What’s happened so far
February sucked. I’ve looked at everything, and my broad conclusion was that it was a rather spectacular time hole that ate up everything. I’m not really certain about everything that I did in that month. I clearly did something, but exactly what? I honestly couldn’t pull out a list and say “this, and this, and this” to save my life. Suffice to say, it was a fairly frustrating month all around. I did get some writing done, but one snippet was just a grind. You know how some writing is nice and smooth, some needs a little rework but is decent going, and some is just a painful grind? Well this was like pounding round pegs into little triangular holes. It’s done, but breaker did it suck.
What’s happening next?
I’m working on setting my vacation up (looking forward to going on a proper real life vacation away from everything), but that won’t really be happening till the end of May. Still, have to get flight tickets and hotel set up, and time off booked as well. So plenty to be done!
Outside of that, it’s working on A) getting the writing and processing cadence down pat and B) reaching out to chat with this book publishing outfit that I’ve been put in contact with. They seem to have some good support and the like, but they’re also REALLY cagey about what kind of support they have for doing RPG and game editing. They say they have people who can support and do things, but they also really don’t want to provide any names or the like that would let me do some kind of independent verification. It’s a little suspicious.
2023 Goals
These goals are approximately in order of priority and in order of precedence (IE have to do #1 before you can do #2). There’s some goals from 2022 that are coming back, but a some of them are going to be brand new ones as well. As before, some of them are one-and-done, while others are big projects. There’s a couple more tasks on it this year compared to last, but a bunch of them are more housekeeping tasks; easier one-and done things that can be pounded out sometime in the year.
So enough banter. On to the list!
1) Complete turn processing for all empires up to turn 175
Right now it’s sitting at turn 151, mostly so that I can clear a bit more of a backlog in writing. February was a slog, but some writing finally got done and I’m expecting that by the end of March I’ll be getting some turn processing done.
2) Update/Archive all the Sketch Sunday Worldbuilding
Not much movement on this one here. I’ve got a OneNote set up, but I need to think a little on how best to organize things. By month? By topic? Something else? I figure the storage schema will change (it almost certainly will when I start inputting data) but I want to have at least a half-decent framework to start on.
3) Finish playtesting and balancing for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
I had some more responses on the discord when asking for playtesting and balance. But this time I actually got results! Honest to breaker results. And good ones too! I’m working to keep lines of communication open
4) Finish the writing work for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
This year. This year. That’s the plan and the pressure. I’ve dusted off my task sheet and it’s been printed and put up next to my monitor as a visual tracking reminder. I’ve got most of it done, but it could stand for another edit pass before handing it off to someone for final edit.
5) Go do a second pass on the artwork for Scenario Book 1, incorporating new details and design concepts over the past year
This task is admittedly higher than it ought to be, as it’s more looking at the commissioned art and then pulling the drawing from it back into the universe’s design documentation and identification.
6) Start fishing in my contacts to find someone who can do proofreading for Scenario Book
This task is sitting low on the to-do list for fairly obvious reasons. Need to be done writing and my own edit pass before the work can get handed off to an editor. Need to reach out to some of my friends/contacts, see if they know anyone. I’ve also gotten put in contact with some potential sources for this as well thanks to some of my family; not sure if they’re familiar with the industry, but it’s worth a check!
7) Rename systems/planets that do not fit the universe setting
I’ve done a pass through the whole space database checking planet and location names and gotten most of them cleaned up. I’ve gotten the most obvious and blatant ones at least. I’ve also gone through my stellar mapping/fleet board and updated that as well. The individual empire sheets have not been updated, but that represents more of a bureaucratic task that can be done as turns are processed. I’m going to keep this on here, mostly as a task reminder to go through the remainder of the outstanding work and make sure that nothing else has leaked through.
8) Look at the Solar Starfire Freight Handling Rules
Not started yet.
9) Set up a redundant deWulf data backup
The NAS (I keep typoing this as NAIS) continues to quietly chug along. I’m going to have to schedule some time into my day to actually look into it and see how I can migrate data over to it. Ideally how I can automate the process. Otherwise what’s the point of doing backups if they’re only done when you remember to do them?
10) Update the deWulf Story Document
The currently available deWulf story document on the website is, to be honest, really old. It was originally done as just a backup log, but with it out and on the website it does have some amount of actual attention. So the plan is to split it into three parts and then give it some short synopses on the website to explain (and more importantly warn) readers what’s going on in each of them. Mind you that’s not warn them of anything really questionable…. it’s more like my early writing is kinda… rough.
Which is another reason why this is so far down the to-do list.
11) Come up with a replacement for Sketch Sunday
Continuing on this vein, I was VERY happy with Sketch Sunday, and I’d like to continue on with this sort of project in some new vein. I’m out of sketches (at the moment) so I can’t just continue on with the same idea. But the regularity of posting was a very enjoyable if challenging task, and one that I think would be beneficial to continue. I just have to think up what to replace it with.
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 