wizardthieffighter

Here We Are, The End

Added 2019-12-12 12:00:46 +0000 UTC

My work is done, my brush has won.

Dear heroes, we are here at the House on the Edge, at the precipice of finality. The project that took much more time than I could have expected is completely completed from my side. The Ultraviolet Grasslands and all the attendent stretch and special and additional bonus material is done.

This project has been ... an experience. Mostly good, but I hope to not repeat it in the same way. I took almost the entirety of the work upon myself and I have learned that ... it was probably too much. It took too much of my time from the things I love, the writing, the inventing, the drawing, for things at which I am passable ... the graphic designing, the project managing, the final editing touches. Oh, so many final touches :D :D

Very quiet now. There's still a bit of technical stuff (visiting the post office and sending things to Matt), but no more editing, polishing, creating.

I am free!

Thank you for your patience.

What Was At The Last

The limited edition book plates: every one of the 150 limited editions is getting an illustrated bookplate with a small illustration, number, and signature. This was probably three or four days of drawing straight. That was intense. I'll probably just make a flip-through video of them all. There are so many, it ... actually takes a lot of time to even flip through.
The 10 different postcards, each with a little paragraph on the location. Anna (our graphic designer) made them look pretty, so all I had to do was add pictures and words. A blessed relief.
The referee screen that took three weeks instead of three days ... and fortunately it shows a bit!

What Next For UVG

This isn't super-relevant for the stratometaship, but ... over the next couple of weeks the kinder marmots should deliver the books and screens to Exalted Funeral. Then will follow the packing and checking-twice of addresses and packages and dice and more. The building of home pages for the UVG and places to host the digital ref screen. The shipping out of books. Updating the digital editions to include the last of the last tweaks.

But, crucially—I won't have to do any of that. Sure, a few tweaks to the website, a bit of verbiage here and there, but really really crucially ... no more grinding out X pages of graphic design, coloring Y hundred illustrations (around 230 at the last), drawing Z score limited edition characters.

Let me repeat: I'm free.

What Next For The Stratometaship?

This. Finally this. Oh, how I have waited to have the freedom to get here, back to making new things!

I'm taking a bit of rest, but, gods, if ideas haven't been roiling, notes getting scribbled, one-shots seeing playtesting ... GAH.

The list that follows isn't complete or anything, it's ... a brain-dump of the various projects and where they are.

Red Sky Dead City — the big one. I've got first drafts of all the locations written and waiting for cleanup. But the big layout change is that I'm going to split it out into two books, one for players, the other for referees, because so much of it should be readable for everyone at the table - the myths, the spells, the abilities, the common knowledge, the histories, all of it. The big production change is that the Moonrats (Jarrett and Fiona) and Doubleproficiency (Anna) are going to be involved from this moment on. I'll provide manuscripts and art, the Moonrats will do the first edits, and Anna will do the layouts. No more fixing everything up after the fact! This is going to mean a lot more time for me to just write and draw.
Longwinter — the slightly less big but still hefty setting. This one is actually getting split into two books. One for players, the other for referees. Plus a separate booklet for the survival horror game. That one might even get adapted into a card deck ... but that's going to be Anna's work, not mine (freedom!). On my side I am going to take my notes and outlines, and finish the setting. Crucial bits I'm fleshing out: factions and their actions (campaign fronts if you will), expanded winter events to populate your game, slightly elaborated locations, more NPCs. Less crucial, but possible: equipment list, micro-bestiary, more spells and special items.
Seacat — making it playable! Making more approachable core skins! Making it easier to get into. Yes, yes, and yes. I'm looking into bringing in a few more fine writers and artists on this project. Both to sharpen the mechanics a bit more, and to write some additional skins and ideas. One of the things I'm experimenting with is ... "lethality settings", to make it easier to run games where character defeat / failure doesn't mean death, but rather their departure from the regular cast (becoming more like player-managed NPCs, or occasional returnees. Uhhh ... this ties into the next thing, and the premade characters for it.
"Missing at Betterfolk Manor" (working title) - a very, very tight and paranoid one-shot adventure that doubles down on the setting of Witchburner and Longwinter. I've figured out an interesting little mechanic for it, and a bunch of pre-generated characters. Should be a good, role-play heavy, rules-light introductory adventure. A supernatural whodunnit. I am sorely tempted to skip ahead to finishing this one, but I'll try to resist and do Longwinter first!
"Let Us In" (working title) - another one-shot adventure (that might serve as an opener for a longer campaign). Originally written to fit within Longwinter, but now - after a few tests - I think it can stand on its own. However, because there were a few challenges with getting ... the story across in the tests, I'm tempted to restructure it with the "Betterfolk" mechanics.
"Kinder Gentler Ague" (working title) - a one-shot I've struggled to fit into a one-shot, which suggests I need to rework it. Kindness and strangeness has descended on a town, what can this mean? More in the Witchburner World - cross between a 1920s mystery novel and a Stephen King novel like the Tommyknockers. I've run it 3 or 4 times and it keeps being a bit too long.
"Bronze God Betrayer" (working title) - a very different three-part module. The first part has the players work and compete as gods to create a small setting. The second part has them generate clans and heroes. The third sees calamity strike, with the players taking the surviving off to ... "make their god see reason." I've got a large chunk of story written on this one, and a chunk of mechanics but ... frankly don't know when I'll return to it. Probably next year some time.
"Motörs & Monstêrs" (working title) — bestiary for the UVG and Red Sky Dead City. A twinkle in the writer's pen. Including a there-and-back-again chase adventure (think Mad Max with Kaiju).
"Summoned Saviors" (working title) — one-shot where the players are summoned by semi-competent wizards to stop a giant monster destroying the city. There's a small plot-twist, unreliable narrators, and a basically indestructible monster. Think throwing the tarrasque at 1st level characters, and you've got a good idea. This one has been really fun in a couple of playtests, but it's in a super rough state.
"Voyages of the Black Obelisk" — the sequel to the UVG and Red Sky. Full on space rock. Lings. Including peng-lings. Time-and-dimension hopping. Unforseen consequences. Strange shennanigans. This one is ... still nearly entirely unwritten. Just ... uhh ... foreshadowed? Announced?
"Power Metal Glory Force" (working title) — a super-cheesy power metal adventure, with the heroes actively "saving" the world (and causing more unforseen consequences). This project is so ... loosely sketched out in my head it might never even happen.
"Gods of Longlongago" (working title) — this is a board game version of the UVG. Again, just a twinkle in the creator's mind for the moment.

So, there we have it! Not much at all, right?

One crucial thing I really want to do is try to write more actually short modules. On the order of 32 pages or so. That's where all those listed one-shots come in.

Finally, there's a thing I've put off over this year, because ... well ... you know why. But, it's revamping some of the patreon tiers. I've found doing the custom art for the metahero tier to be ... very hard, basically. I'll make some polls to figure out the whereto and howfor of that.