A whole year of collaborations

Right, so:

I've been doing this "one game a month" malarkey for five years, now. I've only missed one month out of the many available - two months, if you count the 20,000-word Adventure Calendar as missing a month, which I don't, so there. I'm up to 52 or so. 

I often joke that I ran out of ideas about three months in, and while that isn't true, it's getting harder to come up with new and exciting stuff every month. I'm happy with the games I'm releasing (I've still got a lot to learn and I'm improving every month, I think) but I want to get ahead of my inevitable decline by injecting some fresh blood into the system. 

TO THAT END: I have twelve collaborations lined up, one a month with a different artist/writer/games designer, to see us through the next year of games. I'll be splitting the Patreon takings 50/50 with each of them. All our work will still be one-page RPGs (with a back page, for physical backers), unless for some reason they're longer, but I promise you all at least one page with a game on it every month, as usual.

NOW: who are these fine people I'm collaborating with? I'm glad you asked. Here they are, in all their glory, and in no particular order past alphabetical by last name, because I haven't worked out who's doing what when yet:

Becky Annison

Becky Annison is the award winning designer of When the Dark is Gone, Lovecraftesque and Bite Marks.  Games with emotional teeth.

Nathan Blades

Nathan Blades is an an androgynous android gameshow host, or a TTRPG designer and broadcaster depending on who you ask. They've previously released the system agnostic 'The Queer Cyberpunk's Guide to TTRPGs' and the Jungian urban fantasy actual play campaign Arcana Corps.

Jay Dragon

Jay Dragon (no pronouns) is a queer RPG designer and publisher at Possum Creek Games. Jay is best known for Wanderhome and Sleepaway — games about community, trauma, liminality, and the magic within the mundane.

Sarah Gordon

Sarah Gordon makes comics about horrible things. Her new book, Vicious Creatures, was drawn using ink made from the ashy remains of a large wicker owl effigy.

Thryn Henderson

Thryn is a non-binary game designer and crafts person skulking round t'north. They're half of the crew behind Small Town Skeletons, the Mixtape onepages, and RYNE.

Chloe Mashiter

Chloe is a theatre- and game-maker who writes mega-games, larps, and interactive shows as well as tabletop games. Their TTRPGs range from ridiculous time-travel capers (Time Heist), to love letters to Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (The Andromeda Ward), to narrative hacks of Buckaroo and arcade coin-pushers (both games in RPG A Day 2020: a pretty inconsistent anthology).

Chris McDowall

Chris McDowall is a game designer in Manchester, having previously released the RPGs Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland. He also writes at bastionland.com and produces regular video and podcast content around game design. He aims to combine minimalist rules with an evocative sense of flavour to create exciting, memorable moments at the table.

Xalavier Nelson

Xalavier Nelson Jr. is a BAFTA-nominated writer, narrative director, and studio head, with dozens of titles under his belt including Reigns: Beyond, Hypnospace Outlaw, SkateBIRD, and Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. He also makes strides in a burgeoning storytelling career outside of games, including writing the cult hit comic Sherlock Holmes Hunts the Moth Man.

Alex Roberts

Alex Roberts is a live-action and tabletop game designer whose work is defined by mechanical elegance and relational complexity. You might know her two-player game about precarious romance (Star Crossed), her card-based storytelling game about devotion (For the Queen), or her cute little journaling game about the good things in your life (Precious Little Animal). She also does academic research on game-making and personal change, and paints with watercolours when no one's looking.

Jeeyon Shim

Jeeyon Shim is a game designer and outdoor educator based in California. Her work grounds itself in ideas of community and stewardship of the natural world, and has been featured on Polygon, Shut Up and Sit Down, and Dicebreaker. She likes dirt, and green growing things.

Sasha Sienna

Sasha Sienna is a performing monkey with a typewriter who creates narrative focussed role-playing games as part of MacGuffin & Co. They also turn up in various podcasts, on streams and having opinions about Jane Austen. The Kickstarter for their micro-setting anthology, Odd Jobs, has just funded in 6 hours and they're very excited about it! 

Christopher Taylor

Chris Taylor is Grant's continual writing partner and is apparently too good to write his own bio, so guess what Chris? I'M writing it.  Chris is a Sheffield-based games designer who, honestly, deserves greater recognition but lives his life in the praise-seeking shadow of Grant Howitt. He's very tall and likes painting toy soldiers in his spare time.

---

I don't have a solid plan in place for what order they're all going to be in, but they'll start from May onwards, I reckon - I don't want to rush anything to make it in time for this month.

If you would like to remove, downgrade or suspend your pledge - that's totally fine. I get it. I won't be upset. I appreciate that this is going to be slightly different from my standard output. But I hope that by working with all these brilliant designers I can make something unique, and better than I'd be able to do on my own.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your amazing ongoing support. This Patreon has given me so much of an opportunity to experiment and bring out weird, small, inventive, sometimes funny games - and I wouldn't have the chance to do it without you.

- Grant