ATB2!!! Postmortem

So this feels kinda silly, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

What you're reading is the postmortem to Active Time Battle 2!!!, which is itself a half baked sequel to Active Time Battle!!! cobbled together from the cut content of Active Time Event!!! I haven't written a postmortem for Active Time Event!!! as I'm still in the midst of the fulfillment for that book's Kickstarter campaign (we raised enough dollarinos to meet the stretch goal btw, if you didn't know!) There might be some insight from the process of making ATE!!! that makes it's way into this postmortem, but I'm going to save the lion's share of the experience of running my first Kickstarter for a much longer form article that goes over the numbers, graphs, analytics, and blah blah blah~

So ATB2!!!

Most of the backgrounds for this were cut from ATE!!! because I wanted to do the d66 Troika! format and over the course of development and testing I had more than 36 ideas. TL;DR- what you'll find in ATB2!!! were the backgrounds that detracted from the overall themes of ATE!!! and were just fun Troika ideas. The interesting aspect to me is that two of the backgrounds in ATB2!!! (Sommelier and Gemini Consciousness) were popular in playtesting. At first I was hesitant to cut these two for that reason, but for every background included in ATB2!!! there was some reason or another that made them get cut in favor of content that made it into ATE!!! 

I'm going to try to cover what those reasons were by  memory:

• ROUND 1 FIGHT END: This was one of the silliest concepts that came out of a stoned late night brainstorm with the homies. I think someone just ejaculated the phrase, "Blitzball, but even more complicated!" in between puffs of smoke
• Tanking Sommelier: This is a thinly veiled take on Gammagori from Kill La Kill, and probably my favorite of this bunch. My son playtested this one at a con and it was a riot. The problem is that there's no connection to Science Fantasy beyond the tenuous connection to anime aesthetic
• Chronomaly: I kept trying to make Philip J. Fry work in the setting with LGBTQIQA+SFJTTRPG smothered overtop, but I ended up designing a character suspiciously resembling an old ex-boyfriend of mine. Yikes
• Gemini Consciousness: This one proved to be a problem mechanically every time it came up. What exactly is going on here? Are the twins in the same universe? Alt universe? Is it just a fucking stand? No one knows. Certainly not me lmao
• Infernal Space Pig: I love inferno cop, but this idea is admittedly a stretch. I think it stuck around purely on the power of the words "You crank your hog, cause you're the government's dog, dawg!" Or whatever the fuck I wrote (I refuse to check and you can't make me, you're not sitting here beside me as I write this though I might feel you in spirit idkdkdkdkdkdkdkdk)
• Precognition Ignition: I was trying to make something that really had the feel of the absurd cubist thing that Dirk Detweiler Leichty, but with my writing. I wanted to evoke the feel that the illustration of the Thinking Engine in Numinous edition gives me. I failed and instead illustrated the weird full body rollerblade suit that Jim Carrey wears in the film Yes Man I'm pretty sure I've only seen cause it was on in the background of a trap house I was buying drugs from 

In summary, don't you dare throw away old work no matter how much you hate it! There was some creative seed behind its creation, and even if the piece comes out wrong, you may circle back around again to do it right. I hope some folks get something out of the work I publish for free! I know all too well what it's like not being able to participate because you don't have the resources to, through little to no fault of your own. 

Right now, the TTRPGs for Palestine bundle is on day 3 or 4 of being public. It's pointing some folks to my work. It feels gratifying that my work can stand alongside pieces like Wanderhome and Gubat Banwa in making some difference in the world. Even if my participation and impact in the matter are minimal and nebulous at best.  If you're reading this, and you came from that bundle, YO! Welcome. You're allowed here. I want you to be here. I hope you find something you like and stick around awhile. This TTRPG thing seems to be the way the cosmos is pushing me, and I want to do it right for the folks who have been kicked out of spaces just because they've been treated as "other." If you're queer, if you're not white, if you're the opposite of both of those identifiers, it doesn't reflect on your worth. Come explore fictional worlds with me. 

We can be anything we want.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to the 31 brave fucks that funded this nonsense.

Peace