Wing Commander RPG

Whistler said:
I'm humbled. I'm a bit modest when it comes to accepting recognition so bear with me a bit (although I thought my part rather minor :D). Since my name IS up there as an official play-tester, I guess I better start doing some more play-testing :cool:. IMHO your work and progress with getting this gem up and running is down-right epic, considering the sheer volume of data.
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Hey, I think you earned it; I've greatly appreciated the help you've given me so far. I told folks from the get-go if they helped I'd stick their name in the credits; did that with Starflight and one guy wound up as co-editor...

So yeah, get to playtesting already. #where_is_my_bullwhip?

Thanks for the praise. Building an RPG is tricky work; if you can get the engine down the data usually falls into place pretty easy. In WCRPG's case I started with the engine I used for Starflight - the last two years involved making a few tweaks and adding a lot of data...

Whistler said:
I find the most challenging about game-mastering these battles is calculating component damage (great at math but terrible at algebra). I'm used to old friends and foes alike different takes on dice warfare so keeping up isn't a stretch, however WCRPG is a new system for me so of course it takes some adaptation on my part. As soon as you've given the green light on finalizing chapter 9 I'll start putting together various scenarios using the Who's Who and vehicle chapters and see what kind of trouble I can stir up in the galaxy. Unless of course you have something specific in mind.
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WCRPG is essentially a new system. I mean, I based it on a system I used for my last RPG but my usually playtester has never really been worth his salt (I use him though largely because he is usually willing to help out) so there are some aspects of it that haven't been thoroughly playtested, and there are also aspects that were tweaked from that first game.

I'm mainly proofreading to catch grammatical mistakes and typos; I've finished making the set of tweaks we from the combat demo test runs at this point, so feel free to go ahead and get started. I don't plan on making any other major changes unless something crops up that warrants it. If you have questions about how I've got something set up, lemme know and I'll do my best to help.

Whistler said:
If you can add my CIC handle in-between the name that'd be my one tweak I'd ask for.
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Alright, done.

Whistler said:
On a personal note... YOU SPELLED MY NAME RIGHT!!!(Caps intended). You have no idea how many times I have to correct people, documents, paperwork, bills, etc...and they all misspell my last name. It's really not that hard, "Risko" read like Risk-o. Yes, even when I type it and email it to someone they seem to feel a need to correct my spelling? :mad: You wouldn't believe the incredible and even somewhat creative ways it has been both deliberately and mistakenly printed.
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Oh thank God; misspelling names is also one of my pet peeves - I've got folks at work who insist on spelling my first name with a "v" despite the fact it's clearly "ph" on my name plate. You know on my desk right in front of them, or in e-mails (where my name is also clearly spelled out).

Whistler said:
I stopped at chapter five, pending your warnings about proofreading, then I'll continue when you're close to just the last chapters. Happy macroing!
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Okay. I'll try to get through Chapter Five next. I finished up initial proofreading on the Who's Who about an hour ago... :)
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the weekly WCRPG update.

Week Twelve of proofreading is in the can; I wish it had been slightly more productive than it was (I had another shortened week owing to a family visit this past weekend), but in all I'm not going to complain. Big news of the week is the completion of proofreading work on Chapter 12.2, the Who's Who; that work was finished up on Tuesday. Finishing it put a big dent in my completion estimates and cleared a big mental block for me; by itself, that sub-Chapter was five times longer than the next single largest section (the Index). With that done, I went back to my plan and started working to finish up Chapter Five. Chapter 5.2 (Character-scale weapons) was first; it turned out to be a data sub-Chapter and I was able to finish it up by midday on Wednesday. I decided to try and knock out one more data sub-Chapter that day, so I turned around and worked on Chapter 6.2.1, which I was also able to finish up Wednesday. The completion of 5.2 left Chapter 5.4 (General Equipment) as the last part of Chapter Five that needed work. I started in on it on Thursday; I have to report that I am still working on it as of this morning. The bulk of that sub-Chapter has been proofread at this point, however, and I anticipate finishing it up either today or tomorrow. I was able to keep up with the post-proofreading work for the most part as well; Chapter 12.2 was converted and formatted on Tuesday and Chapter 5.2 was downloaded, converted, formatted and added to the Chapter Five compilation on Wednesday. I was also add Chapter 5.3 (which I finished a few weeks ago) to the Chapter Five compilation. I haven't done any post-proofreading work on Chapter 6.2.1, but I hope to be able to do that early this week.

