A year ago, on 3rd March 2013, I spent the evening in front of the computer and watched as the campaign to fund the project of my dreams broke through its stretch goals and finally confirmed that I would get to write the Official RPG of the Elite Universe. A great night, and one that will forever be up there with the greatest things I've done in my life. And you are the people I have to thank for that. 

That rollercoaster ride began the rollercoaster ride that has been the journey towards trying to achieve the targets I set myself, and I admit that a year down the line my elation is not as strong as it was back then. There have been problems, and there has been difficulty and the targets that I set through the Kickstarter goals haven't all been reached and, more importantly, will likely not be fulfilled on time. This post will be a retrospective look at the last year, the ups and the downs and the progress made.

I'll start with the last thing on that list - the progress.

Progress Report - One Year On

The first draft of the book is about half done. The text elements are:

Character Generation: reviews so far seem to point to it being good and workable.

Game System: under review and awaiting feedback on playtesting. So far things look positive and there a few good pieces of feedback to process on that.

Background History: complete and ready for review.

Roleplay Eras: 3125 complete, 3200 under revision and 3250 started. 3300 not started yet.

Adventure Templates: drafted and ready to be filled out

Short Story submissions: Eighty percent received and approved by me, still waiting on two submissions.

All told, the word count so far is 97,000+ stretching over 298 A4 pages so far, and once I've finished my draft the text will be submitted to Frontier to ensure that the content is OK to release. 

In other areas of the product, the main artwork is being drawn up by Arto, and two pieces have been finalised. I have made significant progress with the research into production of the counters and have a solution for most of the major problems with the production. One major obstacle was that I wanted the construction of the counters to be accessible for both non-card modellers and experienced card modellers and I think I've achieved that. finalising this is one of the things tabled for when the text is submitted for review.

Dice Rings

I have the fabled dice rings in my possession now. These will be sent out as separate items to the Elite dice, but if there are people to whom both Elite Dice and Dice Rings are to be sent they will be getting them in the same package. Again, my priority at the moment is the draft of the book. Once that's in hand then I will start putting more dice in envelopes and sending them out.

That's it for this update. I was going to write up a whole treatise on the last year, including an in-depth outline of the exact stuff that happened both before and during the project that ended up causing the six-month sabbatical, but I figured that you might not want to read all that personal, touchy feely stuff so I deleted it. I've saved it, though, so it might be posted another time. If you are interested in knowing the gory details of the period between August and December 2013, let me know and I'll post it on the blog on the website.

Until next time, keep in touch and thanks for your support.

Dave