Garrity Games

A trick-taking game set in Ancient Rome during the time of Caesar. Each player plays as one of the main protagonists of the first Triumvirate and their main foe in the Senate, each with asymmetrical powers.

The Die Is Cast is a working title. Still, sounds interesting, right? Thanks, I think so.

My first game… 

It’s incredibly exciting. I think about it every day, all day. Trick-Taking games are some of my favorite games of all time. The idea for this game came to me as I was playing a card game with my wife and a few friends. I thought, “You know what would make this cool…” The first line of all great ideas. For this one, the cool thing was adding one of my favorite aspects of any game to one of my favorite types of games: Asymmetric Factions to a Trick-Taking game. 

Then, I took my game idea from in my head to out into the real world. I wrote rules, created a handmade prototype, and went through a few test plays … Three years ago.

And, then, I stopped. No more testing, no more tinkering or pushing to make a better prototype. I just shoved it aside, into a physical and digital draw, and shut it away. Out of sight, out of mind. 

An obvious question reveals itself: If I was so excited about this idea, and was certain it would be interesting to other people and not just me, what the heck took me so long to start producing my first game? What took me so long to kick my butt into gear and start truly creating the thing?

A few things. This is my first foray into the gaming industry. Not as a consumer, but a designer. I plan on selling this game myself through crowdfunding. That was my plan three years ago, and it has remained constant to this day. That, in and of itself, is scary. The word ‘daunting’ comes to mind. While that is a factor, the real-world difficulties of designing, producing, and selling my own game is just another manifestation of the root problem that kept me from creating this game. It is what keeps any and all people from pursuing their dreams. The death of creativity, and the one thing I needed to change if I ever wanted to bring this game, and all my other creative pursuits, to fruition. Mindset.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. It is what has held me down for my entire life, like an anchor tied around my neck. Mindset seems to be what holds nearly all of us creative types from turning ideas into finished products. Are you a “I can do it” person? Or are you a “It’s just so hard” person? I was the latter for—well, forever, I guess. Not anymore though. Something changed a couple of months ago that morphed me into an “I can” person.

Years ago, when Covid was still a plague on us all, there was no impetus to create a game. Or a website. Or Youtube channel (which will be up and running by Friday). There was no…pressure. Today, it is a different story.

Don’t worry. I’m not dying or anything. It is just an aspect of reality that has really hit home over the past few years, culminating in an irrevocable change in my thought process a few months back. You see, for most of my life (and I think this is all too common today) I never noticed the passage of time. Friday would bring the weekend, going out with friends, and seeing my wife’s family or mine. Next month we would have a vacation to Maine. Autumn brought apple picking, which led into Thanksgiving, and Christmas was right around the corner. Then, it was our five year anniversary. Our ten year anniversary. Fifteen years. (I know. Crazy, right? And I’m only thirty eight years old!) You get the picture. There was always something we were looking forward to, while we were never actually driving towards anything. An all too familiar feeling, I’m willing to wager. 

It was a strange time. Life felt more like floating in the current than swimming towards a goal. Then, a little over four years ago, my wife and I had the best news. She was pregnant with our first kid. Our son, Jack. He was born in January 2023. The feeling when he was born was like nothing I had ever felt before. Then, we took our little ball of skin home. It was…an adjustment. Awesome, in all kinds of ways, and that word again, daunting in plenty of ways, too.

Over the next few months, during my down time from work (the jokes), and knee deep in diapers and eye-stinging sleepless nights, my wife and I somehow found time for a game or two. As stated above, an idea struck for a game of my own. Before life slapped me in the face and said, ‘Will you shut up! You got bigger fish to fry. The baby’s hungry!’ True enough. More pressing matters, I suppose. 

Since then, we have added two more to our gaggle of Garrity’s. Three kids, three years and under. Chaotic in the extreme, but the most amazing time of my life. Seeing them all grow over the last few years, especially Jack, has been the best and most terrifying time of my existence. Kids add so much joy, frustration, anxiety, insomnia, love, but most of all, fulfillment. Oh, and they add one more thing. The one aspect that makes them pressing to what we are discussing: A living, breathing sand timer. 

Every day that goes by, it seems like one of them is doing something brand new and extraordinary (to their parents, us, anyways. You would most likely be far less blown away by a three year old counting plastic boats AND knowing the boat’s colors. To us, it’s like seeing him walk on the moon). What that does, other than make me equal parts thrilled and devastated, is serve as a constant reminder that time is ticking by. So, it made me wonder, what am I doing with it? Am I showing a good example to our children? Or, am I showing them what complacency looks like? How limiting fear of failure can be when you give in to it? 

This was all clanging around in my mind for a long while. I am more than a little embarrassed, and somewhat amused to admit, it was a two year old and a children’s book that solidified in my mind that I would make this game and this website. I read to my kids every night, and a couple of months ago my second born son, Cillian, asked for the Idea Book. It’s about “What do you do with an Idea?” As I was reading, he was enraptured. My youngest, our first girl, was rolling around chewing on something, and Jack was playing with action figures on his big boy bed, but Cillian was staring at me, enthralled. Hanging on my every word. The book ends with two lines:

Then, I realized what you do with an idea. 

You change the world.

I sat in the rocking chair in my sons’s bedroom, staring at a book for toddlers, contemplating the wisdom of this freaking story. Oblivious, Cillian said, “Read it again! Read it again!” And I did. Twice more. After turning off the lights, sitting in the chair next to Cillian’s crib, holding his hand as he drifted off to his personal dreamworks playground, I kept thinking. And thinking. Then, thinking some more. I was in their room so long that my wife peeked her head in to make sure I was alright. 

And I was. Sort of.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. My kids slept great, a rarity that I would usually be happy to take advantage. But this night, my mind refused to turn off. I dusted off my prototype, fired up the laptop, and started working on this little card game of mine, and I have been ever since. 

That night, I was at a crossroads, and I have been standing at it for a long time. Too long. There was a fork in the road. Which will win out: the Fear of Failure, or the Fear of Regret? Trying and failing is scary stuff. But regret? That’s the stuff of nightmares. Whatever may come of this journey I’ve started, I am going to see it through to the end. Success or failure, be damned. 

I know this was a longer post, and more motivation and mindset, rather than the more practical, tangible hurdles and hangups that arise from creating anything, specifically a game. Those tangible problems are important, to be sure. But it is our own mind that keeps us from doing the things we desperately want to do. It is crucial for us to know that.

Like most things, our mindset is a double edged sword. What holds us back is also the key to pushing us forward. The good news? While our mindset can often be our biggest hangup, it is also the only thing that can propel us to jump up to the stars and snatch our dreams with both hands. The best part? Our mindset is one of the few things on planet earth that is completely and absolutely within our control. I will be writing more about the practicalities to game creation, and the creative process in general, but even with the tangible issues or goals we have, everything circles back to our own mindset.

So, which will you let into your mind? The Fear of Regret to drive you forward? Or the Fear of Failure that paralyzes you? 

Come along with me, and perhaps we can show each other the way to achieving our dreams.