Hey!
It has been a while since I wrote one of these newsletters, but now that my work on The Electrum Archive Issue 02 has had time to settle into something resembling a routine, I plan on writing these again regularly. So let’s jump into what I’ve been up to since my last post!
February
February was a weird month. It was absolutely incredible to see The Electrum Archive Issue 02 doing well on Kickstarter, but the constant pushing to promote it and the background anxiety of if we would reach certain stretch goals took a bit of a toll on me mentally. So this month I didn’t get much work done. I just read all the lovely comments people left, wrote update posts, and tried to distract myself by playing video games and reading books.
Halfway through the February, I started tinkering with a little monster hunting solo game to blow off some steam. I have no idea where I’ll take this, but it is a fun little prototype to have in my back pocket to tinker with when the mood strikes.
The TEA02 Kickstarter campaign ended with a whopping €48,543 raised, and I’ve been at work writing the zine!
March
Early March was spent figuring out how to get the money from Kickstarter and how to handle it tax-wise. A lot of boring reading into the tax rules of the Netherlands and video calls with my accountant.
I also was asked to illustrate the cover of the Spellburns & Battlescars GM Handbook. This was a lot of fun since I had the pleasure to create the cover art for the Player’s Guide in August last year, and this one allowed me to pay homage to my favorite D&D covers, the 4th Edition ones by Wayne Reynolds :)
The GM Handbook Cover:
The rest of March I got ready to start work on TEA02 by organizing the myriad of notes I wrote during the writing of the first issue, dividing the raised funds into little pools for each part of the creation process. A had planned to start properly writing the zine in the last week of March, but this was thrown off the rails when my partner was rushed to the hospital for a sudden emergency surgery and I had to spend the rest of the month and early April taking care of her. It was a scary event, but I’m incredibly happy she seems to have fully recovered.
April
Basically all I did in April was writing the rules section of TEA 02. This chunk of the zine covers a lot of things I did not have room for in TEA01 or just plainly forgot to mention. It covers a procedure for downtime between adventures, rules for hiring hirelings, new character options, and more.
At the end of the month, I sent it all to Ava for editing and feedback while I got started on the next chunk of the project, the adventure locations.
May
Early May was spent refreshing my memory on how to design good dungeons, reading a lot of fantastic blog posts on the topic, reading adventures, and scribbling down all the inspiration that came to me.
Here are three of my favorite blog posts I read during this time:
Jewelbox Design and Broken Bastion by Gus L of All Dead Generations. This post details what Gus calls “Jewelbox adventure design”, and examines it using examples from his excellent adventure Broken Bastion.
Twelve Angry Rooms by Emmy Verte of Spooky action at a distance. It proposes a framework for designing small dungeons of around twelve rooms by dividing them into three thematic areas, each an escalation of the danger, weirdness and rewards of the previous area.
One Page Dungeon Design by Gus L of All Dead Generations. This one I found particularly useful since I’m working with a limited number of pages for TEA02 and still have to fit three engaging adventure locations in there together with all the other rules and setting material. This post gives some good pointers on which things are important to focus on when you have limited space and stresses the importance of a good map, which can save a lot of space by doing a lot of the describing for you.
Here are some other excellent posts I’ve read (or re-read in some cases) in preparation of writing the adventure sites for TEA 02 and I do recommend you check out if you haven’t already:
Bite-Sized Dungeons by Marcia B. of Traverse Fantasy
Dungeon Design, Process and Keys by Gus L of All Dead Generations
Classic Vs. Five Rooms by Gus L of All Dead Generations
Dungeon Checklist by Arnold K. of Goblin Punch
Landmark, Hidden, Secret by Anne of DIY & dragons
Three Step Dungeon by Chris McDowall of BASTIONLAND
So with my head full of all this advice, I started sketching and writing the first two small adventure locations for TEA 02, for now called The Grafter’s Catacombs and The Tower of Tursar Velm. I’ve been play testing the first with two separate groups and they will soon move on to the Tower. It has been a lot of fun playing more TEA again, and playing through the Catacombs has helped me sand down some of its rough edges.
Here are some of the rough early sketches I made before writing proper location keys and rearranging the rooms:
The last few days of May were spent figuring out how BackerKit works and getting it all in order for me to send out surveys to all KS backers. This was a bit more trouble than I expected, so I’m glad I took a moment to figure this out now instead of closer to fulfillment.
Odds and ends
Here are some other things I did over the last few months:
I’ve been playing Yakuza: Like A Dragon together with my partner. We’ve almost finished it, and it was a lot more fun than we expected when we started playing! I lost a lot of my evening hours last month playing the business management mini-game.
I finally beat Elden Ring, after not playing for a good half year as a result of getting stuck at the Godskin Duo with a pure faith build. I spent some time finding all the medallions, cook books and ball bearings before heading into New Game+. I’m now halfway through my second play through. This time using a dragon knight inspired build using only dragon sorceries and weapons. Hands down the best game I’ve ever played.
While waiting for Armored Core VI and the Elden Ring DLC I’ve started playing Bloodborne for the first time. To no one’s surprise, it’s good. The main thing I’m excited about is that it forced me to learn to parry (which I always ignored in all other Fromsoft games), something I’m excited to now try in Elden Ring once the DLC drops.
To scratch my programming itch, I’ve been tinkering in Godot and made some fun little prototypes for a tiny procedural roguelike RPG in the vein of Caves of Qud and a small RTS which after great input of some friends has been morphed into a Napoleonic sci-fi space game.
I’ve been slowly reading through The King in Yellow. Which is very different from what I expected. The jury is still out on if this is a good or bad thing.
I’ve been working on the guide screen illustration for the Errant RPG. It’s a pretty big and slightly intimidating illustration to work on. If all goes well I hope to finish it this month.
I created some new free illustrations for the CC-BY Art Library:
I’ve probably forgotten a few things, but that’s most of what I did since I last wrote one of these newsletters.
Thanks for reading, stay safe, and I’ll talk to you again next month!
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