Better late than never edition.
I have awoken from my ursine slumber possessed of the muse. Work resumed at a fairly rapid clip, the first portions of which are almost finished.
One of the major struggles in something as complicated as Sword & Scoundrel is that it can become very overwhelming. Related and interlocking bits can get all tangled up, keeping a mental model of the entire game and its working parts can be brutal, and I've had days where writing shut down entirely because I ran into some kind of order-of-information problem and my brain just said "No. Not today." and close the document.
Fixing this has been.. something. Not least because we're simultaneously rewriting the game as an Essential Edition project and thus cutting things out as we go. My solution has become effectively rewriting the game, from scratch, from first principles. Trying to do as much as possible without direct reference to the existing text, and only comparing it afterward to make sure nothing important got missed. My instinct being that if it was a detail I didn't recall off the top of my head, there's a serious chance it was either not necessary or it was more fiddly than it should have been and in need of reworking.
So far this has been a great success and a really good experience. A deciding factor in the viability of this venture has been actually working on the thing in a different way. Rather than trying to do development and chapter-writing at the same time, I've instead taken to sketching out the system in a kind of abridged, bullet-point presentation. This has been massively helpful in boiling down the essential points and makes tackling flow-of-information issues far easier - after all, I can always just scoot a particular bullet up or down the nest.
The biggest benefit, by far, has been that this approach has dramatically expedited the amount of ground I can cover at a given time. The entire Book I: Initiation section was re-completed in a day or two. I am now working my way through Book IV: Tribulation. If you're in Patron chat, you've probably been able to guess this already from my ramblings.
From here, the plan is as follows:
Stage 1: Bare Bones. I'm sketching out all of the Book 1/ Core material, as well as the bits from Book 4 absolutely necessary to the way the system works - Skirmish, Full Contest, Social Conflict, Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Wounds & Healing. Once those are done in their EE incarnations (ETA, by the end of next week, at the latest. Likely much sooner, at this rate) I'll be running a few one-shots with my home group just to make sure that the new rules set isn't missing anything mission critical or that my revisions haven't broken anything along the way.
Stage 2: The Flesh. Assuming there's no snag in the above, I go back and add in character creation and it's accompanying materials, wealth, armor/weapons/goods connections & contacts, and a few other new pieces I have planned for this release (Skullduggery, anyone?). Once stage 2 is finished, I'm going to release the bullet point version to the patrons to look at, play with, and dig into. This will be a Live Edition/Notion release. Format aside, this will be a point where all of the extant rules are in one place and you lot can play merry hell with. After you've had a week or two to look at it, give feedback and so on, I'll go ahead and make it a low-key public release, likely limited to the folks on the discord. At this point, I'll also attempt t do some PbP stuff -- one shots, mostly, and short scenarios, with the goal of letting different people get involved over time.
Stage 3: Skin Deep. While my generous patrons are combing through the new rules, providing feedback, and so forth, I get to turn around and start writing up the new rules in proper chapter form. The goal of stage 3 is to produce a version of the text ready for primetime and a legit DTRPG update.
Stage 4: New Horizons. Once the DTRPG update is ready, things get real interesting. I'm going to have a handful of tasks simultaneously. On the dev front, this is where we begin nailing down GM stuff, NPCs, magic, and anything else missing from the core of the game. On a company front, this is where kickstarter planning and logistics go into high gear. On a public front, this is also when outreach has to be a massive thing, as if you want a successful kickstarter, you need to have momentum before you launch the campaign. This latter will also be a big place where you guys can show your support. Word of mouth is everything in the TTRPG space.
The goal for all of this is to be finished by year's end. Stage 1 is likely to be finished within the next week. Stage 2, by the end of August, at the latest. Stage 3 will hopefully be by the end of September or mid October at the latest. Barring some unforeseen calamity, we'll be in KS territory Q1 next year.
Depending on time, inclination, and inspiration, I'll also begin working on the Fightbook supplement that will add back in all the extra melee crunch that is getting stripped out for the sake of EE. There are big plans on that end, as some of the changes to core mechanics being made by the current edition of the rules will lend themselves to some very interesting shit when we build back up to the advanced melee rules. That said a finished core game is the priority. The supplement must be strictly secondary if I'm going to meet my deadlines.
Thanks for the support, Scoundrels. Couldn't do this without you.
-Brooks
(P.S. The News page on this site has become more of an “official update” channel, rather than an ongoing dev blog. If you’re interested in more informal announcements, musings, and other ephemera, they show up on the Patreon.)