2016 and 2017

Hello everyone,
Long time no see.

This probably should have gone up a week ago, but it's here now and that's what matters. Let's talk about 2016 in general and what I have planned for 2017.


(if you want to hear the exciting and, well, positive stuff just skip to 2017)

2016

2016 was supposed to be my recovery year. In 2015 my father died, one of my kickstarters was dead in the water (though, to be fair, I had bitten off more then I could chew), and the other only barely met it's goal. So I decided I would take the next year off to just finish projects and work on both my physical and mental health.

Oh boy was that much harder then I expected.

The poor mental health just made everything harder. I had to push myself hard to do any work on Horrors, and got almost no work done on other projects. I lost months at a time. When I finally got to a doctor is was like pulling teeth to get any progress.

I did eventually get things worked out. I'm working on my physical health, I'm seeing someone for my mental health, and I even got married (!). But it feels that it took 8 months of my life just to do those three things. And two of them are just "in progress."

And thus the year was eaten away and the Horrors deadline came up (right in the middle of wedding planning) and I didn't have nearly enough finished. Let alone anything for Troubles in Two Worlds. A year in recovery is a year wasted.


2017

This year will not be like last year. I was too sedentary, I was too complacent, I was too eager to take things slow. My physical health is being improved every day. My mental health is, at least, not as debilitating as it once was. 2017 will be a year of completed projects and exciting new games!

That's right, I'm going to work my way out of this slump!

So I am pushing myself to finish Horrors. Just a couple of sections left and its the easy parts (the rules did get finished last year). The faster I finish it the faster it can go to an editor, then formatted for PDF, and then finally printed and sent off.

After that we move on to Pick Up Group, which I have to remind myself was a big hit at phoenix comicon last year. Smaller physical project, much easier for me to handle. Plus I wont have to push past my struggling mental health to write tens of thousands of words, i'll save that energy for the next thing.

Which is Troubles in Two Worlds! No changes in this project. It wont be kickstarted but just released to the general public with the Mars backers getting a free PDF.

After that I may, or may not, have room for one more project before the years end but i'm not going to give it a hard deadline. For fun though, i'm going to list my current projects from how likely it is to be the last project of 2017.

1. VRO (not actual title)
   This is a new game I got inspired to work on over the holidays. I'll make a formal announcement of what is it later, but I'm excited to work on it and it probably has more mainstream appeal then some of the other new games on this list.
2. Robotic Age adventure modules  
   I've got some interesting ideas for adventures for TRA. Plus it will help get me in the mind set to work on number 5. 
3. Charlatan The game about being fortune tellers, sharp shooters, and other performers during the height of the magician craze. I'm still excited about this one, but it probably wont get the attention VRO will.
4. Horrors: Omens and Prophecies
   The supplement for Horrors will have some interesting additions, both lore and mechanically, but it shouldn't be released too soon after the core book.
5. The Solar Age /  Robotic Age Upgraded  PLAY TEST PACKETS
   This standalone supplement pushes the Robotic Age timeline another hundred years into the future where humans, cyborgs, and androids alike have colonized the solar system. The new rules in this supplement will be released as a free PDF for people wanting to upgrade their current Robotic Age games.
   This will not release this year. But I might get the rules together enough to send out play test packets to anyone who is interested.

So yeah, that's the plan for the year. Expect to see this blog come back to life as I talk about all the cool things you will soon get to play!