Wild Hunt Studios

Recently, via itch.io, I released a 1.0 version of my Blades in the Dark hack for the Dark Sun setting, called Blades Under Tyr.

Despite interest and positive feedback, in terms of economic compensation, the return has been less than I’d hoped for something I put more than 4 years into. The game has been downloaded somewhat over 200 times right now, but has brought in only $23 in donations, most of that from a single heroic downloader. This comes out to around 10-cents per download. This is hardly a rousing financial success — significantly less than rousing.

I’m going to use this to jump on my soapbox for a moment and explain this is why indie creators burn out.

I have 30 years of frustration with how people talk about artists and creators, and how I’ve observed those same people actually treat artists and creators. The disparity is wild.

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What follows is a bit of a follow-up to or is complimentary with my advice about regional adventure design and area travel, but as it relates to creating a world setting. I should have written this up and posted it years ago, but I’ve now used this process with multiple groups and refined it over multiple iterations. This method always creates something interesting–more interesting than I could have come up with myself–but more importantly than that, it consistently turns out something the players themselves are personally invested and interested in.

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After a long time serving a solely archival purpose, the Athasian Cartographers’ Guild website has been extensively redesigned and relaunched in conjunction with the Pristine Tower Development Group’s efforts to expand the setting on a global scale using canon (both public and never-released sources) and popular fanon sources. New, lore-corrected maps of the core regions and surroundings are available, and more are in the process of finalization. Many other maps are being discussed and outlined.

I spent a good two months on the redesign and coding this summer, with many more man-hours going into actually painting the site graphics, and am very happy with the results. If you’re into the Dark Sun setting, or just like maps of fantasy worlds, come check it out!

It’s been a while since I posted a blog entry. I’ve been studying at university and haven’t had much time to write about gaming. Instead, I’ve focused my energy on creating things for the community. You can check out my Blades pages here (under Gaming Resources), my Patreon, and my itch.io to see what I’ve been up to and what I’ve been making.

But the reason for this post is that I need help finishing my education. I returned to school after almost twenty years, having had to put it aside in order to take care of family, but now I’m coming up short of funds for this year. More of the story is at my GoFundMe. I’d appreciate any help you can give, which includes sharing this campaign (it really helps!), and thank you!

[GoFundMe campaign is closed]

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