Designing Problems

In our penultimate encore episode, Tracy and Kristian explore the prospects of life after crowdfunding. How to keep momentum going, How to sell product on-hand, and specifically, some of the thinking both large and small that might apply to your product's future--all through the lens of Tracy's personal experience with and future plans for Han Cluster. Join our discord!: https://discord.gg/Bc9dvuz...

In our next extra long encore episode, we talk about the many facets of crowdfunding fulfillment, looking through the lens of Han Cluster. From digital delivery of product through DriveThruRPG to the physical shipping and all the logistics that go along with it, Tracy shares her experience after Han Cluster arrived from overseas. Order Han Cluster: https://hancluster.com

Kristian and Tracy are back for a few encore episodes due to requests from the community!  It's only temporary, but we thought we'd record a couple more to go more in depth about the crowdfunding and publishing process. This episode is about offset printing. What is it, why you might want to do it, and how the process of getting it done works.  It's a long episode, but we think its an in...

In our FINAL, extra-long episode, Kristian and Tracy are joined by community member and SWAG author, John Doom, to talk about letting go of your projects once you finish them, and then we answer some questions people had from our discord server. Goodbye everyone! And thanks for listening!  The discord server will remain open, so come join us! Join our discord!: https://discord.gg/Bc9dvuzZYJ T...

On our penultimate episode, Kristian and Tracy tackle the topic of feedback and criticism. How to seek it, how to take it, and how to give it. Join our discord!: https://discord.gg/Bc9dvuzZYJ The Han Cluster® Role Playing Game Website: https://hancluster.com Immaterial Plane: https://immaterialplane.com/

This week, Kristian and Tracy meander through the topic of genre, but more specifically, how to facilitate creating the stories you want to tell. Though we use genre as a medium to do that, we also use other tropes, mechanics, and even expectations (whether we meet them or subvert them) to not just tell, but SHOW our players and their heroes what our game is all about.  Join our discord!: htt...

This week, Kristian and Tracy invite virtual table top guru, developer, and overall awesome guy, Chris Valentine to talk about the promise and perils of virtual table tops. The discussion ranges from what's out there, what's possible, what's doable, and what perhaps is too much. We talk about VTTs from a designer's perspective, and what we need to do to get our work into module format, how they ge...

This week, Kristian and Tracy are joined by the amazing Karl Keesler. Karl is a graphic designer by trade, and has been the designer for several PInnacle Entertainment books for Savage Worlds, including Pinebox Middle School, Lost Colony, Holler, Deadlands, the companions and many more. He also created the trade dress for Han Cluster, and for Kristian and Jen's upcoming Campaign Cartomancy. We tal...

This week, Darrell Hayhurst joins Kristian and Tracy once again, this time to talk about creating archetypes for your setting. Who are the characters who inhabit and accomplish things in your setting? How do they do it? And why? Archetypes can jumpstart a player's immersion into your world, and doing it well takes a number of sometimes conflicting factors into account. Join our discord!: https://d...

Kristian and Tracy are joined by Darrell Hayhurst in what will be two sister episodes. This week we talk about tailoring your rules to your setting. How to make them work together, compliment each other, and reinforce the intent and theme of the game. The rules of the setting can make a GMs life easier, while also immersing players into a particular world simply by interacting with what the rules...

Tracy and Kristian tackle the daunting problem of getting your project to the finish line. Executing that last 10% is many ways harder than the first 90%, and this is just as true in game production as it is in project management or engineering. After discussing the problem in depth, Tracy and Kristian have some valuable tips you can employ that can help make that final 10% easier. Join our discor...

This week Kristian takes center stage as he and Tracy talk about creating a web presence for your brand. Tracy admits all her failings in this regard, and Kristian gets on his soapbox about not using social media as your company's primary residence on the web. We offer some tips and action items to provide focus to your efforts and maybe make this difficult endeavor a TAD less daunting... but no p...

