Hello all! It’s July. And as is tradition – except when I forget, which is all the time – I’m here to update you on the good, the bad, and the ugly for the upcoming month. Normally, I do this s$&% over on Patreon so it doesn’t clutter this site, but the news is big enough and good enough and bad enough and ugly enough that everyone deserves to here it.
My July schedule has been blown apart. Of course. Because it ALWAYS is. The timetable for moving has been accelerated a little bit and has eaten up a few extra days due to factors totally outside of my control. I’ve had a little bit of a setback with physical therapy and need some extra sessions. Because there’s sort of a deadline on my able to walk and move and stuff. Because: moving. Yaddah yaddah yaddah. And, I also have this book thing, which I absolutely cannot allow to fall behind schedule because people have paid upwards of $60,000 for it over on Kickstarter. So I’m kind of f$&%ing committed. I’m not complaining; that’s an amazingly great problem to have.
But I have to make some adjustments to the content schedule. And you’re not going to like some of them. Megadungeon – as literally the biggest time sink on my life – has to go on hold. It has to wait until I am moved and the book is out of my hands and into the editor’s hands finally and completely. Which isn’t to say I’m going to stop working on it altogether. Working on those maps is fun and relaxing. It’s just the writeups that take the time. But I am going to stop promising regular articles on it until August 13. August 13th will be the next Megadungeon Monday. I’m going to use that time well, though. It’s going to be burned up getting well ahead into the mapping. Because, again, it’s relaxing. And I need a good lead on the project. It’s the f$&%ing writeups that take all the time.
The reason I want to focus on designing and hold off on writing the design up is partially so that I can recapture some of that time into making sure you all get a book on time and partially because, if I don’t get ahead of this thing, it’s going to be going for another three years. See, after this book thing is done, I’m going to need a project to finish out the last five months of the year. And I want Megadungeon to done. At least, done with the initial design. I have to decide whether I want to focus on sharing every step of the design or finishing the project. And this project now has a deadline on it. It’s got about nine to twelve months to be a finished product or else it’s never going to be.
Why? Because the wild success of my Kickstarter – far beyond what I expected – tells me there’s a demand for my content beyond this website. And a lot of people have expressed their desire for a full-on RPG. You know, the thing I haven’t been designing for some time now? Now, designing an RPG of the scale and scope I’m envisioning – because it’s a big one – is going to take time. A couple of years. But then, I knew that all along. You all know that I started this journey three years ago with a five-to-six-year plan that ended with my either putting out the best damned fantasy adventure RPG ever or dying trying. Which means, it’s time to focus on this s$&%. And once I’m working full time on that project, my desire to design a really amazing supplement for someone else’s RPG will be pretty much gone. And, no, the Megadungeon will NOT fit into the Angry RPG. It’s too steeped in how D&D does things – and working around how D&D doesn’t do some things well. Megadungeons will be a thing for the Angry RPG. But not THIS Megadungeon.
But I digress. What about the rest of this month? What content can you expect? Well, I’ll still be putting out a feature article every week, as promised. There is a slight issue with losing about a week due to the move, extra physical therapy sessions, and the holiday this week. But it is counterbalanced by the fact that there are five weeks in July. Well, four weeks and a bit, but I’m going to turn them into July.
Feature articles will go live on Wednesday, July 11; Wednesday, July 18; Wednesday, July 25; and Tuesday, July 31. Patreon supporters will get whatever early access I can manage. Following that, the next feature article will appear on Wednesday, August 8 and every Wednesday thereafter. And the August content schedule will be totally normal again.
Meanwhile, I’m sorry for the sudden change. I really didn’t want to reduce my output for July, but I find myself between a rock and a hard place. And committing to a solid plan is better than struggling and failing every week. I always work better with a solid deadline than a vague “next week will better” or whatever. That’s something I’ve learned about myself in this past year. And it only took me three f$&%ing years to figure it out.
And, of course, I want to end by saying thank you again to everyone for your overwhelming support on this site and on the Kickstarter. And also thanks to everyone for all of the well-wishes, encouragement, excitement, and cheerleading. I am truly blessed to be surrounded by such an amazing community. Thank you.
Now, get the f$&% out of here. I’m trying to write a book.
Good that you got it figured out! Good luck this next month. I have absolute faith that the book will be the best book you can make.
*Upwards of 80,000
Honestly, I feel like it’s better at this point to go faster with the megadungeon unless some really cool design trick comes up. We got to see the first day mapped in extreme detail in terms of theme, mechanics and whatnot, and now I imagine most of the rest of the project will be developed with a similar philosophy. So maybe an even faster pace than “The End of the Day… One”.
I’m starting to think you’re right. Only the good stuff deserves a write up. But, I’ll revisit this question in August.
I think this is a good path too.
As much as I love megadungeon I think mapping it out can be a bit of a montage from here, just posting the updated map and a blirb. I like the design analysis stuff, so I want see more of that, but I don’t think we need anymore on the day-by-day or even room-by-room level. Maybe zoom in when designing a few interesting features like how to design a boss encounter space. Or how you hint at the upcoming boss fight.
