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We Did It!

Friends, gamers, World Builders,

We did it. We achieved our first best-seller medal on DriveThruRPG. It was a long time coming, but we finally got here. Thank you for all your support and for choosing to play Legacy of the Cage: The Gauntlet.

How did this all happen?

Birth of a Legend

I discovered the premise of the game during the long pandemic months of 2020. I wrote down “MMA RPG” and all of the rest fell out of my brain like it had been constipated with this ridiculous idea forever.

I did this by writing down 10 ideas a day for more weeks than I can count. I learned this technique from James Altucher. In his best-selling book Reinvent Yourself, he says:

If you write down 10 ideas a day, you have 3,650 ideas in a year. And maybe one or two will be good.

Legacy of the Cage was the good one.

Legacy of the Cage prototype - it used to be called Legends of the Cage

In about a week’s time, I slammed together a comb-bound prototype and mailed it out to a handful of my closest friends. They all came back with brilliant hand-written feedback. We played hundreds of test matches on Roll20 together. I had people across the world testing out the project. Thanks to the members of a small, but powerful game designer discord server, I had constant support and critique. We cross-promoted our games on social media. We grew. We thrived.

In short, I had an unbeatable system of friends and designers along the way. This doesn’t happen without them.

The Lie of Perfection

About a year and a half ago, after a considerable lull in sales, a falling-out-of-love with instagram (for commercial purposes), I considered hanging up PlayArchitect Games and Legacy of the Cage. I didn’t think there was a future for a game with such a niche appeal. I figured since it didn’t have a full-on promoter system it wasn’t worth people’s time. I thought the market only cared about dragon games. Fine. If they want dragon games, I can make dragon games. But, I don’t want to make dragon games right now. I want to make fighting and sports games.

Then, I got real with myself.

Perfection is optional.

No, LotC is not perfect. No, it’s not a masterpiece. Yes, it is awesome. Yes, people do like it. Yes, there is a lot of room for improvement. I’ve realized this is not the end, but just the beginning.

I love making games. I love creating experiences. I love building worlds.

You confirmed that by handing me my first best-seller medal.

Thank you for the reaffirmation.

Thank you for playing.

Thank you.