Four Years of Psi-Wars

 I began the blog as a way of driving myself to finish some of my setting material and to share my approaches with everyone else.  My intention with Psi-Wars was to finish in a year, and I did! But it proved sufficiently popular that I've continued plugging away since.  Where are we now?

The wiki has been a big hit, and it occurred to me recently that I have all the "core rules" for running Psi-Wars up and on the wiki.  I have a few more thing to add, mostly investigations and "Epic Psi-Wars" stuff, such as monster hunting elements, but other than that, I have everything I need to run a game.

Similarly, technology is in a good place.  We have three major suppliers detailed, and while some material is in my notes rather than on the wiki, I have pretty much all military hardware in place.  What I still have left to do are:

• Civilian vehicles (cars, bulk transports, etc)
• Police vehicles
• A few remaining suppliers
• Syntech (slick, advanced super-spy stuff; vehicles and robots)
• Wyrmwerks (mad-science tech; likely just their robots)
• Startrodder (classic, ww2 inspired stuff; Vehicles and robots)

I also want to touch on more local, proprietary technology, such as the technologies of the Umbral Rim and the Arkhaian Spiral.

I'm also quite deep into templates at this point, though sometimes I think I make it more complicated than it needs to be.  The only templates I have remaining are:

• Commando
• Spy
• Security Agent
• Assassin
• The Philosopher/Mystic (which will be a doozy)

I find myself considering a few more new templates, but some of that spawned the Sidekicks rules, which patrons and backers have already had a chance to see.

What I find myself increasingly drawn towards now are aliens, philosophies and cultural elements.  Psi-Wars is getting to the point where people can readily play a "human standard" game and are becoming more interested in the more exotic parts of the setting, which means I find I field more and more questions about them.  Thus, it seems likely that this year will see more work on aliens.

What drives most of my material at this point are actual games or preparation for games.  I have three I want to aim at.

• The Heist!  This is the next playtest I run, and I have quite some notes, but it's not coming together quite as fast as I had hoped.  Still, I should have it up and running in a few months, with luck.  It drives me towards infiltration rules (up), common gear, currencies, Eldothic tech (because everyone loves the Eldoth), Zathare, and the sort of aliens one might find on Kronos (the Ranathim, the Keleni, Traders, the Mogwai and the Menhiri)
• An Umbral Monster-Hunter Game: I've been trying to rekindle connections with my friends in the US, and I offered to run them a game, and everyone agreed that just playing Psi-Wars would be easiest for me, as it allows me to continue to just focus on Psi-Wars writing.  Given the PC ideas and themes, this will tip-toe towards Epic Psi-Wars, which a lot of Psi-Wars fans won't object to
• A hypothetical Empire vs Alliance game: The secret council presses me for "hotspot details," ready-to-go campaign settings that outline flashpoints.  The most obvious such one is between the Empire and the Alliance, as that's the sort of game that's painfully obvious to any Psi-Wars newbie, and thus a good place to start.

I suspect most of this year will be geared towards getting those three things off the ground.  If I can get them done, then it'll be on to expanding other flashpoints or pushing into Epic Psi-Wars.  Given my pace of development, I sense that we're cresting.  Most of the "heavy lifting" work is done, and I find I'm spending a lot of time polishing elements, which suggests we're nearing the finish line.  Thus, I need to focus less on broad strokes and more on the practicality of actual campaigns, as it will show me where I'm missing material.

This has also been a great year for both my Patreon and SubscribeStar.  Between the two, I've hit record levels of donations from you, and this during a really rotten year, so thank you for that!  I'm trying to collate an art book as a thank you, but it'll take some time.  In the meantime, I'm working on:

• More discussion of Battlesuits in Psi-Wars
• A preview of the Arkhaians
• A preview of the Mug
• A poll for a servile race in the Umbral Rim
• A poll for a lordly race in the Umbral Rim

Chances are, I'll have these out this month.

On the IT front, I'm looking into setting up my own server and hosting my own wordpress and wiki.  Discord has also invited me to become a public server, but my moderator and I are hashing out the details on my rules for Discord.

Thank you, everyone, for another great year of Psi-Wars.  Thank you and welcome to everyone joining me this year.  Here's to another great year of Psi-Wars.