How I made Gloam

A written documentary

The Beginning

It all started back in mid-November when I drew this “hypothetical character sheet” for fun. I think I had seen someone do something similar for a hypothetical card game and I got inspired.

Genesis

I posted it on the r/osr subreddit and it quickly rose to be one of the top ten posts of all time there. At the time of writing this, it’s sitting at #6 with 1,500 upvotes and 77 comments. Anyway, it resonated with a lot of people—it had cool red linework, tarot suits as the attribute boxes, and an overall late medieval tarot-y feel. Most of the comments were enthusiastic speculation on what the mechanics of such a game would look like, with many people offering suggestions or even fully-thought-out core systems. Lots of comments said this game already existed in His Majesty the Worm (we’ll get there later).

Okay, there was something here, I thought. Maybe this isn’t just going to be hypothetical.

I got to work hand-stitching together a 24 page booklet with a cardstock cover, made of letter sized paper folded in half.

---

The Name

The first thing I tackled was the name. I remember figuring this out pretty quickly. Recently a member of my Discord server asked me why I went with “Gloam”, and this was how I put it:

So it was short and memorable and fit with the general vision I had for the game, aaaand Dolmenwood has a really cool crow-themed monster that I think is cool.

I googled ‘Gloam gothic font’ and lettered out my interpretation on the booklet:

Then I drew a mockup of the cover, basing it on the major arcana card The Tower, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. I think I chose this card as the cover because it has a certain mythical catastrophe feel, it evokes ruination, disaster, and it’s something that makes you ask questions. I think something that makes you ask questions makes a great cover. I thought this would be a placeholder, but it ended up being the final cover because I grew attached to it.

---

The Mechanics

The core mechanic comes from His Majesty the Worm by Josh McCrowell. I had the PDF and had read up to the part describing its core mechanic. It just made sense. It felt like it was to tarot what d20 + modifier and meeting a target number was to trad games. Then I saw this line in the legal text of the game: “The mechanics and game text of His Majesty the Worm may be reused freely.” So the stars had aligned and we had our core mechanic. I took a peek at the combat rules too and loosely adapted the core idea there as well. I stopped reading His Majesty the Worm and started working on all the other rules of Gloam. I didn’t the rest of the book until way later, after the rules of Gloam were solidified.

Over the next few days, I wrote down all my ideas for game mechanics and systems in my notebook.

---

The Layout

After coming up with the mechanics, I moved on to layout. This was in early December. What did I use to create Gloam’s layout? Apple Pages! Just the stock MacOS word processor. I actually did most of my image editing there too. With iCloud, I worked both on my laptop and my iPhone. I’d work on it whenever I had a spare moment. I wrote some of the game on my phone. It was honestly crazy and I don’t think I’d work this way again on future projects, but it was efficient, I’ll give it that.

Editing Gloam on my iPhone

Want to see some layout befores and afters? Here are some interesting ones. The pages on the left are from December and the one on the right are the final versions from April. Some of the biggest changes were rules changes/clarifications after playtests, smaller margins, more interesting layout, better art, including public domain drop caps, and mixing 1-column and 2-column layout:

Beliefs morphed into Goals.

---

The Art

Speaking of art: I’m an artist, but I really really liked the vibe of old book illustrations and thought it would mesh well with Smith’s tarot art. Went on oldbookillustrations.com for a lot of the early art. Later on, as the style evolved slightly and I started doing my own art for the book, I wasn’t as satisfied with those initial pieces. Luckily, 3 months ago, reddit user u/zoetrope366 posted A Big Ol’ List of Public Domain Art Resources on the r/osr subreddit. I easily found more dynamic pieces that matched Gloam’s vibe with that. Thanks zoetrope366!

Then I found itch.io user seedling’s Modified Public Domain Art asset pack, which was packed with all that fantastic medieval architecture art you see scattered throughout Gloam. I used this to create one of my favorite pieces in Gloam, this knight on horseback approaching a castle. It was made with several of these public domain images I bashed together in [you guessed it] Pages.

By the way, I made these spread mockups in Pages, too.

I drew these four adventurers in pen, snapped a photo with my phone, and edited them in Pages.

---

The Character Sheet

I saw Silver Nightingale’s badass Niv Lova and Zothia character sheets and I knew I had to commission him to make Gloam’s. So I did! And it rocks! I sent him this draft as a reference and he made it way better:

---

The Playtesting

I put out a call on Substack for playtesters in late January. They would get a free playtest copy, but they would need to post their APs on Substack. That way I could get exposure for Gloam and feedback, and they could get the game they were hyped about. Several of my followers accepted this bargain, and I’m very grateful. They provided valuable playtest feedback!

Big thanks to Björn Gögge, QuestionablePenmanship, Oakley's Zines, Michael, and DrLoveWizard for posting their playtest APs.¹

I also ran a few playtests over Discord with my regular game group. We did a lot of combat.

