Update - 28/02/2022

Hello, everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend! Mine was quiet and relaxing, so I got a lot of work done! I'm finally done with all the content for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds (even though I'm sure I'll be adding little things here and there until the last second, I lost track of the amount of small additions I've incorporated into the game that will not appear in the playtest document), so now I'm focusing on fixing things and trying to streamline as much as I can. This means doing things like grouping the Talents into tables based on utility, or making as many step-by-step guides for each one of the game systems as I can think of. Essentially, I'm trying to make the game as easy to play as possible, let's hope I manage!

With the absolutely terrible situation in Ukraine, Likozor (one of our ATDW artists) is logically unable to continue working with us, so although I've been postponing finding a new artist mostly because it feels dirty to do so, I'm afraid I'll have to. Last time I spoke to him was a week ago and he told me he wouldn't be able to continue, but I'm still hoping things suddenly change for the better and he can come back home, as I'd rather give him the cash, considering he probably needs it more than most. I'm glad though I was paying him in advance so I don't owe him anything, I like to think having some cash at hand helped him to get away from the horror. My life-long partner is a war refugee herself so trust me, I know how devastating this shit is, on all levels. Humanity sucks.

It's kind of hard to focus on something as trivial as games when the world is collapsing all around us, but I think that we are all conscious of what we can and can't do. I don't think any of us is pretending things are okay (not only with the situation in Ukraine, but with the overall state of the planet, with the shitty laws being passed right now on the US, the Saudis bombing Yemen, Americans bombing Somalia... You know, a normal week), and although I'm sure we all to some extent play games as a form of escapism, at this point in our lives (we're all a bunch of "old" folks here, haha) playing games is part of our identity and our daily lives, and regardless of what is going on we'll continue to do so. I'd never forget my friend Marko from Belgrade telling me how they would still have band practice in the early 90s while the bombs were falling and knowing there would be no shows for the foreseeable future, just because that's who he is. I think the same applies to us: we know the world is not okay, we do what we can to make it a better place, and we keep doing what we love not because we're trying to escape reality (at least not completely), but because that's who we are.

Going back to my work (which is why you guys are here), last week's poll was awesome. I honestly expected the ATDW content to win, so it's both confusing and encouraging to see how much interest you guys have in Empire Undying. I'm considering the poll closed at the time of writing, so it looks like the "System-neutral content" and "In-development EU builds" are the winners, so that's what I'll be doing until ATDW is released, at the very least. I already spoke to Carlos Castilho and told him I need a cool page frame, and Phlvx is going to make me a layout template I can use for all this EU Patreon content, that way you guys get a pretty looking file, even if it's truly all a WIP. This weekend I've been going hard on the lore side of things, and that is the first thing I'm going to be sharing with you. As I mentioned before, I'm creating a very solid lore foundation for the game, and this comes with a lot of interesting challenges for me, from how is society structured, to how many days a year has. Since I'm creating a foundation for the game, I need to get a couple of things done that will help me moving forward: a timeline of the Acavian Empire, and a Glossary of Terms. So I think those are the first things you'll see, for sure next month! I'll have some other stuff for you guys as well, so March is going to be a cool month!

I think I've rambled enough for today, hope we all have a great week!