Authorial Highlights
- Work continued on GURPS SNO-51. It’s all coming together in a really great way. I upped my required word count per day to 1,000 and if all goes according to plan I’ll finish sometimes mid-month in March with the first draft. (A 1,000 words the mechanically intensive or research required projects is pretty great, btw.) After that is some really intense alpha-testing and revision before I turn it in.
- I signed a contract with Doug Cole’s Gaming Ballistic company for five The Fantasy Trip adventures. The first of these has been written and sent back to Doug. J. Edward Tremlett and I work on the next one. Two of the five have a due date by the end of the month and it looks like we’ll make that. The other three are due later this year and it’s likely we’ll get them in by then. This project is named “Calypso-4.”
- I currently have three outstanding contracts: SNO-51, the GURPS Monster Hunters item, and Calypso-4; the latter is 20% of the way fulfilled.
- My GURPS Monster Hunters item is going into playtest! See here if you’re interested.
- It was announced here that my previous non-GURPS project was for Steve Jackson Games and for The Fantasy Trip. I was one of five tapped to write the newest generation of TFT adventures and I was quite honored. It was pretty fun to write and though I found myself pulling my hair out at some moments (yay for learning a new system “on the job”) I did enjoy and I’m proud of the final draft I submitted.
- I have gone through my notes and old files for Pyramid and have assigned items to be either potential books, meant for the blog, or meant for Patreon. I’m determined to get out my backlog as much as possible.
Blog Highlights
- I’ve continued posting two blog entries per week, but work on other projects has made it impossible for me to post the 3 or 4 I wanted (for now). I still want to do a web serial and right now I’m contemplating getting someone I know to draw me a nice header for it. We’ll see.
- Sigh. Designer specs for headers. Whimper.
- I’ve put aside my Chronicles of Ceteri primer for now.
Patreon Highlights
- Patreon remained on track for February. Still releasing them to schedule.
- I lost one patron and one patron modified their pledge. So far I’ve managed to keep the Patreon-ship level and I thank all of my patrons who pledge monthly to keep me going.
- My second fiction special was put out this month – it was a “short” scene between members of my campaign setting “The Chronicles of Ceteri.”
- I intend to start publishing my short stories I’ve submitted elsewhere on Patreon as a way to start clearing that backlog.
- I released “Boil and Bubble: Mahotsukai Ritual Path Magic” to everyone. Thank my patrons, folks. Get it here.
- This coming month I’ll be calling on my patrons for the next item to be released. If you want to get in on that go sign up.
- Patreon remained mostly on the schedule I created.
Miscellaneous Related News
- The home repairs continue and my writing time remains way less than what I’d like. 🙁 Automotive repairs also ate my brain and I had to put in a new fuel pump and carburetor in my 1984 Jeep Cherokee. That ate up a huge chunk of my “buy a new computer” fund
- I started looking at pieces and parts for a new computer. I’m going desktop this time. Laptops are great, but I need something I can upgrade in stages and that’s just not a laptop. Doesn’t mean I won’t use it, but it does mean I want use it as my base machine.
- The writing block schedule has worked out brilliantly. So much so that I was able to up the word count on all my commitments in such a way as to be able to keep to schedule with little fuss or muss.
- I started a new campaign. This one is going to be sci-fi – cyberpunk specifically – and I’m bit nervous about it. Sci-fi is not normally my thing, but I wanted to run a game for a while and cyberpunk is pretty much modern day with some toys thrown in. Besides I like cyberpunk. Shadowrun was one of my first RPGs settings and I’m still very fond of that game though 5e remains something of a mystery to me. Ah well. Anyways, it’s likely I’ll do something like a campaign primer like I did for Ceteri. I spent a solid week of time I should have been sleeping or relaxing getting a “What technology is in this setting” file done. I came to the conclusion that GURPS Ultra-Tech is a bit of a mess and I’m just going to have to rewrite (and get help rewriting) sections of it to make it work for my campaign. First on the list is a new cybernetics system. I cannot even vaguely understand how some of those values were derived and after a chat with one of the authors (David Pulver) he couldn’t either.