... And the Frog Drowned

I'm always hesitant to rush into making announcements, and I always do so far too quickly.  As a result, many of the things I plan ... books, posters, etcetera ... never come to pass, so that the reader is disappointed or left wondering, "Is the bastard ever going to produce that thing?"

Unfortunately, I like show-and-tell.  And my relationship with this blog is far less a marketing site to push products, and far more a designer's blog to talk about what I'm working on.  Thus, last February, I posted a bunch of newly-created maps that underwent a series of changes before reaching a standardised format ... which, I feel, helps other designers to witness the design process and recognise how my experience fits into their own.

Likewise this year, I've written a series of posts on how one might write a book giving counsel to a new dungeon master ... and I've called that series "The New Dungeon Master," which might suggest I'm writing a book of that title.  This isn't a bad idea, and certainly something I ought to do ... which is odd, because a year ago, I'd have said, "No fucking way."  Still, I'm not ready to take that leap.  Not yet.

Thirdly this year, starting in late February, while writing about maps here, I began translating my character background generator from an excel file into a wiki post.  It is a very long wiki post, 265,313 bytes, and it's not done.  I maintained a fairly steady pace for about three months, then lost my taste for it in late June.  I have every intention of continuing the process ... and, as it happens, a strong incentive for doing so.

Through August, I've produced somewhat less map than in previous months.  I'll still have a significant amount to show tomorrow, just not as much as I normally would (and in a different dimension).  This is because I've let myself lapse into another project.  Yes I know.  But as the reader knows, sometimes my projects do reach fruition ... and with my life being a great deal less stressful, I feel pretty good about coming to the end of these various productive roads.

Here's a hint of this one ... which, as I say, is definitely being previewed way too soon.  I can't help myself.  It's just my way of stinging the frog.

This is, effectively, the same process as making the maps ... and like the maps, it translates awfully to the blog's graphic ability.  The above is a two-page spread of what the character background generator would look like as an 8x11 book ... the size of the original DM's Guide.  I did most of the writing for this back in February-March, this year.  The above reflects the preliminary lay-out.

For those who haven't done it, laying out material is an enormous headache.  It's struggling with white space, struggling to squeeze too much information into too small a space, and sometimes trying to decide how to best provide that information.  The individualised tables for each human/non-human cultural type is challenging ... and done better here than I did with the wiki, which will have to be changed eventually to reflect the above.  Column width in particular is brutally unfriendly.  Unquestionably, there will be those who will shake their heads at the above and pity my miserable design skills.

But I've printed some of these pages out to show various D&D players and the returns I get are generally favourable.  I hope to improve on these designs.  The shading needs darkening, certainly.  I haven't added page numbers and the columns are inconsistent ... but these pages ALSO haven't been fully edited for grammar and spelling, so there's no point in getting finicky with columns and so on.  This is a broad brush at best.  I have plenty of time to review and improve what's here, for which I'm thankful.

Those who have seen Tasha's Cauldron of Everything know that the book is full of large blank page areas, enormous fonts, page wasting so-so artwork, with other filler.  The book is the usual collection of new character classes, new monsters, new magic items and so on.

Producing my own splat-book of a kind, my sole marketing strength is the providing of solid material: lots of words, and entirely different sort of rhetoric, densely packaged and lacking in the usual listmaking, let's-reinvent-the-wheel content we've seen roll by for three decades.  Tasha's book runs 191 pages; I figure I need at least that many pages to mine off the ground.  I'm not worried that it may have little art, if the pages have 11 pt. font from edge to edge.

Incidentally, about tables.  After trying out a lot of different styles, I've settled on what is precisely the table format from the original books: no lines or border, with shading two or three lines wide (not single spaced, as later company splatbooks would adopt).I'm surprised how consistent and good this looks, as opposed to the cluttery alternatives.  Mixed with much black and white text, it is definitely preferable.

I can't say how long this will take.  I have serious plans to run a table at a game con in Vancouver in February 2023; I've made the downpayment for the table but I haven't heard back yet for confirmation.  I'll need to make sure to get that in the next few weeks.  I sent an email yesterday, but naturally it's only be a day.  I'd like to have this as a product on the table at that time, next to the menu and of course my old book.  Between selling this for $80 and the menu for $50 (or perhaps slightly higher prices), I think we'd make a killing.  That is a motivator to getting this done before Christmas.