And we’re back for day 5 of the Gratitude Challenge. Never heard of it? It was floating around facebook for awhile (maybe it still is?) Regardless, I took it to another level. So if you’re new to the blog, thanks for visiting! I’m posting one gratitude day each week till we have all 7.
Not your cup of tea? Please return in a few weeks and we’ll be returning to game design and shedding light on our upcoming creative projects at QT Games including our Kickstarted Arcane Synthesis: A Blended-Genre Anthology due out this month!
We take breaks at times and tackle life, the universe and everything, but mostly this is a blog devoted to our campaign setting, the Cosmoverse, our roleplaying game, Cosmothea, fiction, and board and card games at times. ‘Nuff said. Let’s just jump right in…
1. Friends: I can’t list ‘em all here, but a few of my oldest friends that I still hang out with whenever we can find the time, include Robert Duran and Dan Fox. Both are great guys I’ve known since the earliest days of high school, and both have been playing my Cosmothea Blended-Genre Roleplaying Game for decades. Robert was the best man at my wedding 22 years ago and has been playing Cosmothea even longer than Dan (and he’s also on my anthology team). Among my most recent (but still very notable) friends, I’d have to include Dan Davenport, Steven Schend and Darrin Drader. Great guys all, but there are so many others, such as Ken Wilson, Allen Farr and my dear friends at Meadows and in the Philippines. I’m grateful for all of my friends both here and abroad!
2. Extended Family: When you marry someone, you get stuck with all of their family members and when your brother or sister marries, you are again stuck with another set of extended family members. This can get weird in some families, especially if you are like ours – we always try to get as many of us together for every holiday we can as often as we can. Thankfully, my wife has an awesome family and so do my sisters! I’ve loved getting to know each one of them better over the years and they are great people! I love hanging out with all of them and am grateful for every one of them!!
3. Fans: Ok, I admit it—I don’t have a lot of fans. But I do have some, and I’m grateful for each one! This is an interesting group as it’s a mix of total strangers, some of which are Kickstarter backers who tossed money toward my dream of publishing books and games, others are loyal followers of my blog or like my other posts, and pop up at times asking for updates on what I’m going to do next through the Drama Guild, QT Games or one of my other projects.
Many of these fans are people I really don’t know well, but they care about what I’m up to and that’s cool! Others just like my skits and plays and don’t really know me very well, just of me or have seen my face around, yet I hear them saying nice things about me or my work to others, which is encouraging!
Still others are friends and family who have gone the extra mile to back my Kickstarter, play my games, read my stories and help support me in other ways, whether or not they are into the kind of things I do. That’s going above and beyond and that’s cool too! Knowing I have fans out there that want me to succeed, whether what I do is something they are into or not, yeah, I’m very grateful indeed!
Once this gratitude series is done and out of the way, I thought I’d do a series of posts dipping behind the scenes with game design and provide some insights into the game design process as I revamp the latest iteration of all things Cosmoverse and Cosmothea and attempt to make it a game and setting you will want to spend a lot of time with—so a game designer’s diary and also a bit more on the system and setting that have been entertaining my friends and I for over 35 years.
Sound good? I hope so! Time will be tight, so I’ll try to make them fairly short posts.
See you in a week (hopefully! Are you there? Feedback? I’d love to hear from you!) Have a great week!
QT Games 