They say developer logs raise awareness so here we go! Instead of talking forward, I thought I'd make the first devlog about looking back.

It's been over a year since I started this project and it's grown bigger than I imagined it would be. After hours of writing and even more hours of playtesting, it seems we really put something together that's grown into something monstrous and delightfully macabre. I can't pinpoint a single moment that started One of Us Will Die. Was it the first time I felt like my character was in absolute peril and I learned the potential of horror on the tabletop (I still haven't forgiven you, Tobie) with Call of Cthulhu? Was it that one Halloween where I had players draw lots in the middle of the game to determine which of their characters was doomed to die at the end of the adventure? The character that died ended up one based on Saitama of all people (It was my brother in a yellow supersuit, a white cape and red gloves and boots). Was it that Song of Ice and Fire RPG that I ran that lasted for over two years that had death around the corner for just about anybody? We had two player character deaths. Maybe it was that one campaign of Wraith: Oblivion (that other depressing RPG about death) that was cut short by the pandemic. I'm starting to realize maybe it was all of them.

As for where the obsession started, that's another mystery. Probably that one time I was three and my dad watched Schindler's List with me, or when he sat me down some time after and tried to explain to me why some of our relatives are just no longer with us and why we go to the cemetery, or even the time he further drove in his point about the permanence of death by ending up dead himself and just being gone and missed forever. I'll always remember that last smile he gave me before he went. There is something in the smile of a man who knows that soon, he will never smile at any of his children ever again. I also wonder if the obsession grew with every time I felt like death was coming for me and that my time just might have been then. Am I crystalizing my trauma into a tabletop roleplaying-game? Perhaps I am, but who doesn't from time to time. After all, there is a name for a person who unloads their emotional damage into the pages of a book: a writer.

This game is honestly wonderful. I've run more sessions than I can count at more events than I can recall now. Each story has etched an image into my memory. That surreal satirical LGBT themed space adventure. The Hamilton inspired American revolutionary one-shot where someone had to break into rap every ten minutes. The martian invasion of post-apocalyptic Earth. The hunt for a dangerous magical horse-man in the forests of Batangas. There are so many characters who have come and gone like the scientist who thought he could talk to dragons, or the cat with a PhD in computer programming. 

There were so many moments while playing this game where I felt like I may have cracked some kind of code. Found a solution to a life-long question for which there are so many answers. How do we make tabletop role-playing games more dramatic? This game is one of those answers. It's death. Not just the fear of death, the way some games do with hitpoints and punishing players for putting their characters in danger where careful play is rewarded with survival (Call of Cthulhu, Dungeons and Dragons), or even the promise and acceptance of a total party kill at the end of the game (Ten Candles), but the embracing and acknowledging the inevitability of it. This is death tailored to a single individual character. It could be anybody, but what is certain is that one of these player characters is going to die tragically and the world will be all the more darker for it. Every player is playing their characters towards a certain point that is dark mysterious oblivion. At the end of the game, at least one player will get to say "This is my character's death. It is just as unique and dramatic as the backstory I gave them. Poetic and beautifully sad.". I've seen characters punished with death, redeemed through death, succeed in their goals through death and even rewarded with the sweet release of life's final breath!

It's what gives life it's meaning. We exist only within the equivalent of what is the blink of an eye to the cosmos and in that single point in time lies adventures, conflicts, victories and defeats; events that drive men to tears of sorrow or joy. What raises the stakes is that at some point it will all end and that makes life exciting! We only get one chance to make it count... that is if we only live one life. RPG players live several lives through several characters and go on numerous adventures. This game aims to put meaning in those adventures. Heidegger once said that the dread of death, the possibility of absolute impossibility, provides authenticity to the human being. He said "If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.". Imagine the stories we could tell if we applied this to characters we play in role-playing games.

What this game promises is something many tabletop RPG sessions and campaigns are made fun of for lacking, a definite end. Every story needs a tail end to be complete.

To everyone of my relatives who have died so far while I write this book and so may never get to read its physical copy, I hope you know you told so many wonderful stories with your lives just by living them and they will last forever. Lolo Ben, Tito Noel, Lola Teresita, Tita Dabi, this is for you. Finally, dad, if you're somehow reading this from somewhere beyond, I hope you'll enjoy watching your dark and twisted sense of fun live on in me.