Category Archives: News

For a long time, this website has been my way of sharing The Artifact with the world. Lately, my focus has been shifting over to using DriveThruRPG and itch.io to share projects because they accurately track the games being downloaded. Because of that, I’ve neglected the website here.

A playtest print for The Artifact 4th edition has been available for a while on DriveThru, so here’s a link to that. Slowly all the downloads will be hosted elsewhere. As I mentioned, there are features on these sites that allow better tracking.

The Artifact fourth edition playtest print

I Started to lay out the fourth edition book, making corrections to the text as I went. Then I started to realize the layout was pointless without the art. I could just jam the same pictures back into the book and that would be fast. I could also do all new illustrations for the book, but I haven’t been drawing in a long time. I’ve mostly been writing. I did a little warm up, I like the result, but I don’t really think it’s good enough.

I like the color and even the raw brushstrokes, but I don’t think I’m a good enough artist. Maybe it’s okay if this was scaled way down the poor quality is less noticeable. It was a picture that popped into my head and I wanted to try it out.

I could go in a completely different direction with the art. I know artist hate all the AI art that’s popping up, but I’m already seeing it in game books that are selling well. It would be easier and cheaper, but I’d probably get someone yelling at me about it. They say even negative publicity is still publicity, but taking that attitude is distasteful to me. Who knows? At the rate the argument is going, maybe by the time I finish everything the RPG scene will be so full of AI art that no one will notice.

Someone could ask why I don’t just pay someone for art. That answer is simple. I don’t have any money. I’d love to drop a few thousand on some art and get something I’m really proud of, but I’ve never made any money on this game. I give it away for free. Even if I started charging for it, I doubt I could make any money.

I’ve been distracted by other projects. I recently brought my four novel Glyph series to a close. I wrote a non-fiction book. I moved. Excuses all around.

That doesn’t mean that nothing has happened in my silence. I’m on the third development print of the fourth edition. I’ve said this update is a big one, and to be honest, it’s usually easier to start something brand new than to buckle down and work on the new edition.

I think that after one more development print, I’ll have a coherent game that covers all the territory of third edition. You know what needs to happen then? Play testing!

That will also take time, but I think that I’ll also release the bare bones book for others to poke at before play testing is done.

I keep asking myself if this change is worth it. Is it worth upending a rule system that’s been in use for 27 years? I hope so. I think so. Even when it’s all done, there’s a few hundred pages of material that also needs to be adapted to the new system. Some of that will come easier, all that will need to happen is a scan through and update of values. In the case of the Player’s Handbook, the big thing that needs to be updated is the equipment building system. I have a few fans that absolutely love the detail of the extant system, but it’s impenetrable to most.

I’m currently just over half way through the third development print in my edits. The big thrust of this print is harmonizing all the changes and most of that is done. Now the thing I’ve realized is that a lot of the lore that we’ve built up over years of play isn’t available in the book. It really should be, so that’s my current project.

I really could get this done if I don’t start any new projects. I was lamenting that I didn’t have a coherent idea for my next novel. With that in mind, I’m taking this opportunity to focus on fourth edition. If I don’t get distracted again, I could be done before the game’s 30th anniversary.

Sometimes I feel like fourth edition is never going to happen. Is it taking it’s sweet old time? Yes. Is progress being made? Surprisingly also yes.

The guts of 4e is there. A lot of the bulk text and stat blocks are also there. We can actually play 4e with me running it. It’s just getting it to a state where other people can run it. So what still needs to happen?

Maps

This is something I didn’t think I’d be redoing. I’ve been looking for a program that could actually draw the maps. The old program I used will no longer run on any computers I have. I’ve tried, really. I was certain I’d need a vector graphics program. At one point I tried looking into CAD but that was either too expensive or didn’t offer the control I needed.

I finally tried Affinity Designer and I think we have a winner. It’s not quite as accurate as I’d prefer, but with the current maps in 3e a lot of the detail didn’t show up on the printed page anyway. What Affinity Designer can do more of is adding color, something that was limited in the last program I used. I don’t know if it’s surprising or just a testament to the quality of Affinity’s software but it’s also the company that makes the page layout software I’m using.

