December Update

It has been a long time since the last update around here. It's been a few months since the last post, with the last update back in May! I've been meaning to put together an update since October, and here it is, almost January, and I'm just getting around to it.

A Year in Review

Although this project has slowed down, it's been a very busy year. There were 2 major milestones that occurred, and a handful of small project ideas. Back in March, Basic Rules v1.3 was released. This was a huge update that made some solid changes to the races and classes, creating a much more balanced game. The biggest changes came from the idea of sticking closer to D&D 5e's rules, rather than creating new systems.

In July we saw optional rules for Vampires and Lycanthropes with the release of Blessings & Curses. This was a considerable amount of work – a lot more than I had anticipated. With 150 pages of content, the majority of which was original work, it took nearly 4 months to put it all together. The largest amount of time and effort was spent researching lore and reworking it to tell relevant stories to suit the theme. It was a lot of fun and a new challenge.

Earlier in the year, there were some ideas put together for bringing factions into your game and a lot of sharing ideas of what eventually made it's way into Blessings & Curses. The community really came together with a lot of great additions and I had a lot of people reach out with interest in the project, which was very inspiring.

On July 4th, my daughter was born, which has made this year one of the best years of my life. On the other side, my mother's health has been failing, and we've spent a bit of time in hospital's, fearing the worst. She has fought hard and has survived, and we are very thankful to spend another Christmas together.

Those significant life events have taken up a lot of time this year. On top of that, work has been very successful – almost too successful. I spent most of the year working 6+ days a week while still not being able to keep up with deadlines. Hopefully next year will be a bit more manageable.

Looking Forward

In August, I started working on the next update for the project, a much smaller project than B's & Cs', but a very lore sensitive subject: Secrets of the Dwemer. The original plan was to have this out by October, but by the time October hit, I was aware I would be lucky if it came out at all this year. Coming in January, I will start sharing pieces of the project, similar to how vampires and subclasses from the previous product were previewed. We'll be looking at the Dwemer race, and the new Dwemer Engineer class, based heavily on the Artificer from Unearthed Arcana.

In the first quarter of the year, I'm hoping to put out Basic Rules 1.4. Most of the updates will be improvements from play testing over the last year – where many of your comments come through to make the game better.

After this year, and seeing some other fantastic work in the Elder Scrolls 5e community, I've been reconsidering my direction. As much as I love reading an reinterpreting the lore, there's such a massive time dedication involved, and I'm not sure if the reward is worth the effort. With the release of Xanathar's Guide to Everything, many of the player class and subclass options have already been created and balanced better than I ever could. I would like to review the book and put out a post with how to use the options presented in that book that fits with the lore of the Elder Scrolls. To finish off the conversion, the missing items are specifically related to world building. This would include a full bestiary, factions, and rare race options.

Until then, thank you all for keeping me motivated with this hobby. Thank you for your kind words and friendships. I'm excited for next year, and I hope I can bring you more goodies than last year.