I won’t go into all the changes that were made, but combat probably received the most updates.

---

The Inspirations

RPGs:

• His Majesty the Worm; Josh McCrowell (2024)

  • This inspired the entire concept of a tarot tarp. And I used its core mechanic and very loosely adapted its combat system.

• Forbidden Lands; Free League Publishing (2018)

  • The concept of a metacurrency that fuels Talents came from this amazing game. I just finished running a Forbidden Lands campaign that lasted 1 ½ years.

• The Burning Wheel Roleplaying Game; Luke Crane (2002)

  • Inspired me to create Lifepath events that took a certain number of years to create a character backstory.

• Dolmenwood; Gavin Norman (2025)

  • The fairytale vibe is unmatched here and was undeniably a huge inspiration for Gloam, especially the darker elements.

• Neverland; Andrew Kolb (2020)

  • I loved Neverland’s graphic design and layout, and its handling of the realm of Fairy.

Video games:

• Dragon’s Dogma; Capcom (2012)

  • I adored this game’s medieval vibe and its action-rpg take on classic D&D. It has excellent monster design too: ogres, cyclopses, harpies, wolves, manticores, chimeras, dragons, you name it. It inspired some of the monsters in Gloam.

• Shadow of the Colossus; Sony Computer Entertainment (2005)

  • The art direction and the emotional weight of trying to help someone despite overwhelming odds.

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; Nintendo (2017)

  • Honestly everything about this game influenced Gloam in some way.

• Hollow Knight; Team Cherry (2017)

  • NPCs come and go, sometimes helping you, sometimes posing an obstacle. The lush environs.

Novels:

• The Lord of the Rings; J.R.R. Tolkien (1954-1955)

  • Of course. Specifically noble heroes fighting a growing malignant darkness. And the Scouring of the Shire.

• The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories; Lord Dunsany (1908)

  • His prose evokes exactly the kind of folkloric fairytale feel I was going for. And the Sword itself was inspirational to the way Gloam handles magic items.

• The Dreaming City; Michael Moorcock (1961)

  • Elric of Melnibone’s first appearance. I don’t know why, but that image of Elric on the throne stuck in my head. Elric’s sword Stormbringer and his magical boat The Ship Which Sails Over Land and Sea were huge influences too.

• The Dream Cycle; H.P. Lovecraft (1918-1932)

  • Dream visions of far-off fantastical realms.

Film/television:

• The Green Knight; dir. David Lowry (2021)

  • Weird Arthurian legend vibes.

• The Witch; dir. Robert Eggers (2015)

  • Folk magic, the inspiration for hags, and the visuals.

• The Northman; dir. Robert Eggers (2022)

  • In a way this is the perfect Gloam film: a character with a clear backstory driven by his Goal to get revenge on his Foe, he finds a cool magic sword and performs folk magic, etc etc. I swiped his sword: it’s called Draugr in Gloam.

• Over the Garden Wall; Patrick McHale (2015)

  • Walking talking pumpkin skeletons, the music, the Beast, the Highwayman, the talking woodland creatures… (stop me before I name everything in the show).

---

The Other Stuff

sean f. smith / he, him reached out to me and offered his proofreading services, which I took him up on.

I set up a Mixam POD for the game, which turned out great. Can’t wait for people to get their hands on that.

I did a lot of self-promotion for this game, which wasn't fun. My post in r/rpg got removed because of their strict self-promotion rules.

A lot of my mutuals here on Substack have been so kind with sharing, restacking, commenting, and otherwise supporting me on this project.

---

In Conclusion

This has been an incredible experience. It feels good to have released something. I’ve put out small pamphlet games before, but never anything near this scale. The support Gloam has received has blown me away. Thank you so much to everyone who has cheered me on in the last 6 months. I am grateful to all of you. It has been so amazing seeing people’s write-ups, reviews, posts, playthroughs, and insane creativity playing my game. Wait, my game? It’s our game now!

Now that the game is out, I’m going to take a bit of a break from projects of this scale for a while. I’m about to start a new position at my job, and I will definitely have more on my plate. After things calm down a little, I’m thinking that my next project will be a custom Gloam tarot deck with 100% hand-made art. That would be really cool.

If you’re curious about becoming a Gloamowner², you can find it here. If you have any QCCs (questions, comments, or concerns), message me or join The Lone Legend Club, our ever-growing Discord community.

If you want to create any rules supplements, adventures, or anything else, I encourage you to! Gloam’s free SRD has an open license, so go wild.

And of course, if you post anything Gloam-related on here, share it with me, I’d love to see it!

With gratitude,

Sam

1. Although, maybe Gloam is cursed, because suspiciously, none of these guys have posted any articles on Substack since their APs. Sorry guys!

2. Sorry for writing this word