The completion of Chapter 12.2 reduced my date of completion estimates to the point where I finally felt comfortable enough to pick up work on Vespus again. After a review of my notes on the campaign, I went ahead and started filling in pieces of the wiki page. The campaign prep and introduction text were finished on Wednesday, the campaign background section was completed on Thursday and the text portion of the system information section was completed on Friday. I still would like to add a system map picture; I will try to add that sometime this week if I have sufficient time. I did take some time to review my original notes for the missions and I did catch a glaring plot point problem in the very first mission (namely how the player's task unit was supposed survive the jump through to the Vespus system in pursuit of a corresponding Kilrathi task unit when the rest of the Kilrathi task group was practically sitting on top of the jump point already). I have a notion of how I'm going to deal with it, though, and I think it'll add to the campaign's challenge. I really need to start in on those missions; the sooner the better at this point. I'm also thinking of adding a few Kilrathi pilots - I'd actually like some help with this, if anybody out there in the CIC or Star Citizen communitys would like to try their hand at building a Kilrathi character; I'd like to not have to recycle Blackeye, Ape-Ripper and company again, if at all possible.

This week I also finally made my tweaks from the combat demo trial runs; all critical rule changes have been made at this point. I may make one more tweak (I think I may have the defenses of CSMs turned up too high), so a few more scenario runs may be in order. I'm also thinking I may need to do at least one run on the character scale at some point; character-scale combat was something that was thoroughly tested in SFRPG and most of its system was translated over, but it'd still be good to check to see if everything's working okay given the changes that have been made to the other scales of combat. Chapter Nine's pretty much last on the proofreading to-do list, so I've still got some time if any major adjustments need to be made. Hopefully there won't be any.

Grand master plan: finish proofreading Chapters Five, Seven, Six, Eight, Twelve and Nine in that order, then get the Appendices and the Index last. 5.4 is all that's left in Chapter Five at this point and I've grown to suspect that 7.2.2 is largely a data chapter. 6.2.3 might prove to be data as well though I know it also contains the rules for firing arcs, which is why I'm thinking Chapter Seven needs to come first. My estimates as of this morning suggest I should be able to finish up proofreading by May 5, ten days before the May 15 deadline. I'm confident that once the game has been paginated I won't have much else to do besides add the back cover, though there's still that looming potential problem with the game's length. I have taken a bit of corrective measures with that already and I still have a couple of tricks I can pull; hopefully it'll all be enough to get the game under 800 pages. I know my macros have helped; they knocked a good twenty pages off the length of Chapter Ten (which as y'all will recall was close to 200 pages in length originally). I also hope that I won't lose any more time in which to work; we're starting to get into severe weather season here in this part of the States, which always makes good time management a bit dicey...

Proofreading of the final draft is at 84.55% complete as of this morning with 17 sub-Chapters remaining.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the weekly WCRPG update.

