - and we just
put up with the headache of making a disbursement schedule,
nominating someone to do them, and make the rest of the collaborators
Admins to manage other things, like updates to the game or community
copies.

4. Environments Are Important To The Overall Atmosphere Of A Game

I spend a lot of my time thinking about this particular facet of game design. If
we neglect the environment, we are depriving ourselves from one critical
aspect of story-telling. I also spend a lot of my time thinking about how to
make people who do not have the life experiences I have understand why I
personally go through when I deal with what it means to have depression,
anxiety, and trauma – for instance, like my first D&D module (which can be
found in the Uncaged Anthology, Vol. I; The Tale of Two Sphinxes). Or, even
in my second module (Book of Seasons: Equinoxes; The Halted March)
where you briefly pause to consider what it means to have a definition of self
vs. what other people prop you up as based on their understanding of you. I
wanted to explore the concept of idolizing the Idea of You vs. the Actual
Flawed You.

Intermixed with all of this, I also think on how I didn’t know these were
concepts or feelings that other people may have had – because nobody taught
me. That doesn’t mean that I want to keep the information to myself; on the
contrary, I’d rather share than not share. Turning things like trauma into a
game is a thin line to walk, and I think that if you do it from your personal
experience, you need to be very clear in your author’s notes or forewords that
your experiences aren’t the end all, be all. It is merely a glimpse into what

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you experienced. Mechanizing it may help other people understand how it
even happens in the first place, and may be a way to approach future
situations (both in and out of game) with a bit more empathy than when you
started.

5. It Is Always Important To Consider Context

This is a polite reminder that, for a lot of people, the only way they might be
able to get published is if they strap themselves together to make an
anthology or project in a notable IP (like D&D) – especially for non-white,
non-straight, non-cis people.

Until people get into the habit of offering to take non-white, non-straight,
non-cis people for projects without a published credit already to their name, I
implore you to think twice before making comments about this newly
finished and published project. The project leads are probably already well-
aware of the criticism for picking the IP that they did.

It’s also a lot easier to get your start on a product that doesn’t require you to
start from scratch for marketing. Marketing yourself takes energy. If you’re a
non-white disabled queer person, you’ve only got so many slots before
you’re flat out.

With that being said, the new project that just came out is still made by
independent people working for pennies. They’re not getting as much cash as
you think they’re getting.

Another thing: it is not helpful for people to recommend other IPs / TTRPG
game systems that aren’t out yet as alternatives and/or systems that have
literally just finished their KickStarters. It is not helpful nor productive to the
conversation.

I’m not asking you to like the current systems that are in place. Far from it,
actually; these older IPs were built with a very homogeneous, non-inclusive
audience in mind and they deserve to be disliked with vigor. But until we

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have better opportunities for our peers, we have to make concessions that for
some folx, this is how they get their feet in the door. And that’s okay.

A follow up to this: people should have the same amount of energy for indie
projects that go through bullshit and we need to be cognizant again that there
aren’t many great alternatives for splitting revenue on projects.

6. I’m Not Asking You To Kill Your Heroes; I’m Asking You To Hold
Them Accountable

This one really sticks with me for a lot of reasons. I got taken in by people
that I admired when I entered the scene; some of them even called me
‘friend.’ It was nice to have new friends and that sense of belonging – I even
looked up to a lot of people… But that changed very quickly when I found
out that people weren’t who I thought they were, and used me for my
kindness and my friendship. If I could go back in time and talk to Old Me
from 2018, this is probably the point I would drive home the hardest to
myself and have more walls around myself for my own safety.

I now tend to side-eye people in the TTRPG scene who have made their way
up the ladder with not only their privileges, but also people who seem to get
away with doing the same old derivative bullshit with a new coat of paint and
passing it off as brand new. This was a topic of discourse about a prominent
figure (Colville), who had made a sweeping and harmful generalization about
those who are enlisted in militarized forces in the context of his game setting
Strongholds & Followers.

