...is done.

All chapters have been fixed....

That's like 208 pages...

Ready to go to the editor...

Whew!

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, work journal, writing

Completed the main-text edits of Chapter 7 of S7S -- that's the GMing chapter, now.

What's left is re-statting all of the example NPCs... which will take a couple days.

NOW, I handle some administrivia, then go make popcorn and open up a beer for to watch the Presidential Debates.

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s, work journal, writing

...is done.

That leaves Chapter 8, the GMing advice chapter. This one's gonna take a couple days to work through -- the text I have is beta draft, and doesn't take into account all of the beta/gamma playtesting discoveries.

Additionally, I have a crapload of NPCs to re-stat.

Lastly, organization-wise, I am wondering if I should make Chapter 8 into Chapter 7, and versy-vicey.

Let's recap current organization of chapters:

• Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4: The 7 Skies Setting, discussing the World, the major Cloud-Islands, the mystical and religious aspects of the World, and the details of skysailing.
  
• Chapters 5 and 6: Character Rules and Challenges & Duels; the game mechanics of S7S.
  
• Chapter 7: The Swashbuckling Genre, a general discussion of what "swashbuckling" means, especially for RPGs.
  
• Chapter 8: Gamemastering S7S, a wide-ranging discussion about how to run S7S games.
  

I think I should move the genre chapter to the end -- it has the biblios and whatnot.

Counter to many other ASMP products, I made the decision (with advice from drivingblind) to not put the genre chapter up-front. S7S is a highly specific, idiosyncratic setting -- and thus deserves to be front and center.

At least, that's my thought at the moment. What do you all think?

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s, work journal, writing

...is done.

Just havta do ch3 and ch8, i think, b4 sending to editor.

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s

I'm an irreggular reader of Steven Grant's Permanent Damage column over at CBR... I generally swing by every month or so and read through the archives. Therefore, muchas gracias to oletheros for pointing this out:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18103

Congratulations to Scott Kane, the first to spot last week's Comics Cover Challenge theme was "birds." Scott wishes to point your attention to The Zorceror of Zo RPG from Atomic Sock Monkey Press, "a fairy tale RPG for players of all ages." Dig it, hipster.

Scott, of course, is one of the artists for ZoZ, and a good friend of mine for years. Major props for the shout-out, homes!

Tags: asmp, gaming, pdq, zoz

...have been uploaded to the Files section of the PDQ-L and the S7S yahoogroups.

Check 'em out (if you have access).

PDQ# is holding steady at 30 pages, despite my edits tonight. Oh well.

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s, work journal, writing

Work Journal: Did about 3 hours worth of work on the draft of PDQ#, which is the setting-agnostic rules engine for S7S, composed of Chapters 5 and 6 of the main manuscript.

I started at 65 pages, and now I'm at 30 (this will probably bump up a couple more pages after editing and layout, btw). I don't think I can cut any closer to the bone. I'm going to take one last pass at it tonight before I send it to the PDQ-L brain trust for comment.

This freebie will probably be around 10% of the size of the overall book, I believe. That doesn't sound outrageous in context, does it?

Also, need to discuss new PDQ/PDQ# licensing concepts with the PDQ-L folks.

With luck, PDQ# will be available by the end of the month for public consumption, depending upon editing and layout issues. Keep your fingers crossed and yer powder dry!

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s, work journal, writing

(many thanks to E. Izzard)

QUESTION: Assuming 1 G and Earth-like air at normal pressure, how long would it take a human body (assume an adult male) to fall 12,600 miles?

Thank you.

Tags: asmp, evilhat, mad science, pdq, s7s

Work Journal: Did about 2.5 hours worth of work on the delta draft of Chapter 6, Rules before an all-day D&D4e-fest up at Chez Hicks, then did another 2.5 hrs when I got home.

Chapter 6 is D-U-N.

Also, I've combined Chapters 5 and 6 into one massive DOC for PDQ# purposes, and have stripped out the big setting-specific sections of material and the Vehicle rules. That dropped it from 65 down to 40. The trick now will be to slice that 40 down as close to 20 (or lower) that I can.

But now... I sleep!

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s, work journal, writing

Work Journal: Did about 2.5 hours worth of work on the delta draft of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, taking in pre-GenCon, GenCon, and post-GenCon comments. The delta draft is the one that I plan on sending for editing.

Completed the delta of Chapter 5, Characters and got about half-way into Chapter 6, Rules.

Next two steps are:

1. Finishing the delta of Chapter 6.

2. Combining Chapters 5 and 6 into one massive DOC and converting it into the freebie core rules for PDQ#.

Conversion will be interesting: I need to boil down the 65 pages comprising those two chapters as low as they can go.

Stripping out setting-specific material and the Vehicle rules will go a long, long way towards that end.

I was able to get the "meat" of the gamma draft down to 6 pages for the gamma-handout (a total of 14 pages when including setting stuff and a character sheet), but that was in a very brief sketch, almost more of a bullet-point list. That's a little more sparse than I want the PDQ# freebie to be, though.

Anyway, after boilage, I want to run the freebie through editing -- and maybe even layout -- before publishing it on the various sites.

However, I think the PDQ# freebie will solve an issue I've been a little concerned about, given my -- and S7S's -- relationship with Evil Hat Productions. Since S7S is effectively being published by EHP (with Atomic Sok Monkey Press acting as an imprint), I've been concerned that people would go to RPGNow or DTRPG or IPR and look for S7S in the ASMP catalog on each of those sites, and not see it.

However, if I have the freebie up there (at RPGNow and DTRPG, at least), when the main book gets released, I can create a bundled-product that ties the freebie in the ASMP catalog to the main book in the EHP catalog easy. (Not sure if that's possible over at IPR.)

After I tackle the freebie, I can move back into editing the chapters of the rest of the book. I already know that the Intro and Chapter 8 have to be massively overhauled.

So, things are good.

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s, work journal, writing