Knights of the Hidden Sun – November 2012 Update

As per my last update I was perusing the developed draft of Hidden Sun. I have finished this perusing.

First of all Malcolm’s and Geoff’s work is amazing. As I read through the draft I was extremely pleased and honored with their contributions. I’ve been generously authorized to use these but I won’t go through the details of the contract.

I can say that I’m allowed to keep my Ready2Run hack for Hidden Sun. Which is good because it fits with the setting, I enjoy the system and keeping it in Hidden Sun will enable me to get this game to market sooner than drawing on up a new set of rules.

I am toying with a Hidden Sun Fate hack but if that happens it will be after the main book is released.

All this being said there’s still some work to do:

• I need to make an ever so slight addition to the ‘How Magic Makes A Space Fairing Society’ chapter. This won’t take long .
• I need to tweak the Knight chapter. The current one a little disjointed so a cleaning up and clarifying is in order. This will take a moderate amount of work.
• I need to tweak, not drastically change, some of the rules. While development was moving along I ran a ton of games and the results of these extensive play-tests have shown me I need to:
  • Ensure all character creation choices are meaningful. Character perks or flaws that no one uses will be broadened or removed.
  • Simplify the ancillary rules. In a game of high action one shouldn’t perform algebra (even simple algebra) to determine how much a character can lift or how far he can jump. This isn’t Malcolm’s Ready2Run’s fault, I added these complications so I’ll replace them with something simpler.
  • I need to reduce dice pools. I have a plan, it will work.
  • This may seem huge but I suspect these tweaks will only take a moderate amount of work. I’m not rewriting, I’m reducing and simplifying.

All in all I’m hoping to have KoTHS ready for editing by the end of February. This is a rough overestimate, if I get my work done sooner there won’t be any complaints, least of all from me :).

I’m restarting my monthly updates so you’ll be kept informed..

Once the Chall fine tuning stage is done KoTHS will be off to an editor to check for spelling and grammar, then will be art and layout, then publish, then profit!

If anyone has comments, questions or concerns please feel free to comment below.