For a while, I was afraid that March would be yet another month without any big block of new material to share, but then I had a remarkably productive week and was able to produce a first interim draft for the “special cases” section of Architect of Worlds. So March ended on a good note, and now I need to think about April.

I think I’m going to restructure my priority list, starting this month. Instead of listing several projects as all being “Top Priority,” I’m going to restrict myself to one project that’s going to get the lion’s share of my time in the coming month. That’s the project that seems to me most likely to produce a block of new material suitable for sharing with patrons and other readers. Everything else is going to get pushed down to “Second Priority” (projects that may get some time, but probably won’t lead to a big block of new material) or “Back Burner” (projects that I’m keeping on the docket but don’t expect to work on at all during the coming month).

For the month of April, I think the Top Priority item is going to be to work on a rough draft of the Atlas of the Human Protectorate, a new tabletop-oriented book that describes the late-23rd-Century universe of the Human Destiny setting. Working on that project for the first time is also going to help me make progress on several items on this month’s Second Priority list:

• Give the current (v0.8) draft of the Architect of Worlds design sequence a thorough workout, looking for possible ambiguities and bugs to be corrected, possibly leading to a v0.9 release.
• Similarly, test and improve on the “working with astronomical data” (v0.1) and “special cases in worldbuilding” (v0.1) sections of Architect, possibly leading to v0.2 releases for those.
• Also, work out how my particular take on the Cepheus Engine system is going to represent this kind of setting, which is kind of different from the usual representation (3D space, more detailed world writeups, and so on). If I come up with some results here, those may go into the interim draft of the Player’s Guide, leading toward a v0.5 release for that.

So, without further ado, here’s the formal planning list for April:

• Top Priority:
  • Human Destiny: Start compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate, meanwhile giving the Architect of Worlds material a good workout. Produce a v0.1 interim draft (at least 10,000 words) by the end of the month as a charged release.
• Second Priority:
  • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
  • Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “special cases in worldbuilding” section, possibly leading to a free v0.2 update.
  • Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “working with astronomical data” section, possibly leading to a free v0.2 update.
  • Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
  • Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
• Back Burner:
  • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
  • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
  • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
  • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine).