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 Easy E wrote:


Got Castles in the Sky V2 to look over and edit a bit. I am excited because it was green lit to be 80 pages! That will make it the largest of the Blue Books ever! Claim to fame..... or something.

Three thoughts/questions:

1. I thought the blue book series were fixed to 64 pages per book?
2. I thought you were on like v4.5 of Castles in the Sky?
3. Isn't the game due out in June? I would have thought things would be fairly locked-in this close to release.

1. Yes. That is why I was so surprised. The editor's themselves drove for the change.

2. Yes, but we cut out content to hit the word count. The cut material was going to go online, and still probably will!

3. Yes! After putting in the brand-new photos, brand-new artwork, and all the rules, they did not like the end result I guess. The deadlines are starting to loom and I have a lot or work to do!

Do not worry, I WILL hit deadline.

You better, feels like every time I blink the deadline gets pushed another 6 months, wasn't it initially scheduled for release in like February/March of last year?

BUT ALSO, why not try to push for one of those hardcover deals like Gamma Wolves got?

I think they always planned 2022, and I initially thought it was Nov 2022! Therefore, they pushed it up.

Well, if it sells well ..... who knows!

I have been painting up Korean War aircraft after finishing the edits to Castles in the Sky. I was excited to see that I could add the Ottoman Fleet back into the book!

Got the color sketch for my cover art from my contracted artist, and super excited about its direction. Probably get the finished full version in a couple weeks, which should kick me in the butt to get going on more layout and playtesting, etc.

Got the final cover art from my artist for my WIP solo/co-op horror skirmish game, and wow. Hopefully after the Adepticon crunch of getting some stuff painted, etc., I'll come back and crank through some remaining scenario playtesting and start layout.

I would love to see it! Super exciting!

If you want to share, I can PM you my email.

 Easy E wrote:
I would love to see it! Super exciting!

If you want to share, I can PM you my email.

I suppose I can share it here. I mean, I should be doing more to try to build up hype and marketing, which I'm terrible at.

Here's the elevator pitch (which I'd love feedback on too):

Strange horrors stalk intrepid characters in this co-operative miniatures game set in a Lovecraftian era. Players work together to escape hordes of zombies, stop cultists’ dark rituals, discover the secret behind mysterious abductions, along with many other terrifying encounters. Players can weave together epic stories using the campaign system, which allows characters to grow their skills, but may also risk losing their minds.

And the cover, pre-title markup, etc.

Very nice cover art! It pays to have professionals do it. You may also want to consider having a professional do the title lay-out as well. I have seen a few articles about how a strong, professional cover design can boost sales; especially for indie books.

 Easy E wrote:
Very nice cover art! It pays to have professionals do it. You may also want to consider having a professional do the title lay-out as well. I have seen a few articles about how a strong, professional cover design can boost sales; especially for indie books.

Thanks! Luckily, I do have a friend who is a graphic designer, and I have taken some graphic design/pre-print classes in the past, so I'm not a complete noob on that front. But yes, cover art and layout is really important for boosting sales, especially at physical locations. Since this will likely be mostly POD (at least initially) that will be a little less of a factor, but not by much. Either way, any layouts I do will get eyeballed by some pro contacts I have.

That looks great! I'm excited to see the finished product. Lovecraftian horror is right down my alley.

I'm pretty excited about the final sized prototypes we printed. Things are really starting to come together. These will hopefully be in the hands of our studio painter within the week to test color schemes.

Hello. Today I made an order for one plot in a role-playing game. I have been doing cartography for a long time and today I made a sector map for the world of Warhammer 40k for the first time. I have a page on fiverr and I would like to have support for me. Thanks!

I put White Star/Red Star up on the Wargame Vault. Doing pretty well, so far a top seller after a couple of days. I do not expect that to last long!

If you are interested:
https://www.wargamevault.com/browse.php?keywords=blood+and+spectacles&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

For reference, from start to finish White Star/Red Star took 2.5 years.

That is one big goal down for the year. Now, onto finishing touches on my Viking based wargame.

Agonizing over activation mechanics for a 40k full rewrite.

Welcome to the club.

We all start out trying to write a better 40K!

 Easy E wrote:
Welcome to the club.

We all start out trying to write a better 40K!

I am proud to say I have entirely skipped that phase of development lol. The first time I played a wargame other than 40k (which was very early in my wargaming career) I knew immediately that 40k was not only not the game for me, but also very limited in its approach to what a tabletop miniatures wargames is or could be.

Unfortunately, I've spent the last ~15 years chasing a dream and not finishing a single design concept lol.

More TTS playtesting! Fine tuning all of the small details and reworking the scenarios for more unique and interesting games.

I have to say, I have not been spending much time lately on new stuff. My focus has been on the less sexy side of things with finalizing and trying to get stuff to market, advertising, and trying to build a big and stronger wargaming community locally.

Grinding type work, which is not much fun; and even less fun to talk about online!

 Easy E wrote:
Welcome to the club.

We all start out trying to write a better 40K!

Indeed we do , and what is more - most of us succeedes Where we fail is having huge amounts of cash and 30 years of market presence.

Back to the topic, for a couple of months now, I’ve been meticulously converting my few years worth of notes into specific wordings and a rough draft on rulebook structure of a theme-less wargame „engine”. It has some unique features, the biggest of which is always rolling only two dice regardless of number of attacks to resolve.

I thought of some things and then didn't write them down

But then I got to work on some actual level scripting and scenario design. Different project tho.