Luka Rejec
CREATOR
about 1 month ago

Project Update: Updates From the Book Mines 1: Layouts and Labyrinths

Dear Goldenagers, noble backers,

I'd planned on including this update from the book mine in the pledge manager update from the EF crew so your inboxes don't get swamped, but some of the backend work is fiddly (UPDATE COMING EARLY NEXT WEEK WITH PLEDGE MANAGER START DATE! 😊). Definitely fiddlier than I understand, being just a pixel pixie. Thus—this is just a "Luka making stuff" update (this one's a bit late, next one will be a bit early).

BROAD STROKES:
Over the next months I'll be (I) finishing the books, then (II) all the other content for the campaign. See [far] below for the week-by-week breakdown of work. 

STAYING INFORMED:
(1) Once a month (every four weeks of work) an update from the book mines in the style of this post. I'll respond to comments on these posts.
(2) On my stratometaship patreon, I post roughly every two weeks, sharing illustrations, pdfs, cast-off bits of content.
(3) On the stratometaship discord (https://discord.gg/bDcc9WYus5) I offer a much closer look behind the scenes, with regular screenshots, pdfs, snippets, creative anguish, and more.

Again! Behold item (1) above. I don’t expect you to sign up for a discord server, much less join a patreon, to stay au courant! You'll be getting nice, compiled summaries once a month and I'm here in the comments.

Take care and welcome to Pumpkin Season.

—Luka.

***

NOW WEEK BY WEEK:

***

Week 7 - Oct 14–21
  • OGA Work: revising draft and laying out the Green Land region (that’s the one with the big living city and butcher bankers and ... well, see attached file for the first half—I wrote this update on a Wednesday). I’m testing the structure I setup the previous week to see if it works. I’m not tightening all the layout screws yet—I’ll do that after text edits. Otherwise, phew ... doing a layout thrice isn’t great.
  • OGA Art: colored the map of the Emerald City (see above)
  • New kitchen table: thank you IKEA.

OGA - Green Land region overview. Please note, this is a spread, so A4+A4. The font is actually a relatively eye-friendly size 10 (unlike UVG 1E which had size 9 and even 8.5 in places!). Yeah, I'm getting older too. Need bigger fonts. ;) The loose spacing is to leave room for edits / tightening. It'll get spot art later.

***

Week 6 - Oct 8–13
  • OGA Design and Content: finished structure revision. Completed half of local city maps / illustrations.
  • OGA Map: revised cartographic symbol font to use assets from Noto Symbols Sans, making it a free font (our golden age-cartographic), so everyone will be able to use it afterwards as well (see image for current character set, request additional location types in the comments). Updated map. Set up region map for layout test.
  • Travel Journal Design: laid out region + settlement pages
  • Working Version: Orange Pumpkin
  • Korean Alphabet Day - went to the zoo with the kiddo

Hey! Custom map icons for our golden age and the vastlands!

***

Week 5 - Oct 1–7
  • OGA Design and Content: continued revision of structure and content to final chapter structure (adventures + regions), opening of second adventure, including district generator for town environs (surrounding hexes).
  • VLG Content: revised background traits to be more in line with those in the UVG.
  • Travel Journal Design: layout of interior pages, tests of first pages, prep for test prints to see color and covers.
  • Working Version: Autumn Android
  • Korean Armed Forces Day - Jets and tanks flying by
  • National Foundation Day - Korean holiday celebrating the day when the Grandson of Heaven and Son of a Bear (Dangun) founded the first Korean state of Gojoseon in 2333 BC.

a region page (left) and a standard dot-grid page (right)

***

Week 4 - Sep 23–30
  • Project: prepared component descriptions for backerkit, reviewed and prepared files for dice production
  • OGA & VLG Design: revised structure to reduce size of appendices (moved twenty character paths from OGA to VLG since they are player-facing content, moved lexicon to OGA and stripped out UVG content to avoid duplication)
  • OGA Design: began revising structure to reduce miscellaneous chapter with content on gods, strange cosmologies, features, so they are located within the lands / regions where they are most pertinent. The goal is to cut page count down to 250 from current ~280.
  • OGA Content: began revising and adapting content to fit new structures, (e.g.  temples of the blue and yellow gods)
  • Working Version: Autumn Android

the VLG appendix has been largely replaced with the OGA paths - they fit better here, since they're very player character facing, compared to the rest of the OGA (which is referee facing)

***

Week 3 - Sep 16—22
  • vacation
  • Chuseok - multi-day Korean mid-autumn festival

***

Week 2 - Sep 9–15
  • vacation

***

Week 1 - Sep 2–8
  • Project: after-campaign review, priorities review
  • OGA content: completed travel tables & first adventure frame
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