Thursday, April 11th

The Daily Report

I said before that if I don't finish the book 2 ebook before WisCon, it probably won't be done until I'm back in Nebraska again. This morning in a burst of clarity, I thought, "What else do I have to do between now and then that's so important?" There are a couple of short stories that are nearly ready for publication, but that's the kind of light work that it makes sense to hold off for Hagerstown.

In other words, I've decided to focus on getting the next ebook done in the next 6 weeks. That's my goal. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it.

The Nook version is ready to roll, I'm just waiting for them to approve my account (they have to verify my bank info)... it's a little disconcerting that it's taking so long for that to happen, but possibly they had a huge leap in account creation the day I signed up, since that was actually the launch day for their new publishing program.

The State of the Me

I ran out of 5-HTP a bit ago and just got more of it yesterday. Same dosage I was taking, but in a time release capsule. I don't know if it was the formulation being different or if I'd built up resistance or if I was just exhausted enough from my late night cramps, but it left me feeling floaty and tired all afternoon. I had a burst of energy late at night, but when I did lay back down, I ended up sleeping until noon... which I count as a good thing, since I've been missing sleep this week and I haven't managed to have that kind of long, deep sleep since I got back to Nebraska.

I'll be keeping an eye on what happens when I take my pills the next few days here. 5-HTP does cause drowsiness in some people, but I've never noticed it before. I have noticed it apparently improving my sleep cycle.

Plans For Today

I woke up later than expected, so I'm basically just going to be working on the ebook and polishing and posting today's MU chapter.

AWW: Design philosophy, rules progress, playtesting stuff.

Reading back through my blog's A Wilder World tag, I'm kind of amazed at how many different permutations of the game system I've gone through. It's weird to read through content I created as mock-ups for the earliest versions of the game and see references to things like yards of movement... originally, the game was going to be a lot less abstract about things like distance.

But it's also amazing to read my game design philosophy posts from three years ago and see how little has changed there. The very first post I made in the tag is a great example. I laid out five specific goals and I think that each change I've made in how I approach the execution of them has just brought me closer to them, while also making it more distinct from D&D.

Another similar post a bit later that same month laid out my goals for the combat system. The system I'm using now is very different from the original one I'd envisioned, but I think it hits the mark pretty well.

My ideas haven't changed, I've just gotten better at crafting rules that express them.

It's also kind of amusing to see me announcing that I would be ready for playtesting "very soon" back in October of 2010... but then, I'd been bouncing ideas for the game around for a year at that point and it seemed like everything was coming together. And it was, but the game that was almost ready to playtest at that point was really clunky and didn't differ enough from D&D to really justify its own existence.

On the subject of playtesting: I've always talked about doing a multiple phase playtest, with the early phases using pregen characters. But the character creation system is really the centerpiece of the game, and there's no point in getting the rest of it right if I get chargen wrong. Plus, people can test the character creation rules on their own time, which is convenient when I'm bouncing back and forth across the country and don't always have time to organize playtests.

So I've decided to focus my efforts on getting the character creation rules written out in full in a semi-finished state and turning that into a PDF. When that's done, I'm going to start soliciting potential playtesters to receive a copy of it to play around with. I'll be looking for feedback on ease of use and clarity. The first round of actual playtesting will be run by me online, with small groups of players using their own characters.

No ETD on this (not even "very soon"), but at the point where it seems like I'm in spitting distance I'll set up an email list that people can subscribe to if they want to be notified when the playtest kit is available.