A Follow-up and an Announcement (UPDATED)

To start, I'd like to apologize for the melodramatic mood I got into in this other post. Fact of the matter is, while preparing the post, I saw something that put me in a mindset of questioning whether or not this would be a project worth tackling at all, and why would anyone buy my book instead of this other thing put out by serious professionals, and so on and so forth. That's something I struggle with in general, because to be honest any sort of feedback or response to my writing is already pretty sparse (not to restart the pity party, but I got two responses to my previous post, and one of those was a rando on Mastodon) and doing something that I'd actually be charging money for felt a bit futile. So, y'know, sorry about that.

But I've had plenty of time to get over it and gather my thoughts, and I'm gonna go into more detail on what I was discussing before. I imagine for one or two of you it will probably be pretty obvious where that was headed, but I'll just be transparent now.

So this is Chris stepping in a little under three years later. Obviously, what I talked about below hasn't happened. I don't know if/when it will happen. The last few years have just been too frigging much, and as of January 2023 things are up in the air enough I can't really commit to any long-term plans at the moment. I'm leaving this post up because I feel like taking it down would be either letting myself off the hook too much, and even if nobody would notice it feels like it'd be melodramatic to do so (well, more than this). Here's hoping I'm able to come back and fix all this later with better news to share.

I'm going to write my own RPG setting book for my Conversion setting -- the one from the furry cyberpunk stories I've been writing for the last few years. 

(As I type this, I just realized I never got around to posting the ninth chapter on this blog, and I need to rectify that at some point. But until I can get around to PDF-ifying it and linking it, you can read it here.) 

I've been kicking around the idea on and off for a while, pondering whether it'd be worth it and whether I'm a good enough writer to even try it. Last year, while at the RAWR writing workshop, one of the instructors suggested out of the blue that I seriously consider doing that, and since then I've given it more and more serious thought. Eventually, I realized that there's no good reason not to do it, and that the only thing stopping me is myself. So it's a thing that is going to happen. It's a when, not an if.

However -- and this is a big 'however,' with italics and underlining and such...

However...

It's going to be a while. I have enough projects on my plate at the moment, and I've had to put enough aside for freelance writing as it is. I've written down some notes, worked up some rough ideas of how I'll arrange such a book, and all that. I have at least a concept of an outline of a blueprint and some stuff is subject to change, but there's something I absolutely need to do first:

I need to finish my 'main' Conversion story, the same one I've shared here before (and linked above). I've been working on it for too damn long, and I really want to get it done before I tackle anything this size. I've recently started work on chapter ten, and either that's going to be a long chapter that'll wrap up the main story with an epilogue to follow or -- and this is a lot more likely -- it'll be a shorter chapter leading into the climax and then an epilogue after. We'll see how it feels as I hit the story beats I want to hit.

And while the RPG book wouldn't necessarily assume familiarity with the story (or any of the others I've written and published in the setting), I feel like wrapping up that story, the one that started the setting to begin with, will be the best spot to leave off for a 'Day 0' status quo for gaming purposes.

(On a related note, I'm going to take that story, edit it, and put together a collected edition as a self-published thing somewhere since no publisher is going to spend money to print something I've made available for free already. That has no bearing on the rest of this post and it shouldn't interfere with the RPG project as a whole, but I wanted to mention it.)

Once I get that done, I'll take a little bit of a breather, maybe briefly poke at something else as a creative palate cleanser, and then dive into the RPG book's text. I may post previews here or ask if anyone wants to beta-read it, I dunno. This'll likely be a while off before I'd have enough material to be worth sharing in the first place.

My current plan for the book is that it's going to use some version of the Fate system (probably Fate Condensed as the assumed default), and probably run about the length of the Fate Worlds books when completely finished. So that'll be probably around 50-ish pages, give or take, but I'm not shooting for a specific word or page count. But who knows what might happen, as this will be a learning experience for me.

And when I say 'completely finished,' I mean 'with art.' Yes, I'll commission original art for this, but first I plan to put out an art-light 'ashcan' edition as an inexpensive PDF. (It'll probably just be a commissioned cover with all-text interior, though at least that text would be formatted and put through some rudimentary layout and such) I think I'll have a better chance of getting this all done at all if I put out a half-finished version I can update, rather than write 95% of it and stall out as I tweak it to make it 'perfect.' Hopefully, sales of the ashcan edition will help pay for art for the full book, and once that's happened everyone who purchased the ashcan will get a free upgrade/update to the final version including the art and any edits/errata I have to make based on feedback. (At that point I'll likely raise the price of the PDF a bit to reflect the increased value of the book.) And while that's getting finished, I'll look at my options for doing a print-on-demand physical release as well.

But again, this is all a ways off. I know in my earlier post I said I didn't want to go into too much detail for fear of somehow derailing myself, but I've decided that anyone reading my blog at all deserves a little better than that, especially after the pity party I threw myself last time. So here we are.

If anyone has any thoughts, questions, encouragement, or anything like that, feel free to leave a comment here or whatever website or social media linked you to this in the first place. Thank you very much for your time and patience.

Thoughts on a possible future project

Like a lot of writers, I'm usually working on a couple of things at any one point and my brain keeps trying to throw other stuff at me because it's always exciting to work on (or at least consider new ideas). And there's one that's been popping up on my mental rotation for a while that I'm giving some serious thought towards, perhaps when I've got a few things off my plate. I don't want to go into too much detail because:

1. I haven't decided for sure if I'm going to do it and don't want to make promises I might not be able to keep.
2. Even if I do it, I can't make any promises as to when I'd get it started and I'd rather not encourage anyone to ask me how it's coming along until it actually starts, y'know, coming along.
3. Talking about stuff like this too much can cause you to lose enthusiasm because your brain gets the same amount of satisfaction (there are actual studies on this).

But the relevant info (and the reason for this post) is this: The project in question is a small RPG supplement, likely using Fate Core or Condensed. But what I'm unsure on is the setting material. It'd be an original setting, and while I have a pretty good picture of it all in my head, I'm not sure what needs to go into the book. I mean, I could probably write up the basic pitch and character creation guidelines and call it good, but this is something I'd actually like to put up somewhere (probably DriveThruRPG) and sell, and I can't justify going to the trouble just to make what would amount to a pamphlet. In terms of size and quality, I'm shooting for something on par with Evil Hat's Fate Worlds line.

So my question is this:

What do people think would be essential for a basic glimpse at a setting, something that could be used for people to run games with just the one book without that book needing to be huge? What would you want to see in a basic setting supplement?

I've got plenty of books both big and small, physical and PDF, and I could easily just study any or all of those, but I've got so much to look at I don't know where to start, and that's what I'm looking for now. What do you all think would be useful starting points?

Also, in doing a bit of research while writing this post, I've discovered there's at least one book out there that (going by the blurb) already seems to come pretty close to what I've got in mind. So I guess I've got a second question:

Is there any point in me going to the trouble of writing my own supplement and asking people to spend money on it when it'd probably be about as productive to just write up a blog post and point it at the other book?

I mean, yes, I guess at this point I'm blatantly fishing for encouragement, but I think I've reached the point where I'm just going to need that nudge. It's not something I do often, it's not something I want to do at all, but to be totally honest I'm discouraged enough that it's all I can do to even finish this blog post rather than just say 'screw it' and delete the whole thing.

Sorry, that went into a tangent I'm not proud of. A lot of little frustrations are getting to me.

If you're still reading this, I'd appreciate feedback either in the comments here or in a reply to wherever you initially read this. Thanks for your time and your help.