Week Thirteen of proofreading saw the completion of the collations of two full Chapters, Chapter Five and Chapter Seven, with Chapter Six almost seeing completion as well. Monday saw the completion of proofreading work on Chapter 5.4, the last piece that needed to be done in Chapter Five. The post-proofreading work on it took place on Tuesday; when it was complete, I added it and Chapter 5.5 to the collation, rounding out the Chapter. Chapter Five added 62 pages the total length of the game. I was also able to go ahead and put the proper pagination data into Chapter Six as a result. With that done, I turned my attention to Chapter Seven like I mentioned I would last week, starting with Chapter 7.2.2 (Capship Equipment). I was pleasantly surprised to discover that with the exception of the accessories table 7.2.2 was a data chapter; I had its proofreading finished before the close of the day on Tuesday, with post-proofreading work taking place on it on Wednesday. Since 7.2.2 was similar in most respects to Chapter 6.2.3 (Vehicle equipment, one of the game's key chapters), I decided to turn around and try to knock it out, which I was also able to do on Wednesday, finishing up its post-proofreading work by the end of the day. I started in on Chapter 7.2 to try and finish up Chapter Seven late on Wednesday; I didn't finish it up until midday on Friday, but I did finish it and I was able to get its post-proofreading work completed. I subsequently added it and all the other completed sections of Chapter Seven to its collation, rounding it out for the most part (with Chapter Six still incomplete, I don't yet have proper pagination data for Chapter Seven). Chapter Seven added a total of 84 pages to the game. I didn't have additional time on Friday afternoon to begin work on Chapter 6.2 (Vehicle Creation), but I hope to get started on it soon and I imagine it, like 6.2.3, will go faster than the estimates would suggest owing to its similarity to Chapter 7.2. I am caught up with all the post-proofreading work as of this morning; hopefully I can keep that up. To close the week out, I ran a spellcheck on the entries in the Index; they all checked out and I was able to get a version of it ready for pagination data when the time comes; it's in a state of limbo like the TOC at the moment, in that I won't actually be able to finish it until all the pagination data is in but for all intents and purposes I can count it as finished.

Work on Vespus was slow this week. Aside from adding notes my big progress there was a behind-the-scenes effort to start generating stats for the campaign's combined character group, amounting to twenty additional Terrans and six Kilrathi. I finished getting everybody named (sans callsigns) and started figuring out their region of origin; I have yet to get further than that, though I will say that this bunch doesn't include any Earth-born folks (just meaning no one was born on Earth; they still could've been raised there). I am taking a bit more of a statistical approach to things this time around; I have percentages for how many folks would have started in Confed, Landreich, etc. as well as Sector of origin for the Confees (the other groups have few enough systems to make additional subdivisions largely unnecessary). The Cats have have all the information needed to go ahead and begin constructing their stat blocks. I did add some notes on Monday on the first mission; these will be used to get past that glaring plot point I mentioned in the last update. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get more done on Vespus this coming week (like work on the actual missions).

So here's the grand master plan as it sits: finish proofreading 6.2, then head into Chapter Eight, following it up with Chapter Twelve, then Chapter Nine and finally the Appendices. Chapter Eight only has three sections remaining and they're small, so I anticipate finishing it up before the next update. Chapter Twelve is half-finished already; technically it's 80% finished but given that almost 75% of its content is solely the Who's Who, that tells you something of the size of the remaining sub-Chapters. I anticipate being stuck on Chapter Twelve for a little bit. I am considering swapping out the completion of Chapter Nine and Twelve, given that Nine is comparatively a lot smaller and finishing it would let me knock out Appendix One in the process, but I want to maximize the available time for playtesting, so I'm still up in the air over that. I have thirty days to my deadline and my estimates as of this morning suggest I should be able to finish up the proofreading work by May 2, giving me a comfortable two week margin to make any last minute corrections. I'm fairly certain at this point that I'm going to be over the 800 page limit; I'm up to 559 pages officially so far and that's not counting the monstrous completed sections of Chapter Twelve, so I'm going to need as much time as I can get, I think.

Proofreading of the final draft is at 89.09% complete as of this morning with 12 sub-Chapters remaining.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the weekly WCRPG update.

This week's update is going to be relatively short. Week Fourteen was not as productive as I had hoped it would be, though it did see the final collation of Chapter Six as well as the pagination of Chapters Six and Seven. Chapter 6.2 (vehicle creation rules) took a lot longer to finish than I had anticipated or estimated; work on it was not completed until Wednesday morning. Once it was complete I promptly converted it, formatted it, conducted the final spell-check and added it along with all the remaining sections of Chapter Six to the chapter collation. This gave me the pagination data I needed for Chapter Seven; I added it and then turned around and did the same for Chapter Eight. I then started in on Chapter 8.4 (interstellar travel), since Chapter Eight was next on the chopping block and it was the largest part of it that needed to be done. Work on 8.4 continued until midday on Friday, again taking longer than I anticipated. I got started on Chapter 8.3 (interplanetary transit) Friday afternoon and am still there as of this morning; I've completed about three-quarters of it so far. I did the post-proofreading work on 8.4, so that'll be ready to go when I need it and I remain caught up on post-proofreading work as of this morning.

