And The Book Is Done

Thirty months after I published the first chapter of an initial eight-chapter Ultraviolet Grasslands on my patreon (the stratometaship), the 32-chapter UVG + 60-page rules appendix is complete.

The wildly successful kickstarter is nearly fulfilled. Sure, sure, we’ve got to do final print-prep on the file. And I’m fixing some … uhh … unfortunate clerical errors (that’s why SEACAT has no clerics! Clerical error!) in the list of initial patreon heroes. And then there’s a bit of layout work left on the UVG map and GM screen and postcards. But overall … the _biggest_ part is finished. Fait. Accompli.

The digital .pdf is available already, both at Exalted and on DTRPG. Coming to itchy soon.

This is what the book looks like. Two hundred pages. 220+ pieces of color art. An index. Cats. A hundred thousand words. Hopefully, also some good reviews.

It’s been exhausting. The last six months or so, I’ve not managed to keep up with the post-G+ scattering of the OSR. I’ve lost touch with a lot of blogs and people, connections I’ll try to rebuild slowly.

The last two months have been particularly grueling. Not to sugarcoat it, it’s been hard. For reasons about 97% unrelated to the kickstarter and the book.

But here we are. At an end, at a beginning. So, what’s coming now?

1. Remaining bits of UVG. Fair bit of work there.
2. Longwinter’s final, third — Winterwhite’s Bargain — gird yourself to unravel the mystery behind the icy death of a realm and perhaps turn the goddess’s wrath to your advantage.
3. Red Sky, Dead City — the doom metal end of a city returns. Get your apocalyptic bent on, as you prepare to destroy a thousand-year civilization in the pursuit of gold, glory, and perhaps a small reduction in your loans with the butcher bankers.

But there is something else. Something I’ve mumbled and muttered about on-and-off since at least December 2018.

SEACAT

With Exalted Funeral we’ve been preparing to put out our deliciously smooth and squiggly roleplaying game, SEACAT, for about six months. We’re a bit late on that, but you can be sure, it’s coming soon.

The Ultraviolet Grasslands already contain a skeleton of SEACAT, plus some skinning for that setting.

Over the next few months I’m going to reassemble that skeleton plus additional skins to release it as a free .pdf in time for the celebrations of Cattus Invictus. There will also be an art-heavier version available for people who want to buy it, and—in time—a print version with EF.

As I go, I’m going to write a series of blogposts, breaking down the system and explaining why each section is the way it is. Roughly:

1. Play and Games: high-falutin’ talk about the difference between play and games, which informs a lot of SEACAT’s mechanical structure.
2. Heroes and the Cat: the two basic player roles, heroes and game runner, and their shared stake in creating a fun play time.
3. Superbasics: the core mechanics. These are familiar to anybody who’s played an rpg before.
4. Heroes: the player characters. The protagonists, if you will.
5. Creatures: the antagonists and supporting cast. Mostly run by the game runner.
6. Stats and Skills: a deeper dig into what these do in a SEACAT game … and most other RPGs.
7. Abilities: the para-human abilities that change how heroes interact with the world differently from ordinary gameworld humans.
8. Customizing heroes: this is the part that is largely missing in the UVG. How to build different skins for heroes and implement them in your game.
9. Conflict: fights between heroes and the shared game world (and often, the antagonists).
10. Magitech and Fantascience: spells and magic for everyone.
11. Corruption: biomagical, radiation, and other changes to characters.
12. Experience: how different experience levers modify the game experience, and why all the players should choose how to handle experience before the game starts … and have a say in changing the agreement as the game progresses.
13. Time: using and modifying time to change your game.
14. Inventory: using inventory as a resource in your game.
15. Misfortune and random events: abstracting the larger environment to help the world seem real.
16. Encounters: similar to misfortunes, bringing the environment to play. Also, how to make it “not so annoying”.
17. Environmental hazards: more than just starvation and thirst.
18. Death and its alternatives: hakaba.
19. Skins for the Seacat—Wizards, Thieves, and Fighters: ok, this is sneaky of me, listing this last, since it’s something I’ll pepper around and throughout. It’s essentially classes, backgrounds, abilities, and equipment all rolled together.

I might change the order of posts, and a lot of this content will be straight from the SEACAT text in the UVG … so prepare for a lot of long reads. Plus commentary from your helpful guide, Blue Skull, explaining why I chose to do things in a certain way (and why that might often also be quite silly).

“Sic wratchatt, messamees,” slurred the skull-faced mastey of games.