Don’t get me wrong, it would be different if he reinvented the wheel to be

less hateful and bigoted, but he used his platform to reinforce the harmful
stereotype of oafish brutes in a fantasy game, that also happens to have real-
life impact on real-life people who serve in… you guessed it, militarized
forces. People who serve in militarized forces often do so as a result of an
amalgamation of socio-economic depressions indicative of a failing/failed
nation-state, an escape from abusive homes, the purported promises of

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financial stability and independence, a fistful of greasy lies palmed into the
hands of our most disenfranchised populace.

He said that these fantasy military soldiers were just a fiscal drain, so of
course you were going to run them through his dungeon in this fictional
world because money and food are tight. It was very pie-in-the-sky to think
that what he said did not have real world repercussions.

It might seem a little redundant, but what we consider normal in a game of

make-believe can sometimes serve as the steel in which real life gets its
reinforcement in treating people terribly. We need to be able to stop and think
critically about that, and ask why is that okay?

Why was it okay for Colville to say that militarized forces are basically
unintelligent brutes incapable of writing sonnets?

It’s okay to look up to people and have people that you admire, but not at the
expense and hurt of other individuals in a given space, is the long and short
of this point.

7. Anyone Who Espouses “Ego Last and Consumers First” Is On Some

Next Level Corporate Bullshit; Don’t Listen To Them, Maybe?

Stories and games are for people with lives and aspirations who feel joy and
despair and boredom and everything in between, like you do. Reducing the
people who would support your art to faceless ‘essential’ cogs in the machine
just makes you sound like the goddamn business man from The Little
Prince… and we all know how he ended up.

It is okay if you make stories for other people. It’s okay if you make stories
for yourself. I feel like the moment you swap the word ‘audience’ for
‘consumer,’ you’ve already lost sight of your place and the whole reason why
you started making games in the first place.

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You’re free to take this advice with as much salt as you want; my most
successful solo endeavor thus far has been a journaling game that you can
play by yourself or with friends, my follower count (at the time of writing)
has yet to break the 2k mark, I’ve burnt a lot of bridges in the industry
because I didn’t want to pay the troll toll.

I’ve found that making stories you wish someone had made for you to
stumble on and change your life is a worthy goal. However, it doesn’t always
have to be high-brow or deep with meaning. It can be simple, clean, goofy…
because those are all life-changing in different ways. Everyone always
expects games to be grandiose magnum opus, but little moments are
sometimes more memorable than the big ones; it’s important to remember
that.

Your life is made up of many little moments and a few great big ones. It’s
okay for your games to span that entire spectrum.

8. Suffering For Your Art Is Not Healthy, Nor Is It A Requirement For

Doing Art

This one is pretty self-explanatory. One day, we’ll exist in a world that
doesn’t enforce the notion that artists (across all mediums) should suffer for
their art. It’s a harmful, hurtful thing to tell others that their work is only valid
if they endure trauma. Art shouldn’t exist merely in a vacuum of pain. Just
because we have great art from people who suffered from a myriad of things,
doesn’t mean they should have had to suffer in the first place to have made
that great art.

9. Don’t Let People Bully You About How You Price Your Games

Your time, your creative energy goes into designing, writing, editing,
playtesting your games – so you should price your work accordingly to how
much you feel it is worth. I had someone comment on Good Morning,
Apocalypse saying that $10.00 USD was too much to pay for a game jam
game. I’m going to break down why, in the grand scheme of things, $10.00

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was not too much for our game. In fact, I still believe that we’re
undercharging for our game, but I’ll get into that in a bit.
• Lily and I spent a day talking to take the idea that I had made in a
Twitter comment to the person who made the Good Morning,
Apocalypse game jam. Lily had been thinking a lot about how the
mechanics would work since I made my comment, and had asked if we
wanted to work together.
• Lily spent a day writing up the draft.
• Our respective households then spent a week playtesting to make sure
ideas would work.
• Minor revisions went in, clarifications on rules were made, etc.
• I bought Affinity Publisher (a $50.00 USD program, not including my
state tax on purchasing products)
• I then had to learn the program. Which was difficult, since I learn best
when someone is standing behind me showing me what to do. Finding a
good YouTube tutorial for me that doesn’t grate on my nerves is hard
and also time consuming. It took me 2 months to gain a basic
understanding of how it worked.
• We have been in a global pandemic for some time. We’ve all had to
learn how to cope with the New Normal. We’re never going back to the
old normal. I think everyone doing their best right now deserves a
medal. Making things on a good day is hard, let alone during a
pandemic.
• The $10.00 USD spent on our game gets broken down like this:
◦ We give 10% of the asking price to itch.io for taking care of the
hosting of our game, any refund issues, etc. It’s a standard practice
for most creators on itch.io to do this. For the purposes of our game,
it means that itch.io gets a dollar.
◦ The remainder of the money ($9.00 USD) is going to get split evenly
between the two of us – meaning we each get $4.50 USD. We are
both previously published game designers and editors/have other
titles to our names; splitting $9 is probably still short-changing
ourselves for this reason alone.
◦ However, we agreed that because I bought and learned a new
program using our game as the test for a lot of things, the layout may

