How it's going on the Magic and Martial Arts book...

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    • Yes indeed, Targath,...I'm finally cookin' now...

      I just got done with the "how to make your own" part of the Martial Styles section, and I've gotten about a quater of the way through with the sub-sections pertaining to each of the categories... I'm working on the introduction to the Military Styles as we speak!

      I'm actually really excited about this part, because, even though I worked on the Military introduction, the remaining three introductions were written by our writer friend Dylan Birtolo, and I can't wait to read through his historical fiction!

      For the most part, with the rest of the book, Dylan was just stuck with the tedious job of editing our previous work (aside from the cool fictional snippets he did for chapter headers and for the styles themselves), but with this part he got to cut loose and actually fabricate these entire two-page sections from scratch!

      By the way,...as soon as I have the chance to double-check the math for one or two of the new Martial Styles, I'll share with you guys a PDF containing them as a teaser!

      Scottie ^^
    • You're welcome Whill!

      Whew! Today I finally finished all my different edits for the Martial Style Category introductions, and will be implanting them into the editable document of the Martial Arts chapter for Aaron tomorrow!

      I ALSO started doing a bit of excellent work of a SHARD-related side project that I might be able to finish in time for publication right around when the Magic and Martial Arts book gets finished... I don't want to reveal anything about it just yet, but let's just say that there may be TWO kickstarters coming down the pipe for us within the next month or so... The progress, so far, is VERY promising!

      G'night!

      Scottie ^^
    • Whew! Late night!

      As I realize that making a kickstarter possible for the Magic and Martial Arts book requires me getting a close-enough page count to be able to get a proper quote going from the printer,...I am now attempting to get the basic chapters all laid out within In-Design...

      Though I know the page count may change give or take a page or two once Aaron does his edits and I do a final pass, a rough count made in that way at least lets me get the Kickstarter ball rolling...

      Last night I threw together the Martial Arts chapter, and that alone is 98 pages long! Woo hoo! Lotsa-stuff!!! I ended up working through the night and finished about 7:30am.... I'm beat!

      The only thing lacking for that chapter now is doing a final balancing and data pass on all the styles, finishing up the remainder of the art and implanting it, and waiting for Aaron's edits!

      As promised, attached you will find a single example of a finished Martial Style... It's un-edited as a final pass (Aaron hasn't looked at it yet), but it will do for a little teaser... Please don't try to incorporate this yet into your games or anything... (though I know you guys are super clever about this type of stuff, heh!)... There's a whole set of rules concerning how these things are purchased for your character, and how they're used, that might throw a wrench in your attempts to play with it if you don't know it...

      Many thanks, in this example, for the work of Dylan Birtolo as the fiction writer, and Nadine Schäkel, the artist for this piece... You can look forward to more of their work, as well as the work of Andrea Klassa, who has contributed further art for other parts of this chapter too, and Jay Judice, who's artwork with me continues on the Animal Templates! (Thank goodness,....I just couldn't do it all myself...) I don't want to give away too much for now, but we can look forward to more from these fine folks in this book as well as the World Gude, which is next after this sucker gets done...

      There's 32 more of these Martial Styles almost done! And I may be sharing another tid-bit or two later, once things get more "final" looking....

      P.S. I also made some more progress on that "other" thing I hinted at... Quite promising!

      Scottie ^^
      Files
    • RE: Whew! Late night!

      I had to pause on the Martial Styles while I went back and fixed an error I found at the end of the Martial Style Creation section... (I need to stop working before I get too tired to make decent decisions)...

      This allowed me to finally pass on the chapter's main text block to Aaron, who has been patiently waiting for me to finally get it system-edited from my end, so he can eventually start his final edits on his end...

      Now that this has been fixed, I was able to implant an image I recieved from one our artists, Nadine, at the beginning of the chapter in the In-Design doc, so that I can give my playtesters a pretty PDF of the basic functionality for testing this weekend (Eric has already tried his hand at creating a possible new Style for later supplements, using the system-edited instructions at the end, and hopefully my mistake won't be a setback for his testing)...

      And now,...back to editing the actual Styles!

      Yay!

      Scottie ^^
    • RE: Whew! Late night!

      Originally posted by Scott Jones
      As I realize that making a kickstarter possible for the Magic and Martial Arts book requires me getting a close-enough page count to be able to get a proper quote going from the printer,...


      Whoa, I must have missed something along the way. This is now going to be a Kickstarter? I thought I had read this wasn't going to be a Kickstarter. I'll definitely be a Kickstarter supporter of this project if that's what I have to do to get it - I just didn't know.

