iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

People really seem to like pictures. So, here's a picture of the first page of the fourth mechanics document in my game.

A screenshot of a word document with the header "Quindecim Timores: Core Mechanics IV", followed by a short subheading that ominously describes it as the fourth in a series of four. The rest of the page is blank except for a single line, centered in the emptiness below it, which says "You know what you did."

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My biggest challenge is somehow getting my game in front of the specific subset of players and GMs who already have a taste for mediated dread, domestic-scale horror, moral recontextualization under pressure, and systems that reward long attention. This doesn't fit in a 300 character pitch.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'm staring at a pile of only a couple hundred pages of documentation the now coherently describes a game system in which a player gets to steer a character who progressively becomes less human and more monstrous. This is what I've been aiming for this whole time.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

"Forms are an option at Eidolon that allow a Weird Stunt to have multiple mechanically distinct configurations. Weird Stunt effects are distributed among those Forms, and regular Stunts may require particular Forms as prerequisites." Getting even Weirder now.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Weird Stunts in Quindecim Timores is an optional additional build system for players who ask whether their shadow can have hands, whether those hands can Grapple, and whether the shadow should scream when they take Soul Stress. I'm not a coward, so I'm not going to call it Weird if it isn't weird.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

it turns out that sometimes, the answer to a complex subsystem in a game is to slap a big 'OPTIONAL' label on it and just let it be what it is. #TTRPGwriter #horrorWriter #TTRPGdev #soloDev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Seven hours of documentation revisions later and one whole ass chunk of the system now reads like something that might be understood by someone who isn't in my head instead of deeply cursed word salad pinned to a cork board and connected by red yarn. Anyone interested in beta reading?

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

So how do any of you engage an audience for your games? I see that most of the material on here is screenshots and artwork, which works great for video games, but not so great for text based TTRPGs. #indieGameDev #indieTTRPG #TTRPGwriter #horrorTTRPG #soloGameDev #soloTTRPGdev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I swear to every god, my inability to accept 'good enough' is going to make this shit take another year and a half to finish.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The most obnoxious and useful thing I've been learning while writing this game system is that organizing information into something that can teach is a whole hell of a lot more difficult and nuanced than I'd ever realized.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

If a game feels like any player character could be swapped out for a different player character without changing the shape of story advancement or outcome, I'm out. I'll just play a video game or write a story instead.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

"Think of Affinity as inoculation. A high Affinity in Violence doesn't mean your Character has become brave, it means the alarm that used to fire when violence was present has been worn smooth by exposure. They don't flinch the way they once did."

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

"Something patient, inhuman, and wholly beyond comprehension pressed against your life. For a moment you were visible in a way you had never been before. You saw something you never could have imagined was possible. Worse, something impossible had an opportunity to notice you back."

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

sorry for the month of dead air. I had a prophetic dream and rebuilt a chunk of the game system into something exquisitely more elegant that does its job better than the previous iteration did. #ttrpg #indieDev #horrorWriting #horrorTTRPG

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Something I didn't fully internalize until I'd been gaming for nearly 20 years, and that changed my entire approach to rules and mechanics: no amount of careful language can defeat a bad-faith, asshole player's read of the rules. It shouldn't try to.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

now it's time to put real work into fleshing out the starter adventures. I'm deeply looking forward to offering a set of four parallel 5-session modules for people to play with. #QuindecimTimores #horrorTTRPG #soloTTRPGdev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

my Tier 1 material is.... finished. Like, legitimately finished. I even built out the glossary on Core Mechanics I, and I fucking hate glossaries. I have tears in my eyes. It's beautiful, and I'm proud of it. #soloGameDev #indieGameDev #horrorTTRPG #horrorWriting

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I've entirely thrown out any attempt to reduce my prose to the 10th-ish grade reading level expected in a TTRPG rulebook. Haters can pry 'actuate', 'imminent', 'ineffable', and 'confounding' from my cold, dead hands. I will meet them in hell. #indieDev #soloIndieDev #TTRPGdesign #horrorTTRPGs

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

CALCULATORS TO AUTOMATE MATH I get to write complex equations for solving mechanical things, and nobody running or playing has to actually understand how it works to narrate the outcome. That's what I call a Win/Win condition.

image of a spreadsheet with contrast backgrounds where information needs to be added, a stack of cells that output values that need to be responded to in the narrative, and a row of high-contrast reminders of things to keep in mind

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

That other feeling, when you find exactly the perfect thing in your game system, and then start angling the design of everything else to show up in the same register. Unf. I need a cigarette after today's work session.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

That feeling when you rebuild a subsystem for the fifth time and it finally locks in with the satisfaction of symmetry to the rest of the game. #feelsGood #IndieDev #TTRPGDev #SoloDev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The craft difference between a jump-scare and fridge horror: The jump-scare crosses the line AT the player, uninvited. Fridge horror crosses it by letting the player walk over the line themselves and only later notice their own footprints. On their own time.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

There is no true horror when you can't establish attachments and then threaten those attachments. Things that perpetually escalate without respite become emotionally and cognitively exhausting, and I personally despise jump-scares as an expression of horror.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

There's no diversion quite so diverting as peeling apart the Calendarium Naturale Magicum Perpetuum (1619) to build an in-setting cosmology correspondence chart inside of a game you've written, and realizing that you have more than enough cosmological correspondences to produce such a thing.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Today I realized that I have a very specific shape of storytelling, and that's shaped how I've been building my game system and setting. I'm now a bit worried that other people are going to pick it up and find it incompatible for a reason I can't even see, and discard it for reasons I can't explain

