Monday, August 12th

The Daily Report

Tales of MU book 2 is up in the Kindle store! Other venues/formats to follow throughout the week.

The retail price is $4.99. I kept feeling vaguely guilty about making it $5 when the first one is $3, because it's only about ten chapters longer. Then I remember that 10 chapters is about half the length of the first one. And that a lot of the chapters in the first one are short. And that I priced the first as low as Amazon will go for the prime royalty specifically as a way of making it more attractive to new readers/people who aren't sure the commentary is worth it. And the commentary is longer and (in my opinion) better in this one.

The bottom line is, it represents a lot of work (both in the original writing and in creating the e-book), and I did that work with the idea that it would be worth it to tell it later, and acting like it's not worth selling now just undermines the whole system. :P

I just made an announcement on the IndieGoGo page to thank contributors and let them know my plans regarding perk fulfillment. I probably should have done that when it ended, but the truth is until the pending balance pays out I feel more anxious about the whole thing than I did even when it was first beginning, so I avoided the site most of the weekend. Oh, well. It ended at the end of the day Friday and here we are Monday morning, so I don't think it's a serious lapse. For business purposes, this is the morning after.

The State of the Me

Last night there was a bit of a spike in overnight temperatures. The rest of the week looks a lot better.

It's a little surreal how much my life revolves around tracking the overnight temperature now, but that's pretty much the same thing as keeping a sleep diary.

Plans For Today

The bonus story bank went over the top at some point in the night, so it's a bonus story day. Given that I'm a *little* short on sleep and some other stuff I'm not going into, that's pretty much all I'm counting on getting done today.

AWW: Filling things out.

I do most of my AWW stuff at night after work hours, but I kind of need a mental palate cleanser in between doing some unexpected technical stuff, dealing with some tangentially-work related setbacks that have disrupted my day (nothing major, just... stuff), and getting back into the creative head space. AWW is kind of a nice bridge between the technical and creative frames of mind, so...

My informal surveys about missing character types went pretty well. Between suggestions from the people following along at home and stray thoughts that were jarred loose in my head, I think I've got a pretty good handle on a comprehensive basic set.

This thing is going to be bigger than I had expected/planned, but I think that's a good thing.

For one thing, even though this is a one person operation and I won't be beholden to the corporate development cycle that kills new versions of D&D in a frighteningly short amount of time... I am a one person operation. And I don't know what my life is going to be like in a few years. So I shouldn't count on being able to keep doing this indefinitely, which means that no matter what my *plans* for expansions are, I should make the basic set everything that it can be.

So here are the general categories of Character Qualities and related foo that I've added, am definitely adding, or am strongly considering adding. Italicized stuff is stuff I haven't added but am strongly considering.

• "Tech/Maker" Categories: Tinkerer. Alchemist. Apothecary. Automaton. To support the Tinkerer, I've added devices as a type of tools and mechanical as a weapon trait. "Automaton" is also a trait for companion characters and may become a Character Quality and/or special nature for player characters. For Alchemist and Apothecary, I've expanded the offerings of expendable items and labeled which ones can be herbal and/or alchemical.
  
• Other Wizard Specialties: Elementalist. Aeromancer. Geomancer. Hydromancer. Necromancer. Arcanist. Green Mage. Enchanter. Warder. "Arcanist" is a meta-magician, no actual specialty but better at manipulating magic itself and enhancing spell casting in various ways. Warder would specifically focus on defensive magic.
  
• Primal/Animal Stuff: Animal Empath. Animal Form. Bonded Companion. Bonded Companion is not necessarily an animal, but this is how you do a ranger or druid-style animal companion or a familiar. Animal Empath might get a better commando name, but the obvious one ("Beastmaster") is being reserved for its next tier version.
  
• Rogue-like: Intimidating. Chameleon. Signature Cloak. Poisoner. Street Rat
  
• Fighter Stuff: Unarmed Expert. Fencer. Signature Shield. Brawler. Brawler would be an anything-goes dirty fighter, not specifically unarmed but with benefits to counteract the drawbacks of being unarmed or using improvised weapon.
  
• Theological: Death-Touched. Fate-Touched. Nature-Touched. Oracle. Battle-Touched. Storm-Touched. Cloistered. "Cloistered" is the gender neutral Monk Quality. And that's "monk" as in "99 Theses", not as in "99 Palms of Fury Exploding Spleen Technique."
  
• Miscellaneous: Unreadable. Merchant. Ogre. Unnamed Lizard Folk.
  
• Meta: Dabbler. The Dabbler Quality has no actual abilities. It just lets you pick two other Qualities to add to your character, with an explanation of how to divide their front loaded benefits in two. The "Dabbled Qualities" can never exceed level 4 (2/3rds of the way through) and can't be used as a basis for Advanced Qualities. This in added partially in response to the requests for a more satisfying way of doing things like a Half-Elf character, and partially just to increase the gradation of things... just like the Devoted Meta Quality gives you the effect of doubling up on something, this lets you go halfsies.

I know I'd said I planned on keeping the companion stuff out of the first round of playtesting, but that was mainly because I didn't have a clear model for the rules. As that kind of came together unexpectedly at my last coffee shop jaunt, I had no reason to keep them out, especially since there was a request for an animal shifter option.

I'm rather happy with how they have come out. Adding a full-fledged companion to a character is rather expensive and a bit more complicated than adding a sword or set of lockpicks to a character, but there is a "pet" option (that can even be taken as an accessory, for a non-flying tiny creature) that is priced to move and has the drawback of not allowing customization until you buy off the difference between the pet version and the full version. So you could add a falcon or cat to your character at level 1 and then have them grow into a fighting companion or wizard's familiar over time. There's also a "trade a Detail for Gear Points for this thing" option that's specific to companions.

For non-pet companions, one of the ways to "upgrade" them is to spend your own character resources on them. This means the easiest way to have a companion with high attributes is to have low attributes yourself... a character with Strength 0 who has a Strength 6 golem is essentially a Strength 6 character with a remote upgrade on their Strength. Or you could give your bear companion the Brute Quality (again from your own pool of them). So instead of having the major advantage of being a powerful and intimidating fighter yourself, you have the major advantage of having a bear who fulfills that role.

I'm adding a bunch of *-touched categories and more wizard specialties because Life-Touched doesn't really stand out as part of a category if it's the only thing in the category, and it's really lopsided to have five of the six available magical specialties being elements. A number of other CQs (Notably Minstrel, Healer, Alchemist, and Tinkerer) are "magic optional" characters; they can function as a magical specialization if you have magic, but don't require it.