Either way, keep trucking Angry. I’m rooting for you and I’m inspired by your success. It’s a lot of work, but you are chasing your dream. I used to do that, but I failed. I’m starting to think it is time to dust myself off and try again.
Very excited about the idea of playing an RPG you’ve made! You were just about to go into lots of detail on making loads of different rooms in the Mega Dungeon and I was looking forward to see exactly how you vary things to keep it interesting, but I can wait.
If it were for me, you’d focus on finishing the Megadungeon and THEN release maybe 3 or 4 articles outlining the most important parts of the process. Then you could release those articles at about the same time as the finished product. You save yourself a lot of time, your readers don’t get completely left out, and those of us who want to explore Oran Ionath as soon as possible dont have to wait another year. But this is obviously a one man opinion, so I understand if you choose to do otherwise.
This is not viable. If I wait the three months or more it’ll take me to finish the project in between everything else I’m doing and then try to do a retrospective, it’ll be impossible for me to explain the fine-grained thought process. And that is what people really want to see.
Hey Angry! 🙂
Thanks for the update on the release schedule.
Any idea when/if you’ll be revisiting the exploration/time/encumberance/light rules series? Just read it and it was a delightful solution to the problems I’ve been tinkering with about how to make the players care about time.
Thank you again for all of your hard work
For me – i think I’d prefer a “making of” write up for the megadungeon. So perhaps instead of documenting as you go, finish a section and then do a writeup of your process and lessons learned etc etc. So finish the mapping and then produce a document for that (or at least a document for a level) then future mapping levels can just document what was special?
You’d think the Megadungeon was all anyone cared about. >.>
The past couple of years really put you through it, Angry, but you grabbed life by the shorts and told it to give you its lunch money. You’ve earned every penny of this project at least four times over for all that you’ve put into this site. You’re keeping us in the loop as to what’s going on and how it will affect your ability to produce content for us, including the deadlines you’re setting for yourself. Makes me wish I had the wiggle room to increase my pledge and grab a second copy of the book. Well, you can be sure I’ll order another once it’s in regular retail distribution.
Love to help you play test your angry rpg, when you get to that point. Love your articles. Don’t even play/run D&D, but your shit is so useful, doesn’t really matter.
Cheers
You know what they say, Angry: you do you. While I’m sure people are clamoring for the Megadungeon, you’re juggling a lot of projects and all of them benefit your readers. Take a moment to breathe. Gather your thoughts. Get the move taken care of. We’ll still be here on August 13th.
Hey Angry, have you ever thought of reording as you map the megadungeon (similar to the stream where you mapped a part of a city)? This could help you move faster, since you wouldnt need the write up and we could see the Project happening live
This is not going to happen. For several reasons. First of all, I generally don’t do all the Megadungeon work in long sessions. I tend to work a few minutes and a few minutes there. The actually design work doesn’t take a huge amount of time. I just don’t do it all in one go. Second of all, Campaign Cartographer – especially with the number of entities I’m working – is pretty intensive. And it can be buggy. I have had a few crashes. Video capture and/or streaming software are also pretty intensive. I’ve tried to record it a few times in the past. If I’m not capturing on the highest resolution, the compression tends to lose the very fine details. Everything in CC is a hairline or a point. And if I am capturing on the highest resolution, rerendering – especially with things like transparency active – and editing entities becomes intolerable slow. Third of all, the number of people who want video content from me is very small. I know. I’ve done video content before and I’ve talked to readers about it. People want stuff they can read wherever they are. Fourth, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to do design work while also explaining what you’re doing in an ongoing narration. It isn’t as easy as you think it is. Those city map streams were slow as f$&% and people don’t want to watch me do something. They want to know what I’m thinking and why I’m doing the things I am doing.
In short, video content is not going to happen.
As always, your transparency is greatly valued, and your well-being comes first.
I hope I speak for all of your readers when I say we’d rather be patient for a few weeks than have you burn yourself out and quit altogether. We play the long game. 🙂
And with regards to the Megadungeon, I can wait 6 weeks in return for it finally getting done and published.
As much as I enjoy reading the articles, I agree with other commentors that a montage is probably called for since I assume a lot of the upcoming design process has already been explained for Day 1, so we’ll be fine with just some highlights and exceptions.
Plus, I’m looking forward to actually being able to buy and run the thing. 🙂
Please note I am not soliciting any further opinions on how the Megadungeon project should be handled in the future at this time. Thank you.
When you design the angry-rpg rules I would be interested to read some articles about why you made some design choices, like stats, skills numbers ranges and so on.
Or maybe write them but only publish them on your website after your Rpg is out on the shelves if it’s touchy.
Ooh, now we’re talking!
If it’s not too much trouble, I would be very interested in reading your design process applied to creating a game system from scratch. 🙂
(Off-topic, but I figured I’d put it in a recent post so it would get seen)
Does anybody know where to find Angry’s 5e monster template for Word? I’ve seen some links in old articles, but those all appear to be dead now.
I’m asking because I specifically need a template for text editors. The monster-creator programs some people have made are nice, as are form-fillable pdf’s, but those don’t offer the flexibility to deal with things like Paragon monsters or Multipart Monstrosities’s HP pools.