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 not be up to industry standard, we were okay with receiving
$4.50/copy sold. And lastly, the money that’s used to purchase our
game goes into supporting us – two queer women – to make more
games in an industry that is hell-bent on keeping us out.

10. Playtesting Can Mean A Lot Of Different Things, But Don’t Use It To
Gatekeep

A couple weeks ago on Twitter, there was discourse that was going on about
(of all things) playtesting. I thought it was weird because I really didn’t think
that the discourse needed to happen, but it happened anyways.
My thoughts are this: a game is not made superior just because it had
playesting done on it. Not all playtesting is created equal, and anyone who
tells you that your game can’t be considered good if you haven’t playtested it
can frankly go choke on a bag of dildos.

Did you know that proof-reading your game alone could be considered
playtesting? This simple act can help your game, and you don’t have to be an
editor in order to proof-read. You can also make a list of questions about your
game – and, if you answer them honestly – that can be considered
playtesting! If you happen to answer no to any of the questions, then you can
fix your game until you answer, “Yes! My game does this!”

Nobody really talks about how hard it is to:

A. Get playtesters
B. Address the quality of the playtesters that you get
C. Sometimes this even means that you may have to compensate the
playtesters for their time
D. How many rounds of playtesting is supposed to even be enough for
your game? Once, twice? Five hundred times?!

Honestly just go forth and playtest as much or as little as you want to. After
all, if Bethesda could release Skyrim buggy… ;3

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11. Sometimes, Kindness Doesn’t Look The Way You Think It Should

This is something that doesn’t get talked enough by white folx (and,
unsurprisingly to non-white folx reading this, non-white folx talk about this a
lot). We think that being kind is being ‘nice’ to someone like when you pay
them a compliment. Being kind is actually pulling your friend aside when
they make a joke based on a harmful stereotype and educating them.

Being nice is holding the door open for the person behind you.
Being kind is sitting at a town hall meeting, and holding the town responsible
for buildings being ADA compliant and regularly maintained in being ADA
compliant.

Being nice is paying for someone’s meal one time.

Being kind is ensuring that someone else doesn’t have to worry about where
their next meal comes from ever again.

Being nice is settling an argument one time.

Being kind is punching fascists when they threaten the lives of marginalized
people.

Being nice happens in one-off situations and is fleeting.

Being kind takes continuous work to make a lasting impact. It’s the
difference between a raindrop and a river. One provides a sustainable source
for life; the other is heavily dependent on other factors.

12. If You Have Access To An Opportunity, Take It

It seems like a no-brainer, but it still needs to be said because a lot of us who
have marginalized identities will self-select ourselves out of opportunities.
So, this number serves to remind you that:

If a mediocre white cis-het man doesn’t have the qualifications and still
applies anyways – then you should, too.

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13. Pay People What They Are Worth; Yes, This Sometimes Means
Telling People You Commission To Consider Raising Their Prices

In July 2019, I saw someone who posted a tweet thread about pricing for
making content on the DM’s Guild; while I agreed with the points that they
had made in their thread about paying people their fair share, the prices they
had listed still undercut writers, editors, graphic designers/layout designers,
and artists. By like… a lot.

I’ll use my (sorely neglected) plant primer project as an example – to give

you some idea just how expensive a project will be if we were able to pay
people living wages up front. Again, this is for the U.S. TTRPG market only,
as this is where I am based (all prices will also be in USD).

