To night i finally got an email from DriveThruRPG, Okult has been approved and published as a pay what you want PDF. And so a journey that started in December more than a year ago has come to an end. A game that started with a name and a couple of black and white photographs (page 33 and 35 in the book) is done and released.
It feels good. Sales are going a bit better than expected, and the last couple of months of a game design project always feel like a steep uphill climb in the rain. But my work is done, Okult is out there in the hands of players. And I’m standing at the top of the hill looking out over a landscape full of new game design projects.
For a couple of years I’ve had a nice set of illustrations done by Daniele Poma. Made for a game that got stuck in playtesting and never was released. I’m considering blowing the dust off the old notebooks and seeing what I do with it now. It’s been seven years since the first playtest, and now the niche of games set on boarding schools is a bit more crowded. But I still think it will be relevant.
The Academy casts the players as the students at a fantastical and dangerous boarding school. Over the years they form alliances, relationships and make enemies among the other students. A game somewhere on the intersection of Harry Potter, Ender’s Game and Before the Fall for four to six players. Where you play the events of several years in a single session, and see how your student grows from a child into an adult.
