CALAMITY #1

TL:DR Hate Not The Night pushed a week

TL:DR Super-Secret Letter coming soon.

Now with low-grade fever play-through action!

Hello. I’m long-covid warlock Todd Michael Rogers, writing to you from a room that is NOT cold enough. This is an impromptu blog to let everyone know that my family and I have been ill—what doctors call, “very sick”. And I thought it might be a good idea to chronicle any major hiccups that occur to the project.

On top of things, it seems I’m having a tooth pulled today due to an infection ON TOP of our flickering low-grade fevers. The best guess I’ve heard is that our bodies are still in shock from Covid in January. Astute readers will remember that my wife nearly died, and that I have suffered various maladies since. It seems our bodies are jumping into “panic-attack” mode whenever a slight virus hits us. Something that’s been devastating to our bills & my ability to Make Shit.

My daughter, BEFORE she was embarrassed of me in the future

Oh, well.

I am spending the time in-between passing out and taking antibiotics wisely. I can’t write fiction or design game mechanics like this, but I CAN work on other aspects of the business. I actually sat down and played through the All our Uncounted Stars demo twice, and was surprised and relieved to find how much fun it was (it’s really hard to judge something on a deadline). I have some great ideas for demo 2, and look forward to the release.

Plans are my drug of choice. Well, that and ADHD pills.

I also spent yesterday in a hot room, boiling in a low-grade fever as I wrote out my daily calendar to make sure everything I want to make for you Gets Made™

I got a bit of drawing done for Hate Not The Night, which is being pushed an extra week so I can recover enough to do the second draft of it justice.

The final line work for Sire’s helmet (Hate Not The Night)

But the work that’s been fascinating me is the behind-the-scenes shit: how many people are visiting the website? How many are from social media? how do you optimize your social media? Like, did you know you have to prime the algorithm first? That each engine of communication has it’s own SEO? There’s a lot of shit that I take for granted—the internet has changed. A LOT.

Case in point: The very first time I put Spell Saga on Reddit was in 2013—we got 5000 views in about 15 minutes, and it crashed my shitty word-press site. If I were to post that same update now—well, it would hardly get past the sociopathic gate-keepers on that platform, much less be seen. I actually posted to a few sub-reddits and Facebook Groups in 2020, and the traffic was…maybe a tenth of that first number? There are robots to defeat, and digital noise to push through. I look forward to the daunting task, and plan to keep everyone here updated with my progress.

IF YOU ARE WAITING ON A SUPER-SECRET EMAIL….Don’t worry. It’ll find you soon.

-mE.