iAi, Dios Mio!
Holy GOD am I busy. My day job at a local university has just endured a presidential visit/large protest, the death of a beloved NCAA championship coach, the start of the school year, all my staff going on vacation for 3 weeks, an influx of brand new admisssions projects for the web and a critical website launch over the last 2 weeks. So know that the lack of updates are nothing personal, dear reader, trust me. On the good front, I'm about 3-4 weeks from getting Project X into contract negotiations, sighting up Shadowforce Archer: Russian Confederacy as my next project (a personal love of mine - I was a Russian major for 8 years, and am fascinated by the history and culture, and the RC genre as well) and working on another top secret deal that I should be able to discuss in a while. Please expect an update fairly soon - once I can come up for air, and break myself away from Soul Caliber II, that is...

Redline
Hey, got $15 in your pocket? Did you like the Mad Max trilogy? Ever dreamed you were a feral biker with the ass cut out of your riding leathers, trucking across the Australian Outback dodging mutants and rad zombies? Then go get Redline. Yeah you. Get up, get in your car, drive to your FLGS, slap that money down on the counter and demand it. Say you won't leave til you have it. Cry and whine and scream til you get it. If you can't get it there, stop your whinin' and grab it at Fantasy Flight Games. Then play it and love it. Good man.

Developer's Digest: Research and Design
I'm currently putting together some materials for training new Spycraft designers for next year, and a thought occured to me that I thought I'd share. One thing I kept hearing from writers when I was at Gencon Indy this year was how fast people could write - 1000/2000/5000 words an hour, etc. I didn't hear how many of those words were kept through edits, or how many rewrites the editors went through with them. From the other side, the developers I spoke with talked about how quite a few writers were turning in pieces that was poorly thought out, written, or developed. Personally, I think there's a direct correlation, and this leads to the vicious cycle of low pay and thus lower quality output.*

The hub of this issue lies with research. I believe that knowing your topic - whatever it may be - is the lynchpin of good game design, and this applies to both setting and rules development. But when writers are pushed by low per-word rates, it's often the first thing that is cut as a luxury or worse, a waste of time. If you've read Spycraft material, you know we pay a lot of attention to our research. I like to think the Faceman/Snoop Class Guide is a good example of this - Clayton and I busted our humps to really make it representative of both cinematic staples and real-life intelligence and investigative practice. For the European Commonwealth Chamber Book, I delved into political thrillers, cold-war spy stories and conspiracy theory films to help make the tension of the chamber felt palpably down to the classes and feats.

But your game doesn't have to be realistic to benefit from research. A good example is Midnight, the first DnD game that I feel really captures Tolkein's vision of Middle Earth in a way that is inspirational for players, doesn't railroad them and leaves the iconic LotR characters and story entirely out of it. Wil Upchurch, Greg Benage and Jeff Barber** (Midnight's developers) obviously spent a lot of time looking hard at Tolkein's body of work, considering what makes the trilogy so damn inspiring, than building their own story and mechanics from there. It paid off - Fantasy Flight won an enNie for Midnight, and even my enthusiasm(an even rarer thing when it comes to Tolkein send-ups). Even if you are developing your own setting or mechanics, research is critical. Learn what has come before you - historically, storywise, or mechanically - to learn what you do or don't want to do. If working on a line, read the books that came before yours; if starting a new one, look at similar games, do a little research into history for similar events and inspirations, look at the game creator's notes, or even read your first notes again.

Research is the grist that makes the game believable, and as we all know, gamers are into gaming for the suspension of disbelief. They want to pretend to be rangers and spies and cyberpunks and jedi, not a group of twenty- to forty-somethings sitting around a table in a basement rolling funny plastic polyhedrons and eating chips and drinking Mountain Dew ;) Research lets you make a place live; and when you know the place you are writing about in and out, when you can make that place come alive in the minds of the GM and in the people listening and actively joining that world, that's good game design.

* Mr. Clayton Oliver and Mr. Will Hindmarch have good point/counterpoints to the views posted here, which are worth reading. Check the feedback - they are also right. Yay for pluralism!
**Edit - added the names of Mr. Benage and Barber to the list of Midnight's developers; good job, fellas!

Yipes!
Hey kids, I just realized it's been nearly two weeks since my last pathetic blog update, so I thought I'd let you know that the "Anatomy of a Character Class" piece part 2 is still coming. The Dragonstar project has ended up running ridiculously long and basically been driving me nuts, so I'd like to try and get something useful out of it. What crystalized for me in doing this stuff is two things - first, I can't really do PrCs in a vacuum in regular d20 like I do in Spycraft (I'm spoiled by knowing all the rules and subsets in SC, which I just don't know yet in d20) and second, PrCs in regular d20 are totally different than SC ones! No formulas, different power levels, as far as I can tell no solid way of balancing abilities...in one sense it's easier but it actually drove me crazy. Well, I had to get the trauma over with sooner or later ;) and I'm feeling much better now.

Other stuff:
* The Faceman/Snoop Guide showed up at Gencon. Good book overall, and it seems to be well-received. This book crystalizes the espionage angle played up in the 2003 Spycraft line - investigative prestige classes; feats, skills and gear to enhance your snooping; a chapter on investigation (forensics, profiling, evidence analysis, surveillance) complete with questions to ask and a system for getting actual results from your investigations; and the intelligence guide, with realistic systems for using cryptology, running manhunts, using intelligence resources, persuasion, stealing identities, and a host of other nasty spy goodies. Some 20 pages of material was cut from the book for space issues, so it looks like I'll be getting an "Additional Writing" credit in the 60's Decade Book coming later this fall, too. Twofer!

* Speaking of the 60's Decade Book, I've just done some new NPC classes and feats for it and I can say with confidence - this book will be cool. Even if you don't want to run a game in that era, it is an excellent resource for modern-day agents looking to grab some cold war feel to their games. Definately brutal, well thought out, Clancy-ish roleplaying to be had. Look for it!

* Most Wanted didn't make the show, but should be out by September. I've just received the green light for preview material, and you can find it here.

* I also managed to get my hands on the talk of the show (no, not 3.5) - the Stargate: SG-1 Role-Playing Game. The book should be dropping by the first week of September, and though it has been the bane of the Spycraft team's existance this year, it really turned out quite nice. Powered by Spycraft, the book is actually unofficially Spycraft 1.5 - Patrick and Scott took many of the lessons we have learned over the last 2 years and folded them back into the book in cool ways. Skills got a long, hard look and now are crystal clear (and 60 pages long!), feats have been slightly reorganized, combat now includes fluid initative and the combat actions that have been added to the game, and gear got a total overhaul (bundles are the key to gearing up in SG-1, rank determines the number you get, and the rest of the gear is handled as "picks"). And of course, there's the obligatory changes to classes, departments, gear and new rules (such as planet creation) you would expect for the setting. This monster is 488 pages of full-color, glossy, packed to the gills (nearly 1000 words per page) entertainment to appeal to any SG-1 fan.

Get it. You know you want to.

* In this little space between projects and armed with new knowledge and impetus from Gencon, I've returned to work on Project X. I secured the trademark Friday, and the last year has given me a chance to get a little perspective on what I want this game to be. Armed with that knowledge, I'm revising both the setting and much of the mechanics to make it fresher, more innovative and much more mine. Hopefully I can finally get this thing to market by Gencon 2004 - cross your fingers!

* While at the show, I also secured a contract for Project Y, which shouldn't be showing up until 2005. Project X actually started a d20 system test so that I could return to Project Y and convert it from my homebrew system - funny how things work out. Kickass.

Well, I think that's it for now. I'll yammer at you again soon.