amnesia.website

I am happy to report that my submission got first place in the STYLE category of the jam! There were lots of really amazing submissions, so please be sure to give the other works a look. Some of the stuff in there is crazy!!

In this post I hope to detail how I designed my submission, what stuff got cut (no pun intended), and what stuff will hopefully see the light of day in the future.

My original plan for the jam was to make a kit of printable props:

A Zippo lighter

A matchbook

A box of cigarettes

A pistol

It became clear rather quickly that I really didn't have the time to make all of these in a month, especially with the other game development duties that I needed to manage at the time. It's easy to prototype out these props, but it is much harder to:

Design a printout that can be used to reliably reproduce a robust final prop

Design clear written and diagrammatic instructions of the assembly steps for each prop

Optimize page layouts to reduce waste

Scan, clean up, and prepare promotional materials for each prop

Fill the pages with interesting and unique flavor

I definitely didn't do myself any favors when I decided I wanted to do the whole thing traditionally end-to-end using ink on paper (I used a Hi-Tec-C). What you see on the final sheet was me just going straight through the whole final draft in ink with no pencil sketches. I did draft up the "greeting" text on a computer before I wrote it, but otherwise I did everything as I went all in one go.

In general, I have grown kind of disillusioned with drawing digitally, partially because my job is done using a computer and I want to get away from it sometimes, and partially because drawing digitally just doesn't spark joy the same way traditional drawing does, at least for me. I really want some of the workflow improvements and creative options that digital art provides though, so I suspect eventually I will need to come up with some kind of hybrid pipeline. That will probably be a future blog entry.

Back on the subject of the jam, I whittled down what I was going to produce to just the lighter -- the pistol was way too complex of a project to tackle at the time, and the matchbook and cigarettes didn't seem essential to making the lighter fun to use. The user could easily improvise a cigarette to use with their lighter by rolling up a sticky note or the like. Plus, I decided that the tactility of flicking open the lighter was part of the appeal of my submission, and I haven't figured out how I could bring that tactility to a box of cigarettes in the same way. Finally, while I did think of a great design for a matchbook, tearing off the matches, while fun, kind of seemed like a waste of paper. I will almost certainly revisit these props in the future though.

The lighter itself took about 8 distinct, fully assembled iterations to get right. In the photo above, you can see the very first mockup I ever made on the left and the final version on the right.

The lighter itself is only two pieces and the assembly process is relatively simple -- the part that I needed to iterate on so much was (perhaps unsurprisingly) the hinge. Finding a way to hinge two-dimensional objects using only folds and tape wasn't that hard, but finding a way to make it robust and consistent was a huge pain. If you make the hinge too loose, then the top part of the lighter would wiggle around too much. If you made the hinge too tight, then it was either too precise to cut or too stiff to flick open.

At first it might not seem like a big deal to make the hinge loose, but if it's too loose, then the top half of the lighter would slide out of place and cause the hinge to get stuck open or closed. It would also cause the lighter to have a generally sloppy silhouette, which annoyed me.

In the image above, you can see how the cutout between the flame and the lid of the lighter changed across the iterations. In the end, it needed to be as uniform as possible to prevent snags.

You can also see in the above image how the flame guard -- the protrusion from the bottom part of the lighter that the flame pops up out of -- had to change over time. Unfortunately it couldn't be scaled accurately to a real Zippo; It needed to be short so that more of the flame is visible and it needed to extend back into the lid when the lighter is flicked open so that the lid wouldn't get caught on it when you flick it closed.

I had a lot of fun working on this project and I have been encouraged by the positive response it has received among the FIST community. This is my first published TTRPG supplement and it won't be the last -- I have multiple projects planned in a similar vein that I hope to release over the course of the year. As of now, here are some of my ideas:

An expanded "smoking kit" with a lighter, matchbook, and box of cigarettes. Maybe a box of cigars too.

A "comms kit" featuring a cassette and tape deck, a pair of walkie talkies (with "talk" buttons that you can push down!), and a vintage cellphone (probably something inspired by the DynaTAC8000X)

A "wonder nines" pack with some of the coolest looking FIST-era pistols (namely the M9 Beretta, the P226, the CZ-75, and the P88)

A "classic pistols" pack with even more iconic FIST-era pistols (like the Glock, M1911, Deagle, and maybe a revolver if I can figure out how to make it)

I want each pistols pack to have 4 guns each so that every member of an average-sized FIST party can have one at the table.

If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach me via the FIST Discord (I'm @Parkagirl#4918), email ([email protected]), or the Tumblr ask feature -- that's anonymous too, so don't be shy.