Reason

From the desk of the creator
I started playing D&D in the fall of 2017, shortly after I started grad school and needed some stress relief. I always knew about it, and desperately wanted to play, but never had people around me who had any interest in or history of playing.

My best friend moved back to town. He started DMing some one-shots with all our friends. I always loved doing impressions and voices, and I was a sucker for immersive RPG video games. I fell in love with the game immediately; it was like the first time you ride a bike without training wheels.

I had no idea how many different kinds of tabletop systems were out there until one day about 6 months later when I was having a conversation with a coworker who regularly plays these types of games with his friends. I thought to myself, "How hard could it be to write your own system?"

Eschewing all responsibilities I had at work or school, I spend most of every day for three weeks writing and editing and rewriting the core rules that turned into The Chain. Over the next sixth months I'm sure I drove my best friend, roommate, coworkers, etc. crazy with my nonstop tinkering and talking out loud about how to improve the game.

I was obsessed with recreating social and mechanical realism within the game. I wanted it to feel like you were actually living the character, and have the mechanics feel as natural and realistic as possible. I was also replaying Fallout: New Vegas for the millionth time, and I've always loved the genre-breaking setting of the game. Out of this and the Dark Tower series by Stephen King (the name of the game comes from the surname of the main character, Deschaines), I became hysterically obsessed with the idea of a bunch of dumb Wild West hicks trying to take down aliens, eldritch horrors, pirates, or whatever else I felt like throwing at them.

I have and will never expect to make a career out of this, let alone make any money off of it. This is purely a project of love, and the only prize I can convince myself I'll receive is that someone enjoys it.

-DS