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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Borderlands Draft Done, But Wait There's More...

Fortunately for my eye sockets, I have successfully resisted the urge to shove steaming red hot pokers into them since finishing A Dance With Dragons late last night.

But unfortunately, I seemed to have picked up some bad habits from George R.R. Martin over the past few weeks of reading his novel, namely the inability to stop writing. If the great secret to life is knowing when it's time to go, then the secret to writing is knowing when enough is enough.

Unless an editor manages to kick some sense into me, you can look forward to—at the least—these new sections to supplement the ones laid out in the table of contents:

Ships and Maritime Matters. A longish list (and description) of pre-Renaissance and fantastical naval vessels with accompanying rules for naval combat, weather, exploration, and ship-building.

Investments. Originally a short section under domain income, now a meatier menu of choices. Strong inspiration from the First Fantasy Campaign.

Campaign Scenarios. One thing that felt missing was a list of possible themes and ideas for set-ups for existing or new campaigns. Playtest players will see some portage of ideas over from play in Nowhere. (May brainstorm this on the blog.)

Fantasy Elements. One disappointment to me about the attempts to do domain-level play in D&D post Blackmoor is how utterly mundane the play options seem at times. I have been going back through and trying to add more touches of the weird and wonderful in several sections to “fantasy it” up a bit more. More floating cities in the sky, golden battle barges, weird/magical resources and the like.

Self-castigation aside, I think these will strengthen the overall product and thus feel like it is a good choice. And I am pleased as punch to say that I finished the existing sections of the draft manuscript this morning as expected.

Even with the additions and a week (or two) of tightening and such not, I expect to have the beta version into people's hand right on the August 15th deadline. Yay.

But please, please stop me before I add again.  

12 comments:

  1. Back away from the writing, Cake. Or I'll send Miss Wiggy over there. She won't bite you but she just might hug you to death.

    She's real good at her job and she won't put up with you adding and adding.

    She's tough.

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  2. Since this is your third intervention on my behalf in 24 hours, I am taking it very seriously.

    (Well... as much as I do anything seriously.)

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  3. lololololololol. It's only because I care.

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  4. The Late Bird Loses the Worm.

    Or so I've been told.

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  5. I know the feeling. Weird Adventures has grown since its initial conception. Luckily, my desire to get done has grown to counterbalance my need to include more.

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  6. TS - the early worm gets eaten.

    Chris, Bravo! Not really done though eh. The ships thing could prolly be a book on its own, but I think you do need that stuff; investments and fantasy elements especially.

    How those FFC/OD&D investments were really supposed to work, seemed a bit of a mystery to me. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

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  7. Every update to this project makes me more excited to see the final results.

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  8. And he will shout:
    But please, please stop me before I add again.

    ...and I will whisper:
    No.

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  9. I couldn't resist. The thought of Rorschach perched on Chris K's house while he's typing away...

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  10. re: Dance.
    Yeah, I hope you don't blame me for introducing you to the series.
    I don't regret it, if only because I have one more person to commiserate with.

    But Manderly's pies were awesome.

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