Update - 27/05/2024

Hello, and welcome to another weekly update! I know those of you in the US are enjoying a long weekend, so I hope you're finding time to relax and have fun! I didn't do anything special for the weekend, working and playing some videogames for a bit. It's starting to get hot here and the dreaded summer is just around the corner, so I'm trying to prepare mentally for the hell that is to come. At least this year I'm finally able to afford installing an AC, so I'll only die when I exit the house, haha.

As expected, I spent the whole last week working on Carnage & Aether: Revenants of Veldonia. After going back and forth a lot, I finally finished the rules chapter. I kept adding details and refining things, streamlining as much as I can and adding a few cool optional rules. The core combat is exactly as it is in Ker Nethalas, I just added the tactical rules on top of it. These are a mix of the Warlord Ascendant and Across a Thousand Dead Worlds rules. I think the result is my best ruleset for tactical combat ever, but I need to test it to make sure it works well.

So now that I'm done with the core rules, I'm working on the chapter that has all the info about how to set up the arena fights. The most common type of match is a deathmatch, as you can imagine, but I'm also adding a few different ones to keep things interesting, things like king of the hill and a couple of weird ones I thought could be fun. I think that the behavior rules I wrote for NPCs should work well with these, but as always, I'll need to test it to find out. On paper, these are the most streamlined rules for enemy AI I've written so far, but we'll see. The way I've written them does force me to write different action tables for each non-melee creature, so it's a lot of work, but in the end the game should be better and easier to play thanks to it.

This week I'll be releasing the second issue of The Vaelorian Codex for Patreon members. Most of the art is missing, but you guys can still enjoy the content, and start incorporating it in your games! I also got the Over War proofs, so the book will finally be for sale tomorrow, most likely. It turned out really nicely! Currently I have a bit of a bottleneck when it comes to my releases, I write faster than the artists I work with can draw. I spoke with José Antonio and we've agreed on a "speed bonus fee", though, so he'll have the missing codex illustrations ready in about a month, I think. I still want him to do art for Carnage & Aether, though, but since I'm also working with Marcin S. for that one, I think that between the two of them it should go fast. I'm hoping I'll have the game wrapped up in June (sans art, though). Since I'm a bit tired of Kickstarter, this one's going straight to retail. Between taxes and Kickstarter's cut, and production costs, of course, I barely manage to cover expenses for my games, unless they're a big success like Ker Nethalas (or Across a Thousand Dead Worlds, even though that one turned out a loss due to the year-long delay). Since I'm confident Carnage & Aether will do well, I'm hoping I'll cover my production costs in about a month or two. It would mean it goes straight to PoD, though, no fancy editions for this one (unless a lot of people ask for one, then I would make a small print run).

So that's it for this week, I hope you all have a great one!