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Blog of Silence – Writing and Stay-at-home Dad

Been quiet this week, so I apologize for that. The cause? My wife is in Italy for the annual Hwa Rang Do world tournament and black sash seminars – in addition to being a PhD in Wastewater Treatment, she’s also a martial arts instructor. 

Yes, she’s a badass.

What that means, though, is I have the 2yo and the 6yo for ten nights, and much of the time, I’m keeping them occupied. The eldest has camp from 9a-4p, and the little one gets daycare three days a week, but Tu/Th and the weekends it’s keeping her entertained. And since she dropped both her naps, but still gets cranky as all get out when she’s tired, afternoons get rather interesting. Yes, this is what my wife has to deal with every single day. I get that. We usually trade duties so we can each get some free time. Mine is usually used for blogging, gaming, and working on Dragon Heresy. Hers is training at the dojang at night.

But it does mean that my time is limited, and I am using that time to go nose to the grindstone on Dragon Heresy. I have basically four things left to do.

  1. I need to finish the subclasses. There will be, I think, 37 of them, which of course includes a whole bunch of divine domains, a few flavors of paladin, and less-evil pact lords for Warlocks. Plus four categories of Wizard. The hard part for me is getting the level boosts right. 
  2. Once those are done, I will whip up about a half-dozen “explicit multiclass” options. These will likely look fairly familiar, such as a Fighter/Bard, Fighter/Wizard, Rogue/Wizard. Plus three more. They will be thematic for the game, borrowing from stories and character types common to the legends I’m pulling from.
  3. I need to come up with a short set of rules for spells – one of the “features” of the game rule design for Dragon Heresy is that I’m looking at Wounds and what I’ve called “stress” in a prior post, but has since been renamed as vigor. But some spells go right to wounds, others go to vigor, and wounds are far nastier than vigor because they don’t go up much with level. But once I get the if/then done for how to determine spell effects, my playtesters and I can rip through this. Tedious, but should be very programmatic.
  4. Finally, the fun part – the setting. A lot of worldbuilding has been going on as part of the writing of the subclasses. Who you are is very much a product of where you grew up, after all. But this can just be “Doug writes stuff,” and doesn’t have the rules mechanics “must check to see it’s all not insane” parts of it in the same way. Sure, I can do stupid stuff, but it’s not stupid stuff that will break game play.
Is that all I have to do? No. But other than monsters/foes and a bit of careful selection of magical weapons and effects, and probably a bit on treasure and rewards, the major game stuff will be written.
Then it’s finish the work with the cartographer I hired, and start pulling the Black and White version of the game into shape. I’ve got some donated art, and the rest will be public domain until I kickstart. Then, I’ll pay for editing and indexing, both B/W and Color art will hopefully be commissioned, and depending on interest level, we’ll see about how the book gets to customers. Oh, and I’ll need to spiffy up the website domains I bought, one for this blog’s eventual relocation, and one for the game itself.
But if I’ve been quiet, and very, very non-GURPSy this week, now you know why.

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3 Comments

  1. I'm glad I only have the one small child. Same issues, though – limits time spent blogging, adventure writing, keeping up with various media, etc.

    Who'd you end up getting as a cartographer? I missed the announcement, if there was one.

    1. I'd rather not say just yet on the cartographer. Not that I'm embarrassed, but that if things don't work out because I'm an asshat as a project manager or because nuclear mutant kittens eat her computer, no one need be the wiser. When the job is done and the maps are finished to our mutual satisfaction, I will likely showcase both.

    2. I thought that might be the case. Looking forward to seeing the work, though. Good maps are a treasure, no matter the scale.

      I just need to wait until the kid figures out dice don't need to go into the mouth before I can start them on GURPS lite, but in the mean time I may invest in some plushy 3d6…

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