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I began serious work on Andras in March of this year. Before March, I posted here occasionally at best. There were no posts between December 2010 and March 2011. Yikes!
There has been constant change. There have been a few stops and many restarts. I don’t consider any of this a problem. Instead, I see it as normal to the development process.
I consider the starting point to be my restating of the goals of the project. I also laid down a few ground rules to guide development. Looking back, I am happy with the progress considering my lack of large blocks of time. (Large blocks means more than 20 minutes at one sitting.)
The Arcanist class, my attempt at a skill-based Mage, has undergone several transformations. I feel good about where the class and the spell-building system used for this class are right now. I have a working copy of the spell building system and it seems to work fairly well. I may even translate the 3.0 SRD if I have time.
The Skill System was the biggest change. Rolling under a d20+d10 presents some interesting possibilities. In my goal to streamline sub-systems, this system guides non-weapon proficiencies and Rogue Skills. It also appears in the spell-building system. It may be a personal weakness that I keep this subsytem. We’ll see what happens with the class builds!
Overall, I’ve tried to develop the entire game in three different ways: I tried sketching it in M20 first, reorganizing the rulebooks, and just editing LLAEC and changing the parts that don’t fit. I believe that I have the definition of magic finalized, so I do not expect large changes in Player information at this point.
For the GM, though, the cycle may be pretty severe. I want to have lots of information and tools. While magic may be in good shape, the random tables and “how-tos” have yet to be created.
I expect to have it finished in 2012. I’d like to believe that it will be sooner rather than later, but who knows what tomorrow may bring.
I hope that whatever your secret project and/or labor of love is that you will be able to finish it in the coming year. Good luck!
Thoughts from Turkey Day
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I did. My wife outdid herself with all the wonderful food.
As far as gaming goes, I tend to be behind. I just discovered that Paizo is licensing a MMO game.
This is hardly news to anyone. Personally, I wish Paizo well. I hope folks really like it.
Seeing that this happens from time to time, I keep hoping that someone will license Labyrinth Lord or Swords and Wizardry into a MUD. I wish it would be as simple as downloading Pennmush and creating rooms. I imagine it would take a bit of programming to get the standard classes.
Still, it’s a frontier untouched by the OSR so far…
I still remember the unofficial MUD list circulated in college. Once I got XWindows running on my Amiga in my dorm room, I could rely on a bit of good gaming, especially during finals when the brain was fried.
I know that the OSR is more than just nostalgia. It’s just that the idea of an LL
MUDMUSH would be the ultimate in retro.Then again, maybe putting all the rules in an HTML Help file is the ultimate retro.
I promise to have something more useful next time.