Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the Weekly WCRPG Update.
This past week saw full-bore work in earnest commence on Chapter 2.2 of the Elegy campaign, entitled Dekh aq T'kon H'hra (or "Flight from T'kon H'hra" in English). Monday saw work on the T'kon encounter, the first of six planned encounters for the mission (each of which are named for the star system in which they occur - T'kon, T'kon Meth, Orestes, Valgard, Kabla Meth and K'nag Rha). Monday's work saw the completion of the Setup and Results sub-sections with good progress made on the Problems sub-section, work that was wrapped up on Tuesday. I also wrapped up the dialogue of the mission's epilogue on Monday, and made a minor change to the name of the prologue and epilogue section (which was also corrected in the template I'll be using for later missions/chapters). Work on the prologue dialogue continued on Tuesday, with all almost all of the dialogue written for the first scene of the prologue that day - I had a single line that I needed to replace, part of an argument between lair-mates Ku'a K'le and Mo, which was needed in order for Ku'a K'le to reach a state of exasperation with his next line. The final line was added on Wednesday, finishing out the dialogue for the first of two scenes planned for the prologue. Wednesday also saw the completion of the Setup and Results sub-sections of the T'kon Meth and Orestes encounters, and editing "chocks" (the red and green blocks of text that indicate where I've edited the chapter) were added to the other incomplete encounters. Some important work took place on the calculated transit distances for the T'kon Meth encounter on Thursday; I had previously calculated the transit time and distance for the Valgard encounter thinking that the T'kon Meth encounter would occur at the system's jump point to T'kon (i.e. when the characters enter the T'kon Meth system), but the change of venue (to when the characters leave that same system) necessitated the recalculation. I also added a transfer DC and the effects of the system's neutron star (one is located in T'kon Meth as per Elegy Chapter 6.2) to the transit indicated in the encounter's Setup sub-section. I finished out the day working on the Problems sub-section of the T'kon Meth encounter by listing out several possible outcomes of the group's encounter with a lone Sha'kar-class transport (what happens if they attack it, what happens if they ignore it, etc.). The idea there is to try and befriend the ship's captain, and get him to drop off a "crybaby" to distract patrols in an attempt to let the group slip through Valgard system - where a Confederation base is located - without being detected. More work on the prologue dialogue also took place on Thursday. Friday, a day where I only had one break available in which to work, was spent working on the specifics of the Problems sub-section of the Orestes encounter, where the group could inadvertently run into a Landreich convoy and Bad Things happen. I'm reasonably happy with the way I've got that encounter setup, though I will need to build an encounter table for the convoy's fighter escort (a la all three of the previous campaign modules, something I'm not ashamed to borrow from them) before I'm finished there. I'm also thinking about setting up some artwork to better illustrate where the ships begin encounters in relation to one another. If I can set up something like that easily enough, I may create artwork for the other encounters along the same vein. My initial thought is to build another VASSAL utility, similar to what was done for the campaign's Nav Maps in Chapter Six, combined with the silhouettes I built a couple of years back for the WC Counters.
So my Plan for this week is to continue work on Chapter 2.2. The idea to build a utility is one that I literally came up with as I was typing the sentence just a little bit ago, and I think it has merit, so I may spend some time on it this week. It does occur to me that in order for it to have full utility, I'd have to take the time to design a few of the new ships I have in the game (namely the Martina Nostra Claymore), so I might finally have a good incentive to actually sit down and design the stupid things. Getting a hold of a decent 3D modeler would become a priority - and by decent, I mean "one I can use where the things wouldn't look like total crap that's free and has a relatively low learning curve". Work still needs to happen on the Kabla Meth encounter, I still need to work on the details of the Demon's Eye base and I'm thinking seriously about getting back to work on the Drayman-II deckplans for Chapter 2.4, where the group performs its first full-on pirate raid. I have a bunch of other little things that need to be taken care of as well, but I sincerely doubt any of it will happen this coming week. Maybe if I can make significant progress on the dialogue of the prologue this week, I'll knock a few of those out.
Well, that's all I've got for this update. The next update will post to the WCRPG site and CIC forums sometime between 11-14Z next Monday, June 20th. Y'all have a pleasant week.