The last edits are being completed on the first draft of Sorrow in Haven. The 'beta' copy of the book has been made (and some obviously adjustments are in order). With that in the final stages, I've moved on to parts 2 and 3 of the project: the monster book and version 2 of the main book.
Monsters
First, re-creating all of the 'classic' monsters is not a particularly fun or rewarding experience. So for the most part I decided simply not to. The majority of monsters are new creatures, things that haven't existed before. As I was writing, though, I realized that some of the classic monsters should show up. Most of them have been included in the "Creatures of Dust" group - these are the more common creatures that characters (and players) may know about.
I'm going to break the monsters into 3 volumes, just for management purposes. Creatures have a "class" that is similar to level and are rated A-E based on where they might show up in a dungeon. The Threat value for individual creatures varies on a given class, but overall, higher threat is a 'higher' class rating. Volume 1 will contain classes A&B, volume 2 C&D, and volume 3 will have class E, Astral, and Gloom encounters. Volumes 1 and 2 will contain 132 monsters, volume 3 128 monsters, and both will have appendices for some extra fun (although I'm not sure what just yet).
Main Rules v2
The rewrite of the main rules is for two purposes. The first is to add new details, rules, and concepts into the official rules. The second is to expand on some concepts that are touched up but not explained as well as I'd like or need to be updated/revised/expanded. The game is the same, just with some more polish on it. All of that comes together to create a single book that is an entire game, including some monster highlights, so a new GM or player can pick it up and jump right in.
When?
That is the fun part, isn't it? Earlier in the year I had a MASSIVE data loss situation. Entirely my fault, although i'll blame technology for as much of it as I can get away with. The monster collection had to be entirely recreated, the dungeon generator I use for inspiration also needed to be (and is still in the process) of being rebuilt from the ground up. So next year? I plan to have the main text completed by the end of June 2019, then the art and editing and all that fun stuff needs to happen. SO this whole project might be ready in 2020. Let's say 2020.
Then I will consider if a Kickstarter is worthwhile. Not really to MAKE money (which would be cool) but to share my project and maybe break even. I'm doing this as a labor of love and will have everything completed and payed for and ready to go if/when a kickstarter happens, so it all comes down to production, which is going to be all done by hand. Because I can. and no PDF because I don't want to make that. I know that a lot of folks will not want such a thing, but i'm old school and like my books.
Recent Play Reports
I've been pretty awful about posting play reports on the blog. I mean clearly, this is the first thing posted in months. But the good news is that a massive and wildly complex adventure came to a close. It was a hard test of the rules and 99% of things worked out. More interesting, is that the first game being run by someone OTHER than me is happening! We've had one session which was awesome. Another session is pending, but work travel (not just mine) has borked things up a bit. In any case, the game goes on!
No comments:
Post a Comment