Seacat 0.77 - Now With All The Gear Spreads (Patreon)

Dear heroes!

Patience rewarded, I trust!

After Let Us In and some other small distractions (new Longwinter story coming soon to Xenon Elasmotherium ... and here too), I've finally returned to the big smilodon: SEACAT.

But First, Welcome to All the New Heroes!

I used to do a personal greeting for every new hero, but at some point I had to stop and admit to myself that I would constantly fall behind on the greetings, then spend a day sending greetings, then fall behind again.

So, now, a public helleow :) Thank you for joining the patreon. It's always a pleasure to meet new and friendly people. Let me take this opportunity to also invite you to the entrails of the stratometaship:

https://discord.gg/9TE92N4FmG

It's a nice place for a friendly chat, for talking about art, language, even games. All at a shockingly PG-13 level, offering some respite from the ... mmm ... excitement of the other interwebs.

Now, having welcomed the good folk, here for the seacat.

New In 0.77

1. Cleaning up the missing bits

There are plenty of spots where I've skipped finishing some section because it took writerly spoons (or layout spoons) I didn't have on hand. Welp, I've gone and fixed a bundle of those.

For example, that big fat double-table on the right, for generating random skills (aka. backgrounds) for heroes.

There's been a lot of those.

2. Finished up the gear spreads, now including professional gear, adventuring gear, and rides of all sorts.

Yep, now you can equip your hero, whether they are a butcher banker or a psyche-sculptor. And, again, mods for your tools.

I struggled for a long time with how to split the types of gear. I set them up by use, then price. In the end I flipped it, price/rarity first, then vague use. I will point out the ridiculous trouble I went to to make sure that all the subheaders are consistently alphabetized. That's the kind of pedantic nonsense you get, after staring at tables for too long. That's a self-portrait at right.

Finally, one of my favourite spreads. I put this one off for far too long ... but now it's done.

3. A few items and new pieces of art here and there.

But nothing definite.

4. Some things got chopped.

Lastpaw's truck got the chop. Other things may, too.

Plans for the next few updates

These equipment spreads were the last big pieces of "fiddly tables" + "layout" for a while. I hope. If fortune favours us, the next few updates should be faster and focus on:

1. Magic albums and more spells.

2. Finishing the "Trader's Catalogue" of example items. Including more vehicles. Finishing consumables, too.

3. Rounding out the creatures.

I'm also going to start shaving off bits from the end of the document. A lot of the world-building and generic stuff is going to the block. The tags. Some other things.

At the same time, I am still on the fence: where do the "faction" pages go. You know, the Cats and the Satraps and other strange things. Do they go in seacat? Maybe they need to? Or are they for a separate book? A breve seacat?

Suggestions welcome.

Anyhow, it really feels like a corner with this bit of update. Away from the hard layout + content + mechanics + ideas combination, back to more writing and drawing. Hopefully we get to 0.80 or 0.90 very soon!

Other projects

I'm going to make a separate post detailing some other projects that are percolating as well. I will also have two special posts. First, a small long-delayed release for all the heroes. Second, a single-post pack of all current complete .pdfs for the metaheroes.

Till then,

keep on truckin', everyone!

Cheers,
Luka