report – Moe Lane

07/04/2020 Progress Report, FERMI RESOLUTION RPG: 28,800/37,800.

Today was half rules, half world-building. Guess which guy forgot to put it anything about armor? This guy! Dear Lord, but this is gonna need some serious playtesting — and before anybody says anything: that’s a discussion for August. I gotta get this draft finished first.

Still, things are not actually going badly. I’ve got time to work on this; the game production doesn’t have a hard deadline. In fact, after a certain point I’m going to need to wait until other people are done working on it, which means I can work on other stuff then. Marathon, not a sprint.

06/25/2020 Report, FROZEN DREAMS Kickstarter.

Today, I sat down and worked on revising the stories for the sampler. Structural edits, and so forth: I’ve done the deed on two out of six of them, and plan to have the others done by Sunday. After that, I will create the actual sampler and distribute it to backers. As I’ve said elsewhere: I don’t know if I should charge people on Amazon for these, at least at the sampler level. They’re going to get released without paid copy-editing or proper cover (the full short story collection will be released with both, but that’s a money issue), and that does make a difference.

Oh, well, that’s still a couple steps down the road.

06/22/2020 Report, FROZEN DREAMS Kickstarter.

Infrastructure today: first off, I did the edits for another story for the sampler. I’m going to try to do the last two tomorrow, then I can figure out what structural edits to make, then I guess I put the whole thing into one collection and go from there. I’d like to check this one off of the list.

The other major thing was a layout/brainstorming gig for the RPG worldbook. I sat down with my wife – she is also a gamer; yes, it is quite unfair how lucky I am – and we just tossed out all the stuff I’d need to put in the book, considering the page count. Right now I’m contemplating about 48 pages, which is not enough for a standalone game. Then again, it’s not supposed to be a standalone: you’ll be playing this sucker with another GUMSHOE ruleset. A full standalone game… will probably be another Kickstarter, in 2021, because I don’t have the budget for that kind of staff. But for right now we’re just going to get this version out the door.

That’s mostly it. Oh, and my usual exhortation to get all your friends to buy the book, of course. And to have them leave reviews afterward.