Weekly Update

[Owen K.C. Stephens]

Hey folks, time for the weekly update!

It looks like we have a proposed timeline for getting WotA written, though we're going to see if we stick to the first section of it before we announce anything about when we hope to have a Kickstarter and/or go to press. I have been in contact with some potential freelancers (and will continue to contact them in the weeks ahead), and Hyrum Savage is working on a line to get cover art we feel better represents what we want this book to be.

Some early design element choices ARE getting pinned down now. The classes are definitely going to be based on the 6 Anachronistic Adventurer character classes (daredevil, enforcer, investigator, luminary, sensitive, tough) and a selection of built-in archetype-like options (which may be called archetypes, or since they work a little differently than normal archetypes in that every class gets one automatically, may be called backgrounds, criterion, occupations, paradigms, or even specializations. But essentially a class represents a broad set of abilities and abilities (enforcers are professional warriors who keep calm in the face of adversity, toughs are brutes who can take a licking and keep on ticking, investigators use their powerful intellects to solve problems, and so on) while a background is more closely related to what you have learned to do as an occupation (ruin raiders specialize in searching through and using relics of old world cities, ESPers develop psychic powers, medicos learn to heal the sick and most efficiently kill the living, and so on). Since any class can take any background, a wide number of combinations are possible (enforcer ruin raiders are guards and guides who take others in and out of old world ruins, investigator ruin raiders seek to find and understand lost technologies, tough ruin raiders are fearless mercenaries who plumb the lost world for whatever they can salvage and sell; while enforcer ESPers are combat psychics, investigator ESPers use their extra senses to learn more about the mysteries that interest them, and tough ESPers are near-madmen who have somehow survived seeing things human minds were not meant to comprehend).

We're also working on the setting. The core setting will likely be generations have the apocalypse, when savages have re-emerged, technology is largely indistinguishable by magic, a few cabals of civilization seek to rebuild the old world, mutants about, and travel is dangerous and difficult), with smaller sections discussing other apocalypse options (zombie outbreaks, Zero Hour campaigns, mystic conjunctions bringing demons out to shatter the world, and so on).

This is all going to take time, but we're getting really excited about how things are shaping up so far!