Spring Cleaning of the Soul

Hello Friends!

It’s been a really exciting couple of years in the independent design and publishing scene, hasn’t it? I started getting involved over the course of 2005 and 2006, while I was developing, and then publishing, my first “real” game, Timestream. Now it’s 2009, I’ve made 2 more major releases (plus a smattering of contest entries, smaller games that I haven’t ever made public, and design noodlings both public and private); became the co-founder and co-organizer of a booth at Gen Con (Design Matters, people!); met, ate, drank and gamed with so, so many great people at conventions, meetups and get-togethers organized around our shared hobby; and made a significant amount of very dear friends. Any one of those things is a cause for celebration! The fact that I’ve managed to enjoy all of them makes me truly blessed.

But things change. My personal situation is worlds away from where I started this journey, and bound to get farther. My design interests have changed and shifted over time. My ability to participate in the online “scene” declines even as my passion for writing and publishing increases. It’s a time of flux, both for me and for our hobby.

This blog was started (in it’s orginal incarnation, over on Blogger) on June 8th, 2005. Almost 4 years ago. Insane! It was part of the so-called Forge Diaspora, at least for a little bit, as the Forge shifted focus away from endless recycling of semi-helpful jargon discussion and (back?) towards actual play, publishing, and independent design work. I wanted to talk about things in my sandbox, and there have been a number of great discussions that I was able to take part in, and even start every so often.

But now, I pretty much only use this space as a promotional tool, and there are better venues for that. My conversations about design occur in person or over email. I find it both difficult and unrewarding to keep up with whats going on in interwebsland on any kind of regular basis. And so on.

So, in short, I’m done with this blog for the forseeable future.

I’m not taking it down, or anything. In fact, I plan to do some cleaning and restructuring to make it more of an archive for things that the occasional wandering soul may find interesting. I also plan to continue working on the Design Handbook project, as that is the most consistently rewarding part of the blog, even if it is rarely updated. But, really, I don’t feel that I have anything particularly interesting to say that I’m not saying in my design work.

This coincides with my decision to rebrand my publishing endeavors and emerge as design label umbrella that will cover not just my hobby publishing, but also more varied projects that I am planning to get involved in over the next couple of years. The shift is gradual, but real. Hamsterprophet Productions will slowly phase out over the next couple of months as I get everything wrapped up and transfer over to the new brand, ndp design.

Thanks for sticking with me this far, dear reader. I really appreciate it.

Whew.