Overall update on the project in a busy moment

TAGS: #CORERULES, #PROJECT

Today, I’d like to keep a broad approach and write about the project overall.

First topic is of course the Quickstart book: I got the first feedback from one of the fellows who are helping on this book, Doug. There’s nothing different from the previous ones: I am far too verbose and my lexical structure is clearly not English! The proofread has not been completely carried out and I will receive the complete work in the next future. Anyway, I am not frustrated by this: I take this as a confirmation that I need to think about a way to make more ‘digestible’ my texts to any native English speaker.

This brings to the second topic! I am considering to publish the core rules in two different versions: one should be the natural derivation of the current playtest rulebook. It’s going to be the extensive version of the rules including the game design notes: for the time being I will name this version the ‘verbose edition’ (I am aware of the fact it isn’t such attractive but, hey, that is a fact!). Once this book is complete, I will derive a ‘slim’ version of it so that any light-rules fan could be interested in it. This would help a lot if this ‘slim’ version is coupled with the quickstart which is in the pipeline (and it somehow foreruns it). I have to make my mind up about the format: I don’t know at the moment whether or not both printed and digital editions could be a plus… but this is another story!

Then, the ‘slim’ version of the core rules coma also handy for another detail: it could be the backbone of the universal KUP rules! I have come to a stable idea of what could be the contents of this book and will foster the development of this book by starting from the light-rules version. For the time being, I went on with the structure of the contents as well as the overall approach with the support of my friend Maarten and I came to a picture that is satisfying!

Then, don’t ask me the reason (I have no answer to that), I revised the contents of the expanded rulebook, VIII·XII·XX : some recent reader may not remember it since that was a topic somehow buried in the early posts (when I used to write on Blogger) and I am now ready to start to write it. Needless to say, I have to prioritize all the topics and this one will likely be a low priority…

Last topic is about my marketing activity: well, I have to admit that this is really a powerful/destroying tool for the success of a game! I prepared a simple graph to support my thought: looking at the number of ‘sales’ (as a matter of fact these are the copies either purchased or downloaded for free from DrivethruRPG of the core rules), these were somehow ‘high’ in the period I tried to promote the game in the online communities, till March. In the last months I had no time to dedicate any effort on this aspect and the outcomes are more than clear! The market is really feral! An underlying message to all the collectors though (since I am a collector, this feature is very important for me!): there are 21 printed copies of the core rules spread in the world. Should you be the owner of one of these, keep it with regard as it might turn out in the future that this is one of the rarest RPG ever published!!!