November 2nd
Edit: I'm keeping this updated as I go along, with strikethroughs for completed items.
Let's take a look at what I need in order to publish:
- Add small amounts of connective and introductory text
- Attribution page, especially for the Society emblems. Some are from game-icons.net and I don't want to miss the attribution.
- Change to portrait layout
- Table of contents and index
- Page references fixed up
- Final review and check
Here are places I need to write more examples:
- Basic Actions, probably 5 more
- Conflicts, probably just one more - one where people are using guns rather than having built-in tech.
- Projects, say 3
- I have enough examples for Themes, happily.
- Taking complications. Call it 10.
- Sublight could use more plot seeds
Here are places I need to go over with a fine-toothed comb:
- The Optional Rules section
- Technology descriptors.
- Make sure the Transcendentals and the Patent Office are not inseparable. They also exist in To The Stars and The Powder Keg, in very different roles.
- The Advice section. This will need the most attention; I'll probably spend a week here. The Describing Plots header is empty!
- Gender and race representation in the book as a whole. I did a quick search for he vs. she, him vs. her, etc. and found about 40% female and 60% male. It's not awful, but it could improve. What I care about more is not having accidentally put my male or female characters in the same roles all the time, or having put (for example) white characters in different roles from black characters on a systemic basis.
Minor things:
- Thinking of adding a "loud" descriptor for tech that can be detected over large distances (e.g. wormhole transits), and maybe a "quiet" descriptor for things like spy meshes that are hard to detect.
- In several places the word "setting" needs to get replaced with the word "universe".
- Man do I need a better term than "Other Setting Components". These are cool things; that term makes them sound dull.
- Add a page on how Capabilities work for groups with Infrastructure. City Stringtech is not giant guns.
- In fact, Infrastructure and large-scale Effects are a big enough deal that all of it needs to get collected in one place, preferably in Game Play.
- I should add the story of the 2nd edition at the end, but I can do that after layout.
- Improve the look of the character sheet. It's too bare-bones right now.
Things that would be nice but are not necessary:
- Wouldn't hurt to have another item in the "unique character backgrounds" section. Skipped it.
- I could use another piece of fiction or three specific to the Patent Office setting, but it's not a necessity. Skipped this too. I can always add one later, before the full-art version.
- A last pass of proofreading.
Things I'm not doing:
- The Stored, Builders, Daoine, Disciples, Gaians, Logicians, Tao, Mechanica, and the category civs (CC, OW, Spacer) all only have one piece of fiction. Weird. Eventually I should write more, but it's not a priority.
- Powder Keg and Divide have an Inspiration section, but the others don't. I think that's probably ok; their stories are closer to the stories we usually tell in media today.
Success! High-level overview achieved. That's a better to-do list. And it seems fairly doable.
