The Echoes of Heaven Developer’s Journal

So that cancer news wasn’t good. My mother’s had a double mastectomy since I last posted and she starts chemo this week. I post about that more on Playtesting.net.

As for Echoes, here’s the state of things. The entire thing has been written and is back from editing. I haven’t run through the edits on all the versions of Part 8, which is the rules section, and therefore needs to be redited in it’s entirety for every system.

The main document is back from proofing as well.

There are some changes I need to confirm are in the right documents. These were added to the adventure during the last playtest and I just need to double check they are correctly handled, and if not, mark them for proofing and moving over from the HARP version.

Finally, my license with HERO Games expired. We don’t have the new contract yet, but I believe we’ve agreed on terms, so I don’t foresee an issue there.

All the art is in except for one batch. That artist was brought in to pick up the art from another and I haven’t been rushing him, so that’s not his fault. What I’ve gotten from him is great.

I think that’s everything important. Things are pretty busy with the cancer and the chemo, but I’m still plugging a way. Thanks for you patience.

Hi. I was planning on posting an update on status this week, followed by some insights into time management. However today I discovered that a lump my mother found in her breast doesn’t look good to the doctors. They’ve drawn the biopsy, but they aren’t expecting good news.

I might be a little out of it the next day or two. I’d appreciate any prayers, meditation, or general well wishes you might throw our way. Her name is Patricia Christine Adams.

Thanks for your time and your attention.

Bob

You must go to Schlockmercenary.com. You must read up on the delightful product XDM. You must buy it.

If you’re going to GenCon, buy it anyway (if you ship it priority I bet you’ll get it before you go). When you get there, buy another. If you hand Howard both, I bet he’d doodle something special for you. Tell him I said he would. But you have to buy one now. And one there.

Actually, you love your family, don’t you? They each need one. Oh, I understand. No, no. No need to explain why you don’t love your family. I get it. I won’t tell them. I mean, I will probably never see them, right? This will likely never come back to haunt you. I’ll just go weep for your cold, stony, heart.

I need to go rethink my view on humanity.

Or DO I?

The HARP Version is kinda done. I’ll still get notes back and have to fix them, but we’ve gotten through the adventure’s notes, and those are certain to be the most complicated.

I did the d20 Teaser though Act II. Act II has a really awful fight in d20. Right now I have it calibrated so everyone will likely die without a little luck if their characters are vanilla (because most d20 characters are more powerful than that) with a note of warning to the DM to adjust for his party.

So I will likely have a big part of that version finished this weekend. That’s the last one.

I’ve done an art audit and sent it to the artists. Only one’s replied.

That’s where we are.

Tonight I finished my first draft of the HARP version of Product 5. Each of these is a huge accomplishment and I’m more than a little happy right now. I rewarded myself by taking a break and doing half a fumble chart from Critical Blunders. I also finished an art audit of what I have for this book and what I still need. I think I’m going to play with a little pagemaking now and launch into the d20 version tomorrow.

Sigh.

This product will NOT break me.

I feel like it’s time to update you, and to continue to update you more frequently (we’ll see if I follow through this time, but that’s how I feel).

So let’s talk about work habits. The move and the new job hurt me a lot. I wasn’t able to figure out how to work on the new, tighter schedule, and it seemed like product 5 was insurmountable.

I think that turned around when I listened to the Webcomics Weekly podcast this week. They were talking about a piece of time management software and they were talking about tasks that take ten minutes or two minutes. I can’t use the software, because it’s primarily for Macs, but it got me to thinking about how I organize time. I’ve thought of product five in terms of two hour tasks and ten hour tasks, but it really isn’t. It’s a series of ten minute tasks. Sometimes you want to do them all together, so you don’t forget where you are in the process–I ran into one of them last night–but still I’ve been looking at blocks of time and thinking they were too small, when really they weren’t.

Anyway, I explained that because I thought some of you might benefit from that time-management revelation. I’m really here to update you.

I have a sharp guy, I mean a really SHARP guy, who looks at the HARP material before it goes into pdf. He gives me notes, pointing out HARP rule interactions I might have missed and some story points. He’s found flaws in my products that came from the original HARP materials. He also gives story notes, which is wonderful, because he’s the only gamer who looks at the finished text of an adventure and has never played it (my editor is a playtester, for instance, so I might think something is obvious and he might agree, when really it isn’t). Anyway, a big step in any product is when I start having him give me notes.

So here is where I was when this week started:

RM version written and stattted.
HERO version written and statted.
Part 8 of HARP version completed (I think, I’ll need to go over it again.)
d20 version mostly done (all the nasty conversion was done by my converter, but they might not all be typed in right).
4e version of the adventure done (for the playtest), but the book part of the product is untouched.

So this week I started hammering on the HARP version of the adventure. I sent him the Teaser Tuesday morning and he’s sent me back notes I haven’t finished. I believe I sent him Act One the same day.