Which brings us to…

Layout

I despaired for a while at the challenge of rebuilding the tables in 3e for 4e. The table creation tools on Affinity Publisher are not the greatest. Then they introduced the ability to import tables from Apple’s suite of office apps. The tables will need to be tweaked but they can mostly be imported now.

That’s the brute work of figuring out layout though. I have some issues that are a little higher on the scale of page layout. Ones that I don’t really have any answers to.

What fonts should I use? I’ve traditionally stuck with Georgia for The Artifact. Should I change it? I’m not sure. I think a change in the heading font could help with the other problem I have with layout. That being…

The Artifact has been called a “text wall” and I can’t disagree. I would like to fix that problem but I get weirded out with too much white space on the page. I’ve seen layouts that use whitespace well but I’m never satisfied with my attempts at it. I have a weird quirk that I feel like the more text on the page the more “value” the page has. It’s wrong, I know, it’s just hard to get past it.

In general, I have no idea what I want to do with layout.

Actually writing too

So what I have written is a lot of fragmented sections. Although the main ideas are there, I’ll probably write it all over again. I’m having a crisis of confidence that I can express the game well. I think I’m doing better than I ever have, only it’s in ways I’ve never tried before, so none of it is tested.

There are a lot of new rules that are much different than what came before. Actually that’s the problem. They’re mostly a jump from the old rules, doubling down and amplifying the things I really liked in 3e. But they’re different enough that it would look alien to most people that have played 3e. It would be bad writing to explain how you played 3e and then describe why the system of 4e is an extension of those ideas. New players don’t care and I doubt it would really help experienced players.

I also have a lot of writing to do for the GM’s section. One of the big changes is going from GM to Facilitator but that’s just a change in the vocabulary. The real work is that I want to better describe how to run a good game on The Artifact.

I’ve found out that there are specific themes that work, pacing that builds on those themes and a mindset that goes with them. Straying from that formula doesn’t seem to work well. Describing the formula is a new trick that I’ve taken a few stabs at.

Art

I don’t have an idea of what I’d like to do with art. I could draw some more pictures but I’m not sure I’m up for a whole art re-work like I did for 3e unless I come into an unexpected inheritance and can afford to pay people.

So, that’s basically it. A bunch of things that are huge and need resolving. Once figured out a lot of these might become obvious. Until then, I’m muddling along, hoping for an epiphany or two.

As I approach putting together a new version of The Artifact, I’m continually asking what needs to change. One of those things that probably should change is the software being used to lay out the book.

In the past I’ve used Apples Pages 4.0 to put together the books. If you were unaware, the current version of Pages is 7. The reason I use an old version is because Apple significantly nerfed the product at version 5 and you just don’t have the level of control there was in 4.

I’ve worried that an update in the OS would make Pages 4 stop working someday. That hasn’t happened yet thankfully.

The last game I put together was with the free beta for Affinity Publisher. It seems very capable, although The Artifact is by far bigger than that project.

Something that gives me pause using Affinity Publisher is that it’s not easy to import tables and The Artifact has a lot of tables. That would end up a hard slog. It would give me a chance to catch errors but would also introduce the chance of me introducing errors.

What AP (Affinity Publisher) does afford is better control over layout and the opportunity to go to introduce a new style for 4th edition. I don’t know what that style should be, though.

I could try bringing the book into a 6×9 format. That would ballon the page count and would require a lot more art assuming 1 piece of art per 4 pages as I tried to get for 3e. There are a number of people that strongly prefer 6×9 but I’m not sure it would suit The Artifact. For one, the maps would have to be reduced in size and that would make details less noticeable.

I could bring in a new set of fonts but I hate picking fonts. Georgia, while nothing exciting is a solid and respectable font.

The other big concern is that AP is an unproven solution. Sure it works and is stable, but will it last as a platform? I think the answer is yes. The Affinity suite is taking on Adobe’s unattainable prices and I think that’s going to win them a lot of small publishers. Still, the original versions of The Artifact were layed out on a program called MacPublisher that went belly up. While that gives me pause, I know my current solution is also going away.

Looking at the big picture, moving to AP is going to be a slog and it raises a lot of questions but I know I should probably do it.