Focusing your time creatively

The Worm Jam has crossed the halfway point (and then some)! Even now, before the desperate last sprint towards the finish line, we have some incredible entries. I’m thrilled with the initiative and creativity of the community so far.

At this point in this creative endeavor, I’m needing to make some choices about what I’m going to focus on. My brainstorming gave me more ideas than I could complete in the time allotted. And, as always, I have overestimated how much time I have and how quickly I can create good content.

Playing to my strengths

I have at least some awareness of things I care about, things I don’t, things I’m good at, things I’m not. I know that I can do some things myself, like writing. I can probably do a passable job setting the text into the Adherent of the Worm Creator’s Kit. I know that I can’t do other things. I can’t draw or do cartography. I can’t see my own copy errors.

I’ll need support for everything I can’t do. There’s a few strategies I might use here.

For one, I can collaborate with someone else. If someone helps me out with something I need, I can do the same for them.

Two, I can reach out to help from the community. The Worm Discord channel is cooking stuff up right now. I also am lucky enough to have found other like-minded game designers, OSR enthusiasts, and general perverts that are willing to help groupthink in-progress projects.

Matters of scale

I also know that I can’t do everything that I want to do, even if I have the right skill sets and levels of support. Like Quests, each project needs to be discrete and achievable.

Taking a look at the document where I have my module drafted, there are parts that are more fleshed out than others. Some ideas were ambitious. Some were interesting. Some are mostly done. Some are just sketched out. What do I need to cut to get this down to a finishable state?

If I cut content, I make sure to save it somewhere. You never know when you can create something new and interesting by Frankensteining two old drafts together.

For now, I’m going to cut back on the dungeon I had planned and focus on one unique idea: a Dark-Souls-esque shrine full of merchant NPCs.

In summation: Put your energy most towards the things on the quadrant of x: care about and y: able to do yourself.