This may be the last time I touch the Advanced books for a while. I love them and will no doubt come back at some point, but I have a bunch of other fun projects in the works, including Monster Ambulance - which is very close to ready too! It's a busy time here.

The first release candidate for Into the Impossible can be downloaded below. I'm sure there are still typos in this release - please do report them if you find them - but the content is all set to go.

This book adds more Expressions, adds more detailed Infrastructure-level Expressions, gives some examples of old busted magic, and talks more about how magic effects various civilizations in unique and different ways. It also has a quickref section at the back for things like Loud and Silent magic.

Here are the downloads:

PDF format (19 MB)
epub format (400 kB)
mobi format (200kB)

Work on physical copies will be started after I feel like enough typos have been spotted. Because of the current… (indicates the entire world)… and the resulting shipping and printing issues, the turnaround for proof copies will probably be longer than usual, so… yeah, who the hell knows, pandemic 4 lyfe apparently.

Here's the beta version of Into the Impossible if anyone is interested. New Expressions, new infrastructure-level theurgy, old broken tech, and a few miscellaneous references.

PDF version (16.5 MB)
epub version (378 kB)

It feels really good to have this released. I'm looking forward to seeing how it does, and trying not to put too much weight on that. :)

The one you're probably going to get tripped up the most by is that I've renamed the types of Expressions. It used to be Innate -> Universal -> Exclusive -> Grand Wonderwork. Now, it's Universal -> Common -> Restricted -> Grand Wonderwork. I realize that having "Universal" change levels isn't great, but it feels like a much more sensible scheme.

I've made some small tweaks to how the natives of the Worlds Beyond are handled and what their restricted volition looks like. This mostly impacts the Sovereigns and their mid-to-long-term plots. There have also been some tweaks to the Unroyal, most importantly the sidebar on page 200 (which is now named "Exfiltration" instead and removes/patches some of their previous lore).

Other changes have been fairly small - just formatting and spelling and such. I just wanted to flag those two because the first can be confusing and the second might change some of how you see those civs.

So I'm bowing out. Resigning from the project. Colin has my blessing and encouragement to remove my name from the acknowledgements.

Many thanks to the Chandra X-ray Telescope for the new corner image! https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast29sep99_1/

I've also started putting together the DriveThruRPG page for the game.

Semi-optimistic timeline:

• Proofreader is done in 2-4 weeks.
• I take 1-2 weeks to incorporate everything.
• I upload the new file to DriveThru and order a proof.
• It arrives in… (checks DriveThru again…) Oh. "Hardcover books shipping to the US and Canada are estimated to print in 30 business days", plus usually 1-2 weeks for shipping. Oof. That's a LONG turnaround for proof copies. Maybe I'll do a proof with the Interregnum Edition just to check the colors, because otherwise it's an extra 6 weeks every time I want to try a different color adjustment.

Will keep everyone updated.

The B-side is entirely songs I already knew. I actually made the B-side first, thinking it would be the whole soundtrack. I didn't realize it until I was done, but the B-side was just a warmup for the A-side.

The A-side has a mix of artists I know well and some who are completely new to me - and let me tell you, I found some fucking awesome musicians in the course of making it. While B has one of the most discordant songs I actually enjoy, the A-side has harsher music in general, along with some serious emotional gut-punches.

Both sides tell the same story.
Correction: Each side tells a story around the same events.

The A-Side
The B-Side

As many of these as possible are from the artists' own YouTube channels.

PDF version

Looks kinda fuzzy in this version for some reason, but the original is perfectly crisp.

Difficult Play and Safety Tools


This game revolves around themes of…

• The use and abuse of power

• Political, cultural, and academic colonialism

• What we become when we are limited by our desires and beliefs rather than our minds or bodies


Any or all of these may result in emotionally difficult play, particularly where they overlap with players’ real-world experiences, and especially for those who have had bad experiences with abuses of power in their lives. To improve the play experience for everyone, there are three rules that apply while you are playing Sorcerously Advanced:


1. The Biology Rule: Anyone can leave the play space at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, with or without explanation, with no penalty. The GM or players can inquire if they’re concerned – “You ok?” “Did something happen?” – but no clarification is required.

