Truly Rural is basically a one man operation consisting of myself, Peter Amthor. The goal is to release material for tabletop role-playing games. Not a professional studio of any sort. Not making slick products that are cutting edge. But making stuff that is (hopefully) useful to folks at a cheap price.
Most of my experience in gaming has centered around modern day horror, cyberpunk and post apocalyptic. I’ve done playtesting for West End Games, Fun Sized Games, R. Talsorian and more. Plus a few other credits here and there. I’ve been a community organizer, ran games at conventions for AEG, been a storyteller for a Larp and more. So gaming is something that I’ve always been into for as long as I can remember.
The first release was “I found what in my bag of holding?” in 2015. Followed by a few more pdfs and a small amount of stock art. Things were tooling along rather nicely until Covid hit. I ended up on a ventilator at Barnes Hospital followed by a period of physical rehabilitation at Mercy Hospital. The amount of brain fog that I ended up having was pretty bad. Basically I released the last product or two that I had pretty much finished and was done.
Physical recovery came much faster than mental recovery. But through getting back into tabletop gaming I started getting my brain going again. Then when I figured out there was no returning to factory work I was given a job by one of my good friends at his shop,Aesop’s Treasury. Started out having to use a calculator for even basic math was a bit rough. But by exercising my mind, conversing with customers, keeping track of stock, it’s all helped me. My memory got better, my math got better and my creativity returned.
So now I’ve gotten back to work trying to write and produce material for the hobby I love. No longer worrying about trying to make anything perfect. Just get it done and out there. With each release I smile to myself and think about getting the next one rolling.
If any of you wish to follow me on social media the links are below. And after that is a feed to my regular blog which contains a lot of material which eventually find their way to my actual releases.