From The Agency Handbook: the Push Pyramid
Game text is finished!
The text of Blowback is done. Three quick bits of supplemental material (revised character sheet, Push Pyramid, and Job Dossier), and it’s ready for outside playtesting. I should get the supplemental material done tomorrow.
Let me know if you’re interested in running it for me, and I’ll share the document with you (and thank you in the book). You can comment here, or on Facebook, or on Twitter, or email me… You get the idea.
(And if you just want to give me thoughts on it, I’m interested in that too. I just want to control how many people have access to what is almost the final text.)
[Blowback for $1K] State of the project
Things have been going along decently for the last couple of months, with a few hiccups. But we seem to be back on track:
Game Completion
I totally missed my deadline of having a completed game text by Dreamation. Part of this was due to my entire family getting violently ill, myself included; mostly, though, it was the convergence of multiple projects and not enough hours in the day. Right now, though, the text is 80% finished and it’s looking great— all that’s left is to write up the last bits of The Agency Handbook and the author notes, and then it’s just compiling appendices from there on out.
The game itself is finished, design-wise, and I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly. I need to get a multi-session playtest going, just to double-check the game progression works as well as I think it does, and then we’ll be gold.
Budget
After some deliberation, I’ve decided to shell out $200 to Mr. Ryan Macklin for game editing. Let me be frank: despite my high esteem for Ryan, and how flattered I was when he reached out to make the offer (he’s the best in the business, and super busy with projects like Primetime Adventures 3.0), I was dubious about shelling out 20% of the grant to have someone go “Hey, just so you know, your participles are dangling.” In my past projects, I’ve had multiple people take multiple passes at the plaintext version of the document simply because they enjoyed the project and were willing to be a pair of fresh eyes, and that’s worked out fine. So, after Ryan made me the offer at Dreamation, I told him that I was pleased and thankful and that I would think about it.
During my thinking— which, in all honesty, tended more towards “It’s a generous offer, how do I politely say no?”— Ryan made this blog post about his editing philosophy. Which made me say, “Oh. I need that.”
It wasn’t a decision I made easily, but it was a decision worth making. Since there’s a lot more riding on this game than on a usual release for me, and simply because I love this game and I’m a damned perfectionist, it needs to be right the first time. People need to be able to understand the rules, my intent in writing them, and what they should be able to change or throw out if they want and still have a workable game. Part of the problem is that I always understand that stuff intuitively, because I’m the one who wrote it— and the friends who check out my stuff are also pretty used to the way I communicate. Not everyone will be. So I’m willing to take the risk and make the investment in a better text.
I’ve also shelled out another $50 on art, which altogether, brings the leftover budget to $642.50.
Update; also a contest
Things are going really well for the text of Blowback. I finished writing the final section of the players’ guide, and have started The Agency Handbook. In the meantime, I’m running a contest over on Story Games asking people to stat up their hometown. The coolest town wins you a free book!
Budget post coming soon.