Comment on “The Projects Continue”

Finally have time to go over some of the streetvendor material. Sorry for not saying something sooner even though you took the time to email me during the Patreon kerfuffle.

First off, I love your decision to go all in on rich and informational text. It’s been a long long time since I used any published RPG material, from WOTC or from smaller publishers or from independent, because none of them know how to actually describe anything (because they don't know about the world, only about generic fantasy). They just give me a bunch of badly written cliche flavor crap I don’t need. I can open a history book and get 10 gallons of “flavor.”

So I’m excited for the street vendor guide: definitely think the basic premise of the material so far is filling a hole in the market, at least from the perspective of people like us, your readers, who want to play games that are rooted in managing and applying information about a world.

Second, I believe you’ve mentioned that you will be buying some illustrations for the book. If I may give my two cents: the way that splat books fuck up when using images is to give “evocative” character and scenery artwork. Sorry, artists, but the web offers more such pictures than I could ever survey. What’s harder for me to find, at least in a form that is trustworthy and useful at the table, are diagrams, blueprints, plans. not representations of people and places, but visualizations of information. It seems those kinds of material would fit perfectly with the SV Guide.

Third, could you please (when you have time) say a bit more about the relationship between your trade tables and the book contents? you mentioned in the draft of the book introduction that you are using your tables to generate the prices at a particular market. But I don’t think we’ve seen the design of the tables since 2018 or 19, so I’m curious , for instance, how many of the goods in the book already existed on your tables and how many will be new research. (I know all the writing is going to be new!)

Thanks for sharing your progress and the pictures! Great to hear it is flowing smoothly.