A Designer Log & Affinity Software Review for TTRPGs

A very long game dev log + software review

When I first started in TTRPG design like two months ago, I was using Canva, a nifty little tool, but it didn’t have the flexibility that I wanted and, probably, needed. I asked around, and was recommended Affinity Publisher & Designer—two separate programs by the same company, Serif. When I was doing research, I couldn’t find much by the way of articles talking about using these for TTRPG design, although you can probably find a few things in varying discords. Because of that, I thought I’d write my own review of using it for that very purpose.

I am currently working on a Slugblaster supplement for the Wilkie’s Goody Jam 2. This post is partially a review of Affinity and partially a designer’s log for the supplement, and I’ll be using the latter to talk about the former. The first section of this post tackles the supplement in its content, the second section tackles its design. Feel free to skip to the second half if you’re just looking for a review of Affinity’s products.

One Last Blast: A Very Ambitious Dream

I’ll start off by saying something that may surprise you: I have never played Slugblaster. Never! Not even once, not even a little bit, not even a one shot. I have, finally, played Blades in the Dark—a game I’d been wanting to play since Big Bad Con, and which Slugblaster is based on. So I have at least a little bit of an idea of how the system runs.

So why did I want to write a long, ambitious supplement for a game I’ve never played? The vibes. They’re truly immaculate. Incredible. Inspiring. I cannot get over how much I love the visual design of this work as well as the experience that Mikey and the team are trying to capture with their kids-on-skateboards-sticking-it-to-the-man thesis.

Sam Dunnewold and Gem Room Games had a discussion about the visual design of MÖRK BORG where they discussed just how much the design of the game plays into how people approach playing it, both in spirit and in mechanics. It’s a game that’s very in-your-face about it’s tone and it’s world, and the vibes are off the charts. It’s a piece of art in and of itself, a book that you can flip through just for the pure joy of it.

Slugblaster shares some of that same intense design, although I’d argue it’s got accessibility in mind much more than MÖRK BORG. You don’t need to download a bare bones copy to be able to read and navigate it’s rules, instead, it uses design to create a flow through it’s story, mechanics, and, most importantly, its vibes.

But, I do believe that Slugblaster poses an issue for players like myself, players who don’t inherently enjoy sandbox experiences (I genuinely can’t understand how people play Minecraft, if that tells you anything.) It does not contain an internal narrative drive. Why do the kids slugblast? Because they like it! And that’s about it. There’s fame to be had, your crew can level up, you can gain things, sure, but for a player like myself, I enjoy a narrative drive, a reason for the season of slugblasting, so to speak.

So, instead of writing off the game as something I might not enjoy due to that narrative lack, I decided to write a narrative drive for players like myself who need a little something extra to work towards, a bigger story, a more intense ambience, etc. And what I came up with was One Last Blast.

This piece is inspired most by Night in the Woods, a game that I love, and that I also played on a semi-whim based on the song Rät by Penelope Scott and her Genius interview about it, where she explains the line, “And I hope someday Selmers rides her fucking train”—a reference, of course, to Night in the Woods and a part of the game where Selmers reads off a poem that is a scathing condemnation of Silicon Valley (and her plans to burn it all to the ground.)

In the game, Selmers has been a background character for most of the action, and this is when you really get to see her passion, the passion that comes from living in a dying town, in a world that’s passing her by because of where she lives, who she is, etc. So I played the game wanting to get to that part, and honestly? It lived up to the hype of that moment, and so many others. It’s an incredible game, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys story games.

I wanted to move a few things over from that, namely the vibe—small town, dying, with those who live and love there trying to save it, even desperately. Mae, the protagonist, has come home from college after some mental health trouble and she is trying to figure out what to do with her life, but won’t talk about why she left. The game explores her own inner turmoil as she tries to unravel the inner turmoil of the town.

The second inspiration was “I Know The End” by Sam Dunnewold, a game inspired by a Phoebe Bridgers song by the same name, as well as Night in the Woods. It follows our protagonist as they come back to their hometown to find it is slowly sliding towards death. The game’s first page includes a letter from Sidra, the person who has asked you to come back to town and it reads, “I know it’s been a long time. I know this is short and weird. But something is wrong here. We need you. I need you. Please come home. -S.”

This game captures the vibes of a dying town perfectly: it’s surreal, intense, and it devolves as the adventure progresses. I couldn’t help but feel compelled by the image of the town’s literal beating heart, either. So, like all good writers, I just stole the idea.

