Let's Talk about the Campaign (Patreon)

So last month I promised a campaign scenario. Here's some numbers to give you an impression of what that'll be like:

• 9 Episodes. Each Episode consists of a short Intermission, an Operation, and a short optional post-Intermission Scene.
• 6 Introductory pages. If you've read Any Oasis in a Desert, the Monsterpunk campaign scenario, it's pretty much the same as the first 20 pages of those.
• 6 Premade PCs. Including their own Mecha, different from the ones in the core book.
• 8 NPCs. Including detailed descriptions, backgrounds, plot hooks and character arcs.
• 6 Premade Enemy builds. These too will be different from the ones in the core book.

Right now I'm estimating around 100 pages total. I might add more episodes, if I can make the story not feel padded. That'll add more pages. I might also add more NPC and new Premade Enemies as well. The cast does feel a little bit small on the PC's side (most of the 8 NPCs are Enemies), right now I'm thinking that's an opportunity for each group to either make new NPCs for roles like comms operator or medical officer, or ignore those roles because they're not that important and probably won't matter. If the roles become plot relevant for more than a single Scene, I'll probably give them full character pages.

I think you can see why I didn't include a campaign in the core book now. It would've added a lot of development time and increased art costs in a way I simply could not afford. As its own supplement, I can take my time to get it done right, and add even more content if I'm feeling like it, which I probably will.

So far, so good, right? Well, there is a small problem: I don't know what to post for updates while I'm working on this. There is just not much that I can show of the campaign-writing process. 

For example, right now I have the introductory plus most of the character pages written out. I could post those pages, but I don't think that's a good idea. Most of them are both full of spoilers for anyone interested in actually playing the thing and also paint an incomplete picture of the campaign as a whole. It tells you what the intended experience is, but doesn't show that experience. It's like reading episode summaries off wikipedia.

Considering the campaign will be dealing with sensitive subject matter, I think plot summaries would detract more than help. You can't just flip a few pages to check if  it's tasteful, it indicts or endorses the things it shows, and if the exploration of its themes is genuinely engaging or pretentious navel-gazing.

So no spoilers or provocative teasing bits. Okay, what about art?

Well, art will happen at the end of the process here, I don't want to commission something that I might end up writing out of the plot. If I'm leaving myself open to add more characters or episodes, I should also keep my art priorities open.

I could also curate short descriptions instead of posting complete pages. It's probably not going to be all that fun though. Like, have you ever found the promotional websites for anime productions interesting? G-Witch is some of the most fun I've had with anime in many years but the promotional material played no part in that. And those websites actually have character and mecha art! 

I could also do basic pagecount updates, a little like this one. Again, not particularly engaging, but maybe adding that to the summaries above it's meaty enough? I'll let you be the judge of that, if I don't come up with anything better.

To add to this... We've started summer somewhat early in my corner of the world. Its already 30°C in the middle of November. The exhaustion, power outages and general holiday chaos are going to slow me down a lot. I finished the 130 pages of Any Oasis in a Desert in about 4 months, but I wrote them late Autumn through early Winter. This will take longer than that, simply because it has 4 months that make me miserable in the middle, and inevitably a lot of what I write during those will suck and need rewrites, possibly multiple times. This campaign likely won't be finished until the halfway point of next year, basically.

So, given it's going to take a long while, and there's not much to show in the first place, what do I do for updates? I'm taking suggestions here. Would you be okay with radio silence for a while? Otherwise, I'll come up with something for the December-March period. After that it's going to be easier, as I will have done a few passes on the episodes themselves and could post excerpts from those (The kinds that a GM would read out or copy-paste to the players. Showing rather than telling) and may have moved on to get art already, which automatically makes any update more interesting.

Gimmick Out.