The planning messages remain fairly short and simple, as my status isn’t changing much from one month to the next.

I know, it’s April and Architect of Worlds still isn’t out the door. Ken Burnside has been having a difficult few weeks, and the final textual edits on the book are still on his plate. At this point I’m not going to make any more estimates as to when the book will be finished – hopefully sooner rather than later, but it’s not in my control.

For the moment, I’m focusing on the Human Destiny setting bible and RPG sourcebook, with an eye toward being able to send an interim draft off to Chaosium at the end of May for their “design challenge” contest. I was able to push out a medium-sized update to my patrons on 31 March, and I’m hoping April will be a productive month for that project.

In particular, I’m going to be concentrating on those parts of the book that are directly tied to game mechanics. The Chaosium blog has mentioned that one of the things they’ll be looking for in a successful entry is clever and original ways to apply the Basic Roleplaying rules to support a game’s themes. That’s something I think Human Destiny can do very well, once it’s closer to completion – in fact, I have several game systems in mind that are not quite like anything that’s been done with BRP before. So that’s where my focus is going to be, leading up to the deadline for the contest.

Which is not to say I won’t be continuing to add to the setting background, of course. The sourcebook has a lot of outline sections that are still incomplete, and I’ve found it’s best to work where my muse wants to work on any given day.

So here’s the formal plan for April, very similar to the plan for March:

• Front Burner:
  • Architect of Worlds: Implement final-release changes to the text and turn the release draft over to Ken Burnside for publication once his editorial work is finished.
  • Human Destiny: Continue rewriting and adding to the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
  • Human Destiny: Write a new Aminata Ndoye story, set when she’s about seventeen years old and attending an academy for officer candidates for the interstellar service.
• Back Burner:
  • Great Lands: Begin work to revise the geography and back history of the setting.
  • Fourth Millennium: Resume work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
  • Fourth Millennium: Resume work to rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.

There may or may not be a charged release for my patrons this month, most likely some combination of new Human Destiny setting-bible material and a new Aminata Ndoye story. As always, that depends on whether my other commitments leave me enough time and energy to get creative work done.