A pre-order store for Thousand Year Old Vampire's second printing. Please notice Weird Horror and the Operator's Manual for the Handheld Bronson Articulated De-Flensing Unit. These are both items that might only ever be sold here and now.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hey folks,
Happy New Year! I'm here to give you a state-of-the-vampire-book update.
Things are pushing along just fine. I'd publicly challenged myself to have the layout done by Jan 1 but missed that self-imposed deadline. Mostly because it was completely unreasonable compounded by my getting some freelance work and unexpected family care duties over December. We are still will within the actual schedule I'd laid out for myself for the project, though, so have no fears.
The book as it stands now is 150-plus pages. The page growth factor is mostly from my swelling the appendices with all sorts of good stuff. Right now the appendices are going to include:
I. Alternate Prompts from myself and a small handful of contributors.
II. Play Examples
III. Random number tables for those who lack dice
IV. A section on safety in play.
V. Multiplayer rules variants
VI. Two context-giving interviews
VII. Designer's notes
The alternate prompts especially are going to make this game book a lot more exciting.
Now I'll show you some things.
Above is the basic format for the rules section. The layout in the example isn't nearly done, but it shows the style I want to use. Sidebars will be scraps of paper tucked or taped into the book. I'm liking the red frame pretty well, but it might become a different pattern or at least a different color throughout the rules. Again, this layout example is nowhere near resolved in it's particulars.
Here's an example of the biggest "sidebar". It's going to overlay two full pages of the book. You'll see bits of text peeking out behind it, but know that the text will be there just for show--no actual useful information will be covered up, of course. The map of Poland that makes up the back piece there has had every city and location marker crossed off with a little x, and there's a little "Where is Piotr?" written in the lower left. I'm trying to make these tuck-in elements feel mysteriously purposeful.
[NOTE: From this point downward I am rewriting this update, dejected and deflated. I'd written the whole dang thing only to have it fail to publish. I refreshed the page (and yes, I'd saved it but no, I hadn't copied and pasted the text into another window) and it was blank from this point down. Sigh. Please forgive if I fail to exhibit verve and/or zeal.]
More examples of tuck-ins. These are all very "built" things. The newspaper clippings are flat and pure white so I add the wrinkles, paper color, scribbles. I fold and bend things. Someone please appreciate the barely visible "Santa Carla" on the fortune teller card.
The tuck-in photos, too, I've been trying to fuck with to increase the weirdness, or at least distance them from their banality. The bottom photo has a very subtle self-portrait. I'm not going to bother finishing it as it's a bit 'too much', but it was fun to make.
Man I hate rewriting things.
The next week's highlights include:
-a phone call with the printer to talk about cover texures and Metallic Ink on the End Paper
-probably a hand-back from the editor
-more tuck-ins because I can use like a million of them.
Finally: It feels so great to be able to draft folks into helping me with this and to then PAY THEM. Thank you all so much for this. The games making ecosystem is built on love and support and when money shows up it makes everything wonderful.
High fives,
tim h
I'm not going to post a lot of formal Updates, but this is a special one: The first chunk of the rulebook has been sent off to the editor.
I'd been carrying around this paper print out of the rule book with me everywhere for weeks, reading and rereading it and making changes. Then I realized that if I lost it it'd be disasterand I had to laugh because I was recreating the Diary mechanic in my real life. Anyways, I put the red slashes through paragraphs as I finish moving my edits over.
Now things are in the hand of Dr. Watson. Some things anyways. I am going over the entire Prompt list again and then rewriting the material for the appendices. Did I say that there are appendices? I think I did, but I'll repeat it. There will be appendices with examples of play, additional Prompts, safety mechanics, design notes and I don't know what else.
Also:
I'm not picking favorite but if I did I'd have to pick Four Ways to Die in the Future because it includes work by my favorite game designer whose games I've never actually played, Aura Belle. Between P.H. Lee and Aura this is probably going to be amazing and intense and maybe sexy/scary.
Turn by Brie Sheldon is getting me increasingly excited. It's described as "a slice-of-life supernatural roleplaying game about shapeshifters in small, rural towns who struggle between their beast and human sides in a quiet drama." I totally want to be a raccoon that has to keep it secret that their a human or else they'll get ostracized by the animals. And the ostriches especially I guess.
My Jam is a larp zine type thing put out by Jeff Dieterle and Eric Mersmann. This, so's I hear, is a really good game where music and dancing is a feature-not-a-bug. Turning larps into books is a good trick and I'm glad to see these people do it. Also, the Kickstarter itself is so dang charming you should visit.
Jason Pitre had a game about lumberjacks that I desperately want to play, but is also Kickstarting After the War which sold me on the art alone and I'm not the kind of guy to get excited by game art. Jason does a lot of heavy lifting as a game community organizer so that's even more reason to go and help out.
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Thank you all again for giving me this amazing opportunity!