So it turns out designing ship combat that takes place within a role-playing game, where players will have roles on the same ship that are meaningful is hard.
Huh. Who knew?
Getting past naval combat was probably my biggest hurdle to getting this bad boy done.
Now that that system is working (and it seems to be), the book is picking up steam again.
My next challenge will be to not get so exhausted by writing this book that I don't want to support it.
6 comments:
Has this project been more pain than joy or joy than pain?
Regards,
Walt
I would definitely say pain has been the order of the day for this project so far.
Just finding the information I needed was a HUGE pain, then translating it into game terms turned out to be an even bigger pain.
And the bitch of it is, I don't even know what that means. Legends of Excalibur, a book I consider to be an unqualified success, was a book full of pain.
On the other hand, so was Blood and Time, a book I consider to be a wash or moderate success.
Similarly, books I've done that were enormously fun and flew out of the word processor have done ok(Legends of the Dark Ages) and been huge hits (Blood and Fists).
If that is the case, the ones that were pains, did you personally enjoy the finished product when it was done... like it was that last hill you had to climb before looking where you had been?
Regards,
Walt
I can't think of a situation where I'd release a product I wasn't personally happy with.
I mean, if *I* think it's sub-par, I'd be an ass to put it out to begin with.
In most cases, it's the difference between being a professional and being a hobbyist.
In Voyages of Discovery, for example, it was absolutely 100% essential for the book to have a robust naval combat system.
That was a huge bitch and took about a month's time all on its own.
Blood and Time, I felt it absolutely essential that the book have a timeline for all of Earth history.
Were I a hobbyist, releasing stuff for free, I wouldn't bother with stuff that like that which will be huge chunks of time to write.
As someone asking people to pay for the book when it's done, if something is a pain or takes a long time but will be VERY handy to someone running a game in that genre, I feel like that's *exactly* what I should be writing.
Sounds like we have the right man for the job. From the looks of things... Naval combat is also keeping you awake at night ;-)
Best Regards,
Walt
Not anymore, it's done! It's even posted to the group, so you could go look it over right now if you wanted!
Actually, the book itself is getting pretty damn close. I am working on magic right now, at which point all the major pieces will be in place.
Chris has been playtesting the book for awhile now, even before naval combat rules were done lol.
At one point he was actually saying to me "finish the rules, my players want to take their ship out" lol.
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