I am still marching briskly forward towards the end of the DPnP’s first development milestone. However, this week has not been all about DPnP. I also got a chance to guest GM for a group of local gamers as well.
As for DPnP: things are moving along nicely. I have learned more than I ever thought possible within these few weeks. The overall program is taking shape nicely, and I am all but busting to get this wrapped and sent out. The major accomplishments this week was finalizing the core code that makes up the reports and objects that represent the different campaign elements in the Campaign Resource Manager. The CRM is part of the final DPnP release but is not part of the demo release. However, it is completely needed to create all the content for the Player Character Creator. Furthermore, it is also the component that will get some new products out quickly. This is the key component at this point. I hesitate to say (for fear of having to take it back later), but it seems that the key challenges have been overcome, and I just have to fill in the rest of the code. Next I take the data files and finnish up the Player Character Creator. The integration will be the last real challenge. For now, it is all just legwork.
This weekend is actually why I did not post sooner. I was contacted by a local GM interested in the system. He and his group invited me to guest GM their game. That also meant that I was using their chararacters, quickly modified to be used with E-RPG, and running their campaign in its current context. After pages of emails explaining the situation I ran a sidetrack adventure for the group.
The session lasted about 6-8 hours. The entire group was a blast to play with. There were interesting characters all around, and like my other groups, was nothing typical of your fantasy games. In fact, when selecting archetypes to represent (and then be modified) for their characters, they mostly selected NPC’s from the Paradigm sourcebook. There was alot of good role-playing using a wide range of skills. At one point a small combat encounter took place that resulted in a PC death. That was the only real game killer, and luckily it happened towards the end of the night. Once that event occured there was really no getting back on track.
Prepping for the game and then followup took a few days out of the normal development process. I still have some emails to respond to from that as it is. I spent the last two days catching up on the codework for DPnP, having just managed to solve some major roadblocks yesterday that threatened to have me beating my computer with a really big hammer. Roadblocks are past, and a good weekend of gaming, have enspired me to keep going. After I write this I will update some topics in the forums relating to DPnP development, then it is off to get some cofee, fold a load of laundry, then back into the DPnP code.
Until next time,
Happy Gaming.