Industry rate for content writing is: 0.08/word USD – 0.10/word USD.
Due to my background in plants, having written content for other
publications, and making my own games, I consider myself to be
intermediate to advanced, so I would probably price myself at 0.10 at a
minimum to 0.12/word.

Industry rates for editing vary (this dependent on the type of editing your
project needs), but we’ll use copy-editing as an example here. I can do this
myself, but I’ll always pay someone else to do it: 0.08 – 0.10/word USD. If
your project is a lengthy one, it is more cost-efficient for you to get a per
page rate instead of by word. Most editors will usually have a per page rate
once they hit a number threshold (mine is 3,000 words; once a project hits 3k
I switch to a per page rate so as to not price myself out of work). This per
page price is usually a reflection of the per word rate – so you’ll see an
average of $8 - $10/per page.

Industry rate for an artist to make you custom cover art is about $400 -
$1,120 USD – dependent on size and complexity. NOTE: This is just for
cover art and no additional art pieces inside your project.

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Industry rate for graphic design/layout design: $20 per page, at a MINIMUM.

Now that we have these averages, what does this really look like in context of
an actual product?

My plant primers look like this in terms of pricing at this point:

• I cost 0.10/word for plant-based writing. Assuming that I write 30,000

words to fill a 200 page PDF that equals: $3,000.00

• Hiring a copy-editor at 0.08/per word or $8/per page is roughly (and

respectively): $2,400 or $3,750 [0.08 is the base rate I would pay an
editor if they did not have a background in plants; if they had a
background in plants, I would pay them 0.10 or 10/page]

• Hiring an artist for a half-page cover illustration: $480 as a base amount

• Hiring a botanic illustrator at a discounted bulk rate at $15 a piece for

100 pieces: $1,500

• Hiring a graphic designer at a base rate of $20/page for 200 pages:

$4,000

For those doing the math, one plant primer alone will cost me anywhere
between $11,380 – $12,730. AND, all the costs save the writing have to come
out of my own pocket beforehand. These things are also non-negotiable. I
need these skills that I don’t have. I’m not here to douse on people’s dreams
of producing content, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of us cannot afford
to make content unless we strap together and get paid pennies for our work.

It’s a creative bottleneck and it has to be broken. We break the bottleneck

when we value our work and know the true cost of things, know what we and
our skills are worth, and know what our friends and family members are
worth with their respective skill sets. If you absolutely must, do a trade or

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pay in installments for things you want. Draw up a bartering contract, set
some terms, and abide by it. Get something for something.

I drew up a barter contract to trade my skills for copy-editing for my friend

James (@James_C_Mccloy) and his expertise in aquaponics/aquaculture
because it’s something that is beneficial to both of us.

I’m not saying this will always work, but it’s still a tool you should have in
your toolbox.

Also, the main reason why my plant primers are going to be system agnostic:
So I can sell it on itch.io/outside of the DM’s Guild so WotC can keep their
filthy paws off it and I get more money back per copy sold.

Because when you limit yourself to a system like WotC – as previously

mentioned in this document – there’s going to be a portion of the cut that
goes to them.

System agnosticism is a boon for creatives to more accurately price their

work because then YOU DON’T GOTTA LET SOMEONE TAKE HALF
YOUR MONEY. Not that I did the Uncaged Anthology for money. Making
money is nice, but I did Uncaged for the experience of doing something for
the first time and making art out of my trauma. The project taught me
valuable skills and now I get to apply them elsewhere.

14. Standing Up For Yourself Can Be A Very Ostracizing and Lonely

Experience

Reviewing my old tweets and seeing me progress from the wildly ecstatic
(and unhealthily) supportive person to the now existentially tired and the
more-often-than-not cynical me is… an experience. I had a single incident
happen in October 2019 that I can point to as the catalyst for all this. I’m
going to put this experience here – not to drudge up old shit but to provide
context and information so that if you are currently in a (similar) situation,

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you have an idea of what might be in store for you and make a better
informed decision about whether you want to walk this path or not.
I had commissioned a prominent artist (who, at the time, had nearly 8k
followers on Twitter – 7 times the number of followers that I had) for 3
portraits on the following dates for the following amounts:

