Saturday, July 31, 2010

In Before the Lock!

Whew! I almost let all of July go by without posting. I'd already let most of June go by that way, but I couldn't do the same to July.

Anyway, as it happens, I actually do have something to report, so this isn't just a completely gratuitous gimmick post. All of my Anglerre Companion material is off to the editor (as of about 10 minutes ago), which is a relief. Between moving, my son, an out-of-town guest, and Comic-Con, getting everything polished off on time was a little beyond me. At least I can say I got it all in before GenCon.

Here's what I ended up with, by the way:
  • Cities: A random city generator that would be both broad enough to cover every kind of fantasy setting but specific enough to actually be useful proved to be an untenable proposition without about a million different tables. Instead, I came up with a method for statting out cities in FATE terms, some new city-specific Organization aspects, and a whole lot of fluff on cities in general. It's a fairly extensive chapter that should make creating villages, towns, and cities very easy, and I learned a lot researching it.
  • Islands: I never thought a random island generator made much sense, so this chapter concentrates on what makes island-based adventures distinct from "mainland" adventures (not that anyone ever calls them that). The chapter provides 12 different island themes and ways to use them in a campaign. No mechanics -- it's all fluff, which I'm not really used to writing, but it was a fun chapter to do.
  • Random Adventure Generator: Man. Revising this was a bit more involved than I'd anticipated, but I'm happy with the final result. It's significantly longer than it was when I turned it in last year, but it's also about a hundred times easier to use and much better organized. I'm proud of it, so hopefully nobody rips it a new one in a review.
Up next: some non-FATE-related stuff (finishing up Leftovers and my wind ensemble piece based on Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, the intro adventure from the 1980 Top Secret boxed set), then onto some very FATE-related stuff that I still can't discuss out in the open like this. In between will be Gateway, where I'll probably run more FATE Supers, although the specifics are way, way beyond me right now.

As for Anglerre, I expect to see it in the mail next week, so I'm looking forward to that. I don't know what's coming up in the line, but I hope to write more material for it in the future.