      I'm coming up on the busy season of the year for my job (January-April), during which I work a lot of overtime, so please e-mail me at the e-mail address I am currently registered on this site with when the Kickstarter starts. I don't want to miss it! Thanks!
    • RE: Whew! Late night!

      Originally, back when our company had more funds at its disposal to work with, I had assumed we'd be making enough from the rest of our products to support the printing of this next book...

      The delays in getting this second book out, plus the need to continue going to the somewhat expensive tradeshows and conventions over those first couple of years after publish, ate away our "excess" funds, and cause us to make some tough decisions concerning how we could approach continuing to afford future publications...

      At least, with a Kickstarter, we can plan-in all the printing costs in advance, and assuming the Kickstarter funds, we'll have the money it takes to do all the printing! Last time, for the Basic Compendium and the other initial products, I funded all the printing privately, which is something I can't do this time... So hopefully this will keep me from risking everything up-front without knowing whether enough folks will buy it to recoup the initial expenditure...

      We still have about 1600 Basic Compendiums left in stock unsold, and about 600 of each of our other products... So, though the value of those products haven't been lost, they also haven't let us recoup the initial costs of production yet for our first run...

      This is why we must depend on a Kickstarter just to get a second book out... Hopefully, the combination of this Kickstarter, plus a secondary Kickstarter for a related, yet-to-be-announced SHARD product (which we're play-testing right now), plus excitement concerning Aaron's other Scavenger RPG (which we are assuming we'll be representing through Shard Studios LLC), will help give Shard Studios enough of a shot in the arm that it jumps to full life and starts supporting itself and us, for the sake of future product...

      We need all the luck, well-wishes, and support we can get to make this work...

      Scottie ^^
    • OK!!! After all the holiday-season mayhem I've gotten back to work!

      Hopefully you all have had a fantastic Winter Solstice by its various names (Yule/Hanukkah/Saturnalia/Christmas/etc.), and have enjoyed a wonderful time with family and friends... I know I have!!! (I ate WAY too much,...in fact,...heh!)

      As I prepare the last of the Martial Styles chapter, I'm simultaneously making sure that the descriptions for the remaining Martial Styles images that need to be made have been crafted and passed on to the artists... I'm really, REALLY looking forward to seeing these done... These images, like the new Animal Templates chapter as a whole, were a last minute addition that I'm really sweating...

      The first of these Style description, put together with the aid of the new narratives (also a recent addition) written by Dylan, provide the specific Zoics I want potentially shown in the art... We didn't have these narratives for the first batch of images, and so I had to do some creative writing edits later on to make the awesome images seem related to the narratives that were being written simultaneously to the art's creation...

      At least this time, the cart can actually follow the horse... And with the descriptions, reference images to make sure that the artist currently working on these last few images, Nadine, has a good idea of the basis of the Zoics she'll be portraying... Fun stuff!

      Three more batches of descriptions to go!

      Scottie ^^
    • Scott (Aaron),
      That is great news on the books. I hope to see them, as a kick starter, very soon, and quickly have them in my greedy, little, hands post that.

      Any ideas what incentives you're looking at? I have some ideas. Character portraits would be a huge, for me at least. See I got this new house... and all this room in the Man Cave... Could use some meaningful (to me), art pictures to throw up.

      Sorry I've been away from the boards for so long. Been playing Shard, and Hackmaster, with some folks in Afghanistan (mostly military, but some contractors as well). It was well received (made you some new fans), and a great distraction from the norm. That said, when we got "internet time", Shard forums wasn't exactly on the forefront of the list... had too much home e-mail to catch up with.

      In regards to the martial arts section, anything on wrestling? Like native american style, or greco-roman style? I still have fond memories of Dan Severn in the early UFC (before the gloves, and rules) pay per views, supplexing and tossing around chuck norris types. Would be great for some bears, pachyderms, etc... What about berserkers?


      As you know my campaigns don't always follow the setting to a "T". This last campaign had the players in the proper setting, but I had a "Roman"esque Empire on a neighboring continent slowing moving across the land conquering (ney, kicking the crap), out of everything in their path. It was great fun. The characters played such an integral roles yet I was able to vary them up to avoid anything becoming stagnant (scouting, assassinations, causing general chaos, as well as setting bottle neck traps, and mass combat tactic.

      Hope all is well with yous, Let me know if you're looking for another editor, can never have too many eyes on something....
      ToG

      "Violence may not be the best option..... but it's still an option!"

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Tides of Gore ().