9/4/2018 - $95.00
11/10/2018 - $105.00
1/1/2019 - $100.00

$300.00 in total for art commissions. I had gotten to know the artist – or so I
had thought – and I called them my friend in private and publicly on Twitter;
they say that you don’t really know people until you do business with them
and I suppose that there’s more than a grain of truth to that. Business with
this artist was great at first. They were communicative. The first commission
was for me, a piece that had sentimental value to me – as it was of my
protagonist for an in-progress novel (a vampire queen). The second
commission was also for me, also of equal sentimental value of one of my
D&D characters. The third and final commission was a present for my spouse
– a portrait of his D&D character for his birthday.

I only ever got two commission updates from this artist, and that was only on
my first commission. I received no updates on the second or third
commission. I also had found out in March 2019 that this artist was selling
my unfinished commission on their online store as a print called “Vampire
Queen.” I have no screen caps to prove it, other than me confronting the artist
in private messages on Discord about it. At the time, because we were
friends, I said that I was okay with the artist selling prints – so long as they in
the future could have a conversation with me beforehand. I said it was okay,
but looking back on it now, it wasn’t okay. Not in the slightest – considering I
paid nearly $100 for a custom piece of art specific to my protagonist, and
now other people were able to buy prints of her for 1/10th of the price.

I had also asked about an update on my 3rd commission since it was a gift for
my spouse – I ended up asking the artist on my spouse’s birthday as to the

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status of it, in which she acknowledged that it was due that month. Then I
didn’t hear anything else after that. I was ghosted. I sent another message in
June 2019. I had heard through the grapevine that emails weren’t being
responded to, so I tried Twitter. I was more than patient trying to get a
response from the artist. I had sent the artist an email on October 12, 2019
formally requesting a refund of all 3 of the commissions that I paid for, citing
the lack of communication/updates as the source of my discontent. The artist
acknowledged my email and stated that they could not refund me all at once,
but that the refund would happen. There was no apology for the lack of
communication, and no timeline given for the reimbursement.

I sent a follow-up email the next day (October 13, 2019) to inquire about an
action plan for the refunds. I did use this next email to express my
disappointment in how I was treated, and told the artist that I will not be
commissioning from them in the future for anything. Minutes after I had sent
this second email, I was blocked on Twitter by the artist.

I was saddened, frustrated, and felt that I had no recourse but to take to my
Twitter and state what had happened to me. I didn’t want this to happen; I
worked with this artist on the Uncaged Anthology – a project that was so
much more than just them and I – a hundred other people worked on that
project and now… Now this happened, which meant that it could (and did)
affect the sales – as the artist in question also did all 4 covers of the Uncaged
Anthology. I do not consider myself a problem client. I had commissioned
half a dozen other pieces of art during that time – both big and small – and
had received them quicker than the 3 outstanding pieces.

It was disheartening to also find out that an artist and friend who had been
ghosting me for months – and, not only that, but this artist had also been
named as the Lead Art Director for an upcoming KickStarter. I stated that the
reason the artist couldn’t refund me all at once is because the artist spent my
money – which is true. It had been spent. I had been informed that the artist’s
Ko-Fi was doing the rounds on Twitter, which was the only reason why I
ended up even coming forward about it – the artist was sourcing the funds
they had spent from the community to pay me back because the artist was

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citing that they were ‘suddenly in debt.’

I stated that ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ wasn’t and isn’t a good foundation
for any business or friendships. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know
what the best thing to do was. Taking to Twitter about it was 48 hours of
anxiety and tears worrying about – because that was a hefty chunk of change
to just write off as an expensive mistake. Going to Twitter was my last resort
if I didn’t receive any refund at all.

I clarified that this was not ‘sudden.’ It had been in the making for well over a
year. I had encouraged people to still support the Uncaged Anthology
anyways because there were many other hardworking people who are apart
of each volume.

The artist unblocked me on Twitter, but I blocked them because I wanted

nothing to do with someone who calls me ‘friend,’ takes my money, treats
others like stepping stones, and then has the nerve to hide behind their mental
health as an excuse for being a genuinely shitty person. Or a person who lies
about why they were suddenly in debt when they couldn’t admit from the
get-go that they had fucked up and needed to issue a refund because they
spent the money.

