RetroRoleplaying: The Blog

There have been some changes to the project list I wrote about in early February. Here goes:

• BX Advanced Admanantine Edition: This is still my priority. However, just the mutations material is requiring a lot of playtesting and rewriting/adjustment cycles. So I think my hope of getting this out the door by summer is shot. My current target is "late in the year." Saying this doesn't make me happy, but I would rather delay it than publish rubbish. I may have to settle for a less complete mutation system just to get the game moving forward.

• Micolite81 Advanced Tablet Digest Edition: This will be the next minor project I plan to tackle. I need to add the planned extra monsters and finish the layout. It's not hard but life seems to be conspiring against "time to work" lately.

• BX Advanced Gold Edition (Printed Version): I know a lot of people really want this. However, I can't really start work on it as long as people are still finding annoying typos in the PDF versions. Hiring a proofreader is out of the question as the costs would be almost twice what I've made from the PDF version and any spare money goes toward my wife's medical needs. It looks like the print version will have to be done via Lulu as the requirements for layout/design for Lulu are actually within my skill set where the requirements for RPGNow/DriveThru are truly beyond me.

• Dungeon Delving Undying Light: Back in February, I mentioned that I would be working on a version of The Black Hack because of my friends (and a player in my Waco campaign back when I lived in Waco) wanted to run it. He decided not to run The Black Hack when he saw Swords & Wizardry Continual Light. So my hack of The Black Hack polymorphed in a hack of Swords & Wizardry Continual Light. The resulting game, Dungeon Delving Undying Light, should be out next week. All BX Advanced donors to date are also credited as sponsors for this game. I might (or might not) try to do a printed version of this game as a "test" before doing the more complex BX Advanced printed edition.

• Dungeon Delving: Whitebox: I recently mentioned I was planning on doing a revised version of Tarnhelm's Terrible Tome, my Swords & Wizardry/0e supplement. Working on Dungeon Delving Undying Light made me realize that I don't really want to revise this so much as I want to write my very own version of Whitebox incorporating things I like from S&W, SWCL, The Black Hack, Delving Deeper, and a lot of my own ideas. So the revised Tarnhelm's Terrible Tome is canceled and my very own version of Whitebox replaces it. The Whitebox variant will probably be published under some version of the Dungeon Delving name, so I've given it the working title of "Dungeon Delving: Whitebox". Please don't hit me -- I promise that will not be the final title. BX Advanced donors will also be credited as sponsors for this game. I'm not going to even try to set even a tentative release date. I'll be working on this when I'm having BX Advanced writer's block: that could mean it will barely be started before the BX Advanced Admanantine Edition is released or it could be finished by then. Most likely, it will be well-started but far from finished.

• Mini-Adventures: A lot of people ask me to write adventures. However, I'm terrible at writing adventures for publication as my campaign stuff looks like what Gary Gygax used: Room (or hex) numbers with stats for whatever in is the rooms and a few words of description to get me started when a group enters the room. In other words, nothing that you could not get from any number of random generators on the Internet. I am going to try to produce a couple of one or two page adventures that might actually be worth downloading. No promises, however.

Important Note: My wife's medical needs come before writing/design/playing time and as a stage 3 cancer survivor with MS and spine issues, my wife has a lot of medical problems which require lots of doctor visits, tests, etc. So any publication schedules/plans have to take a backseat at times. This means my rpg projects generally take longer to complete than I would like. However, while my track record for getting games out on my planned and announced time schedule is really poor, my record of actually getting games finished and published is pretty good. I will not do kickstarters and the like because (among other reasons) I know I probably will not be able to meet any deadlines I set. My world is just not predictable enough and my primary job has to be being my wife's caregiver.

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Please Support BX Advanced with a Donation: If you would like to have access to the BX Advanced playtest rules (as well as other donor files -- like free copies of all the "for sale" RetroRoleplaying publications), you can make a donation towards my wife's medical fund (old oral cancer bills and more current MS-related bills). Donations to the RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund for $10 or more will also earn a listing as a sponsor in the BX Advanced rulebook. A donation of $10 gets a Bronze Donor listing. ($25+ earns a Copper Donor listing, $50+ Silver, $100+ Gold, 200+ Platinum, 300+ Electrum, $500+ Adamantine) -- see the sidebar for a list of donors so far. If you would like to sponsor BX Advanced with a donation, you can send a donation in any amount -- small or large -- to the RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund via Paypal.