Thoughts on the RPG Writer Workshop

For the month of November in 2020, I took part in the RPG Writer Workshop. For thirty days, I focused my creative energies of building, writing, testing and eventually releasing an RPG product into the world. (Find it here now, half price for December!)

I’ll be writing a couple of posts soon that focus more on my adventure and why I made it. This post is going to focus on the workshop itself and how I found it.

I’ll start with the cost. It was $35 for complete access to everything. For free, you get limited access to the lessons, but do get access to the discord and can see what everyone is doing, gain feedback, all the rest.
It is fantastic value for money.
You get to keep all the lesson materials, worksheets, everything at the end of the month. You get templates for Google docs and Notion.io and Trello that really help bring the creative process along. (I’ll be reviewing Notion in a future post.)
You get amazing feedback, and a group you never have to leave – that’s right, I can get to work on more stuff and keep getting feedback from my classmates and hundreds of others who took previous workshops.

So what’s covered? In no particular order – brainstorming, mood boards, living documents, designing for accessibility, playtesting, cover design, marketing, incorporating maps. AND MORE!
Plus articles by different designers in the industry sharing their experiences, pep talks, live streams, checklists.

Basically, if you want a crash course in the fundamentals, jump on this.

Now, some of the time I thought the lessons were a little out of order. By the time we were looking at the various parts of an adventure – environment, maps, descriptions of the environment, enemies, NPC quest givers – I was trying to finish off my draft and round out the details.
But that also felt like it was just me, and I was trying my hardest to write everything as soon as possible. I knew that layout and maps would be my Achilles’ Heel to begin with.
Maybe a couple of the lessons could be swapped around in order, but I don’t think they were all that far out, now that I’m looking at it in hindsight.

So, will I be jumping on the next writer’s workshop? I’ve yet to make a decision. I’ve been lucky with my time management on this occasion. As the toddler gets a bit older and I have less time to work with, maybe it will get harder.

I am kicking myself for not trying to get stuff published previously though. There’s still so much rattling around that I’d like to share!