The last few months have flown by. It started with a relocation cross country trip from East to West Coast, catching a flight overseas then eventually making it back to California for additional schooling. Now that I've just gotten back from a field exercise in the Southern Californian brushland I am ecstatic to once again have running water, three square meals a day and a nice rack to sleep in. It also means I have more time for my personal life and projects, not to mention a semi-reliable internet connection while I continue my hotel living on temporary duty assignment.
Where I last left off I mentioned I had been working on a book. Well I have been for quite some time now; this rules system has taken one shape or another for many years now, each new revision building off the last. I'd say my initial encounter with the Old School Renaissance (OSR), years back is what influenced me the most. From that day forward my goal was to drop the exceptional mechanical complexity and to keep it sweet and simple, letting the theater of the mind fill in the form work laid by basic but elegant rules. Don't get me wrong, this still has plenty more fiddly bits than Holmes basic but each mechanic has been hit by Occam's razor on numerous occasions.
Currently, playtesting is focusing on finding glitches in the system and unanswered questions. For instance, Ranged weapons fire at the start of initiative so a recent question was whether or not thrown weapons or an elemental blast falls under that clause. We'll experiment a few more times before we come up with a hard answer. After a few more cycles of this I'll start working out how I will handle open playtesting. Initial batches of art have been commissioned and procured but I'd like to have a hell of a lot more so we'll see where the budget falls soon enough.
Below you'll find the basic outline of the book, its contents, and an approximate percentage of how complete it is.
