Awaiting Moderation…

by Richard Anderson

This morning I stumbled across a box of hidden gems – not literally you understand, but more in the shape of a folder in the back end of Blogger called 'Comments – awaiting moderation'. In it I found 2 years (!!) worth of comments that had been deemed questionable by Blogger (for reasons mere humans will not understand) and were sitting patiently for a green light from myself to be seen by the wider world… except I didn't know they were there!

Apologies to you if it was one of your comments that didn't appear on the blog after you clicked 'Publish'. I have pushed them all through this morning (except for a couple of legitimate dodgy ones) and now realise the blog wasn't quite as quiet as I had thought (and that you guys probably thought I was just being rude!).

Whilst I'm typing I thought I'd give a bit of a hobby update.

by Richard Anderson

I guess the big news for me this week is that The Dark Crucible will be making a comeback soon – I'm going to speculate and say beginning of next month. I decided that of all the rulesets I was trying to create, this one was the simplest (you'd think at least) and the best candidate for being published. Needless to say, it has been a labour of love and dedication since the turn of the year in lieu of any real hobby time. Solo playtesting has been happening for a good three months now and things are close to being coherent enough for 'outsiders' to view it. Don't get me wrong it's still clunky and full of bugs but it will be interesting to get some feedback from someone other than the mirror!

by Max Dunbar

My other ruleset Hood has been a beneficiary of my dedication to TDC as some of the rejected rules and mechanics have filtered their way to Sherwood. Whereas The Dark Crucible is a light ruleset that can accommodate almost any pre-gunpowder model you may own, Hood will have specific characters and no generic attacks or stats. It will very much be character and adventure driven, so wiping out your opponent may not always be a good thing.

The only real progress that has been made on Hood recently though has been the visual side. I have been collecting imagery on Pinterest for months and months and now it's time I stopped hiding behind my Pinterest Boards and started drawing my characters. With that in mind, I have deemed June to be A Sketch A Day month, while I reacquaint myself with pencils and paper. Stay tuned for future blog posts about that. You'll see some of my recent 'Pins' in this blog post.

by Johannes Helgeson

Project Out Of Time is, well, stuck in time a little bit. I'm not feeling sci-fi at the moment (although Netflix's Lost in Space was very entertaining), plus it's by far the biggest project on my list, so I feel the need to cut my teeth on the other two before I try and tackle something so complex. On the upside, my use of the STA mechanic in The Dark Crucible (borrowed from OOT) seems to be working well, so that will save time when it comes to implementing the Energy mechanic for my sci-fi rules.

If you want to keep up to speed with how The Dark Crucible is going, check out my game design blog link in the sidebar – I don't want to clog up this blog with playtesting stuff so it's all on there.

I do have a new game mat from Deep Cut Studio (which I may do a review of) for playtesting and now I feel the need to paint my terrain and a few figures – there may be some genuine hobby blog posts here yet!

Stay tuned for more!!