In One Last Blast, you play as college students coming home for Fall Break and stumble upon Something Weird happening in their town. People are going missing, everyone is on edge, and things smell faintly of existential decay. Unlike base Slugblaster, “Runs” are not your main goal—your main goal is investigating the Something Weird. One of you holds a secret, specifically the character “The One Who Never Left.” That secret is about THE HEART that inhabits the town. It’s asked you to bring your friends along, so it can make a plea to be saved.

THE HEART is hungry, and you don’t know what it needs. Is it good? Bad? Gray? I guess the main goal isn’t investigating the Something Weird—it’s figuring out what to do about the Something Weird/THE HEART. This is a very freeform adventure, and much more a “set up” than a full adventure. I give you the hook, and it’s up to the GM and players to figure out how the story goes, and most importantly, how it ends. Do you take THE HEART down? Does it do the town more good than bad? Is it really THE HEART of the city? Or something else entirely?

Bringing the Supplement to Life

Thankfully, Mikey Hamm (author of Slugblaster) made a Design Sheet available to those of who are in the discord—making it very easy to mimic the design of the original Slugblaster (and the way I recommend learning the software instead of just starting with your own project, unless you have a general design background.)

The design document covered fonts and colors—although I switched the latter out for a moody Autumn palette to reflect the time of year and the content. It’s been very easy to set favorites for fonts, and to import them. I can download a font and install it and it’ll appear in Affinity without me needing to restart the program, which is a huge plus for me.

Affinity offers a lot by way of arrangement—I’m doing this like a “booklet” with the pages turned landscape and stuck side by side. It allows me to see how it would look in actual book form (although the dimensions aren’t the same as Slugblaster’s booklet form.) For this design, I opted for landscape because of how the “One Direction” (the title) font works—it can take up a lot of space, and I enjoyed playing with that space.

The number one most helpful thing in Affinity was the node tool—I can create shapes and then shift the curves of the shape very easily and quickly to produce shapes like the one above (and on the title page) that reproduce the original Slugblaster “blob” vibe.

I used Designer to make part of the above “ad” in the booklet—it was a subtle change, but one I really like. The text on the TV uses the “Perspective” tool to fit within the confines of the TV. Now, I’m not actually a graphic designer, so it’s elementary and definitely not perfect, but even something small like that can really elevate the design in my mind. Functions like that are part of the reason I moved away from Canva (same goes for the Node tool.)

I also used The Noun Project for the icons (I got the year long subscription) and so far I’ve found everything I need. It’s an easy way to add little bits of art to the pages without needing to get art commissioned—something I can’t afford to do for side projects, and also because of the time limit of the jam. I use Pexels for my stock photos (they’re free and don’t require attribution!)

I didn’t time how long it’s taken me to create the booklet, but this is my first time really using Affinity for a big project, so I suspect I will get faster with time. Personally, I am quick at picking up software and don’t watch tutorials—I just google what I need when I need it. Does that mean I sometimes pick up bad habits? Yeah, but over time I do eventually read tips and tricks and change my ways.

I don’t think you need to watch tutorials to use Affinity, it’s lightweight and intuitive, especially if you’ve used other designer software before—I haven’t, I’ve used Clip Studio Paint, Live2D, and a few other pieces of software that deal with art, but never really graphic design.

Publisher is really interesting because it does like 95% of what I need, and it’s what I’d recommend if you only want to get one piece of software for your design work with TTRPGs. The other 5% is niche stuff that I’m not sure if I’ll use it for every project, and I got Designer while it was on sale (which I recommend doing for all the products, although they don’t go on sale too often.)

As of the writing of this post, the whole suite (bundled and separately) is 40% off and I highly recommend getting all three pieces of software, ($98.99 USD) since you never know when you might need them, and they all have functionality that can be used to design TTRPGs. Also, if you purchase one or two pieces (like I did) you don’t get any discounts on the bundle, so if you’re thinking of getting even just two pieces of the bundle, go ahead and grab all three.

I stand by Affinity as the best option in the space, not just because of its functionality but because it’s a one-time buy for each version, and there’s a huge span of time between each iteration (usually 5+ years). I cannot abide by subscription services like Adobe, which are predatory and currently operate the way they do because they can, as the industry standard. Stick it to Adobe. Buy from a different giant corporation or whatever.

Also—I’m not getting paid for any of the endorsements I’m making, as a heads up. These are just my opinions.

Keep an eye out for an announcement about when One Last Blast becomes available! When released, the booklet will be a “bare bones” edition—but an update will follow, and I’ll probably do a designer’s log about making the playbooks (a huge task, in my mind!) If you’d like to get notified when the game goes out, or when it’s updated, you can follow me on itch.