2020 has been a rather strange and eventful year, my career in the tabletop games industry finally began to head in the direction I wanted at the beginning of the year and in short order the way we do everything has changed. Like with so many others at this time, this has meant a lot of setbacks and a great need to adapt.

This year has unfortunately led to a lot of division between people, but it’s also brought others together, forcing us to adapt to gaming in new ways. We all love hanging out with our friends and family and playing a good game, but at the moment online platforms seem to be the best option. This has led me to dig deeply into methods to play and design and still share with others through platforms like Discord, Tabletop Simulator, and Roll20.

In addition to this I have begun developing 3rd party supplements for Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics with the help of Patrick Roach and several RPG enthusiasts. New and wondrous things are coming down the pipe, mind your head!

In the coming months I will be talking about my journey to test and develop these new experiences, a new setting is in the works for DCC called Mudd City as well as various other goodies from stand alone adventures to new classes and I will be sharing progress on this here.

If you are interested in how to manipulate Roll20 I will share my insights, I have built towns where NPCs have canned dialogue and supply costs and stats to share with players. I’ve also tried my hand at setting up popular wargames to work on the platform as well. There are many awesome benefits to the platform once you get past a few hurdles, which I hope to help a few of you clear.

Another good thing that has happened this year is that I have been able to be a part of the BARD Games team as project manager for The Lost Worlds of Josh Kirby. It has been a fun ride, and I have learned so much in a short time about how to bring a board game together for manufacturing. I have been able to work with great people at BARD, Brandon and Eric have been great to work with, and I was able to work with Matt Paquette on the graphic design of the game as well as have a super cool opportunity to dig in to some amazing unpublished work from Josh Kirby thanks to Amy and Rob at the Josh Kirby estate, the art this man created is truly mind blowing. I had the amazing opportunity of seeing letters between Josh Kirby and Ray Bradbury, one of my all time favorite Sci-fi authors.

I may also have been presented an offer on a game design by a publisher, more on this as things coalesce.

Thank you for making it to the end of this. I hope to share much more with the community as time goes on!

-Gerrod