As December closes around a chilly Christmas, it feels like a good moment to write about where Bardworthy is, how it got here, and where it’s headed next.  The short version is this: Bardworthy is still very much alive. Development is ongoing. But the past year forced some changes in pace and approach, and it’s worth unpacking that.

Are we sure 2025 was only one year long?

    This past year was hard.  As costs and uncertainty increased, it became clear that our development plans weren’t practical anymore.  Like a lot of small independent companies, Rainjoy Games was built in the margins of the rest of life: families, jobs, bills, and responsibilities that don’t pause just because there are dreams to pursue.  

    We had to pause active development for a while to regroup, not because interest in the game faded or because we lost direction, but because we needed to figure out the best way to ensure that Bardworthy had the sort of future we wanted for it.

The Thoughts We Gathered

    We knew when we started what our values were—why we want to make games and what sort of games we want to make—but stepping back forced us to clarify the alignment between our values and efforts.

• The core identity of Bardworthy—a storytelling focus empowered by mechanical verisimilitude—was worth protecting.
• The biggest risks didn’t center around the rule implementation, but around production assumptions.
• Bardworthy development can stay closest to the parts of game design we care about, even if that means growth is slower, quieter, and less broad.

    In other words, the game itself wasn’t the problem. We just needed to rethink how to position and produce it.

As Ross Said, “Pivot!”

    At heart we’re storytellers.  Storytelling is the art we like best. We like creating stories, we appreciate good stories wherever we find them, and we want to help other storytellers when we can. We’re confident that Bardworthy will empower gaming groups everywhere to create richer stories together, but while we finish building it, we want to use our passion for storytelling to help build its potential audience by offering helpful resources for other storytellers.  That’s where our system-agnostic projects come in.

    While Bardworthy itself is still in development, we’re preparing resources like Momentary Troubles and other system-agnostic adventures and tools. These projects let us do two important things at once. First, they let us introduce Rainjoy Games to a wider range of players and GMs by meeting them where they already are, regardless of system. Second, they let us demonstrate the kind of storytellers we are and the variety and depth of storytelling that we care about.

    They aren’t distractions or even side projects; they’re expressions of the same interests, hopes, and philosophy that underpin Bardworthy: rich stories, complex freedom, meaningful choices. If Bardworthy is the engine, these projects are test drives on real roads.

    Just as importantly, we’re building with Bardworthy in mind. The resources are designed to stand on their own, but also to pair naturally with Bardworthy when it launches. The tone, assumptions, and narrative priorities are aligned. When Bardworthy is ready, there will already be material that feels at home with it: adventures and tools that show how the system supports the kind of play it was made for.

    This approach lets us keep creating, keep refining our craft, and keep building trust with players, without rushing the core system or pretending we’re larger than we are. It’s slower, but it’s honest, and it keeps the focus where we want it: on helping people tell better stories together.

What This Means for Bardworthy Right Now

    We really love the game we’re making, so we’re going to keep building it, just with slower and more deliberative steps.  At the moment we’re revising the next playtest packet: improving clarity, reviewing consistency, and better explaining the  game’s assumptions.  We’ll have more to say about each of those in future diaries.

    But we’ll also be talking about our system-agnostic projects.  The important thing I want to reiterate though is that Bardworthy isn’t being set aside while other projects move forward. The system-agnostic work supports it, informs it, and helps lay the groundwork for its eventual launch. Everything we’re producing now is meant to make Bardworthy stronger when it arrives, not to replace it.

    Think of our coming releases as scaffolding: their purpose is to help us build higher and better.

Here’s Looking at 2026

    If you’ve been following Bardworthy quietly, checking in now and then, or simply holding space for it while life happened elsewhere: thank you. Projects like this survive as much on patience as on enthusiasm.  Hopefully you agree with us that the goal is worth the effort, and that careful design is better than speed and spectacle.
    The work we’re doing now—the first issues of Momentary Troubles will launch in a couple of days—all flows from the same commitment. We want to make tools that help people tell rich, meaningful, Bardworthy stories together, and we want to do it in a way that’s true to what we care about.

    As the year closes and we look ahead, I’ll say again: thank you for walking alongside us, whether you’ve been closely following every update or simply checking in from time to time.  There’s more to come. We’ll get there the right way.

Until next time,

Daniel