We have been rather quiet here in the Secret Clanhold for the last 60 days. The reason, we have been working. A strange concept, but there it is.
We have been creating a system for creating cards, rules, guidelines, adventures, comics, podcasts, commissions and everything else. It has not been easy, both Sue and I are a "little" headstrong and opinionated.
Card sets have to be taken from a pile of 900 published cards and 600 unpublished cards and pounded into sensible nine and eighteen card sets.
From this pile I am creating card sets. These become "concept" sets.
Once I have made a concept set I post it to our server and Sue goes over the sets asking herself if the cards make sense, are desirable, and fit in the Stormlands as she perceives it. She makes notes for me to work with. Some sets I rebuild and send back as concepts, some are moved on to Analysis.
I work on the sets and send them to the server for Sue to analyze. Here she asks a new set of questions. Does it have a theme? Does each card fit in the theme? Do the card rules work and make sense to her? Are the CP justified?
I take her notes, replace cards if needed, rewrite the cards and get the formatting and layout corrected. If I had to change too much, the set goes back through analysis. If it is accepted, it moves to the edit stage.
In the edit stage we start looking at specific card layouts and make sure of the information.
Abilities are Activated, Spells are Cast, everything else is played.
Ranges are self, touch, 10 feet, 20, 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 500, 1500 or unlimited.
Contests are always stated as: User 2d6+X vs. 2d6+GM MOD
Card type line checked, card title top and side match.
Card grammar corrected, if space allows.
Of course, Sue can still reject cards at this stage and send it back to Analysis.
Once the cards make it through the edit stage they get a card number and I add them to the growing database of cards. The card set then moves on to having a guideline written for it.
Now I create a Concept Guideline. The concept guidelines have the job of helping to add the Stormlands flavor to the set, covering rules specific to this set, add commentaries for each card, and the card pictures themselves. Once I have a concept guideline I pass it to Sue for an introduction, more card commentaries and finally pictures of the cards so people can make proxies of the cards.
When Sue sends it back to me I will do some editing and lay the whole work into a format to publish it as a PDF.
Ultimately we will be assembling these guidelines into books that we can publish through an outfit like LuLu as a PDF or actual book.
So there it is, a breakdown of what we are doing.
I should also add that the card text boxes, when sized at a readable size, have the contest line and about 180 spaces left for explanation.
The reason for going so carefully through these cards is so that Sue can track the rules that need to be covered in the rules she is working on.
We also have to make very sure that GM's and players understand that these are called guidelines because we are keeping the GM at the table as the ultimate judge of how things work in their game. We just want to give them a clear view of the tools at their disposal.
-- Post From My iPad
