Well, I'm finally back in full swing at last on the God Slayers: TTRPG beta.
Every game designer seems to have a different interpretation of what a "beta" means. Beta for me means pretty much feature complete. Things can still wiggle in small ways for balance and overall QoL but otherwise from start to finish the manual will be finished. Nothing more to be added or removed, nothing more to be overhauled or replaced. It'll be one step before a 1.0 launch. And that's what I'm currently working on, getting it to the point where I can call it a beta.
Over the past several months I kinda slumped and got stuck, then I started digging around in new systems and finally, recently, I've rekindled my motivation to work on it. The weird thing is, whenever I investigate and try to learn things about a new TTRPG system, I keep feeling like mine does a lot of things... if not better, then... sometimes... more elegantly? Which is a weird position to find myself in. But an encouraging one. Fast forward to whenever I finally get it out to the public and I get to hear critique from people who know fucktons more about game design than I do. Eh, that'd be the dream tho.
Of course, it's still not perfect and there's still some rough spots I'm hoping to scrub out with the beta. Deadline? Nn..... newht yet. I've only just gotten back into it, and if I can keep up the momentum for a bit, I'll consider putting a deadline on myself because that'll force me to see it through.
In the previews, I've included a couple of WIPs for TTRPG beta art I've drewn. That and a few older rough art I put into the alpha is about all I got so far, but I figure I'll slowly add more as I get more ideas for things. The first one in B+W is for the intro, kinda showing off the world, while artistically trying to hype up the idea of exploring it. It's probably too dark but I can lighten it. The second is a silly idea I had just today to visually explain why the system asks players to track their item sizes. Cuz damn, lil guy, no you cannot swing that hammer. The big guy can, but you cannot.
Alongside that I'm doing some final tweaks on how encumbrance works, combat turn order, combat to hit changes, and I've made a lot of the character creation calculus easier, cuz nothing really needs to be as complicated as I originally had it in the alpha. Then oodles and oodles of fucking editing. FUCKING EDITING. It is not fun. And I actually hate it. But once I get it to a state where I'm not quite so embarrassed to show it to others, I know some people who know some editors who might be able to take a look at it and humble me further.
I'm still not planning to have the TTRPG officially published. A digital release here on Patreon or maybe MAYBE as a pdf will suffice plenty. Printing a 400 page book that's packed full of my senseless ramblings won't be worth the cost unless we can expect to sell hundreds of copies. I'm just not that popular.
In any case, the comic this week will be God Slayers - Page 253. Starring some folks some of y'all might know. Who knows! It's mysterious.
Speaking of, Max won the poll for the bonus art! Y'all apparently wanted to see some Cerellia and Max. There's a lot of ways that can go. I already have some ideas, but hey, drop some more in the comments if you want to try and steer me one way or another!