Buried in the Shadowdark

I’m a little miffed. I’ll admit it. It’s hard not to be.

It’s not as though I deserve anything at all, and if anything I’m more annoyed with myself than anyone else. I have an incredible ego. And little things can knock it down.

Well, today I learned that the supplement I wrote for Baron de Ropp’s Shadowdark Indie Game Jam came in 27th.

Oof.

Now, that’s 27th out of 117, so I beat out 90 other submissions. That’s pretty phenomenal. I did better than ninety other people. So it’s nothing to, realistically, get upset about.

Immediately, though, my mind went everywhere that the delusional creative sends it in moments like this.

Was it rigged against me?

Did some other developers see how high quality it was and intentionally vote me down?

Did people just not “get” my genius? (This is the well that I most often drink from.)

No. Maybe (but no more so than everyone else’s). And probably not.

I didn’t expect to win, but I did have the impression that I was going to place. That I would be within the top eight and would get to see three people experienced in the TTRPG scene discuss my work.

No dice.

So, yes, I’m a little miffed.

Going back to the module, however, I need to think of this as a positive. As an opportunity to grow. So, let’s break down what went poorly and what went well.

Growing from failure

First off, yes, I put n a lot of effort and submitted this piece early. I should have gone back a few days before the jam’s entries closed and done a review of the project. I would have caught at least one thing. The borders were pretty bad. They made the whole thing feel cramped. Especially on mobile devices. Did they need to be taken out? Maybe not, but they should have been dropped in opacity so that it felt more like an accent than the heavy black lines that they were.

I knew the border was a problem. I had fiddled with taking it out, but never with dropping the opacity. That’s something that, with a little distance, I would have easily noticed (especially considering it was the first thing that I noticed on losing... hey! Maybe I can blame that!).

Second silver lining, I have a thing now. Sure, it’s not award-winning, but every piece of content is a piece of content! I need more things like this to push me to produce, to grow, and to thrive. Losses like these hurt because they’re rare. If they were less rare, it would hurt less. I’d feel less inclined to do a self-indulgent retrospective afterwards.

So, yes, I have a new thing! Something to show people. Something to give people. Something that might make someone else’s game better! Something that can drive people to my other work. *rubs hands conspiratorially*

So, the first thing that I did after discovering this (Okay, the second thing I did. The first thing I did was feel bad for myself.) was to upload The Unbroken City to Drive Thru RPG. Then I sat down to write this.

Third thing: This is great. This is the whole purpose of the game jam is to talk about Shadowdark, to get people talking, and to generate high quality content around this indie title.

Gang. We did it.

I still stand by this piece. I think it's a quality module that would help and GM running an urban adventure. And it is a testament to the game developers who were competing against me that there were 26 better submissions than this one!

This submission is solid. And it came in 26th. That is great news for Baron de Ropp, for Shadowdark, and for the TTRPG community as a whole!

Well done to everyone involved in this game jam!

Final thoughts

You can’t judge yourself or the quality of your work based on factors that are out of your control. Other people’s subjective opinions of my work don’t define me as a person. And they don't define you, either.

Hold on, I got a quote about this. It’s on my phone… how did that go?…

Ah.

“In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me. In my choices.”

- Epictetus