Star blog number 8675309. Transparency Blog
It’s been a bit since our last transparency post, but it’s also been a bit since we did any meetings of note in public. With months before our game goes open for sale, we have been primarily working on the organization back end, continued development of our The Wailing Shores book, and doing the planning for our combo CT- TX double header event.
We did end up popping in to the DR National discord opening-de-grande and did a talk on what our book release plans were and how development was going.
For those of you that attend our Most Improbable chats, its not much of a surprise. We’ve finished the layout for our The Wailing Shores book and intend on giving early access to it to anyone that buys a ticket and at least 1 additional XP for the DR CT event. This will give people early access to the book before the game so that they have more of an understanding of the territory, the unique flavors of Strains in the area, as well as some of the threats.
What was a new-er announcement was that the book releases going forward are also going to contain optional LARP mechanics. As an example, in the TTRPG each of the Strains has a mechanical condition that they have to abide by. This sort of translates over to the “Traits” that each Strain has that is primarily a roleplaying guide. Our book will provide optional roleplay Traits that can be taken for characters with those Strains that are based out of DR CT.
In addition, we announced that Catie and I were going to keep writing and publishing books, all with additional source materials and TTRPG and LARP mechanics. The book that will have the most in the way of “direct XP purchase mechanics” instead of items that are primarily roleplay variants, will be the Murder Inc book that we plan on releasing in 2023.
Our goal is to write and release at least one book every year, each from different locations, and running an event based in that area. Because Most Improbable licensed publication rights from the IP management company (and a chunk of sales go to that company for the things we make), we are able to write books and release optional mechanics going forward.
It is important to mention, that Catie and I aren’t doing this as a job or a living. We literally pay more into releasing these books than we will ever make back in the $1 and $2 residuals we make from each book purchase. With that in mind, we are 100% writing the books we want to write because we LIKE doing it and running events to match because we WANT to tell those stories. We aren’t part of National, we don’t get paychecks from this, and this is all about us effectively doing nerd writing and art.
So, that about sums it up. Other than occasionally Catie and Michael do public chats on the Most Improbable discord talking about different game design theories, processes, and aspects of writing and working in the industry.
