Shipping It, or Not

Three different things get called publishing, and only one of them is.

Using it in your own game. The common case. Nothing to publish, nothing to decide. Build your world in your project and play it.

Keeping it private. Also common, also correct. Mature or heavy material that belongs at your table and nowhere else stays there. Private is a real end state, not an unfinished one, and nobody should make you feel otherwise.

Sharing it so others build on it. The rare case, and a deliberate one.

The checklist that matters either way

None of it lives in a file, so nothing carries it for you:

PIN            GM Operating Principles. The silent failure.
PROJECT TYPE   System, if others should build on it.
TAGS           set on the project page; written into the file
               they do not stick.
INSTRUCTIONS   Orbit's thirteen blocks. Confirm the count.
LEXICON        real banks, not the shipped demo terms. This is
               the largest quality lever in the system.
EXAMPLE WORLD  mine it, keep it, or bin it — and if you bin it,
               re-point the root map and Scene State.

Releases

A private release is numbered, immutable, and a rollback point you will be glad of later. Take them freely.

Public is a separate decision. It puts the project in a catalog strangers clone from, and the release your handbooks ship with is tied to it permanently. Nobody should do it by accident, and nobody should be talked into it — including by me.