Ambition and Adventure

Originally Posted August 3rd, 2017

First of all, I want to say thank you to all my early supporters on Patreon, you've exceeded my expectations!

Ambition & Adventure
Accidental Woman is an ambitious project to be sure, but I believe that it's ambitious in a good way. Everything I've proposed is completely feasible, and the scope is constrained with a plan to get to the finish, so it isn't ambitious in terms of what is possible. I think it's ambitious in terms of making a really good game. I want to make something that people enjoy playing, that captures a certain narrative spark that happens when a game and its players interact to create an experience.

Before ever writing a word of code or story for Accidental Woman, I took a good amount of time to do some preparation. Thinking about how the game should be structured, what sort of features and mechanics should be included, and the fictional environment of Appletree and the individual stories of its inhabitants. This planning gives me a road map of how to get to the finish line, and informs how I go about building each piece along the way.

Experiencing Adventure
As far as time goes, I've known from the beginning that development wasn't going to be over in a few months, but instead was going to take two or three years to finish. The game will certainly be playable well before that, but the narrative content will take time to flesh out.

I've worked on long projects before, professionally and for fun in the game modding community. I think the most relevant experience I can liken to Accidental Woman is playing Dungeons & Dragons (or Pathfinder and other tabletop RPGs). I've been GMing campaigns in one way or another since 2000, and quite often these campaigns last for more than a year, and some have lasted for two or three. Working on Accidental Woman is very similar in a few ways: It requires dedication and forethought to seeing it through, it weaves a lot of story threads together inside a larger fictional world, and it depends on working together with players. (Also, it's fun to work on, and I'm sure there'll be drunken shenanigans at some point.)

My plan depends on building a community of players, and listening to them. Interacting with people who enjoy what I'm doing helps me improve, but most importantly it's what motivates me to keep going and put in my best effort. The support so far is extremely encouraging!