Personal Context Around the Patreon, and Why You Are Awesome

Thank you so much for supporting the Ironcrunch Patreon! Below, an exposition on why I'm so immensely grateful.

Ironcrunch has been a passion project for me since it began with a 2-pages document with few tweaks, it has been exponentially growing alongside my eagerness to see the Ironsworn system taken to crunchier boundaries, without abusing mechanics that go beyond a simple consultation in the moves quick reference. Now, I know where that eagerness ends, and I confidently say that this is project is finite and won't go ad infinitum. This doesn't mean I will stop producing content for the Ironswon system right after the Ironcrunch launch, as I have plenty of ideas for it.

The upcoming update has been planned since January. In time, I've been testing several modes to implement races into the ruleset, and even though the initial attempts were conceptually satisfactory, the mechanical balance was not. Simply creating asset race cards with a bunch of circumstantial additions was not enough, I had to establish a subsystem to regulate the abilities granted to each race and avoid overpowering some. My main focus in this regard was to avoid an unbalance as in other RPG systems that use "races points" or any other value to let know the mechanical advantage of one race over others. The format I created, which will be included in the rulebook to create custom races, allowed me to make 16 races.

Unfortunately, on January 30th I irrevocably lost the device in which I had stored all the progress for this update, and the latest backup was from two weeks ago. The work I had regarding races was significant. This led me to a breakdown and instant emotional crisis that accentuated the depressive picture I was already going through. Not that this was something I was doing for profit, because even though the idea of selling the supplement eventually came on, in the meantime, Ironcrunch was nothing more than pure passion.

Fortunately, thanks to an amazing guy in the Ironsworn community, I recently was able to buy another phone device, which now allows me to work remotely when not at home. On the other side, some other folks from the Discord server strongly encouraged me to launch a Patreon. I was skeptical of the potential interests others might have on the project, but the insistence of those already interested in it convinced me that it might be worthwhile anyway given the difficult economic circumstances that Venezuela, my country, faces. I'm still very surprised to see more than five people following the supplement, so I'm very, very grateful for that.

My visits to the psychiatrist continued due to the nervous breakdown triggered by the loss of my phone and all the data I had there. My last visit was on Friday, February 7th, and the doctor finally came with a diagnosis: Asperger. Since then, I took a hiatus with my wife to assimilate what that means, and what that meant throughout all my life, as it came as a supreme and universal explanation to many conflicts I've had during my time of existence. With my personal study of this syndrome, I have the tools to finally confront them appropriately, and now I can move on.

As you probably know if you are familiar with the syndrome, Aspergers tend to have strong fixations, i.e. obsessions in regards to restricted interests. It turns out Ironsworn and Ironcrunch have been those, the ones that have been taking most of my time. That's why Patreon has been like a blessing, an answer to many financial issues in my life. A happy accident that I'm extremely grateful for.

Life is strange. None of this would have happened if I hadn't lost my phone.