Observations of the Fox

I'm really struggling to get this character generator ready, every time I read through it I'm seeing more issues with it. I guess I'm just running into that eternal problem where "perfect is the enemy of good". A character generator needs context, especially when it is designed to create characters who integrate into a specifically established setting. So the question is "How much context do I need?" Things are blowing out, and the character generation system is rapidly becoming a "player's guide". Anyway...school holidays are coming up, I might get more time to work on things then. Tings are going so much slower when I'm painting a bunch of player pictures and trying to keep them consistent (before Photoshopping them into customised page layouts). I'm doubling and even tripling up on usage of the same images for the characters...but even though the whole process is taking a couple of hours for a new batch of illustrations, and more...

It's been over a fortnight since my last post. I'm running into that idea where "perfect is the enemy of good". I've been wanting to reveal the character design system that I've been developing, but getting the finer details just right has been a mammoth task.  At the moment, we follow a life path through stages. Each stage sets up something about the character, and builds their story with a sequence of random events. The base character generation pages are seven pages, the random life events are nine pages. and then we go through a worked set of examples where four players build their characters, and these characters will be used for the play examples through the rest of the rulebook. There's at least another sixteen pages coming (2 pages each for the various cultural groups, including their cultural values and stereotypes within their communities, how they relate to the other cultures, their available starting equipment, and a few other flavour elements)...

Three to finish off with...  Day 29 - Awesome App Nope. Most apps I've played with have been distracting at the table, or have simply made an overly complex game, slightly less complex. So with this in mind, I can see that a lot of players like them for D&D because they reduce the labyrinthine systems to something vaguely manageable, or make the custom dice in FFG games more available. However, for most of the games that I've tended to play apps just limit the immersion. Maybe I'm just old school like that. Day 30 - Person you'd like to game with I'd love to game with one of the many celebrity gamers who claim that D&D is a great game. Vin Diesel, Hellen Mirren, Terry Crews, Joe Manganiello (my wife would want to be on that table too), Stephen Colbert, Deborah Ann Woll, Dame Judy Dench... I'd love to play something else with them to show that there are games so much better and more interesting out there. Day 31 - Game or Gamer you miss One of the first p...