The road ahead in 2021... as far as I can see through the fog

This year is coming to an end and it is time to look ahead what I am trying to achieve in 2021. The goals and priorities may shift throughout the year, but I have been chewing on this topic for a while now and the ideas stabilized enough to talk about them.

Basically I am starting a new project nearly from the scratch. The scope are multiple applications working together and alongside each other to bring you an improved experience. The central piece of this new project is a web service - which working title is "Eden" so far.

The first version of Eden will be just a database of information for Shadowrun 6 and Splittermond. You will be able to look up e.g. spells, powers, qualities ... in a progressive web app. It has yet been to determined what I will be allowed to show for free and what you will need to buy. I am confident that I can achieve license agreements for german content, but I am unsure what options I have for english/international content.
I wish to implement a shopping option inside Eden, but that may be too complex with regard to taxes. (In theory I need to pay taxes in every country where a customer buys something. There are easier options as long as I don't make too much money with this, but all this bureaucracy is something I am not very familiar with).

I want to accompany Eden with mobile and desktop applications that - once connected with Eden - can be used offline to view your data. This apps will all be built from the same source code, so it will be Write Once, Run on Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS. What remains to be seen, if I will have a dedicated gamemaster application and if I will have player applications for each supported RPG or a single application for all RPGs.
Currently I am going with a player application Mondtor (for Splittermond), Kommlink/Comlink (for SR6) and Salomon (for GMs).

This year fast forwarded my plans to make use of VTT applications. While I initially started with Roll20, I made the switch to Foundry and am quite fond of it. The current situation is that Foundry neither supports Splittermond, nor Shadowrun 6 (while there are people who announced working on support, neither of them released anything yet). Though we are unfamiliar with JavaScript and all the frameworks used, Anja and me started looking into the topic of developing character sheets for Foundry. While a lot of work needs to be done, we already did some very basic sheets - and made it possible to interconnect with Eden to load your compendiums from there.

What about character creation?

As I said, the initial versions will be only some kind of library for content from the RPG books. Once in place and working, I will add more functionality - and character management is one of it. It will be a part of the applications (not the web-app), but it will use Eden as a central hub to store your characters.

I will use the chance to redesign character generation where necessary - especially for Splittermond. But my data design in Shadowrun 6 in Genesis has some shortcomings, which I hope to improve as well for the new applications. Redesigning two RPG chargens (It is likely that Space 1889 (Ubiquity) and Coriolis won't be supported anymore in the future) at the same time will allow me to unify a lot of code, which should improve code maintenance in the future.

Timeline

Well, here is the drawback: there will be a lengthy design time (with respect to system architecture, data architecture, screen design) where I need to work on multiple areas of the project at the same time.  It will surely take several months until I am ready for a version 1. As I wrote in the previous post, I will keep support for Genesis running with reduced speed, mainly relying on contributors work. Input from Genesis will help me to improve design of the new applications. At the moment I don't dare to make a guess when a new chargen software will be ready - that highly depends on my motivation throughout the year ... and that again depends on users encouraging me. 

Risks

I never had a task so enormous as this one. While I successfully implemented proof-of-concepts for all the steps to get there, the sheer amount of work is intimidating. I usually can dig myself into the the pile of work, as long as I am exited about the goal. But last year I learned that even hobby projects can begin to feel like a burden and lead to a kind of Burn-Out-Feeling. So my plan is to interact often with you or users in general to keep my motivation up. Perhaps I can come up with a roadmap to visualize progress on the way - it might help.

I hope you will accompany on my journey and discuss with me in 2021.