Cutestpatoot DevLogs

The initial plan, a couple months ago when I actually started these games, was for them to be Micro-TTRPGs. 3 Micro TTRPGs. Under 5 pages of TNR 12 single spaced, maybe even one-pagers. Man, one-pagers would have been nice. I'll have to keep that in mind next time I do this to myself. I regret nothing but I do wish I'd eventually develop some level of foresight for the scope of projects when I set out to do them.  As usual, I started by logging a ton of my favorite movies into a wheel on wheelofnames.com (LOML) and spinning it 3 times to get my inspiration seeds and I was not disappointed. The movies were Scooby Doo & The Ghoul School (1988), Halloween: Resurrection (2002) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000). The concepts for each game came pretty quickly.  For Ghoul School  I decided to take inspiration from the actual surface plot of the movie, which is that the girls of the school want to beat the neighboring boys military academy in a volleyball tournament, for which...

 I recently released this via my itch for free and figured it would be cool to host here, too. 10 Minute TTRPG by Cutestpatoot Games The Mission  With the monthly podcast 10 Minute TTRPGs I’ve been trying to help demystify entry into the game design process, which is to say I want everyone to understand that they have what it takes to design games. I won’t say there’s not people who pick it up faster than others or for whom the work is more appealing than it is to others, but I really believe everyone can create at least one game. But what’s really incredible is that nobody else can create the games You create. I’m just here to lend a bit of a helping hand.  In this game we’re setting the timer to 10 minutes and putting ourselves in the hot seat. By the time that timer goes off we’re going to have at least an ashcan of a game, I promise.  An Ashcan* is like a demo, it’s a less fleshed out version of a game or a shorter one, to give people an impression of the full ga...

Sometimes inspiration is a blessing, other times... it's a somewhat more exhausting blessing.  I was supposed to set up a page for my unconventional mechanics game jam. and I was. I had the page open, I clicked the title field and thought, huh. I can't help but think of "Hack the Planet" right now, weird. "Game-ify the Planet" would be fun. That reminds me more of what my friends describe as my tendency to game-ify my life. Look, I have ADHD, I have No Medication for it and I have to entertain myself somehow constantly. If you've ever heard it you'll know I've often said "if you've ever entertained a kid you're a game designer." Sometimes (often) the kid I have to entertain is myself.  So far, I've game-ified listening to music (my Spotify Wrapped is a year-long game I play against myself and I almost always lose, but it's SO much fun to play literally all year long)(g ame link to come ), watching TV ( First Impressions ...

I'm not sure where exactly my love of unconventional mechanics came from, I just know that when I encounter them in the wild (other indie games) I feel this excited surprise bubble up in my chest and I think "Oh My God, This is so fucking creative. I never would have thought of this." and I become immediately obsessed with it, usually instantly evangelizing the mechanic, its game and its designer to my friends- some of whom are also designers or game industry professionals, some of whom don't play games at all but let me talk about them whenever I want (I am very lucky that way).  By unconventional mechanics I mean game mechanics that are not the classic card/dice-based mechanics that are typical of games historically. Rock/Paper/Scissors is too common of a tiebreaker, so I consider it relatively conventional a mechanic in this context, too. I'm talking about, for example, games like Kick Rocks (or its companion Kick Garlic ),  a role-playing/storytelling game  p...