БоеБлог - Новые начинания - 7 мая 2009

[DeJaVu]

So I'm going to try something a little different. As Adam is want to point out, my 'blogs" aren't really blogs in the common usage sense...there electronic tomes. Then again, I like to try and convey as much information as possible and that has meant in the past that the blogs are crazy huge things that can take most of a morning to put together.

Unfortunately I don't have that time any more. However, since I banned Herb from doing any type of web contact until A Time of War is done, I feel obliged to try and fill in some. So instead of the mega tomes where I update everyone, the dog and the kitchen sink, I'm going to try and settle for short blogs every couple of days, just to show that we still exist, we're still producing product and that the road bumps of the last 6 months are almost gone.

Please note that in good 'standard blog' fashion there won't be a rhyme or reason from one blog to the next. In the past I usually tried to pimp the product that was closet to release. However, that falls back a little too close to my mega tomes. Instead, I'll just provide updates on what is currently on my desk, regardless of how far it is in the pipeline, as I find the time and can slide them in. Hopefully you'll enjoy this new format...and thanks for all of your patience as we worked out some kinks and get ready for a fantastic summer of releases.

A Time of War....getting a pile of cool art in for this project, even as we race to finish it. Klaus is once again lending us his great artist style for the fiction sections that appear in this book; unlike previous books, though, all these stories are actually linked, creating a much different feel and one more appropriate for the RPG.

While the vast majority of this project has been 100% Herb and his authors, he's let me throw my weight around a little. One of the sections I suggested we should add is a "boots on the ground" feel of various technology levels of planets for gamemasters. For example, if I'm running a game and my players hit the ground on say New Avalon, the "feel" of what they encounter (from every day gadgets, to communications, to vehicles and so on) is going to be radically different then if I hit a skidrow world like say Annapolis. While previous RPGs and other sourcebooks have provided a whistlestop tour of numerous worlds in the Inner Sphere, it almost always centered on simply the history of the planet, there rulers and so on. All great stuff...but if a GM wants to know how to tailor the feel of a world so that the players must interact differently as they bounce around the Inner Sphere, pretty useless.

If it turns out right (and I believe it's well on its way) it should provide the thumbnail reference that a GM needs to really 'get' the differences between technology levels and how that applies to that "boots on the ground" and how to convey that to the players while extrapolating that information for any world the GM wants to toss his un-suspecting players onto.

See ya next time.

Randall