Turning the Page on 2016

I've been working on The Next Project for a while now, but I've only been blogging since this past August. In that time, the blog has received over 1000 views! Most posts have each gotten 30-40 views, but some have gone as high as 60-70.

Going forward, my intention is to post 3x per month. From January through June, I'll be posting on the 5th/15th/25th of every month; I'm going to take a break for a bit in July, so details for beyond then will be ironed out closer to the end of June.

Leading up to 2017, all 15 planned classes were completed, across the 3 slates: Heroes of Martial Might & Divine Power, Heroes of Magic & Shadow, and Heroes of the Wilderness. I'm hoping by the end of January to complete a "math pass," specifically focusing on the damage values for each class. To this end, I've worked out a few dice expressions that achieve the expected values; now it's just a matter of checking each class to make sure it fits within those guidelines. I'm also going to try and strip out excessive rolling if/when I can, and simplify things mechanically.


A few changes to player options will be forthcoming:

• Classes that have "Roles" will be able to change their role as part of their initiative check (currently includes Fighter, Bard, and Warrior.)
• Power Sources will be added to player-characters (Arcane, Divine, Martial, Primal, and Shadow); each character will have 2 Power Sources.
• Rules for changing your class/archetype between adventures; hybrid/dual-classing/multi-classing rules will be looked into.
• Knowledge Skills will be tied to Power Sources, helping to streamline these skills, and to give additional mechanical weight to Power Sources.
• Starter Classes will be finalized once the core classes are done; expect the text to be trimmed down and simplified as much as possible.

Beyond that, I will be seeking feedback on the writing/mechanics, hopefully getting a few extra sets of eyes on things. With this, I'll be looking to make sure the language is clear and there are no gaps in the rules, possibly resulting in an FAQ as well. I'm also going to try and get the formatting for classes into a more unified state.

The DM-side of the rules still need to be published, so that work may begin in parallel to the other revisions, or begin once those are completed.


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Next post: January 15th!