Kurt Refling

@kurtrefling.bsky.social

596 Followers 53 Following

Writer, tabletop game designer, occasional artist. Maybe: future friend? He/him. My games: http://a-smouldering-lighthouse.itch.io

A crude MS Paint drawing of a small person smiling nervously. In front of the small person, a placard reads "Kurt Refling: Baby / Imposter." On either side of Kurt, the shoulders of two people can be seen, heads out-of-frame like adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. The left figure wears a suit jacket; the right figure wears a blouse.
An amateur watercolour painting of a forest scene. A gnome couple sits in the foreground at the root of a tree. Behind them, a forested hillside angles upwards to the right, while a creek passes by on the left.
I have a (very) small TTRPG business. I have a day job and sell my games in my spare time, which means I occupy a weird middle space between hobbyist and publisher. I'm a publish-ish. A hoblisher. It's a space that a lot of your favourite small designers exist in, and it's not very well documented. In the interest of financial transparency, I'm going to share my revenues and expenses for the 2025 calendar year, then a breakdown¹. The Numbers I had a pretty big Kickstarter this year, doing all the fulfillment myself ². Those figures make up most of my earnings and expenses! But these are totals for all my TTRPGs. All values are in Canadian dollars ³. Expenses Printing - $7,100 Shipping - $3,500 Marketing - $800 Formatting - $800 Software - $200 Total Expenses - $12,400 Revenues Kickstarter - $10,500 Distributors - $3,600 Online Storefronts - $1,100 Translation Royalties - $500 Total Revenues - $15,700 Net Earnings - $3,300
A banner advertising a live playthrough of Sock Puppets at Lucca Comics & Games 2025.
A poster reads: UPPER FRESCIA WAITS FOR NO-ONE! Two peasants carrying shovels walk up a tower that leads into the open sky.
Two people sit beside each other as a selfie is taken in a car. The person on the left has extremely colorful hair and a bright smile. The person on the right is unsmiling and monochrome. Editor's note: I believe this picture was originally shared on the internet by one of the people pictured, and that they were sisters? These distant memories. Who can say. Certainly easier to ramble into alt text then verify for you.
Post-script: Wills are very important. Not just to ensure your wishes are respected, but also to make life easier for your loved ones. The death industry is largely corporate-owned and profit-motivated, and their revenue streams rely on upselling grief-stricken clientele. I can't be clear enough about this: if you want to "just be tossed in the dumpster" or whatever half-joking thing you always say to mean "please do not spend much money on my death," know that your loved ones will be torn between your offhand assertions and the very real salespeople applying pressure at a very vulnerable time when decisions must often be made quickly. In a perfect world, none of this matters until a very long time from now. But it's good to be prepared, and to take care of the people we love. Be well.
Some folks may have seen the article going around about J.D. Maxwell's absence after his Grimwild crowdfunding campaign. We don't know what happened to Grimwild's designer, and I would ask that we not speculate on the nature of his absence here. Still, this raised certain questions in my community of practice about art after death of the artist. There are real options for how to handle creative works after death or incapacitation, if you make preparations while you're around. I'm going to share a practical approach in this thread. Quickly, before we start: if you're not in the headspace to read this, that's okay. Close the tab. Your responsibility is to your well-being. Making a plan for your art is firmly in extra credit territory. It's okay to set this aside. I'll break this down into four steps. 1. Keep organized records (ongoing). 2. Elect caretakers. 3. Set up a dead man's switch. 4. Document your wishes. Both 2 and 4 are areas that benefit from an estate plan (including a legal will) if there's money involved. I am not going to discuss the drafting of formal wills here, but understand that wills are very important. See post-script in the comments.
A crossword laid out on a spreadsheet, with a grid on the left and tickboxes on the right allowing the user to highlight clues and check words for correctness. One word on the grid is highlighted for the viewer.
Text within a halo of dots. The text reads: Name: #ERROR Class: Xenon Age: 83 Type: Mender / Local / Ghost Grandchildren: 2 [name, common interest] x2 Achievement: 1 [career / hobby / obstacle overcome] Regret: 1 [missed opportunity / harm caused]
A screenshot of a live playthrough of a tabletop RPG. At the top-left, a human-sized puppet is wheeled onscreen. At the bottom-left, a hand puppet fills the frame. On the right, both other plays laugh in open-mouthed astonishment.
A copy of a book titled Sock Puppets sits on a table. The book reads, "A roleplaying game about puppets and their problems." The cover image pictures a concerned-looking sock on a puppet show set, complete with lights and a camera. The game is surrounded by crafting supplies: scissors, glue, markets, stickers, paper, and so many googly eyes.
Sin ??? - Maybe These Ones Are Fine, Except The Furry Sex Thing : Here are some names that I think might actually have worked. Mostly because I hadn't had any obvious problems come up yet. Including so you can prove me wrong. Big Dog, Big Volcano: I like that saying this makes you sound kinda dumb, because that has dog energy. But that does make me a hypocrite. I worked at a server at a "fun" restaurant, and I know first hand how few people want to order sandwiches with names like Mr. Bacon's Big Adventure. Also, if you write this in a list separated by commas, it does look like I'm a five year old who calls all his games Big. "Someone please buy this man a thesaurus." By Moth or Moonlight: This one page hack of Wanderhome works, I think? The title is gentle, and it alludes to the source material. But it does fall into my classic trap of wanting to name things like a poem. Knots in the Sky: I think this name is really pretty for a game about a floating labyrinth. But I showed one friend and was hesitantly, awkwardly asked if it was about furry sex. Furry sex, apparently, is called knotting³. Reader, it is not about furry sex. The Hourglass Sings: A love letter to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000). I think this one is actually decent, although somebody's already gotten it wrong in front of an audience. Also, the reference to Zelda themes is probably too vague.