The artist had issued a public, saving-face apology (before they had issued an
apology) to me that was along the lines of:

“I’m sorry for my recent unprofessional behavior. I pushed back

commissions, avoided responding in a timely manner, and then blocked when
I absolutely should not have. I’ve apologized privately, fully refunded the
money, and am doing what I can to make it right.”

I found out, shortly after coming forward about the commissions, about the
legitimately concerning behavior the artist was engaging in with other folx in
the community. At the end of the whole ordeal (which lasted from October
2019 until about February 2020), I had no less than 20 people who came to
me to tell me their own horror stories.

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People came to me because they felt safe. I was made the face of publicly
speaking out against this artist. I had to sit with knowledge of what they did
to others, knowledge that I didn’t realize I was signing myself up for when I
made the decision to speak publicly about paying for services that were
essentially non-rendered.

I went to other people for help. I asked for help from those who had been in
the space longer (that I, at the time, had trusted) and had comparable follower
counts to the artist that I spoke up against. I was told to stop talking about
what the artist did or had done, or else it would look like I personally had it
out for them. So I sat in silence for months publicly – only speaking about the
issue privately. I didn’t get any form of substantial help until about January
when other people spoke out publicly, but the damage was pretty much done
by then. I had sock accounts harassing me in January. An entire streaming
community, when confronted with the issue of this artist’s grift and abuse,
suddenly and nearly without warning—imploded in February; I had people
subverting the Twitter blocks I had on them from February 2020 – August
2020. I found out about the people who assisted in the cover up of this artist’s
abuse; these people still are in the TTRPG space.

I don’t have as many friends as I had when I joined this space. I’ve lost a lot
of them and that’s my albatross to carry. Same with picking up the pieces of
whatever reputation I had for doing good and doing editing work, making
things with no more than 4 people that I trust at any point in time, or making
games by myself.

I’m not saying this to earn anyone’s sympathy, or to have people reach out to
me and check to see if I am okay. But the constant exacerbation of the issues
that came from this one incident in October 2019 has solidified a truth I
already knew from being a survivor of sexual assault:

I have more days now where I wish I had stayed silent about the artist. I have
more days where I wish they had just… taken my money and ran into the
ether, never to be seen again. I wish people hadn’t made me the martyr/the
face of speaking out against this artist, being the only one for months to say

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things publicly.

I wish I didn’t have to know about the emotional manipulation that happened,
having vulnerable people come to me to tell me they were made to feel
special by the artist, I wish I wasn’t credited as the sole person who imploded
an entire streaming channel and Discord community, I wish that the people
that I went to for help would have just fucking helped me when I asked.

I asked for help multiple times and nobody cared.

I hate feeling like I never should have spoken up. I hate that with every ounce
of my fucking being. I wish I didn’t have to be hyper-vigilant about the folx
that let the artist get away with what they did.

I feel like nobody cares but me. I know that’s not true, but I am constantly
reminded that the more time passes, the less “relevant” it becomes because
the artist no longer has a presence on social media anymore. They’re gone.

But the people who helped them obfuscate are very much not gone. They’re
still here. Buzzing like corpse flies. And I hear them all the time.

That being said…

15. Power Dynamics and Power Vacuums Are What Abusive People Use
To Keep Victims Silent

As previously mentioned, I am a survivor of sexual assault. My birthday in

2019 marked the 10th anniversary. I released my module, The Tale of Two
Sphinxes, which was an artistic vent of the various traumas I went through 10
years ago (now 11 years at the time of this writing), which didn’t stop until
roughly 8 (now 9 years) ago.

I’ve given a lot of thought as to why it happened. I’m sure most people
who’ve endured trauma think about that question a lot, when they’re able to.

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To a non-traumatized person, the answer seems fairly simple:

The abuser is an asshole, case closed; this shouldn’t have happened.

But it’s a little bit more complex than that. I want to talk specifically about
power dynamics and power vacuums – things that, unfortunately, also exist in
most communities and most facets of our lives.

We don’t tend to think critically on it, but we probably should.

What is a power dynamic? It’s a relationship in which one party has

inherently more power than another.