Vespus continued to see work on characters. I spent a good amount of time getting down the places of birth for my characters on Monday; by Tuesday, I had finished up all of their basic aspects besides the callsigns for about half a dozen of my pilots. Hitting writer's block at that point, I decided to open it up to the CIC community; we've got still got three characters sans callsigns as of this morning. I hope to be able to start work on stat blocks this coming week and maybe get started on actual missions (I need to get started on missions; there's not much left to do elsewhere with the campaign at this point other than the "What's Next" section).

I got some press coverage at CIC on Friday. I'm not necessarily sure I liked the part that said "some of the math and setup sounds complicated" when they were talking about the combat demo but I'm always happy to receive press (and to be honest, it is a bit complicated sounding/looking at first glance). I've actually been considering doing a second scenario, this time with Whistler's suggestion to do Blair's first mission from the HOTT novel. I have some concerns about WC3-era craft that I want to address; it'd still best to do that before the game goes to print, naturally. Plus I'm jonesin' to actually play the game at this point...

So here's the grand master plan as it sits: finish proofreading Chapter Eight, follow it up with Chapter Twelve, then Chapter Nine and finally the Appendices. There are only two sections remaining of Chapter Eight and they're small, so hopefully I can actually finish them before the next update. I'm still considering swapping out Chapter Nine and Chapter Twelve, given that I already know I'm over budget on pages - if I do have to cut material, Chapter Twelve is going to be where I'll likely have to do it. Once again I want to be able to maximize time for playtesting; only reason why I haven't swapped out the two yet. It's 23 days to D-day; my best estimate now has me finishing the proofreading on May 6, so I've definitely lost some ground this week. The next three weeks are going to be tricky; next week is Staff Week at work, which means I will definitely be losing some time this coming week. After that, though, is the end of the semester, which is when I get overnight shifts; those are almost always very productive times for me, where I can get close to five hours of uninterrupted work time (provided I can stay awake). Hopefully they'll be enough to get me back on track before my deadline.

Proofreading of the final draft is at 90.91% complete as of this morning with ten sub-Chapters remaining.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

Week Fifteen of proofreading proved to be a little rough, on account of finding more tweaks that need to be made (I suppose that'll teach me to run scenarios when I'm supposed to be working). I started the week off in Chapter 8.3, completing it before the end of the day on Monday. I headed straight for Chapter 8.2 (planetary travel), the last incomplete section of Chapter Eight. It turned out to be shorter than the estimates suggested due to the presence of tables and I was able to finish it up on Tuesday, completing the Chapter Eight collation and generating beginning pagination data for Chapter Nine (it also, unfortunately, confirmed what I've been maintaining for weeks - that I'm over-budget on pages). I moved into Chapter Nine from there, starting in with Chapter 9.1 (general rules) on Wednesday. That same day I ran a scenario with WC3-era craft and discovered that they and all craft that follow would need a tweak to their weaponry. This is an issue with which I haven't yet dealt; I hope to get to it this week. I continued to run a series of scenarios with later-era craft throughout the end of the week, verifying my initial findings and helping to determine how big of a tweak each craft would need. The scenarios discouraged me from proceeding further with Chapter Nine for the time being, so when Chapter 9.1 was finished I jumped over to Chapter 12.1 and started proofreading the timeline. I'm about three-quarters done with it as of this morning.

Vespus didn't see much work this week on account of the demos, though I did get the basic skill blocks and traits sets up for all characters. I did check my characters versus my histories; it turns out I've got four folks born on colonies in Gemini Sector before they existed, so I'll have to adjust their profiles a bit. I'm actually hoping to get some work done on Vespus this week; it's going to depend on how fast I can get the later-era ship stats updated, I think.

Downloaded the Aurora brochure from RSI on Friday; you know that one's going to go in 6.4 as soon as I get a chance...

