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Post-Mortem of GrungeWorks 2024 to mid-2025

This post revolves around a post-mortem story done for GrungeWorks, LLC from 2024 up until mid-2025, in the land of Olathe, Kansas, USA, where GrungeWorks lies. It's troubling, but promising.

Eskilax

Initially, I desired to make a game based on combining some variants of Daemon Dice by SFR, Inc. It was a wonderful dream Eskilax. The game was simple enough for a child of 7 (my son) to enjoy. We played it for months, perfecting the rules and face make up. At one point, I made promotional items using icons created by someone for me and constructed by Chessex. They're beautiful and I still have some as of this writing. However, it proved too costly to make in a reasonable way before the tariffs. Now that the USA tariffs are in place, it's wildly infeasible. Most likely, I'll find a blank die pattern for paper dice and revisit at some point in the future. As it stands, the game is on haitus to prevent further wastes of time in development.

OpenD6 based RPG

Deciding to switch gears into the realm of roleplaying games, I search around and OpenD6 seemed an excellent fit. I made many locally tested games and session between the kids. It proved fantastic enough to build Aetheria off it. However, it didn't seem suitable to earn a living off the work of others.

Made SRDs

Deciding once again to change focus, but maintaining the position of making roleplaying games, I started to make my own. With this, there was several mixing and matches. Experiments were performed over the course of a few months with using four- and six-sided dice. All of them viable, but not entertaining enough. The search continued with using success based approaches proving a good foundation. However, on the horizons were compilations and innovations.

The D6 System 2e

The bomb was dropped. The D6 System 2e preview was released and it is a doozy. It is a wonderful collection of modules and rules useful in constructing mid-level crunchy roleplaying games. So, it seemed fitting to convert Aetheria to it. After the conversion, it plays well. Now, GrungeWorks has a mid-level crunchy game it can distribute once the full release rolls out.

Made GrungeWorks System SRD

Another innovation appeared on the horizon: GrungeWorks System SRD. It is a system requirements document decribing a Fudge dice-based, trait-based SRD released under the CC BY-4.0. Originally, it started as a TinyD6 knock off. Realizing I needed something original, so dix mille was sewn into the mechanics. However, dix mille proved in pre-testing to be infeasible on many levels. Now, GrungeWorks has a light-level crunchy SRD to build other settings upon.

Return to Original Intention

Our original focus was to create games and host them for families and businesses as a bonding experience. And after two years in attempts at business, I feel we fell short of this goal. So, what is the secret to this kind of endeavor? One concept needed is to understand what constitutes a “good RPG”. There is something to be said about good rules. If the rules don't promote fun, they're pointless. Each group decides what is fun, such as a high-level crunchy game such as DnD or a rules light like Bubblegum. That's fine. However, and after playing multiple games with children as players, I can rightfully say it's 80% or more about the session play itself. So, you can play a crummy game session using any number of my now lost SRDs, but it's a successful game because people are laughing and having an all-around good time.

As such, GrungeWorks will still make games, but not many of them because creation, distribution, and promotion of roleplaying game materials is expensive. However, it will focus nmore on hosting games (keep an eye out for us on StartPlaying)

With that in mind, I will happily report I will be familiarizing myself with unfamiliar systems and make settings for sessions using the following (ordered from most crunchiest to least crunchiest):