Pausing a bit for the build up on the Maps of London and Saurids Sourcebook campaign (which is going to be coming up very soon), I wanted to take a brief aside to touch on what’s coming down the pipeline after that, since we’ve got keep an eye out not just on what’s in front of us, but also what’s ahead.
I’ve recently done some clean up on our files after our writers meeting discussions, and we’ve got a list of chapters that will help give us our general outline. These aren’t completely set in stone yet, so if any of you have additional things you want to hear about with the Samsut, let me know in the comments and on Discord; as always, I want to keep your feedback in mind so that we’re putting out products that meet your interests and needs.
A lot of the basic structure is going to follow fairly closely to how we’ve done the Saurids Sourcebook; the format works and is familiar to write and read, so it gives a solid foundation for everyone involved. We’ll open with an Introduction chapter that gives the general overview on the Samsut and does a bit further of a dive into their history. Unlike the Saurids, their anatomy is well familiar, so most of that talk is going to be replaced with a general discussion on Life-Giver tech and how that has influenced them. Again, this is all broad strokes, just a primer on the material for the rest of the book.
From here we’ll jump into a discussion on their culture. While they have some variation between their city-states, unlike the Saurids, they don’t have enough to be completely distinct from one another, so these are going to get blended into one chapter. A pair of our writers had the idea to tag team doing a set of letters between in-game characters going back and forth over the subject as a framing device, which I thought was great and should help keep things interesting.
Technology comes up next, and oh boy, do we have a lot to talk about there. Not just from the military aspects – and there will be and entirely separate chapter discussing their military and tactics – but all of the civilian and mundane uses they’ve developed from the Annuinaki tech. Considering these are people who don’t have a problem raising the dead as a fighting and labor force, some of them might seem a bit macabre, and I’ve given instructions not to shy away from the ooky areas where it’s appropriate. To most of the earthers, it’s going to have a very foreign feel to it.
The city-states are an interesting beast to cover; there are thirteen of them, which is too much to cover from the ground up in one chapter, but we’ve already had a lot of the basics talked about previously. We’ve had the idea to break them up by primary political affiliations, of which we’re figuring three, which does put them in more manageable chunks. For right now I have it as one chapter to organize and see how much material we generate, but that one is ready to be broken up if it starts getting too long.
In addition to the military, right now I’ve got a chapter for civilian interests as well. I want to make sure the Samsut are not just propped up as the enemies for the British to fight, but as a unique people with a different point of view that could potentially be played out if someone were inclined to (though depending on how material comes in and what chapters are needed for organization, this info may get absorbed into the cities/culture chapters). We’ve even run a Samsut demo at Gencon previously, and I’ve got the framework for another one for next year to play with the material we come up with here.
Which neatly moves me into the last chapters, Game Mechanics and Index. Again, following the form we did with the Saurids, Game Mechanics will cover the technical nitty gritty of Professions, Equipment, Skills, etc., all the stuff that either doesn’t quite squeeze into one chapter or could fit in multiple places. We’ve done this approach with Fort Alice as well, and so far I think it also works from a usability standpoint to have one chapter to go look for the less specific mechanics in rather than having to hunt through the whole book. With the Index, I’m again planning to include a lexicon for their language, though this time around there’s probably going to be less importance placed on it, since Babylonian is a language you could go and look up. We’ll highlight a few key terms most relevant for in-game information, but most likely this is going to be our main float chapter that we can add and remove data from to get us to the needed page count for the price breaks on printing.
That pretty much covers the major overview. There are of course many specific little easter eggs and further details we’re going to be including, but naturally those you’ll have to wait until the book to find out. Is there anything in particular you want to see covered in depth on these chapters? Any other aspects you want to hear about that don’t fit into this framework? Let us know in the comments and on Discord, and we’ll see you next week!