More meta-blogging – month three of Hydra.

How many Heads has the Hydra got?

Well, look here I am in the third month of the Hydra project. Time to take stock and also reflect on the process. Well, ahead of schedule in terms of play-testing – one session down, and more to come, so hopefully all play-testing done by the end of the month and this will mean that the manual will zip straight to version 1.5 from version 1.0 where it is at right now. (Well it’s more at 1.1 but hey).

I’m behind on writing up the manual however. Not that you, gentle reader will know much of this because it’s locked behind passwords until complete. Or someone chucks gobs of money towards me to publish it. Or until I give up on the gobs (or goblets?) of money and publish anyway. People hit the link quite a bit which is encouraging – people are clearly interested in the manual. I am planning on releasing excerpts and tasters of it when there is enough stabilized to ‘taste’. At the moment I am still working on the character creation streams and the underpinning framework. You can I suppose see the progress somewhat in the relevant manual menu, even if you cannot see what lies beneath. I think I may have been very optimistic in thinking I could get the write up done in 6 months – I may need to double that at this rate.

What I have seen from the tag cloud (fusion processes) that there is now a fairly even headed-ness in the state of  Hydra development between the world development and the rules synthesis. World development and the manual writing should now start to take over from the core rules-synthesis you would tend to think if I keep up the writing. So if things are going badly it should become evident from the fusion processes tag-cloud. Let’s hope not. I expect also, as is starting to be borne out in the tag-cloud that the art-work category is going to get strengthened. I’m trying to upload things as they significantly develop, during the work so you can see how things are developing and shifting in the game development. How does the art shift, mature etc within certain pieces and across different work? Hopefully this is reflected in the blogging here.

I have been advertising the blog site a bit more by spidering it to to some RPG specific search engines – both that I have bothered with so far  are being very slow in allocating the site to their respective databases. That’s a little frustrating but there is little that I can do to expedite this apart from a little e-mail pestering. That doesn’t seem to do much other than alleviate some of my pent up rage. RAGE! I mean, sorry :)

It’s also evident from the fusion processes that play-testing is another process at the fore at the moment. As it should be. I’ll be blogging each of the sessions, and also asking for my players to contribute to the blog if they feel so inclined. Would be nice to have some direct feedback on the play-test sessions from the play-testers themselves rather than filtered through the inevitably distorting eyeballs of the DM. Umm, or something like that. I still have the other PC’s to blog up, lots of NPC’s to add-up, and more artwork to do. I have some other players waiting in the wings to have their characters rolled up – and the next session will hopefully give the combat rules a ‘trot out’ as we say in these parts.

Right, gotta fly. I’m going to focus on writing up the manual and giving those PC’s something to run away from screaming in the next session. Roll 3d6 for me somebody. Thanks – was it more than 9 you got? Ace :)

Right Where Am I?

Ok. So where am I now in the fusion process? Well, quite some way on from when I last dev blogged. I am now rewriting the fused rule-set. I have yet to finalise magic, but need more of the world developed to tailor the magic rules, so I’ve had to put that on hold for a bit to get the world sorted. This is new territory to me, so I’m learning it by writing out the original source material, and getting the root sources as well. I’m drawing up maps and stitching in resource material from other generic sources.

I’m concurrently writing up the RPG framework to submit to the PC’s that outlines the principles of the system without talking about what lies beneath. I will also publish here the second set of player preferences and how I’ve integrated these into my writing process – I’ve mentioned them already but I’ll just underline them for you and do a bit of a walkthrough.

What else? Oh yeah the main rules – now in their second rewrite as I craft the game-maual further and in the process having some mutations, name changes to protect the innocent but with all the original sources referenced. In case you’ve been wondering I’m hoping to approach the original authors and copyright holders for the main copyrighted systems (Chaosium) and see if an authorial credit/copyright share is an option from the mashed system. The world is copyright another company – so I may well write it for another world too, later on, before approaching Chaosium and the lead authors. I’d have to scrap the HM stuff completely before doing that, as that’s a different couple of companies and I’m not having a negotiation with Columbia Games/Kelestial Productions bunch as well as Chaosium! Might as well just bring about world peace and all that! The FUDGE stuff is open-sourced I think, but I’ll check that out before doing anything else.

I’m about 3-6 months away from being able to do the above, but my thinking is there for you all to see and we can see from this devblog in 3-6months time whether or not I got it right, or very wrong. Also, this whole thing may remain out of the public domain and just end up being our pet system. Or I might adapt key elements not dependant on the source systems for something publishable. Who knows? We’ll see eh.

So yeah – some mutations in the rules going on which is pushing it away from the original source material (all sources acknowledged explicitly within the text to trackback all decisions so they can be undone so to speak).

That’s my update – next time the second player’s prefs, and my walkthrough for how I met them, and also the framework for the fusion system. Which, by the way, now has a project title. I’ll let you in on that in my next devblog post.