August Update - Hiatus over
Hello, honored Thanes.
My hiatus with Rulers is over. It might take me a bit of time to get back up to speed, as always I promise monthly updates on what I have or have not worked on, but not monthly updates to Rulers itself.
I haven't been idle this whole time either. I had a lot of fun working on other game projects during my hiatus. I find working on multiple projects allows me to practice different skills which unblocks different problems in other projects, which allows me to keep chasing that dopamine.
What gone done
- Rulers is now hosted on Notion Sites - It took me a very long time, far too long, to figure out what was different about publishing a Notion page to the internet compared to publishing it as a "Notion site". Well it turns out I should have done that from the beginning, so Rulers is now available everywhere as a Notion site.
What got worked on
Marigold's Bookcase. Witch Bolt is an artist who creates spellbinding atmospheric Dungeon Synth music. Not only that, it takes place in their own universe with their original characters and locations. I joined the fan worldbuilding community of Lorewrights and have been writing lore for Witch Bolt. You can now explore some of that lore by entering Marigold's hovel, and reading some of the books on her shelves. I wrote "Bones, Wax & Hymns" which includes my creation, The Ossa, and two whole ballads! I have also been helping out with other lore contributions, as its a collaborative effort. You can explore Marigold's home, on itch.io
Containment Breach! This is a sequel Twist on The Zone. After the 14th Expedition returns with whatever was at the center of the exclusion zone, you can play Containment Breach! as a follow up game of your hubris as the entity escapes. I finalized one nagging mechanic, which allowed me to write it up well enough to send it for playtesting. And I'm really proud of this cover I made for it. If you would like a playtest copy, just let me know! It requires only the contents of the base game to play.
Skulker. While I was on a kick of hacking The Zone, I decided there needed a Dark Fantasy version of the Zone with strong OSR vibes. This was inspired by a D&D campaign I have wanted to run for a long time, and me reading Roadside Picnic which is now one of my favorite books. Roadside Picnic of course being made into the movie Stalker, so, Skulker. This one is going to take a lot longer as it involves rewritten the entirety of The Zone to be fantasy. But I made another cover I am very proud of!
Outlaws over Orion. I love FASA's tabletop wargame Crimson Skies, and the original PC game. What I didn't mention, is that after playing D&D for the first time in 2010, I decided the obvious thing for my first campaign ever would be to write an absolutely wild homebrew stitching together Crimson Skies with World of Darkness (because they both used d10s). 'Cos nothing says extremely heavy tactical combat like nWoD. And so I ran this homebrew for a full year, with its own in-universe blog (that is still out there) and even used the cutscenes from the PC game to make a trailer for the climatic final session. It was an absolutely bonkers thing to do and my players absolutely loved it.
Well what if I did it better this time and put it in space!
Outlaws over Orion is a heavy tactical RPG of space pirates flying their starfighters on missions of fortune beyond our asteroid belt. I have been having a ton of fun building this. It is mostly Crimson Skies underneath with some ideas from Lancer and Captain Sonar. I really need to take some time to playtest it because I am not certain the underlying resolution mechanic is going to hold up. But I have several classes of starfighter designed and a multitude of weapons already.
I learned a lot more about graphic design in this period. I had skill before, but something really started to click for me where it felt easy to open up Affinity V2 after a long tiring day, and just start making stuff. It was fun and relaxing. I now have a lot more confidence in designing character sheets too, after working on the Outlaws over Orion sheet from initial sketch to finished design over a little longer than a month.
There you have it, that was my hiatus!
I hope it encourages you to try doing a different kind of task for a different kind of project, and see what you learn along the way!
And go check out Witch Bolt, we have more lore nuggets coming.