I’m currently listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes on my headphones to drown out the barking of my neighbor’s dog. Such are the hazards of apartment life and working on a role playing game from home instead of some office. On the other hand, in the office (at least the ones I’ve worked in), they frown on not wearing pants. Life is full of give and take, I guess.
The dog next door aside, I got a lot done in August, including several art renders. The biggest challenge was doing all the art for the Skill and Ability chapters. They both required art to break up all that uninterrupted text, but they also gave me the greatest opportunity to show a range of different images. I ended up using a mixture of old renders (from my stories) with new ones created just for the rules (at about a 2:1 ratio). At the moment I’m almost done with the Combat chapter, which leaves five more chapters to go. However, the good news is that those last chapters already have a lot of art in them, so they should go quickly.
Besides working on artwork, I also thought about lore for the first supplement Destination: Rochan. I’ve been brainstorming about the two playable races, the Klixians and the Tor. As I mentioned in my blog, my creative process is very organic. I tend to start with one idea and let it flow into several others. I then go back and weed out the ideas that don’t fit or which I just don’t like. Brainstorming works well for me, perhaps due to all that mental minutia floating around in my noggin.
One of the main things that happened this month was a live playtesting session between myself and one of the testers (a former coworker). Except for an unprovoked attack by my cat, the session went well and I’ve already incorporated some of the things we found. Once the game goes for sale, I suspect players will send me additional feedback as well. We’ve done our best to get things right, but there’s always something that only comes up after a lot of players have a chance to dissect the game during live sessions.
It’s my hope that I will have the game ready for publication later this month. The only things to do are the artwork and creating the index (which has to be done last). I’m not sure how long it will take, but I’m working as hard as I can to get the game finished as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
William Mitchell
Imperium Chronicles |
