June 13 Update (Patreon)

First up, we have a nice little piece of OEA fanart thanks to Runcible Technician. ^-^ If too much of this appears, it might need its own folder in the art pack, which is not a bad problem to have.

Second, let me quick talk about the new OEA maps for those giving feedback:

• Many of these are the Tower of Order dungeon, which you've mostly already seen. Hopefully the top floors are suitably climactic.
• Next we're working on finishing the Frozen Tale. Not terribly remarkable, but we have day/night variants for the cutscenes!
• The Expanse maps are intentionally sparse due to their looping nature.

Finally, the heart of this post:

My original TLS outline for the upcoming section just says "2-3 updates" because this one is a bit tricky. Right now I'm thinking two updates, though I'm not far enough along to say that for sure.

In the upcoming war, many events are set. There are payoffs and twists that I've been working toward the entire game, so there's nothing really to think about there except executing them as best I can. However, for a truly complex event, the actual game can be more up in the air than you'd think. 

Certain elements, like characters' motivations and the players on the table, are set in stone. But how do all of those actually fit together? How much branching can the event support and how much will each past element/decision contribute to the invisible variables? Other elements of the story are essentially arbitrarily set by me, so making an update is about shifting these non-numerical variables so that everything else comes together in a satisfying way.

This event is supposed to be one of the most intense in the game. Don't expect a really long war, but do expect major changes. Right now I'm trying to go further than I have before in terms of story branching and payoff, because I hope that will make the event feel more rewarding. As I've said before, we are entering the payoff section of the story.