Into the Portal #5

It's been a few months, with the world swinging from spring into summer, and progress here at Portalier Press has been, well...

Slow.

The combo of an amazing-but-not-creatively-productive working vacation for almost two months, and then increased responsibilities at my day job (and the resurrection of a dormant non-TTRPG project), have left little time or brain for Portalier adventures. I've been working hard – and then, over my current summer break, refilling my internal well with inspirations, touchpoints, and breath.

But! We are not entirely without some updates from the lands of portal...

An Afternoon in the Court of Vipers

I've long said, playtesting is my Achilles' heel at this stage in my design career. I've done it far less than I should have. In fact, until my recent trip to Toronto, I'd never playtested one of my original works at all! But hanging out in my Airbnb, fresh off a hilarious game of Pig At A Wedding with my sisters, I was able to easily shake off my nerves and dive in. I proposed we try out a game I'd drafted: the nascent Court of Vipers.

And it worked! The game functioned, albeit clunkily, and we had fun prodding at its weak joints and shaky balance. Some of my existing concerns were validated, and new issues rose from play that I hadn't foreseen. It was a thrill to play a game I'd created with other people, to see them engage with mechanics I'd designed and strategize based on rules I'd written. And it was in a safe group of people I felt comfortable with – which I shouldn't rely on long-term, but was a balm as I dip my toes into this incredibly important process.

I have a list of goals to tackle for the next pass: balancing the character features, emphasising the roleplaying in ways that don't trip up the mechanics, clarifying some overlooked game actions, streamlining character creation, etc. It still feels like a major candidate for Portalier's next playtesting packet.

Which, hrm... probably won't be this summer after all.

The Next Playtesting Packet

Last update, I got excited about the idea of following up our initial playtesting packet with another this summer. I had a promising new game in Court of Vipers, a mostly-finished draft of Eternal, and I'd hoped to schedule a handful of illuminating playtests on our initial slate of games that would give me plenty of insights to drive some follow-up revisions.

A few busy months later, Eternal is still an almost-draft, I haven't playtested any of the previous slate, and Court of Vipers has plenty of revisions for me to institute from the above playtest before it's ready for outside eyes. So, I think, we're looking at a fall or winter release after all.

The Devil's Game

There's another key task that I need to finish:

The Devil's Hollow playtest document.

The game is, at least to the degree needed for playtest, fully designed. It's got mechanics and structure and stats and vibes. It just needs to be adapted into a document that folks can play from, rather than chicken-scratch nonsense from the walls of my inner skull.

I've got the draft started, so the next stage is all about getting the information on the page in a way that communicates the game: what you do when, how and ideally why. Hopefully, I can chip away at that over the coming weeks, and get it into folks' hands to fuck around with by the end of the year.

See you on the other side of the portal, friends.