It's time to get spooky! It's time to make story!

It's June! you say. And I say, IT'S TIME TO GET SPOOKY. (props to you if you know my reference)

*Sighs* Halloween Mansion is actually a game I made last year, for Spooktober. I'm just starting this tradition of making a game for myself and write my OCs play them for each Spooktober since... two years ago, I think. Or, three if I count this one. But anyway, the reason I just managed to publish this game now is because, as what I have found out through creating this handbook:

Documentation is a b****.

Nonetheless, I finally managed it! That book is now out, for everyone to read and guide them to play. And now, I'm writing this post to blabber even more. In the middle of writing it, I realized though, that perhaps this book is more about my story of how I come up with the "boarding" or "mapping" method for this game, since I consider that the most essential thing about the game. I hope it will interest some of you from the side of game design, on how we can emulate some game mechanic elements we often find on video games to board and tabletop medium.

I'll also have to mention; it is actually the first time ever I published any TTRPG book. I certainly have a good interest for TTRPG genre, I like reading and hearing people talk about their DnD games--but honestly, I have never really played DnD or other TTRPG. Still, I love the way that it seems like a very... affordable method to generate fantastic, playful experience.

Yes, I'm talking about the stories. By now I figured, a lot of things that fascinate me about games is its ability to be a storytelling medium. It's just fascinating how you can blend playful experience with story making--and I figured, from now on, a lot of games I create will have telling and creating stories as its main focus as well.

Anyway, more about Halloween Mansion.

The main reason that delayed this book publication is: the graphic works and supplemental stuffs I had wanted to include along with the handbook.

As you can also read in the book, I created the game in less than a month; it was for Spooktober, and I also had a story to write alongside with the game, so frankly speaking, the game perhaps doesn't have much in term of mechanics--though I did include a lot of possible variations on how to bring forth that "rogue mansion" mechanic into the roleplaying game.

It wasn't actually too hard for me to figure out a structure for the book either; I don't have that much experience with another TTRPGs, yeah, but so I just went with what structure seems to make the most sense to me. I had someone (Panda-kun who is mentioned on the book acknowledgement) to be my beta reader, and from him I received nice feedback on what to improve on the writing as well, whichever parts I have to clear up.

Now, that took some time, but it wasn't too hard to be done. I consider writing as my forte after all. (Though if there's any writing I'm least comfortable with, it is formal, academic writing.) And after it went through several revisions, it's done. You can see that the closing words was signed in November, though, that was the time I finished the first draft, lol.

But then... after I finished the draft, and the revision, there was other thing that made me... slowed down on the documentation. That is, putting in all the graphic works. Like. Sure, the drawing you see in the book are simple drawings. But still I procrastinate on them--because that's just how my neurodivergent a$$ works. A couple of the graphic should have been photos, too; I had taken a couple of photo that shows how I made my own boards for the Halloween Mansion, but for some reason, the files can't be displayed right on the document. So that adds to the list of stuffs I had to make for the book. Other than those, I haven't made the picture used for the cover either (gotta thanks Pixabay's creators for that).

And... lastly, that supplemental thing: I actually had wanted to add some cards template you can print--at least the card backs. I even had made several drawing for them, but--alas, I lost it when I reinstalled my computer. (You can find one of those card back picture on my KoFi gallery.) So, in the end I had to scrap that idea, or else I would never get to finish this work. Instead, I made it up with the minimalist edition and the Halloween story, my story, that resulted from the game. That's why, if you've read the handbook closing words, you'll see that I talk about the Halloween story being on my Telegram channel instead. I also published the story there, yes, but the story I included here now is one that has been proofread once more, and added with introduction for the characters and the world-setting context.

You might want to ask--are all of those actually take *counts from November until June* seven, eight months? No. Most certainly, I could have done it sooner than that. But as I said, there were revisions, procrastination, fighting off perfectionism... and also, in the end I chose to finish it by this month because meme:

It's time to get spooky! XD