October Update (Plus new short story)

Yep, it's that time again! Let's see how things are going!

Development was admittedly slower in September and October, but by no means entirely dormant. Some of the tabletop events/leagues I run took up a lot of my free time in organizational work, both for local leagues (new edition of Kill Team, whee!), and prepping for the Michigan GT, the largest tabletop convention in the state. I ran two different tournaments simultaneously at the GT, which was challenging but highly rewarding, and participated in a couple other events as well (I took first place for Conquest: First Blood, SCORE!).

Also on the tabletop news, I put the final touches on Protoverse and got the first professionally-printed copy made! It's glorious!

Not gonna lie, it's extremely exciting to see something I've created be fully finished and produced at a level of quality on par with what you can normally buy in a game store. I don't have any distribution options setup yet, but I'll definitely try to figure something out. If you're interested in getting a copy, let me know!

I've also made some solid progress on Seven Families. An initial draft of the final rules has been written up and is being proofread now. I've also finally reached a more finalized design of the gameboard I'm happy with (that was the biggest thing slowing me down). Hopefully I can have everything done and also sent off to the printers by the end of November.

As for Unto the Breach, it's a bit of a mixed bag. The situation with my work hasn't improved at all since my last update, and I've been utterly burned out enough times before to recognize when it's happening again. As before, it's left little motivation to spend any additional time outside out of work on my computer. Or, if I did spend any additional time doing creative stuff, it was largely focused on Seven Families. I needed to do something that had more immediate results. That said, September and October haven't been entirely devoid of progress.

The biggest steps taken in this time were connecting all the existing maps for Episode One, so you can now play from the beginning through nearly the entire final dungeon. Greyboxing is done for all but the last floor of the final dungeon. It should be a relatively simple process to get the last floor done, then perhaps start working on the ending sequence.

Several NPCs were also added to locations around Doramor City, helping the city be more lively. The final number will probably be around double what's currently implemented though, if not higher. I really want cities (and the world in general) to feel like they're actually inhabited by lots (and lots) of people, Doramor City has a population of about 250,000. You're definitely gonna meet more than a few of those people, heh.

Also on the creative front, I've got a new lore article written up that I'll be posting soon. It's a historical article about one of the most crucial battles of the Judgment War, and is easily the longest article I've written yet, at about 3,400 words (so about 1.5-2x longer than the political articles I posted in July/August). I'll likely have that up next week. I've also got another lore present planned for Halloween!

That wraps it up for now. I wish I had more to report, but we all know how life is. I'm confident my situation will be improving soon, though, and things will pick back up with Unto the Breach as I muster the energy for it again. And even if things don't improve, I will endure, as always.

See you next time!

itch.io addendum: I also posted a Lovecraftian horror story on Halloween, set on Terranis. Give it a read!