I’ve slowed down considerably in the run-up to Christmas, but it’s not seen any slacking in getting OpenQuest stuff done. At the same time, Paul (Mitchener) and Peter (Cakebread) are going through the first draft of OQ3 with a fine-tooth come, a job that should be done any second now. Meanwhile, I’ve been beavering away on various things that are outside of the Kickstarter deliverables’ work while related and help bring clarity.

OpenQuest Thursdays. This is my “home” group that got up and running sometime online in October. I’m using it playtest the Quickstart adventures, that I’m producing for Kickstarter Backers. It’s going tremendously well. On a personal level, it reunited me with a couple of my old friends who have played in games that have shaped what OpenQuest is today.

OpenQuest World. At this point, this is probably only exciting to me. My “publisher head” remains unconvinced 🙂 Back in October, I stopped doing my Gloranthan fanzines, which while disappointing to Gloranthafans, meant that I could reclaim the bits of the adventures/setting info that aren’t Gloranthan IP. Kick out Orlanth and the Gang, and I’ve got stuff I can revise and reshape for OpenQuest releases. With my creative head freed up from pondering Gloranthan this and that, It had to look at another setting. And it found and fixed in its gaze the nascent setting that is detailed via OpenQuest 2 and its setting/adventure books (except Crucible of Dragons), and notes I made for unreleased stuff. And suddenly a coherent narrative of a fantasy world emerges. Not just the snapshot of the late Dark Ages/early Medieval Empire of Gatan anymore, there’s a whole Ancient World and even an Age of Reason/Enlightenment period now. I’ve started work on a “setting bible”, a set of bullet-pointed/brief notes on all the ‘facts’ of this setting, in a form that both myself and future OQ authors can use. The immediate effect on books is that the default setting, because don’t get me wrong OQ is not tied into this, will be a bit more joined-up

Empire’s Edge (working title). This one developed out of the OpenQuest Thursday Quickstart adventure playtest sessions. This will be a short setting/adventure book that focuses on the Eastern Imperial Borderlands, particularly the County of Mitchdale and a series of adventures that introduces bigger concepts of day to day life in the Empire of Gatan. While I have plans to do a bigger treatment of the Empire, called Dark Corners of the Empire, later on in 2022, this gets you started with an introductory arc of adventures that will probably come out in 2021.

Back into work on the various OpenQuest deliverables for the Kickstarter campaign in earnest tomorrow, but I thought it would be exciting to share with you some of the stuff happening on the edges.