Grand Master Plan as it sits: 12.1, 12.3, 9.3, 9.4 and 9.2 in that order. With 9.2 done, Appendix One will fall right into place and leave Appendix Three as the last bit to be checked. The estimate for 12.1 and 12.3 combined is nearly seven working days; I'm hoping I can shave some time off of that due to the heavy presence of bulleted lists in 12.3. Of course, I've also already spent a couple of days proofreading 12.1. Still, I wouldn't have much reason to suspect I'd have Chapter Twelve finished by this time next week were it not for the fact that I have to work two overnight shifts this week - ten hours of essentially uninterrupted free time combined, nearly five normal days equivalent. The trick will be to stay awake, of course. I've got sixteen days left and the estimates now say I'll need every last one of them just to finish on time...

Proofreading of the final draft is 92.73% complete as of this morning with seven sub-Chapters remaining.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

Week Sixteen, the penultimate week of proofreading, felt more productive than the numbers would indicate. I started the week off by finishing off Chapter 12.1 (Timeline) on Monday. To give myself some additional time for playtesting, I moved from there to Chapter 12.3 (Environmental Effects); owing to an overnight shift, I covered the bulk of the Chapter on Wednesday, completing it by day's end. Post-proofreading work on both of these sub-chapters took place on Thursday; by midday I had completed Chapter Twelve's collation. As I had feared it would, that Chapter put me way over-budget on pages - it's 248 pages just by itself. I'll be looking into things I might be able to cut there; I have some formatting tricks I'm going to try first before hacking out any content. With Chapter Twelve done, it was time to move into Chapter Nine, the last bit to be finished. I started with Chapter 9.2 (Character-scale combat) on Thursday and finished it late in the day on Saturday; I have yet to do the post-proofreading work on it. I was able to sneak in some time to make some of the smaller scheduled tweaks on Sunday, including the addition of a definition for EHD to Appendix Three, the adjustment of the wording of the Auto-Repair system in 6.2.3 with the associated craft updates in 6.3 and 6.4, an adjustment to the service date of Tachyon Sonar in 6.2.3 and the addition of this accessory to the F-107 in Chapter 6.3, the decoupling of certain weapons from full guns and ITTS effects in 6.2.3, and a final tweak to Heavy Ordnance rules in 9.5. The final, largest tweak (namely updating the weapon stats on late-era craft) has not yet occurred, but I have begun the initial work towards that effort and I think it will go quickly.

The past two weeks I've been running some combat scenarios from various eras in the WC Universe in order to gauge how much tweaking to the weapons is going to be necessary. Probably the most elaborate of these scenarios so far was an Arena-era matchup that got started the previous Friday and ended last Monday (largely because I let it slide over that weekend - and no, I didn't incorporate any power-ups). I hope to be able to squeeze in one or two more scenarios before the week is out in order to test Skipper missiles; those scenarios will be from the WC3-era obviously.

I also mentioned last week that I was going to get the new RSI Aurora into Chapter 6.4 when I got the opportunity; I added it on Tuesday, successfully altering the completed Chapter Six collation to include it in the game. Its inclusion ultimately didn't add to the game's page count (which, believe me, is a Very Good Thing at this point). Like the earlier RSI Constellation, I put it in assuming it would be a Privateer-era craft. If y'all want to use it against Retro Talons and Demons, it's there in all five versions.

No work on Vespus to report this week in the favor of the demos and work on the Aurora. My intent at this point is to get the Core Rules done and there's little time left to do that, so I will probably pick up work on Vespus again once WCRPG has gone to the printer. The "required number of pages to be completed per day" estimate is creeping upwards faster and faster with each passing day as well, another good reason not to work on it right now. Soon though.

Grand Master Plan as it sits: 9.3, 9.4 and then the two remaining Appendices. The estimated time to completion overall is just under eight days; with only nine days to go, that'd have me concerned except for the fact that Appendix One is an amalgamation of several other chapters (I finish up Chapter Nine and that one will promptly pop itself out) and I have three overnight shifts coming up this week. There's also the fact that portions of the text of 9.3 and 9.4 is essentially the same as what appears in 9.2, so I'm reasonably confident that I'll finish proofreading this coming week. We'll see. I've got that to do, I've got to make the weaponry tweaks and I've got to reduce the game's size by at least 250 pages. I still have ideas on how I'm going to do all these; the trick will be having enough time to get everything done before the deadline. It'll either all happen this coming week or it won't; keep your fingers crossed.