    • Hey there Tides of Gore!

      I just got back from a trip to visit my newborn great-nephew that was named after me! (so CUTE!!!)

      The incentives for the new book haven't been mapped out yet (but we're workin' on it!), and character portraits could definitely be a possibility... Great idea! And, of course, there's always the chance to offer a way for the fans to actually participate, in some way, with some aspect of the production...

      There are lots of cool ideas to muddle over, but for now,...just getting everything done on my end is the biggest challenge! Time just never seems to be on my side!

      As far as the Martial Styles go,...we're generally sticking with styles influenced by the East (Asia and India and such), but we're including instructions on how to build your own styles, in case there is a particular martial/cultural flavor you'd like to capture... Fun stuff!

      I just finished the second set of descriptions I'm handing over to one of our contract artists (Nadine) for the purpose of getting more of the Martial Style illustrations done... Just two more description documents to go, and then I'm back to pouring over the Style statistics one last time...

      After that, on to the Animal Templates chapter!

      Scottie ^^
    • Whew!!!!

      I just now got the last of the Martial Style image descriptions done, and have passed them on to the artist!

      Tomorrow I get to work through more of the Martial Style edits, and then I'm off to a little town south of San Antonio to pow-wow with yet another artist named Andrea as we talk about Shard stuff, her own portfolio, and upcoming projects of all kinds!

      Scottie ^^
    • Whew! I'm now merely a few Martial Styles away from having the last pass on the Multi-maneuvers complete!

      Once that is finished, I'm then moving on to the task of getting the new Animal Templated crafted from all the data I've been given... I've already made room for them in the In-Design layout of the book... Not all the data is generated just yet, and I know several folks who've continued to support my efforts to get them generated, so very soon I'll be tapping them on the shoulder and moving forward arm in arm!

      Here's the rough look at what's left:
      • Animal Templates
      • Final Animal Template image insertion
      • Final Martial Styles image insertion
      • Additions and final work on the Appendices
      • Last-minute general art additions/fixes for the whole book
      • Aaron's final editing pass
      • Layout and final Indexing
      • Out-of-house printing/production efforts


      I'm about to be delayed here over the next two weeks since I'm going to be taking a trip to Bali, not only for enjoyment, but to capture some amazing images for use with creating paintings and other art for the eventual World Guide, which I'm already trying to plan for... (slowly, I know, but I still have some steam left in me)...

      And lastly,...I'm finally ready to announce that "secret" project concerning SHARD that I've been working on with a friend of mine, Denis Loubet, who's been wanting to work on something with me that just might end up being REALLY cool!

      ...Check out this announcement...

      Scottie ^^
    • RE: How it's going on the Magic and Martial Arts book...

      The release of this excellent work will finally pave the way for my fellow Wuxia enthusiasts to see the glory of Dardunah's combat system and it's fantastic potential to really be the worlds first system to bring you the awe-inspiring excellence of Tsui Hark's finest martial arts effects masterpieces as well as the bone crunching hardcore fighting of Prachya Pinkaew and Tony Jaa's Ong Bak series. Fans of Shard can hardly guess what they are in for with this expansion of the fighting rules. I can't wait for it to hit shelves.

      And the core rulebook just did not prepare players for the expanded Magic rules either, I think. The material in this publication so vastly expands and clarifies what is truly possible with ritual magic that I highly expect to see floods of comments and praises from our hardcore contingent of seasoned players.
      "Daggra" means "Enemy" in Tibetan.
      "Chora" means "Thief" in Sanskrit.
    • RE: How it's going on the Magic and Martial Arts book...

      Progress on the book will be stalled slightly this week since I am currently in Bali for both a vacation as well as a mission to gather excellent photographs to use as the source for new paintings I'm hoping to create for the eventual World Guide...

      As soon as I get back.. I'll share some of the photos with you all!

      More to come soon!

      Scottie :)
    • RE: How it's going on the Magic and Martial Arts book...

      I'm back from Bali, and revving back up for continuing work on BOTH the "Magic and Martial Arts" book AS WELL AS the "SHARD Spiral Arena Card Game"!

      As soon as I get the chance I'll share a few of the inspirational photos taken on the trip!

      As far as the book goes, having gone through almost all of the data for the Martial Styles, it's now time to concentrate on the new Animal Templates as well as the art that's beginning to come in for the rest of the Martial Style descriptions...

      Great sketches (and even a final image or two) are coming in from my artist friend Nadine and her cohort, and I can't wait to share the progress with you!

      More soon!

      Scottie ^^