For example (in broad strokes):

- Parents and their children

- Dungeon/Game/Galaxy Masters and their players
- Extroverts and introverts
- Employers and employees
- Friends

Power dynamics, by themselves, aren’t necessarily a bad thing. In the

examples of parents/children and DMs/players, it’s to maintain a certain
order; to have a final say and provide instruction where there otherwise
would be chaos.

Power dynamics, however, in the examples of extroverts/introverts and

friends – can, and sometimes are – more fluid and volatile. (Again, this is
broad strokes, please don’t get mad at me.)

Extroverts tend to be the life of the party; introverts prefer small groups. And
then you have friends who have known each other longer vs. a shorter time.

All of these can experience what is called a ‘power vacuum,’ which sounds a
lot like someone got the bright fucking idea to strap a Hemi to a Dyson and

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called it a goddamn day. Power vacuums happen when one party (either
willingly or unwittingly) abuses their power dynamic.

I say “unwittingly” because it’s usually unwittingly the first few times –
we’re human and we are prone to accidentally fucking up and I’m giving us
all some benefit of the doubt that we don’t initially realize what’s happened
until after the fact. I also say “willingly” because there are those individuals
who know what they’re doing and habitually do it because they like the
feeling it gives them and makes them – obviously – feel powerful. Like
abusers. Like those who manipulate others. We know the ones.

Power vacuums also have the unique feature of alienation and isolation
which is not like a dynamic. It’s why we call it a vacuum. Shit gets in and
doesn’t get out without a lot of effort, which also includes victims being
subjected to various abuses. Power vacuums also use existing relationships
with other people to further isolate and alienate victims into

(say it with me, class)

Silence. It is a vacuum. Devoid of vibrancy and life and healing and all the
things that are good and just in this world.

I’ll bring it back to me now, specifically. My exes, the illustrious shitbirds

that they are, used fawning rhetoric such as “you’re not like the others,”
“you’re special to me,” etc. to get me to convince myself that they loved me
and to convince me to not leave them. They used my love, my kindness, my
empathy as tools to hurt me. They told their friends I was making their
abusive behaviors up, to the point that one of my mutual friends told me,
point blank:

“You’re both my friends and I’d rather not get into your business.”

Because this mutual friend had more of a lengthy friendship with my ex than
I’d had with this mutual friend. And this is the exact. Fucking. Reason. Why
people are scared to come forward. Abusers bide their time and calculate

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risks like they’re fucking sports analysts. They know how to play this game,
which buttons to press, and when one person comes forward in public to say:

STOP. YOU’RE HURTING ME.

The victims are greeted with the most deafening sound, a sound even louder
than the people who tell victims that we’re liars, character assassinators, or
that we have vendettas.

And that sound is the sound of silence.

The sound of soft blocks in social circles. The folks who want to be the
middle road because there’s history with both sides but the abuser’s pull is
that much stronger.

The above reason, this exact fucking reason is why I’m not fucking playing
games with known abusers in the TTRPG/Gaming communities. Because I
know firsthand what they are doing. If they abuse me specifically, I’m not
letting them go gently into the night.

If they abuse me, I’m going to say something.

Because I’ve already played this game with 3 exes who emotionally
manipulated me and sexually assaulted me. I’ll be damned if you’re going to
do the same mental and emotional manipulative bullshit to me and then get
away with doing it to others.

You picked the wrong motherfucker and y’all will need whatever fucking
God gets you through your abusive life because I’m far from quiet.

And I’m only done when I say I’m done.

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AUTHOR’S NOTES:

I want to thank @LegendaryVermin for giving me the opportunity to put

some of my Twitter threads together in one document so that other people
could learn from my mistakes. It allowed me to write down all the things I
had to learn over time that I wish someone else had made available to me.

I have many more threads that would have been helpful; however, it is going
to take me a little bit more time to search through my 40k+ tweets to find
them all, but I feel that this document should be a good start – and when I
find more of my threads, I’ll release an update.

I hope that this helps you in your tabletop journey – whatever that looks like
to you. You are worth more as a person than the art that you output. I hope
you know that, Reader; I hope you honor and take care of yourself.

You are loved.

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