First of all, I’d like to introduce Per Gradin – the excellent artist who’s been doing a lot of work especially on character portraits for the introductory adventure in the book, as well as some other stuff here and there – this, for example, is a prime example of Luna City law enforcement =)

There’s also a PDF! It’s 167 pages long! It’s technically printable! You could print this and it’s be recognizable as a product, as a game. The text will still go through some more iterations of proofreading, editing and corrections but I feel like I can confidently say it’s not a complete disaster. Aside from the above-mentioned Gradin stuff, there’s not much art yet, but there’ll be at least a few more pieces before the kickstarter.

It’s always a nice feeling when a project reaches this stage. There’s a lot more work to be done, but the end is in sight.

The plan right now is to get this PDF signed off on and approved, hopefully with some more art in it. Then use it to finalize deals for printing etc.

And then to start serious planning for the kickstarter, while revising the text and the illustrations.

This is the pre-Kickstarter version. A sort of “minimum viable product”. If we get funded at just the basic level, this is what you’re getting – it’ll be a PDF containing the entire game and as many pieces of art as I can reasonably afford to buy on my teacher’s salary. Better KS result = more illustrations! Among other things.

In other words, this will be a very classic Kickstarter – not a large corporation minimizing risk*, but an indie creator trying to finance some more artwork and a print run.

(* I’m not against large rpg corporations minimizing risk, to be clear. It enables them to do weird stuff they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.)

Sorry for being a bit late; I try to strive for making one of these posts at least once a month. I’ve been a little busy with life outside RPGs – like I said in the last update, in my day job I’m a highschool teacher and the term just ended. Always a stressful, busy time.

But that doesn’t mean work has grinded to a halt by any means – here’s where we are at:

• Layout is on a little bit of a pause as I’m travelling right now. I expect to be home again next week though, and restart work on the preliminary layout.
• I’ve just finished going through all the really nice comments and suggestions I got from the first round of outside readers. All low-hanging fruit has been dealt with; now I’m gearing up to do another pass and handle the more difficult stuff. The comments that require a bit more work.
• When I’m home again I’ll also pick up where I left off in terms of illustrators and illustrations. I don’t have a huge AAA studio budget pre-Kickstarter but I want to make sure to have at least enough pieces to do some kind of version of the game either way. I want to make sure people see this game isn’t just a pipe dream. There’s been far too many projects like that on KS already.
• I’ve GM:ed one group through one of the two scenarios I’ve created so far. It went well, though the characters never did manage to actually solve the mystery. Not completely, at least. But we had fun, and the game seems to do what I want it to. Not that the mechanics come into play very often, but the scenario design works pretty much the way it should. I’m going to GM the same scenario again for a different group this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyways, that’s all right now I think. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you think something’s missing in these updates. I’m hoping to be able to share some more worldbuilding and details on what the rules look like soon, too

I’ve received the completed version of Bergting’s cover and while it’s going to have to be a little bit under wraps for now I gotta say it’s looking really, really good. As expected, given the artist, but you know. Still.

He’s also expressed an interest in doing more work for this project, and who am I to say no? So yes, life is good.

In other news, the first round of proofreading’s pretty much done and I’ve begun sifting through all the comments and suggestions. Fixing the low-hanging fruit first – imperfect grammar and so on. Next, I’ll work on the more juicy stuff, the comments that might require bigger changes and additions. I’m very grateful to the people involved.

We’ll see how many proofreading passes the text needs – I’d rather do one more pass than release this game half-finished, as it were.

Either way, while working on the text I’m also continuing to work on a preliminary “prototype layout”; a complete-but-not-final PDF to show to various stakeholders and publishers in order to move things forward.

I’m looking forward to summer break – as a high school teacher here in Sweden, the past month or two has been very busy with grading and other tedious parts of that job. The 7-8 weeks until school opens again in the fall will be a good opportunity to work on Luna City Blues…

Still no set date for the kickstarter, I’m afraid – A lot of stuff needs to be in place before I’m comfortable taking peoples money. I’ve seen way too many projects fail post-KS because they didn’t have all their ducks in a row.

Yeah, that’s all for now I think. Please feel free to write any questions you have in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them =)

So; the first draft of the book is done, except for the introductory adventure. I’m currently giving it a first read-through pass, looking for obvious problems, spelling errors etc before it’s ready to be looked at by others. Don’t worry, when I’m looking for outside proofreaders I’ll holler

Meanwhile I’m preparing for a big-ish update of the official website; most of the changes are already there but I want to make sure it’s up to snuff before I unveil it. Not really anything dramatic – a new landing page, a devlog, an FAQ. At least it’ll be better than just having the press release there

I’m not promising anything, but I hope to start reaching out to some artists in the next few weeks, to look at some samples and see what they’d be interested in doing and what their rates are etc. Most of the funds for illustrations will probably have to come from the planned Kickstarter, but I’ll be able to pay for a bunch of pieces beforehand – which is good, because if nothing else a text-only Kickstarter seems like a really bad idea

It’s kind of interesting how important illustrations and graphic design can feel, even when we’re talking about a hobby that’s primarily text- and mind-based. Chronicles, to me, was never a mini-heavy game, we mostly used our imaginations and maybe some quick sketched maps on graph paper. Not a lot of visual elements around the table. But it’s hard to argue the effects of 1e’s stark imagery on the imagination…