The Testing

When you're editing and proofreading a work of fiction, I imagine it would be useful to keep a set of notes to track consistency with character descriptions, events, behaviors, etc. When editing a game, however, this doesn't work as well, because there is so much that needs to be tracked. The only way (that I've found) to make sure your editing is sufficiently extensive is to play-test the material.

One Small Step...

... for me, one giant leap for Renaissance. Over the holiday weekend I finalized the latest editing of Renaissance: The Rebirth, 2nd ed., completed the rough table of contents, converted to PDF and have ordered my first test printing! I'm now working on designing a number of adventures to test the system with and a condensed rule-set for play-testers to use. Once those are complete I will be looking for people who are able and willing to run test games and provide me with feedback on their experiences. Once that process has begun, I will also be looking for an artist who can draw in the desired style and within my price-range for keeping the final book affordable.

If you're interested in running a few test games and think you and your group can provide effective feedback please contact me at renaissancetherebirth (at) gmail dot com.

The Toil of Creativity

I may write more on this topic later, but for now I'd like to simply observe how much toil and (some might say) drudgery goes into finishing a creative endeavor. You get this great idea, you work on it and are driven by your intensity and then, suddenly, the creative part grinds to a halt. It is at this point that refinement, editing and finishing kicks in. Once all the creative processes are complete, you still have (in my case) spell lists to write out and format and re-format, summaries to write, indexes to assemble, tables to assemble and read through's for editing spelling, grammar and consistency. It's not a complaint, not really, but there's a lot of hard work that goes into finishing a creative project, whether you're doing it all yourself or working as part of a larger team within an established company.

Progress Update

I've been working on finishing all the miscellaneous bits of Renaissance that were still floating around, waiting to coalesce into legitimate mechanics and have recently moved on to the final editing process. I'm still missing an Index, Table of Contents, Art and Bestiary, however, these are all superficial things at this point. All of those will be necessary for a final print, but prior to public play-testing they are superfluous. I'm currently on page 217 out of about 290 in my final edit so progress has been made surprisingly quickly all things considered. There are a few things I will need to go back and change due to other changes I've made in the editing process but for the most part the 217/290 assessment is a fairly accurate progress bar.

The End of an Era. Maybe.

I've been reading "The Dungeon Master Experience" article's by Chris Perkins for about 6 months now. He's been writing them longer than that but I came to the show late and frenzied my way through the archives pretty quick. These are some fantastic articles he's written and are well worth the read. As of this last Thursday though, 03/21/2013, his 4th edition campaign is over and so may also be his articles on this topic. There is still the possibility he'll return when his D&DNext campaign gets underway with new Dungeon Master Experience articles, but I would be surprised if he did so. I wouldn't be surprised to see him return with a new series of articles though.

In the meantime, I highly recommend visiting their archives, sorting by Category and reading every one of "The Dungeon Master Experience" articles available. There's lots of good advice and general entertainment, ranging from designing balanced encounters (and whether or not you even should) to how to create a game world that feels truly alive.

'til later...

Don't Blink

I was thinking about what a game with Weeping Angels in it would be like, which led me to wondering what mechanic to use to see how long a character could keep their eyes open without blinking. In Renaissance, a round is only 3 seconds. After a little experimentation I guesstimated that a character, in Renaissance, could keep their eyes open for a number of rounds equal to their Con score before they would need to start making Con rolls. In terms of other game systems, which use 6 seconds (D&D 3.0 and 3.5, Pathfinder and 4e too I think), you would need to limit that to half the character's Con in rounds. Regardless of which system I use, I can't wait for my next Halloween game!

Have you ever played in or run a game with Weeping Angels in it? If so, tell us about it in the comments below, I'd love to hear your stories!

Chaos Summoner

I've been cogitating on a Stormbringer inspired summoning class for Pathfinder recently and finally hit some inspiration last night and threw this together this morning. It's not quite done, there are some durations to work out, I need to build an Aspects list and their effects and, of course, do some testing but I thought I'd put it up here today for your perusal and preview.