Editing and Formatting
So I took a break from updates last week becasue of local holidays stuff, spending time with family, and to let a Facebook promotion run it's course. While it didn't generate much obvious interest, it did give me some valuable insight on promotions. I hope that it will make my next one more effective. So what I've actually been doing lately is simple, but time consuming. I've been working on editing and formatting. The reason it's so time consuming is that it's a lot more than just correcting the text. It also involves setting up tables, charts, making sure that different text layersa are correctly layered and that images have the right sorts of boundaries (you don't want text hidden behind a nice pic, and you don't want a nice pic ruined by having text on top of it), and of course making sure that everything is in the right SPOT! This is VERY importatnt when it comes to charts and tables, because those need to be near the text that references them, but you have to be careful not to clutter a page with them. I have also been double formatting, setting Multiversal up up for both a standard 8.5x11book/pdf, as well as more intereseting 8.5 square book. I will ultimately decide which book size to go with when I have finished. Obviously, it does affect the page count, but what I'm most interested in is the formatting/aesthetics of it, especially with it not being the size of a piece of paper. So that is just what I've been doing. However, I figure I will give you a bit of an idea what each chapter will give you, and how it is different from Multiversal Light (which you can pick up here if you haven't already). So, in addition to the basic rules for playing the game, the full version of Multiversal will include a few things with EACH chapter. First of all, artwork. Each chapter will have a single, full color, full page, illustration at the beginning of the chapter. Also, I am planning to include some smaller black and white artwork in most of them as well Second, customizing. This is a big thing for me; I want any and all aspects of the game to include both set up elements as well as rules for creating custom elements. That means custom skills, custom weapons, custom armor, custom vehicles, etc. The reason I am including rules for custom elements is that I want players to be creative, but it is also important to make sure those elements remain balanced with the rest of the rulebook. Third, the primary rulebook will include a few chapters that aren't in Multiversal Light at all. Those will broaden the possible scope of a game, but they are also more work as they must be balanced against everything else. Finally, there will simply be MORE STUFF! Multiversal Light was released as an introductory ruleset, which means that it doesn't include everything. There is a LOT more in the full version, and while it is easy enough to make sure that all the stuff from ML simply gets copied over, everything else has to go through the balancing grinder from scratch. Also, everything from ML needs to be double checked as well, to make sure it did copy over correctly. So, yeah, it's been time-consuming. I've been focusing this week, but not a lot of visible progress has been made. However, I am almost finished with the first round of edits/revisions, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Anyway, stay tuned!