Hello!

It's been two weeks since the end of my game jam, Street Grimoire Creative jam, and since then I have been trying to give myself the insight to properly write this postmortem. First of all, for those who may not know, a postmortem in this sense is just a little discussion about what I learned while participating in this project. I will go over my choice of 5 things I did right, and 5 things I did wrong. This is all subjective and is just me trying to see what lessons I can learn, and share that with you all. A quick note: I am writing this as a stream of consciousness, and there might be typos and strange wordings, I am sorry about that. Before I dig too deep into that, let's delve into why I ran this game jam.

I talked a bit about this before, like a lot, but I love tabletop role-playing games, especially when it has some more modern twists. Overall, most of the time the games and settings for this type of play have been kind of bland for me; and while I know I have been working on my own TTRPG system to cover this area, to help tell the stories I know I want to tell; I wanted to just see if I could gauge people's interest in this, see what sort of things people could build given the setting restrictions. And, oh boy, the submissions were FIRE. I gave myself a month to plan my part of the game jam and to also in that time start trying to get people to join. I set a goal of wanting 20 people, as I wanted to try and hit double digits in the submissions (as I assumed some people who joined might not get a game in time, or would just not submit at all). We amazingly exceeded both goals by a huge margin. Overall, I think we crushed this whole game jam thing. 

Let's dig into what went right based on my internal reflection. First, I think that choosing to give a "wind-up time" of one month did a good bit for me, as I was able to learn how to publicize the game jam effectively. We could have done a shorter marketing time, but I know that sometimes that makes it hard for people to figure out the timing they will have to write what they want to submit. On the other hand, a shorter time could have helped increase the percentage of those who said yes to participating and who submitted something. On the other hand, I think the amount of extra time also was a benefit to those who might want extra time to just think about what they want to submit.

I think I did pretty well with the imagery I used for the game. I used Canva to help make all my promotional material, but for the little I spent, and how quickly I was able to get things out, I was impressed. To be fair though, if I had more time and money, I would have tried to pay an actual graphic artist to help me with getting the brand going; not that anything was done poorly, but in a different scenario that would have been a great opportunity.

Not only did the game jam go well when it was done in publicizing, I think it was cool for me to have a stream reading a bit about each submission. The hardest part was trying to find a balance doing this though, as I wanted to read them there in their entirety, but that was not possible. Looking towards the future, I might do these much more intentionally, set up proper streams, and set a timer for each one, but I need to think about that.

I want to say, that I think my theme concepts were on point. I know there was a bit of confusion around the concepts, but the way I was using them was kind of awkward and easy to misunderstand. I know I am going to use the concept again next year, but I want to see if there is some good middle ground.

There were a few hiccups, but overall I do think the people who joined were super friendly and amazing. There was a good bit of voting going on, and I think the thing that slowed it the most was submissions that cost an amount of money. I didn't mind spending for them myself, but I know I need to make sure to have that as a rule in the future. I also hope that the people who join in the future years join with a kind heart as well. I want to help cultivate this side and set it into more tabletops, but if we gatekeep or attack those who participate, it won't do much in that regard.

Next year, I am thinking I want to attempt to reach out to others in the TTRPG community, not only asking for people to join; but I would love it if I could get some people to help in regards to being a judge or maybe doing something else. I am completely unsure, but I know that I want this to grow and be the best jam it can be.

With that all said, let me know if you have any thoughts or opinions about all of this. Out of the games you read that were submitted, what was your favorite thing? What would you love to see in the future of the Street Grimoire Jam?

-Technomancer Kyle