Before I was a teacher, I was an archivist…
I could spend a whole post going into being the child of an archivist, spending my time in special collections, and growing up to work in William Stafford & Ralph Ellison’s archives. But the long story short is that recording, collecting, and preserving is something important to me. To me it is an essential aspect of the creative process
Having an archive allows one to look back and notice patterns, trends, growth. It preserves process. I have transferred this desire into cataloguing and preserving my game archives:
One example is how I archived my process in Editing & The Mall.
I was able to hire Vi Huntsman to do editing for The Mall. Initially I budgeted for copyediting.
After the first round, Vi noticed that there was a need for dev editing and we discussed adding dev editing time to the project. We were then able to pivot, doing two rounds of dev editing (and some resulting major restructuring). Afterwards Vi did a final round of copyediting for The Mall.
The Mall's Editing Journey
First Itchfunding Draft: The Mall v.0.75 itchfunding version (pre-Vi Huntsman Edits)
Round 1 of Dev Edit Notes from Vi: Dev Edit Notes 1
Second Itchfunding Draft:: The Mall v.0.77
Round 2 of Dev Edit Notes from Vi: Dev Edit Notes 2
Third Itchfunding Draft: The Mall v.0.8
Third Itchfunding Draft (with copyediting notes): The Mall v.0.85
Final Draft of Manuscript (with all dev and copy edits): The Mall v.1.0 manuscript
Or looking back at old gm notes and artifacts to discover how my trajectory in GMing (and consequently game design) shifted over time (see embedded twitter thread)
One thing that I noticed was that I didn’t have a consistent archive of play.
Recording:
In Vi Huntsman’s episode of Adventure Tourism (by Chris Bissett of
) Vi talks about how they record all of their sessions. In my ideal world I would do this as well. But despite being a dreamer, I realize the reality of this for me isn’t quite feasible.Pictures & Recaps:
This method seems much more feasible to commit to. Like a back-end prep where I take the time to take some notes on what happened and take any pictures of play (the table, notes, ect) as a means of capturing what happened. Being consistent in process will be key (also creating a space in which to save these items that is more consistent than twitter will be key).
All of this came about as I reflected on what games I played this past year. So for fun I’m going to include some of the sessions I did archive in twitter threads this past year.
Context:
I had two main groups I ran for this year, they’ll be referenced below as the Art Crew and The Basement Crew.
The main adventures I ran this year were: The Mall (LIMINAL HORROR), The Bureau (LIMINAL HORROR), Metroskate Bloodbath (LIMINAL HORROR), Incandescent Grottoes (OSE), Gradient Descent (Mothership), The Drain (Mothership), Meatgrinder (Mothership)
I have a third group where I am usually a player that archiving is also super important as well. It was ommitted for sake of length.
Art Crew Threads:
Gradient Descent
Jan 9th 2022
Jan 23 GD art crew
Mar 22 2022
The Mall
April 3rd
June 13
Basement Crew:
Gradient Descent
Nov 18 2021
Dec 29 2021
The Mall
Feb 10 2022
Feb 24, 2022
The Drain
March 9 2022
April 1 2022
MeatGrinder
April, 13, 2022 Meatgrinder:
Incandescent Grottoes
May 4 2022
June 22 2022
July 20 2022
Aug 15 2022
Metroskate Bloodbath
Sep 21st 2022
The Bureau: Nov 9th
Table context. This is the group I’ve run Gradient descent, the mall, the drain, meatgrinder, ose, metroskate for. They lean into rollplay and the weird and picked up a lot of the things that are direct echos of our previous sessions that I snuck into items and things.
Sleeper agent (ex basketball playing mattress manager) Old maintenance gov worker Ghost hunter with a Tik tok channel Union steward.
In lobby. It’s weird. They wait. “Probably on their mandated 30 min break” Thermal image to show it’s been a minute. Go to sign in. Been two days. Fail roll and knock stuff overseeing the visitor badges. Offices. Find a containment box with the pet rock (ghost hunter). Roll 4 hours for highlander. Next room find rubber ducky in the lockers.
Then cafeteria disarray. The union steward finds the time watch in the freezer. Turns it 8 years. Player notices but not character yet.
The to stairway. Find an agent (maintenance) with maimed legs dying. Talking about not being seen “Was this your supervisor….we will make headway with a union yet) Attempt to save the worker in the cafeteria but too mangled (edited)
Sneak into bullpen. Red light (thermal imaging to show someone up there). Computers on director lockdown. Attempt to sneak out, rubber ducky goes off. They throw it across room. See observer step out and red light. Barely make it out
Bathroom. Dead agent. Gun. Up to 4M through vent.
Decided that the tumor is gonna trigger before reading room description.
Black mold.
Ghost hunter and maintenance get fallout.
Maintenance gets black halo. But no one notices that because the tumor erupts into another ghost hunter. Everyone starts screaming and pointing guns. Sleeper agent says should I end it
He ends up garroting the new tumor boy. Yanking him out of the mass. People don’t notice the subtle shadow maggots that are in the original ghost hunter (he got fallout as well)
After freaking out and seeing. The halo. They move forward. Tank with body (they record and check it’s not ghost hunter). Find the shaft to 8 but move to water tanks.
Four bodies. They go to push on it. Get attacked. Maintenance gets hit (down to 6 str) shoot two. Then maggot pull down equipment to smash the remaining two. Everyone hates the maggots. Warning next time.
In the pump room notice all the drones. Use maggots to turn valves (warns and everyone closes eyes and ignores squelching)
Power generator notice seems to be a cage. Actually, see subject d
Push to find a place to sleep. Go to storage. Find the globe. Figure out how it works. Begin pondering options. Maybe get the weak maintenance a new body? Go to janitors’ office and meet Amos
Pretty good 2.5 Hr session
Nov 29th - Session recap wasn’t recorded
In Conclusion
I’m realizing how important it is to:
Take pictures of play
Record highlights post session
Archive both in an easily searchable medium/location (other than twitter).
I need to go back and make sure I preserve the contents of these threads as well.
If you take the time you can get a glimpse of the type of gm I am (it aligns a lot with the type of writer I am as well).