Tuesday night I did most of the nickel and dime conversion for Act Two, all but one monster which just needs to be copied out of the bestiary and then toned down if necessary for HARP.

Wednesday night I realized there were holes in the document I was working on. I’d added a whole new character during the 4e playtest and a LOT of boxed text notes. You might hate 4e, but trying to keep up with some of their ideas is sure making me a better game designer. So anyway last night I found the sections that I’d added to the 3e doc and spent all my time copying them into the other docs so they’d be inclusive. This step isn’t REALLY necessary, because I don’t reproduce that text every time I pagemake a new version, but I also wouldn’t want it to be rejected by one of the publishers that have right of refusal because they felt it wasn’t complete (and also it’s a violation of the licenses).

So tonight, should nothing go wrong between now and my writing block of time, I will finish Act Two and send it to him. Act Three is probably beyond me tonight because I have one really high level character that still needs statting and that’s probably a few hours of work.

So that’s the update. I also put a thread on ENWorld asking if I should start releasing 4e versions with this product or wait and back fill. Feel free to track that thread down if you want to comment.

So everyone have a good nite. I’m signing off.

Sorry about the delay. I’ve been sick and some stuff has been going on at work. If I’d been HOME sick I would have put this up anyway. Today I AM home sick, and so you get the final installment.

The last day took about three hours. I did the last hills the way I’ve done all the others and then put out a high-res graphic of it. I took that to print at the local all purpose postal store (which has a plotter). It came out beautifully.

Here are the final images.

Pious Hill:

Scholar Hill:

Soldier Hill:

They released the new GSL. Among other things, it removed the conversion clause. This means, for instance, that I could release The Throne of God as a 4e Tournament Module without having to kill all sales of Echoes OGL products.

This makes me VERY happy. Especially since I’ve been asked to do just that.

Another two hours of work, much of it on or around the Holy See.

The artist didn’t give me the Holy See as a layered file, and the size of the color file did not match the size of the inked file he gave me previously. So I spent the first half hour in photoshop making the inked file match the colored file in size and resolution.

So, with both the Basilica and the Holy see I set the layer to Structures (Color) and then put the graphics files in my symbols directory. Then I laid out the inked file using the grid snap. Since it’s white and these are both religious buildings, I didn’t need to further color code them. Then I set the layer to Structures (Fill Style) and laid the colored images right on top. With the snap feature and the images being the same size in both the colored and inked versions, this was easy. Then I rotated and moved the layered images to position them like I wanted.

Then I placed a fountain on the top of the hill. I discovered you couldn’t see statues on the cobbles so I decorated with trees and bushes to define paths.

Finally I did the rest of the houses and trees like in the other neighborhoods. With all the trees lining paths, this took a little more fudging, but at the end of the two hours, it was done.

The full map:

Holy Hill with the roofs on:

Holy Hill with color coding:

Spent two hours working on the map last night. The Holy Hill was next, but I’m still waiting on the artwork for the Holy See, so I hit Monument Hill.

Monument Hill is essentially a museum. The city itself is a testimony to the past glories of the Church, but Monument Hill is the section of the city with the least practical contributions as a whole. The second largest of the seven hills, it has the lowest population. With 79 residents, there are far more buildings than people to fill them (barring guards, workers and the like). The place is filled with museums and tributes and statues to the past glories of the church.

So I did this in Default and Classical for the street tool. I also laid down a lot of random classical buildings. I placed gardens in the middle of the blocks for parties and events held by the various historical shrines. Note the hill to the south east. There’s a huge fountain there, surrounded by statues and trees. I’ve discovered something new about Sulvican City.

It has wonderful water pressure.

No really. I haven’t placed any fountains in the valleys. They are all high up. So where does this water pressure come from?

Well Hegaion could have built Roman-style aquifers, bringing water down out of the hills to the south. That would solve the water pressure problem, since the watter would be starting higher up than the hills in the city, but that is vulnerable and this place has demons trying to roll over it every so often. It probably just takes one Demon of Pride and a little bit of effort to thrash an aquifer. That would leave the city without potable water during one of the regular sieges, so that can’t be the source.

There could be plenty of underground streams, that would help explain why Hegarion chose this spot, but where does the pressure come from? It would take a hell of an artesian spring to apply that much pressure.

No. Hegarion built the Holy See with magic. He had to have used magic to supply the water pressure as well. Do the current inhabitants know this? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve already established that everything he did was declared holy after the fact. The inhabitants of the city would consider it a minor miracle next to the See itself. So magical water pressure.

But what would happen if that magic were ever to fail. Hmmm.

Anyway, here’s the full map, for you enjoytment:

Here is a close-up of the hill, with rooftops:

Here is the color coded hill. Since almost every building here serves the same general purpose (religious), the place is rather stark.