Earlier today, I teased a friend for naming their TTRPG EA Sports¹. I realized about five seconds later that almost all my games have their own name problems, most of which were not on purpose. So now it's time for me to eat my humble pie and tell you all my sins. The bad names fall into 3-ish categories. I'll write a quick explanation paragraph, then give the examples.
500 copies of Sock Puppets on a dining room table.
A still frame from a video depicts a puppet mid-sentence, with a title card that reads "Herman - Game Designer?" Underneath the video, there are project stats: Sock Puppets. 161 backers, 15 days to go, and $5000 pledged exactly.
A man looks suspicious of a puppet he's actively operating. In the background, there's a puppet show set affixed to the wall with duct tape. In the foreground, a microphone sits on a copy of Slay the Spire: The Board Game.
A cursed block of tofu wears a baseball cap and walks after a red ball. The tofu block has arms and legs, and is using the arms to move through what may be a forest of rosemary? The tofu also has eyelashes and a smile. A peeling (but printed-on) sticker reads "new".
A snippet from a collage-style rulebook. The text reads: "When you gather flowers, talk about who Jessie was. Her little habits, her hobbies, her dreams, things she used to say, things she loved (or hated). If it's been a while since you found a good flower, talk about her death instead." "When you weave flowers, talk about your relationship with Jessie. Consider memories in tableau: glimpses of life, rather than full stories. If a stem breaks, share something that fell apart without her."
Notification on a phone screen reads "A Stranger has followed you."
Two people peer over an octagon-shaped board with a play area divided into rings, and discs scattered on the surface. One person's hand is positioned in a way that suggests they just flicked one of the discs across the play surface.
A banner welcomes the user to Adobe Photoshop Elements 9. In the splash image, there's a badly-made collage of a child playing the drums and using playground equipment.
A woodburnt plaque reads "CANGAMES 2024," and shows a picture of a phoenix-dwarf emerging from two eggs. Underneath the illustration, faint text reads "Best Addition to a Roleplaying Game".
ITEM 4: NOSTALGIA I stopped mid-sentence of item number three to write that I was just overcome by a vivid memory of my childhood. On a lake somewhere in Missouri there was a rundown little marina and the floating building furthest to the left was an old nickel-type arcade. It had four or five ancient pre-video game games. One was a rotating airplane on a wire. You could make it move up or down as it rotated and, through a clever trick, it could fly through a little barn. The other was a baseball game that I've seen elsewhere. The room was dusty and old and I can only imagine that the whole thing slid into the lake and turned into slime.
A screenshot of a spreadsheet that at first glance looks like a bowling scorecard, but on closer inspection includes rules for playing a tabletop roleplaying game (and spaces for character names, players, etc).
A low-poly robed figure hovers above a hologram projector, slowly rotating. Superimposed over the figure is "GALACTIC 2E," a roleplaying game by Riley Rethal. In the background there are small dots of stars. Several boxes overlay the screen, each labelled with a different player's name.
An interior scene of a wooden dance floor and a nearby bar. A large window frames a scene of a sparse field with a single tree, and mountains in the background. In the foreground, four figures are present: one place the fiddle, two dance, and one sips of glass of wine from the bar, looking on.
A screenshot from the website formerly known as Twitter. It reads: "Anxiety and low self-esteem make those "manifest your big dreams" posts a nightmare." The post is credited to Nathan Lurz, @LurzBlurbz.
A man dressed like a crow faces the camera, one arm aloft and one holding a cocktail. His forearms and hands have velcro attaching feathered wing segments to them, and he wears a tail made of cardboard. On his head is a papercraft mask of a crow.
A mockup of a spread for a game. The page is filled with prompts asking leading questions for a dog character and an island character. The spread is black and white (not greyscale).
Kurt and Ian wear event nametags and address an offscreen group of people. Kurt is mid-sentence, mouth open. A wooden horse in the background shares his exact expression.
A volcano rises above a girl and her dog. Text reads: Big Dog, Big Volcano. A TTRPG by Kurt Refling and Kathleen Hartin. 3 players, 90 minutes. The volcano, text and foreground figures are the same shape.
An MS Paint drawing of a forum screenshot from the 2000s, with a thread titled I NAMED MY BABY GOKU and body text that reads "a tabletop rpg about a community of fans and the thing they love".
Kurt smiling coyly at the camera.
I Named My Baby Goku is a 2-6 player game about a small fandom community.
Kurt smiles, holding up a copy of both Here We Used to Fly and Two Summers.
Three people pose in a stream overlay: Kurt, Anthony, and Amanda. Text on the screen reads Wanderhome, and illustrations of plants are superimposed over it. Kurt is pouring tea, Anthony plays the banjo, and Amanda has a cute dinosaur toy perched on her shoulder.
A person in a pink dress walks towards a staircase leading into the sky. Text reads "Knots in the Sky: 2 players, 40 to 60 minutes, by Kurt Refling".
Three figures stand in a field, staring towards a decaying rollercoaster track that frames a sunset. A title reads "Here We Used to Fly".
A hiker and her dog share a moment of affection. She is seated and her dog is licking her face. Their shape is vaguely triangular, and underneath them his text that reads big dog, big volcano.
Dead Your friends don’t know this, but you’re not really you anymore. You’re a spirit – an echo of someone they used to care about. You’re tied to this place now. How did you lure the group here? Messages from your old phone number An impulse you planted in their minds Through a co-conspirator who knows you’re a ghost and wants to help Other: How did you die? A tragic accident A chronic illness Through your own vices or recklessness Other: Why do you linger in this place? Memories of better times Its emptiness mirrors your own You have unfinished business here Other: Which park feature grounds you on this plane?