February Update: General Ramblings

Just wanted to update you guys what's coming up, and the schedule of things to come. This post will be incredibly long, so I'm trying to label in it a way that people can find what they might care about, so feel free to skim until you see what that might be :)

General Status

First of all, I'll be travelling for the next couple weeks, unfortunately. This doesn't necessarily mean away from the internet (nothing too exciting) but it does mean I'll be a bit more intermittent, particularly due to timezones - mostly as far as my presence on Discord and Reddit goes. I will still follow up with tagged comments and questions, might be more of a delay on them though. Will go back to normal at the end of the month.

During that time, we might also see less updates here, but that'd just mean we see more updates when I get back; I'll probably have more time to work on writing than usual, but playtesting and layout will be a bit more challenging for obvious reasons :)

If you haven't seen it around, there's also a Suggestion Box using Google Forms here:

 https://forms.gle/d7RsScY3xnLZPRtU8 

Appreciate all the suggestions so far, and it's the way to make sure I see a suggestion, though like with any suggestion, I don't make any promises (unless you're at the Noble tier... in which case I make some promises :D )

What's Upcoming?! : Homebrew Stuff

Crafting: The big item we've been seeing updates on is Crafting; the document has gotten past 30 pages and will continue to climb as charts and tables are fleshed out. The goal of keeping it simple remains, but simplicity does you little good without proper reference.

Some of you may have seen the lookup table JavaScript tech demo; depending on the overall success/usage of crafting once it gets into playtesting, I may flesh that out. I think it's a cool idea, but making that actually functional would take a good bit of work, and working JavaScript is not my favorite thing ever :)

Expect a playtest version of Alchemy, Blacksmithing, and Enchanting with feature complete as far as item crafting for PHB, XGE, and DMG items around the end of this month, or in the few week or two of next month.

Occultist: The first new class in awhile.  I would not expect to see a playtest version of this until next month, but this will be dropping next month almost for sure. The playtest version will have Witch (with White, Black and Green covens), Shaman, and one more subclass that's still up in the air between a few options. The main delay here is that the Occultist needs new spells to function, and spells are something that have to be created and tested carefully. We've seen the first wave of spells, and we will see the 2nd wave of spells soon (along with updates to the first wave of spells).

There is also art in progress for it, from the same talented artists we've seen art for Artificer from :)

Artificer: Artificer is the most complete of my projects, but there's never such a thing as done on it; it has the most eyes on it, so it has the most suggestions and feedback.

Runesmith has been delayed as the rework didn't get through preliminary testing. It's still coming, but I want to make sure it's a version that I'm happy with before I commit to it.

Cursesmith is out in the wild being playtested. I've gotten the first round of playtesting feedback from more than a dozen people out there playing it in the wild! Some changes will be forthcoming, but overall the receptions been fairly positive.

There won't be a new subclass poll until Runesmith returns, but there will be an Expanded Toolbox update shortly. There's a long overdue additional Thesis option for Fleshsmith that should shamble onto the roster tonight or tomorrow, with a handful of extra upgrades all around.

Psion: We did have a winner of our poll, so the next update will be Clairvoyance/ Clairsentence , a new Discipline to flesh out the roster. That with a small suite of improvements and adjustments should be coming soon. This will probably be posted while I'm travelling, but might have to wait until I'm back.

There was a clear second place with Nomad as a new subclass, so rather than run another poll, I will probably work off of the order from the poll for the next update. Nomad will probably be the 1.3 version of Psion, coming after Clairvoyance and that will probably have to wait until I'm back from travel (as a new subclass means a redoing the layout of the doc :)

Warlord: Been awhile since we've heard much on the battlefront here... and that's mostly a good thing. People are happy with it, and it's out in the wild. I think I will be some updates to it just to clean out the cobwebs and giving it another chance to get posted and out there in the public, but there's remarkably little that needs to be fixed current. I think there's probably some small need for buffs, a few tweaks to Chieftain, and beyond that it's due for a new subclass soon. The next poll will probably be a Warlord subclass poll... if you want to make sure you're idea is on the poll, make sure you've let me know your ideas.

Patreon Requests: We'll be seeing some interesting stuff this month out of Patreon requests, these will all probably fall towards the end of the month this month. If you've made a request, definitely feel free to follow up with me where it is at, and if you haven't made a request, make sure to get it in front of me soon for the month :)

Subclasses: Outside of the patreon requests, no new subclasses are scheduled for this month. I have some ideas that will be coming forward in time (some good ones from the suggestion box, a few of my own). Expect 1-2 of these next month, maybe I will sneak one in this month, but don't want to promise more than I'll deliver.

 What's Upcoming?! : Other Stuff 

I actually have two other things floating in the background here...

Website. As we are all aware, I have the organization of a team of caffinated squirrels. Many of you probably hadn't seen the suggestion box, and there's constant asks of where X or Y is linked. Patreon will always be the source of the newest versions of things, but I'm working on a website that can help have all of my stuff in one spot (as some of you may know, I'm a little reluctant to use patreon as a link up to all my stuff after some issues with erroneous takedown requests - not patreon's fault, but don't want to risk that patreon account with things like that in future)

My solution to all of this is get my own website. The wheels are spinning on this, but my website savvy is... very out of date, particularly for this user facing UI/UX stuff. There's a few options still on the table, but it's something I'm working on.

Stream. For a long time a (few) people have suggested they'd like a Happy Fun Hour esque stream. I think this will actually happen come March. I'll do 1 or 2 in March, and if people are interested we'll pick it up as a weekly/biweekly thing. No promises yet, but I do have gotten a mic, so we are that much closer to this being a reality. I've never worked on Homebrew in that sort of situation (on stream) but I think it could be fun, so we'll give it a shot. This will happen in early March.

...Running a Game? Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Running an online game is possible in the future, but currently on the backburner. This would require a bigger time investment than I can do currently, and will likely only happen if I make a shift to spending more time on D&D stuff in general. Might be something that happens at some point, but there's a lot of things in the way of it (like that I don't know how to use any of the VTTs :) )

What About All The Other Stuff?

There's a lot on the backburner not covered here. If something is on the back burner, it's usually because I don't have a lot of actionable feedback on it, and there's other stuff that's more exciting in front of it. Sometimes I have an idea that makes something more exciting and that bubbles it to the front, or sometimes I get suggestions and feedback about an old idea that breathes new life into. The best way to get other ideas to move forward in the queue is send me thoughts and feedback on them :)

Things on the back burner simmering include:

• The Book of Feats
• Lineage Levels
• Demiclasses
• Ancient Arcane (gravity and time)
• The Adventure (Artificer's Workshop Adventure)
• Reworking the Warlock
• Runesmith Artificer (and deeper on the backburner, Mindsmith, Bindsmith, and Spellsmith)
• Gish Spells
• Additional Psion subclasses
• Engineering (crafting branch)
• ...and a lot more; honestly that's just the list I remember off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more in my notes.

Anyway, this is a stupidly long update, but it's been awhile since I've done one, and I wanted to keep you guys in the loop. 

Working TTRPG stuff is a ton of fun - I love hearing all the stories people have from the games and all the stuff they manage to with the things I make. At this point there's a real chance this something I'll be able to spend more time on the future. Cannot make any promises there yet, but appreciate all the support here so far - it's already created more time for spending on this sort of thing, and continues to do so as the support grows. Seriously; thanks!