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

the downside to running a game where character situations generate big feels, is that I have to then be mindful while handling players who are having big feels.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

there's something strange and delightful about how the pacing changes when a system nears completion. there aren't as many different tasks for me to split my attention between. the list of what's left is short, and most of the entries are deep rather than broad.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Last night and today's task: build out about 4 dozen different potential 'specialist' character builds at various anchor points to stress test the system for powergamers without screwing over casual-build players. #SoloTTRPGdev #TTRPGwriting #GameMechanics #SoloIndieDev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

nothing like combing through 200 pages of documentation in a single day to change just five words. But find-and-replace doesn't account for grammatical usage. #soloDev #TTRPGwriter

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Alright. So what I'm working on is a game where you start as a regular-ass person, and every step forward into greater power comes with a terrible cost that you're willing to justify in your circumstances. #horrorTTRPG #soloGameDev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I'm trying to tilt the vocabulary in the game so the first-encountered, most-common, lowest-power terms are familiar words; and increase in unfamiliarity and esoteric weight at the top where end-game content lives and those novel words have context to land in that helps them hold significance

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

escalating power/strength levels inside discrete categories: Mundane -> Marked -> Supplicant -> Eidolon The four tiers of gameplay, the character types Echo -> Lair -> Temenos The three types of territory in the Real, in increasing degrees of saturation of influence

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

There's something deeply indulgent about using words like 'Apotheosis' in a game setting guide. Everyone likes being indulgent and feeling cool. So I don't hesitate with some of these deeply academic vocabulary words.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

spreadsheets. I fucking love a good spreadsheet. I never see them in rulebooks (always tables or charts), and I can't figure out why - which makes me think that using spreadsheets for data organization might be some kind of mistake I'm not aware of? #indieTTRPGdev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

What's up, #ttrpgdesign ? Looking for more mutuals that I can read and respond to. I'd love to see and support what others are doing in this niche. Especially #HorrorTTRPG

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Where do I find more people writing games for tabletop or digital formats? I love y'all who're making video games, but I need to also be active in the right niche. #gameDev #indieGameDev #indieTTRPG #HorrorTTRPG #SoloDev #TTRPG

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

For anyone else out there trying to build a #HorrorGame Let everything that felt disappointing about your own experiences as a player inform how you write your own. I have five playtesters, rabid for more content, even after 18 months of regular gameplay; and eight waiting for the second run.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

I'm within a couple of months of wrapping up my first cohort of playtesters for a full campaign, and the amount of mechanics revisions I was able to make as a result of their enthusiastic pressing on the seams is prceless. #indieGameDev #TTRPG #HorrorTTRPG

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

I apparently have a latent dislike of Class systems in games. The closest I have are Paths, which are a single set of 'powers' from a list that act as a very small fraction of a character's build. You don't get to pick them. You don't get to change them. They're determined through gameplay.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

#QuindecimTimores is based in Fate Core, with three Primary Stress Tracks: Injury, Reputation, and Sanity. Track length and Stress-specific Consequence Slots are added as the determining Skill is increased. All three of them are equally disastrous to overflow. All are equally useful in a conflict.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

please someone buy me an extra braincell. My last two are busy fighting over how appropriate it is to describe a key part of the cosmology as 'ineffable experience-construct thoughtforms'. I need to get this down to an 11th grade reading level somehow. #TTRPGwriting #IndieGameDev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

my current storage directory for QT documentation, rules, writing, references (system and setting), and publication roadmap is 112 files summing 12.9MB in markdown, text, docx, and pdf files. Yeah, I'm a former-gifted-kid burnout overachiever.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Each path in QT has a set of secondary skills from which it grants bonuses. This is mechanical backing for each character to move into the depth of their role, rather than just collapsing into a useless pile of contradictions generated by the contrast of their influence and lived conditions.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

thermodynamics of concepts built over time which become constitutive of a character is a whole damn thing

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

#TTRPGwriting my brain is a soup of cosmology for #QuindecimTimores today. I'd started drafting out the set of four starter adventures, and realized that I didn't have a comprehensive cosmology reference to work from - so now I'm on a tangent dense enough to drown a fish. I'll be here awhile.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I was recently talking about QT with a friend of mine who pointed out that I've easily put 700 hours into mechanics and setting development. The look they gave me when I told them to triple that number is going to haunt me for at least the next week of my life.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

That specific feeling when you come back after an entire week of everything else that life contains, look at your absolute scrapyard of collected bullshit, take a deep breath, and dive back in with renewed passion. Taking breaks isn't 'turning off'. We never really turn off. They're generative.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Nose to the grindstone, building out those four starter adventures. I've got a week off, starting tomorrow night. Then I'll be back at it again, and hopefully with some high-quality updates and fun shit to make into words at y'all.

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Thinking of how to get my game in people's hands: Four starter stories, each a variation of a base, meant to run 5 sessions from Season 1-Season 2 (Mundane tier content) as an introduction to the system and setting. Simplified rulebook, pregen characters, campaign guidebook, map. #IndieGameDev

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Quindecim Timores @qtrpg.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

alright. another day off to handle my actual day-job (must at least try to pay the bills, I don't much care to try and work on game dev in the dark, homeless). damn do I hate that I can't afford to just do this until its finished.

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