Oooh, shiny!

We’ve scheduled the first test session of the d10 Core Roleplaying Game System Release Candidate 1 for Thursday, June 23rd, 2011. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re getting there. I’ve finished the 90-page “guts” of the system, more than enough for an official test run to get kinks out. The first version of the second edition rules sits in my hand, courtesy of being printed and bound by CreateSpace last week. I’ve made 3 copies of the book in paperback with a flashy generic cover just to see how it looks on paper, how some of the artwork holds up on the presses, and how it reads on paper.

The hard copies were about $18 for 3 copies with shipping and everything added, and the data gleaned already before play-testing has been invaluable. I can’t wait until my play-testers come up with “This thing is broken!!!” in more ways than one to see how we can break and reset the bones of this beast. I even told them I have no problems with them drawing in the book like a degenerate monkey who’s found some crayons. A couple of the 90 pages are just ruled pieces of paper with “Notes” written along the top to encourage note taking and destruction of my precioussssss.

Anyway, the testing session should be a great deal of fun. I’m really looking forward to it! Hopefully, the testers don’t find some lame reason not to show up. “How many times has your dog died now? It’s been at least 4.”

Until next time…

So I sat down yesterday and looked at my messy pile of d10 Core notes and chapters that I’d already written. I said, “This doesn’t even look appetizing to me, and I wrote the thing.” I decided to stare at a blank word processor page set to 8.5″ x 11″ until that special look came to me. About an hour later, I’d crafted the format I wanted for d10 Core.

I always had a problem with headers and how they looked in the rough drafts of the chapters, so I wiped that away completely. I went with a two-column style, a traditional feature in game core books, and decided to go with a regular flow. Rather than trying to divide everything up into pages that fit exactly, I just filled the columns with my content. The process is much more streamlined and allows me to do more of what I actually enjoy – the writing part.

I took a break from the novels for just a minute to solve a few of these major issues and get some of the book into the first draft. I want to at least begin playtesting this system during Q3 of this year, but I don’t have a release time frame yet. I don’t want to release the core book if I don’t have any game settings ready, either. The core book gives you all the governing rules of the system, and the supplements are what bring the game to life, so I don’t want to go with the core book until I have a supplement ready to go with it.

Anyhow, things are going well. I am glad that I stopped doing so much advertising and promotion. It gives me more time to actually work, and it’s not like the sales or interest have waned dramatically to send me running and screaming back to the self-promotion bit. lol  To all the fans of Nadene, Andy, and now William, thank you.