And so the Klixians are born . . .

One of the playtesters pointed out that I didn’t have an insectoid race in the game, or at least not a playable one. He suggested that type of race was common in most sci-fi games, etc. I’m really not sure why having an insect race never occurred to me, since they’re usually pretty cool. Although I don’t plan to include such a race when the game is published, I have been thinking for awhile about what to include in a future expansion. For a long time I’ve thought about having a supplement focusing on the planet Rochan, so it occurred to me that I could include a new playable race in that expansion. They would fit together well because I’ve always envisioned Rochan as being crisscrossed with mining tunnels beneath the surface. Perhaps the insect race would also live underground (to escape Rochan’s inhospitable environment), and come in contact with the miners (perhaps in conflict).

So this week I started brainstorming about this new race. I found a nice model on the Daz3D site and from that I starting thinking of a name. I went through several ideas, but ultimately decided (at least for now) on the name Klixian. The name comes from their language, which is a series of clicking sounds. In other words “Klix” sounds like “clicks”. I like the use of the letter K and X in the name also because it gives it an alien quality.

As for the racial stats, those are still up in the air, although I’d like to incorporate some psionics, perhaps even a so-called Hive Mind. Right now only the Dahl have good PSI skills, so it would be nice to have another race to give additional choices for players. Also, while doing research on insects, I found that ants have something called the Metapleural gland which secretes antibiotics. By adding that to the Klixians, I can give them a high Disease resistance modifier. I will likely give them a decent Radiation resistance as well.

While I’ve been thinking about the new playable race, I’ve also been working on the game itself, adding changes based on playtester comments. I plan to publish a new draft (verison 0.4) next week. I’ve also been doing new renders for the paper miniatures (see image). I’m thinking about calling the product Cardboard Citizens, or something like that. ;-)

Art and Miniatures

I spent a couple of hours yesterday working on renders in Poser for the paper miniatures I mentioned in my previous post. Since I haven’t worked too much in Poser lately, it was a time consuming process. Also, Poser crashed on me (effectively went “poof!”) so I had to redo some setup. All in all, I only got six sets done, which include three middle-class and three aristocrat figures. Each set has three renders, one from the front and one from the 135 and 225 degrees. I have many more to do, but it’s good to get at least a few renders under my belt. See below for a sample:
So, last Thursday while I was driving home from work, I had an idea to hopefully drive some additional traffic to the Chronicles website. Since the game originated from ideas for a book and then an online graphic novel, it seemed logical that I should have artwork and prose featured on the website. In other words, I’d like to get artists to show their works and writers to post their fiction on my site. In both cases, they would need to have either a sci-fi theme or, preferably, relate directly to the Imperium universe. As I envision it, the artwork would lead directly to the artist’s site or perhaps some other site like DeviantArt. Either way, my site would act as an affiliate, hopefully attracting people to the artist’s sales site. At the same time, it would hopefully attract people to my site as well. Of course, I’m not sure how well any of that would work, but it’s just an idea.

An Organic Process

I sent out the July newsletter this week. Not a lot to really talk about except a progress report on how playtesting is going. In many ways it’s an organic process: of the people who have shown an interest, at least half have not been able to actually take part. Half of those couldn’t do it for technical reasons of one kind or another. One person didn’t have steady internet access and another person needed the rules in printed form (which is a hefty 240 pages). Since I’m incorporating the testers’ comments into new drafts every couple of weeks, it’s vital that the testers receive the drafts via email (as opposed to regular mail), so internet access is very important.

Another group of people who ended up not taking part simply disappeared. I basically stopped getting email replies. I assume those individuals simply decided to do other things (or perhaps they just really hated the game). I don’t think that last part is the case, although there’s no real telling. In the end, those who remained have made very good comments and I’ve found their input invaluable.

To that end, I’ve been making several changes since publishing version 0.3 of the draft rules. Most recently, I’ve added a whole section to the Starship chapter involving component damage when a ship takes a critical hit. This was directly due to the comments from playtesting that suggested the rules needed it. I had thought of it before, but left it out, but apparently I did so in error. :-)

During this period, I should also work on a supplement to the game: namely, paper miniatures. I’ve mentioned this before, but I haven’t really done much since. They are 28mm miniatures printed on paper (or card stock) that players can cut out and use to play the game. A handful of others offer paper miniatures, but mine will be tailored especially for my game, including creatures and other baddies featured in the rules.

Prose

As I may’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been adding some prose (story) at the beginning of each chapter. Today I wrote one for the Encounters chapter, which features creatures and other things that go bump in the night. I can’t say I’m completely happy with how this little story came out, but it’s not too bad hopefully. ;-)

The tunnel opened into an immense burial chamber. The explorer shined her flashlight around the room. The beam cut through the dusty air, landing on columns encrusted with cobwebs and ancient writings. The light fell on a sarcophagus in the center of the room. She stepped closer. Remains from a cave-in covered the stone coffin, but the explorer had no doubts about what lay underneath. She had spent years searching and now, finally, she was inches from her goal. She brushed aside the webs and stood with eyes ablaze with discovery. The red eyes of a giant spider glimmered almost as bright as it slowly descended from above, its jaws awaiting another meal.

The Playtesting Adventure

The epic adventure called playtesting continues . . .

Right now I’m working on draft 0.3, incorporating most of the changes found by playtesting so far. The biggest change, from a headache stand point, has been re-alphabetizing the abilities. I had the descriptions split up into groups (ie: General, Combat, Psionic, etc.), but one of the playtesters said this made looking up abilities difficult (unless you knew which group it was in). So, I spent a couple of days doing a lot of cutting and pasting in Word until they were in the correct order. While I was doing that, I corrected some inconsistencies in my naming conventions too. I think it’s a lot better now.

I’ve been trying to use Google Docs to get new drafts to the playtesters from a centralized spot, but my PDF is just too big apparently so I was getting server errors. I discovered today, however, something called Google Sites which is a website editor. From there I’m able to upload docs and have others download . That seems to be working, so I’ll try to use that from now on. It also has a place for adding comments and announcements, which may prove useful.