August Roadmap

Summer is almost finished. Here in the Netherlands, we just cracked some heat records in a mind-blowing heat-wave with temperatures I've not felt since a stint I spent in the Mojave Desert.  I managed to get a few things done, but I hadn't the time to really promote my blog or do much chatting, so if it seemed quiet, that's why.

If you missed it, I had promised to deliver:

• The Giant Action Vehicular Playtest
• Abstract Wealth for Psi-Wars
• The Diplomat Template

I delivered those and a disease design system for my Patrons.

Once again, I've had a vote, and it was... interesting!  For my general blogpost, my Patrons would like a look at the current state of my vehicles system.  Expect a patreon post (or two) and some additional discussion of GURPS Spaceships vs Vehicles and why some choices were made and what I would change.  GURPS Cabal Dust-Off came in a close second, so future polls my contain some occult options.  I've tried to keep away from those because I figure part of my appeal is that I'm one of the few GURPS blogs that doesn't talk about fantasy stuff and there's a lot of support for the occult and fantasy in GURPS right now and less support for sci-fi things, but man, I'm a devoted acolyte of Kenneth Hite and I've been building a library, so I could talk about it for quite a bit.

For Psi-Wars, my patrons voted for a deeper discussion of space rules in general, and it wasn't close so expect that as well.  It'll be a wiki post, but I'll update you on the blog when it happens.  For templates, Smuggler just squeaked past the early favorite of the Frontier Marshal.  So, expect to see the Smuggler on the wiki this month, and a post discussing what I changed and why I wrote it the way I did.

I found the vote for the templates very interesting, as it was completely different from the first vote (1st Vote: Frontier Marshal 2, Scavenger 1. Second Vote: Frontier Marshal 6, Scavenger 4). I'm not sure what changed.  Whims might have something to do with it, or what people are thinking about playing, but I notice more support in general for Rim characters after the Diplomat, and I suspect that's because people are interested in seeing how I handle Rim characters differently from Core characters.

I lost a patron (My wife, who was rearranging our finances and decided it wasn't worth the surcharge from Patreon for the amusement of wrecking some of my polls), but gained a new disciple.  I always love it when someone slides in for $1, and after a month or two, realizes "What the heck!" and ups their pledge.  It tells me I'm creating interesting content.  Views were also high last month, and have been trending high in general, but I must admit I don't pay much attention to them after that surge of bots wrecked all of my stats (why am I still on blogger instead of Wordpress?).

To my patrons: Thank you!  I have another surprise in store for you this month as a thank you.  And for my readers, thanks for being here though this rough patch, and I hope you enjoy this month's posts.