2. The Good Friends Rule GMs and players gladly accept the task of adjusting their stories to avoid causing pain or disgust. All participants are mandated to respond to indications of concern or revulsion, such as: Ughhh; Um…; Ew; Oh lord; Hold on; Where is this going; Can we not? Any channel is acceptable: verbal, note passing, text messages, facial expressions, a raised hand, etc. The response should be immediate, and might include: a time-out to discuss with the group, a private conference, or simply asking what to do. Good phrases to remember include “Are we ok?” “Should I wind that back?” “Should we skip this?”

3. The Self-Determination Rule: Let others determine their own levels of comfort. If you read pain or disgust in someone’s manner, bring it up – but if they tell you they’re ok, let the matter rest. Everyone has their own reasons for playing RPGs.


These are fairly unstructured rules, are intended to work within the social norms found in many gaming groups. Our hope is that more “natural” interactions will make it easier for people to bring up when they’re uncomfortable before that turns into pain. If you’d like a set of tools with a bit more structure to them, we recommend starting with the Tabletop RPG Safety Toolkit, a free resource. You can find it at

[
https://bit.ly/ttrpgsafetytoolkit 
https://bit.ly/ttrpgsafetytoolkit]

Sorcerously Advanced: Interregnum Edition (PDF download, ~80MB)

Page xx references and some typos will still be present. Everything else is, at least in theory, just about ready for publication.

I've consolidated all the chapter documents into a single massive 250-page-plus document. This is one of the weakest points in Affinity Publisher, but we'll give it a shot because it should enable a much smaller file size. Seriously, Affinity, book docs. Seriously. You are not building a better workflow here.

My next steps are fixing the "page xx" cross-references, making yet another layout pass for all the styles that broke during the document merge, and sending it to the proofreader. I also have to (ugh) make decisions about uniform capitalization (or lack thereof) for game terms.

As part of this I'll be posting a Release Candidate version later this week.

Ahem.

So yes, more advice, nicer diagrams, some layout work, some image replacement. Today I'm writing one of the bits I've been looking forward to most: the rules for crossover games between Sorc and SA2.

Putting characters from one game into another is easy. Building hybrid characters took more consideration. Natures and Capabilities aren't really the same things, metaphysically speaking. They just sit in the same places in the game mechanics and have similar effects.

In the end I decided to go with a fairly simple approach, letting players mix-and-match the two with some adjustments to Power scores if someone builds a 12-attribute monstrosity. Power is a more general word than Tech, so it won out as the thing-that-balances-Import term for hybrid characters.

I'm still deciding what to do for characters who are built without certain groups of attributes. What do you do if someone lacks Cognitech, Mystery ,and Trickery? What if they lack both Self and Biotech? I could point people to the Disconnection rules, but SA2 handles a lack of attributes a little differently. I want to make things as easy to remember as possible so that folks don't constantly have to flip open the book they're not familiar with.

I ditched a few images that didn't fit with the way the people of the Basin are described. All of them got replaced. Still looking for more stock art that has appropriate folks in it, but I do not have high hopes.

Current page count: 256. Auspicious number.

Remaining items:

• Finish the Advice section.
• Check gender and representation balance.
• Layout tweaks

Since I've got plenty of time before the end of the month, I'm going to spend some extra time on Advice, improve the existing diagrams and make more, and really buckle down to try to find art that represents the characters who actually live in this world.

The first person I asked about proofreading said no, so I gotta check my second option (who has done great work for me in the past). I would not be the least bit surprised if that takes more time than just through the end of November, so I'll have a PDF put together sometime the week of Thanksgiving for those interested in early access.

After tons of brainstorming and some Excel, I've finalized the Power calculation at something very close to what SA2 has. Your Power is the average of your top 2 Nature scores. If all your other Nature scores are 1, subtract 1. Repeat for each Tradition.

This puts Power slightly higher than Tech overall, but I'm ok with that, especially since Sorc has the Worst Enemy Rule and Suff doesn't.

This probably means that the full-blown sample characters are up next.

I've also found a few places where the text styles were not what I expected (bullets based on the Base style instead of the Body style like they should be). I'll need to do a bunch of style checks before I can do final layout. I'm just glad I can see the difference between 12pt and 11pt text.