State of Affairs, Jan 2022

Looking forward to the rest of the year, I wanted to work out where I stand with my larger projects - both those I am actively working on and those that are still purely hypothetical. I am a terrible judge of project management, so writing it down and letting other people get their eyes on it is as good a method as any to get my thoughts in order.

Many thanks to Layla for always being down to talk shop.

Unicorn Meat

Barring catastrophe, it'll be out in the next few months. You can hold me to that. 

Lighthouse

Lighthouse has been stuck for a while now, but the plus side of that is looking back at what I've already made and reassessing.

The primary current issue, I feel, is that while anticanon is great and all but it does leave something to be desired if you want focus. The material is pulling in opposite directions - both big and small, both specific and general - and that does me no favors when my design thru-line is "Delta Green, if it was Disco Elysium". Can't have Disco Elysium without Revachol.

So to that end, I think I am going to focus more on the (very loosely sketched at the moment) sandbox setting of [REDACTED], and developing it more. The Field Guide posts are great, but they aren't enough to hang a game on, and I think they're a part of why this has stalled out.

I had originally envisioned the Underworld as a dedicated depthcrawl aspect, but on review that unbalances everything. Instead I will be adapting my card-based expeditions from Unicorn Meat for delves, so that it's not just dumping a megadungeon in a game that's not about that.

Sisters of the Sable Maid

I still have very little for this, but I do at least have the ideas. A hack of Yokai Hunters Society for MSF (as that setting fell away from being a traditional D&D setting years ago) where you play as the Sisters of the Sable Maid and you go fuck up demons. Nice, simple, specific, actionable answers for who you are and what you do.

Two goals I have set for this project

• A "multiple moving parts" character creation in the spirit if not the mode of 5e - give people a series of simple, flavorful choices to make about their character.
• A greater focus on combat, but making it fun. The vision in my head looks more like JRPG combat, for whatever that is worth. 

Mothership Compilation

What it says on the tin: a compilation and expansion Mothership material that I have already written, plus additions that will naturally emerge from the editing, plus the posts I have been sitting on for ages, into a toolkit and resource book. Would contain tables, character options, gear, planet / sector generation, a planet gazetteer, and probably a couple shotgun scenarios. Half done already.

Assortment of loosely-sketched Mothership adventures

This is where this exercise starts going down rabbit holes, as I only just have ideas and nothing practical for these. Hopefully I will be able to run some this year and flesh them out. So far they are

• Introductory "wake from cryosleep on a spooky ship, learn the ropes of the game as you get it back into working condition" scenario.
• Investigation of a murder, and a datademonic possession, players as exorcist and support crew.
• O'neill crawl above a rim world crawling with devils. Re-visiting my Road to Pandemonium post for setting material
  

Mother Stole Fire and Other Stories

A collection of revised / adapted / expanded versions of the fiction pieces on the blog. Simple enough in concept, but if I know my perfectionist streak, and I do, this one is likely to be a long haul.

The Dog Gospel

Another compilation, this time of revised blogposts and fleshed-out slush pile ideas. I specifically want to make this a "binder book" - that is, everything is no more than front and back of a single page, so that the entries can be printed out in whatever combination one wants, then hole punched and put into a 3-ring binder and plugged into a game as one sees fit. Again, this is another half-done idea, I just need to get a proper workflow for actually doing it.