This week, Kristian an Tracy follow on from last episode and talk about playtesting your game. When do you start? What does "fail faster" mean? What is most and least valuable about the process, when is it best to participate yourself, and when should you just shut up and watch? Everyone does it differently, but this is a look at the subject with no assumptions and fresh eyes as we try to justify...

This week, Kristian and Tracy discuss the sometimes (but not always) contradictory goals of creating a game that we think will sell, versus creating the game we want to play. It's a nuanced topic and in our weird industry of creating "experiences," trying to find a balance between these two goals sometimes leads to difficult and risky decisions. The Han Cluster PreOrder Store! - https://han-cluste...

This week, Tracy and Kristian deep dive into the seemingly endless decisions leading up to and during crowdfunding. Tracy discusses the Han Cluster BackerKit campaign in terms of everything from choosing the platform, to deciding on the offering, to setting funding goals, to creating pledge tiers, and much more.  There's multiple reasons behind EVERY decision, and this is just an introduction...

This week, Tracy and Kristian Tracy talk about what SHE experienced BEHIND THE SCENES leading up to and during her crowdfunding campaign for Han Cluster, including the breaking out of a full-blown trade war in the middle of the funding period. We pull back the curtain completely on some of the most difficult and stressful aspects of bringing a design project to the marketplace. This is the moment...

Tracy and Kristian finally get into some of the nitty gritty of laying out your book and other products for an audience to consume. Though this is primarily a high level overview of how layout programs (like InDeisgn and Affinity) work and "think," it's also a dense exploration of everything from basic concepts to best-practices as you move from the word-processor or note-taking ecosystem into the...

This week, Kristian and Tracy explore some of the roadblocks that can get in the way of our creative selves. These may include the world around us, external pressures, or our own inner demons. We have an honest discussion about what we do to keep going, how our creations themselves can be our voices for change and a advocating for a better world, and the little tricks and tips we've learned to kee...

This week, Tracy and Kristian talk about the strategies and challenges of building your audience, not only for your game, but for you as its creator. We cover some of our own anecdotal experience navigating these tricky waters, emphasizing not the marketing and hype of it, but the benefit of nurturing genuine relationships when you're able. We talk about both being authentic to yourself and ways t...

This week, Tracy and Kristian take some time to decompress. With Han Cluster's crowdfunding and all the anxiety and excitement that comes with it in full swing, we look back on our big projects with an informal discussion of how they started, how we solved certain problems, and ultimately how they turned into run-away freight trains we could no longer control. In all seriousness, this episode tang...

This week Tracy and Kristian are joined by Jodi Black, President of Carolina Game Tables and lead editor at Pinnacle Entertainment. We dive into the complex but rewarding world of running your own business (particularly as it applies in the US, since that's what we're familiar with). We talk about the different business entity types from Sole Proprietorships to C-Corps, what might be right for you...

This week, Tracy and Kristian are joined by Darrell Hayhurst, creative director at Pinnacle Entertainment, to talk about a fascinating problem in RPG design. How much can you change your world-state during the course of your adventures or campaign? Can it evolve? Or should it remain static. The answer, as always, is, "it depends." There are advantages and disadvantages of each, and it's not an eit...

In this episode we cover one of our most requested topics. Tracy and Kristian are joined by Jenn Ellis of Twogether Studios to demystify the art of art direction. We cover a number of different aspects, including how to find artists and get them onboard with your project, the different ways of communicating with them, the options you have when contracting with them, the revision process, and how t...

https://hancluster.com This week, Tracy and Kristian tackle the daunting topic of organization. First we dive into the challenges of organizing your initial thoughts and ideas about a setting including what to work on first, and how to bounce between different aspects as you develop your world and the the rules that govern it. After that is where the rubber meets the road. How do you organize your...

This week, Kristian and Tracy talk about the process of defining the setting and the creation of a "setting bible" whatever that may look like for you. Tracy talks about the concept of the "Axes of Conflict" and how they can help you define what's most important about your setting for PCs to engage with. We also touch on this problem in terms of defining the setting's in-game goals. What do you re...