On a whim I decided to start writing on Return to the World. Maybe not so much of a whim given how much I’ve been thinking on the game system and working out the details. I wrote the prologue and part of Chapter 1 before throwing myself into the peripheral materials. I really do have a case of complexity addiction as I keep on adding new mechanics. Some might argue that I’m reinventing the wheel as a lot of PnP RPGs like D&D have already done a lot of this legwork, but I enjoy putting together my own ruleset from scratch. Heaven help anyone who tried to adapt it, though. Even with me using pseudo-programming notation, I shudder to think of the mammoth task of actually programming this monster. LibreOffice has crashed so many times as I’ve been working on the spreadsheet, it’s not even funny. Anyway, I’m probably going to continue working on this for a while, but I’ll try to find time for some actual story writing as well. Stay tuned.

I don’t quite have the chapter structure for EM3 set in stone yet, but I finished five chapters. Several of those were already in progress, so it’s not quite as much headway as it might sound at first, but it’s still pretty respectable if I say so myself.

For a change of pace, I wrote Chapters 1 and 2 of Whose Dog Are You? (which I’m going to be referring to as “DonaInu” from now on, from the Japanese translation of the title: “Anata wa Donata no Inu Desu ka?“).

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of work in the peripheral materials of Welcome to the World. One of the gimmicks is that I’m really trying to make the World operate according to a clearly defined game system. I may need to go back and streamline the mechanics more as I think I’m suffering a bit from complexity addiction. We’ll see how things go.

I mentioned plans to plug some holes in NagaTen and TWH last week. I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I need to get on it. Stay tuned.