I don’t have a whole lot to specific cover this week, but that’s mostly because there are a lot of things in progress being worked on all at once. I figured rather than send something out that is half done, I’d be better off giving an overview of what’s being worked on and what our intentions are projects coming up in the future.
First, for the blog posts themselves. There are a couple of fiction pieces I’m working on that aren’t quite ready yet, but they’ll most likely be the next ones to release. These aren’t particularly relevant to anything upcoming, at least not in the near future, just events that could potentially take place in the setting. So far, I’ve gotten a few questions in the thread I started on Discord for the blog posts, mostly related to terminology. I do intend to answer those, but since they’re mostly tied to the Saurids, I want to wait until we’re getting closer to the release of the Saurids Sourcebook before I go into those (more on that in a bit). In the mean time, please feel free to send in any other questions you may have that you’d like me to go over, or if there are any general suggestions for topics, send those in as well. I’ve made mention of this previously, but I also have plans to start another intermittent series for the blog posts called “What’s Your Profession?”, where I go over a character from popular media and stat them out as if they were an 1879 character. Before I start that, however, I do want to get the new format for the character sheet completed to display them on.
Speaking of which, the character sheet update is in progress and is a priority item for me. I’ve gotten some great feedback, and have several ideas, which as I’m writing them out look like there’s enough material there to be its own post just going over the intentions. I’d like to develop the sheet out with player base feedback as it goes, so look for that in coming blog posts as we do a couple of iterations to refine the design.
Redesigning the character sheet will also be essential when we do the updated release of the Personalities. Yes, that’s right, we haven’t forgotten about that project, we’ve just had other items to prioritize. The layout for the remaining personalities was done prior to our update, so the individual PDF releases will most likely be released in the old format, but from the start we intended to do a full final book that incorporates all 12, as well as a 13th bonus just for that book, and that will get done in the new layout format. My intent is to have the new character sheet format done before then so that we can provide character sheets for each of them as well. At the rate things are going, that book may end up getting included in the next Kickstarter campaign.
Before I get into the next Kickstarter campaign though, I should go over the previous one. Layout work for Saurids on the Grosvenor Express is nearing completion, and will likely be getting finished in the coming week. Once we’ve reviewed the final cut with all the artwork in place to make sure everything is in order, the PDFs will get released to the backers and made available on our shop, and the final proof will be sent to the printers. As I understand it, printing for this book should be the final one for this particular batch, and once it’s done all the physical copies will be shipped out. As always, printing and shipping do take time, and we’ll keep you appraised on that, but the actual production work for that project will be done on our end, and we can shift focus to the next.
What’s next on the agenda are the Saurids Sourcebook and Maps of London. Writing for the former has been progressing while we’ve been working on the current campaign, and I do want to take a moment to give a big shout out and thank you to my writers team that have been getting that done. While I’m on that note, if anyone is interested, there’s still plenty of room for us to pick up additional writers for future products, info for which I’ll go over at the wrap up. With regards to Maps of London, the maps themselves are done, we have a layout for the adventure that will be included, and at this point just need to get the text and stats for it finished. Overall between the two books, I’d say things are sitting at around 50% as far as getting the material created. Our intention is to get that Kickstarter campaign going after the first of the year (with some time for people’s wallets to recover after the holidays, of course), so my goal is to get the writing done by the end of November. That’s not too far away, so the pressure is still on, but with the current campaign nearly wrapped up, I can switch gears and put the next one in full focus.
Since I am looking ahead and as I mentioned writers earlier, if any of you out there are interested, we still have plenty of room to add additional writers to our crew. It’s a freelance position and we do pay for writing based on your final word count that gets published in the books, in addition to which you’ll get access to electronic copies of all our books (you’ll need it for reference anyway) and can get a contributor copy for any products you help to create, plus you get to add your ideas to directly influence the game line. You can ask any of our current writers, I openly encourage them to speak up with any ideas they may have, no matter how outlandish. There are usually a few other perks depending on available circumstances, including some new goodies we’re working on that haven’t been officially announced yet (more stuff to keep an eye out for) and the recently mentioned possibility of starting a writer’s 1879 campaign that I would run, so that everyone gets a chance to actually play in the game we’re writing and test things out, plus have some fun together.
To apply, send an email to me direct at brad@fasagames.com to express your interest, and either attach or send a link to an example of your previous work. This doesn’t have to be anything extravagant or super long (a page or two minimum is fine), it’s just to give me a feel for your writing style and determine how best we could make use of your skills.
Alright, I think that about wraps up everything I was looking to cover for today. Hoping everyone has a fantastic rest of their weekend, and keep looking ahead for more good things to come!