Matrons of Mystery

The first copy of Matrons of Mystery out in the wild has been sighted, so it seems like a good time to reflect on this project.

This all started with a general dissatisfaction with Brindlewood Bay.  Its mystery system is one of the best examples of game design I've seen in years, but for various reasons, when I thought about running some games inspired by the British cosy mystery TV shows I'm so fond of, it didn't really work.  Sure, you can run it without the void mystery aspect, but that's quite a chunk of the game to cut out.

So I decided to change it up a bit.  It's not a long rulebook, and hacking PBTA is pretty much a tradition at this point.  I changed things, and changed things, and changed things...

Until I realised that what I had wasn't Brindlewood Bay any more.  It was its own cosy mystery game, using the mystery system from Brindlewood Bay (which Jason Cordova has generously granted permission for other people to use) which meant I now had my own game.

Playtesting began.  I started off using the adventure 'The Great Brindlewood Bay Bake-off'.  Three games and a lot of imaginative biscuit creations later, I was confident I had a solid foundation and began assembling my disparate notes into a single document.

How was I going to get this thing out there?  I initially planned on doing a kickstarter.  It would be nice to get it properly edited.  (I've seen some absolute horrors from games that weren't edited.)  A kickstarter would allow me to pay an editor and maybe get cover art and stuff as well.

But the more I looked into it, the less I liked the idea.  I realised that what I actually liked doing was writing and running the game.  Kickstarters take work.  You've got to do budgeting, to work out what your costs are, how much Kickstarter take for their cut, how much you're going to have to pay in tax for this one-off payment and so on.  I didn't want to do any of that stuff.  I just wanted to write my book.

So ultimately editing got done by the group of playtesters I'd assembled, who pointed out typos and made helpful suggestions.  Taking all their feedback on board, I was finally happy with the end product.  I made my own cover using a royalty-free stock photo from Pixabay, and found a few line drawings from the same site to sprinkle through the text.

Now to publish it.  I'd formatted my Word document in line with Lulu's requirements, as they were easy to get hold of and easy to follow.  With an actual in-person convention coming up, I knew I needed a physical copy in my hands, so I submitted the files and bought a single copy.

 

The cover was a little darker than I wanted (a side effect of making my cover image in RGB rather than CMYK, I later learned) but other than that it was perfect.

For RPG passing trade though, I really needed to get the game onto DriveThruRPG.  I signed up for a seller's account, and by way of practice, published my one-page RPG Silencers.  But when I downloaded the requirements for print-on-demand files, everything suddenly got a lot more complicated.  It talked about layout tools I didn't have.  I re-installed Scribus, this being the one I had actually looked at before, and rapidly remembered why I'd never bothered installing it when I changed computer.  I opened up their template and was then entirely unable to add my own actual content.

But the black Friday sales were on, and Lulu were offering a 30% discount.  If I couldn't figure out DTRPG, I could at least make it available somewhere.  I tried to figure out what to do about that cover image - how to make it brighter without losing the colour palette.  But ultimately I gave up.  The cover was fine, and I should not let perfect be the enemy of good.  I could fiddle with colour balance for ever, or I could press the button and let people get their discounted copies.  So that's what I did.

I will put the PDF version of the game on DTRPG in the not too distant future, as I know I can meet those requirements, and maybe eventually there will be a POD version there as well.  But for now, the book is available to buy and that's what I really wanted.

I've had a wonderful time writing and playtesting this game, and I hope everyone who picks it up has just as wonderful a time playing it.