Hey guys,
Just wanted to drop in and give you the update I promised. I've been working heavily on the world building this past week and I'm pleased with the general shape of things, though I've got a lot more to do before it's even remotely pre-Kickstarter presentation ready. As you might imagine, I've had to greatly expand the scope of what the game will cover now that we won't have the tablet as a restriction, so busy, busy, busy. Rome was not world built in a day.
I've also had a number of conversations with potential team members who are going to help create our Kickstarter demo. Unlike a lot of the other projects that have launched of late, I'm very determined that on day one of our campaign, you're going to see SOMETHING from the actual game. Maybe it's just exploration, maybe it's really, really, really early combat. I can't say yet because until I've got butts in chairs slaving away for me, all else is hyperbole. I don't want to say "it will be exactly X, or Y, or Z" until I've got a reasonable chance of delivering X, Y. or Z. But I will say you'll have a lot more than a pencil sketch, and more than just a video of me sitting in a chair talking about how AWESOMELY MIND BLOWING this project will be. You guys want (and deserve) more than that before you commit to the Betrayal at TBD train, and I'm going to do my best to live up to my end of the bargain.
Of course with all of the above said, it's going to take a long time. The campaign won't launch this month, and likely it'll be more like six months before we're anywhere close to being ready enough to even think of firing up the game's crowdfunding. But the promise I WILL make is that before it even goes to Kickstarter, I'll be in here with details to share so that I can hear what YOU guys have to say.
NOW
On to another topic that I'll probably start as a seperate thread, but I wanted to share it here first. As some of you might or might not have been aware, I was the appointed loremaster for the Wildman campaign from Gas Powered Games. Had the game funded, I would have been the guy not only creating the story, and dialogue, and worldbible for everything, but I was even on the block to write a tie-in novel for it. I was mondo jazzed about the prospect because not only was I going to be working with some of my favorite devs again (I worked with them on Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander), but after twenty three years of working in the biz, I was finally going to have an official excuse to write a novel. Except, of course, the campaign failed, and there went my income for the first half of the year. KAPOOF! So then I began thinking about what I was going to replace that with, which is where the Facebook discussion on my wall about Betrayal at TBD came from in the first place. Of course I knew I couldn't spin that up very quickly, which meant that I'd need something else I could develop much faster without having think about game engines, and I DID already have my mind set on writing a novel, so....
In a couple of weeks I'll be kickstarting my first novel. I didn't want this to be a shock to all of you because from an outside perspective I don't want you to think that I was in any way, shape, or form dropping the Betrayal project. This is a smaller project that plays to what I'm best known for --- i.e. storytelling --- and it doesn't require a team of people wrangling up sketches, unity demos, and play mechanics before a campaign. People get a fun fantasy novel out of it, and I can keep the lights on, the roof over my family's head, and food on the table as I both work on the book and on the design needed for Betrayal. (And I know you're thinking a book and a game at the same time? Madness! But I've done it before. I created all the narrative assets for Dungeon Siege while I was also writing "Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games". And I simutaneously did the writing/design for Lords of Everquest while also writing for Champions of Norrath. So this is familiar territory.)
Since this is a GAMES forum and not a book forum, I'm not going to muddy this up any further talking about the book details other than to say it will be a fantasy story that combines magic, adventure, court intrigue, and espionage in one novel. If you're interested in keeping up with it, just follow me or send a friend request on Facebook as I'll be launching the novel campaign from there.
In the meantime, as you might imagine, I have a MOUNTAIN of things to do, so I probably won't be doing daily check ins here, but I'll be back in a week or two to give you an update on how things are progressing with collecting my Betrayal team.
Best,
Neal
