Another Update

It's been an exciting time. The Winter Home has been updated and I'm still almost, kinda getting close to finished with the book. It should be going into layout mid-July -- which is good news. It will have the same sort of look as The Winter Home. I'm not sure about the release date (yet) but I hope soon-ish is good enough. I'll be sure to give plenty of advance notice as it's getting closer.

So what's been going on in TATG the last part of June?

• OLD NEWS ALERT: I updated The Winter Home. Wouldn't you know it? I found some typos and math errors on the character sheets (as well as a couple of curious omissions in the Equipment list). Expect another update in the not-too-distant future.

• I'm still trying to block off time to do those last two Examples (In-Between Adventures and Investigation). That's it, that's all, once those are done. I've got some interesting life activity coming up in the near-term so I'm hoping I have enough time to get those examples done this week because...

• I still need to proofread almost the entire book. There are a few chapters that are a-ok and have been done-done-done for months. But there have been lots of changes here and there. Just today I found a block of text in the Character Classes chapter that was easily one full re-write out of date. Yikes!

• Once proofread, I'm bundling the Gamma and sending it to the playtest and editing crew. Shortly afterwards, it will be going to layout.

• Layout is anticipated to take about a month. I'll keep you all updated if that slips. So, timeframe-wise, we're probably looking at mid-to-late August or September. 

Playtests!

I've also had the opportunity to run through some more TATG with the awesome group here in Austin. I had a chance to subject them to the latest rule edits and here's what I found:

• The new Death/Dying rules appear to be fine. They're a simplification of what was there before (and that was already pretty simple).

• The changes to Fear saves were very nice. One less chart -- but when someone flubs that save it's sheer gold.

• The changes to Turn Unholy sucked. In the same spirit of the new Death/Dying rules and the Fear saves, I had simplified the Turn Unholy bits and, well, they were sanitized beyond boring. It also turned out that my math around Turn Unholy (which I had based off the regular DCC RPG spellcheck math) was way off. Fixed and fixed. Caster levels to Turn Unholy have been beefed up and the old, flavorful Turn Unholy Mishaps table has returned from the grave.

I'll have more information on playtests in general, how they're going and what I've learned from them in future blogposts.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Layout is right around the corner. After that, it's tying up loose ends and done. My plan is to increase the marketing blitz while the book is in layout. I plan on putting together a "designer's notes" series of blogposts. As well as an overview of the chapters in the first book and the Character Classes in TATG (specifically how they've changed over the last year).

I hope you all are as excited as I am.