Proofreading of the final draft is 96.36% complete as of this morning with four sub-Chapters remaining.
 
Hello,
Are you going to portrait or Landscape your problem? That might reduce it if it mostly charts buy a few pages. and then make the size of the font slightly smaller if it is landscape say if it is 12 reduce it to 10. I hope this idea helps.
 
Right now the main text is in Futura 10 and tables are already at 7; I can probably go down as far as 8 without it becoming too hard on everybody's eyes. Likewise, I could reduce the size of the headers a little bit. I wouldn't gain much by reducing font sizes (maybe fifty pages, tops).

I have been playing around with reducing the amount of space between paragraphs; that seems to be my best bet for making any appreciable gains.
 
Realistically, I think my best bet at this point is to go multi-volume for the print version; the PDF can stay in one piece. I probably would split it at the end of Chapter Nine (you'd have a Player's Manual and a GM's guide). I wouldn't necessarily have to re-page the thing either; I seem to recall Steve Jackson Games doing this sort of thing with their last edition of GURPS. I'd have to add the TOC and probably the Appendices/Index to both volumes but that's no biggie.

So now hopefully I haven't got a 1600 page monstrosity in the works...
 
WCRPG player groups: haven't heard of any specific plans yet. I would certainly hope one or two would pop up...

Actually, I've been learning a lot about the VASSAL engine lately (I joined the group playtesting the Privateer Board Game) and it might be possible to play that way. I'd need to learn a lot more about how it works (read: how to build a mod) before anything definite happens along those lines. And right now my focus is on getting the game to the publisher.
 
toc_screenshot.png


Just about there...gotta get through the Index.
 
Do you mean TacOps? We still have folks playing that one every now and again; it's got it's own board on the forums (Tactical Operations) and the site is here.

The Privateer Board Game only recently entered alpha testing; it's not yet ready for public release. More than that I probably shouldn't say.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

Well, here we are. Week Seventeen is in the can, we're two days to D-day, and I have to report that in spite of all my optimism for the past week I still haven't got a finished game to give to y'all. Well, that's not entirely true: of the intended final permutations of the game, one of them (namely the wiki version) is complete at this point. So that's something, I guess.

As of last week's update I still had four chapters left to proofread - Chapter 9.3 (vehicle-scale combat), 9.4 (capital ship-scale combat), Appendix One (Charts and tables) and Appendix Three (the Glossary). I started the week off with Chapter 9.3, using the text from the completed Chapter 9.2 to guide some of its wording. Thanks to an overnight shift on Tuesday, I was able to complete 9.3 quickly and compare it to the text of 9.4. Except for some minor differences, 9.4 is essentially a repeat of 9.3; "proofreading" it largely entailed copying the text, removing any unnecessary bits (such as special damage rules for Canoes and such) and making sure certain words were substituted (e.g. "ship" for "vehicle", "captain" for "commander", etc.). About that same time I went ahead and started updating the content of Appendix One (a reference of tables and charts - so stuff from all over the game) to get it ready to go pending updates to the systems damage table in Chapter 9.4. I was able to get both 9.4 and Appendix One complete by Wednesday evening. Thursday I started in on Appendix Three, the last sub-Chapter. Owing to overnight shifts on both Thursday and Friday, I was able to complete proofreading at 4:23 AM on Friday, May 10th; the final set of page editing permissions were locked and the wiki version of the game was completed at that time.

With the game's pending completion, I kept myself busy on the post-proofreading front this week. Two key decisions were made early in the week. The first addressed the issues that Whistler and I had come across with low-damage weaponry in the post-WC2 era; I decided on Monday to make any "uprating" of weaponry a GM-level decision, simply putting in a blurb in Chapters 9.3 and 9.4 that says GMs may do so if they wish. This not only kept me from having to go back and edit and re-calculate the cost and SI of over two hundred craft, but it kept the game's level of "factual integrity" intact (like it or not, the amount of damage listed is the amount indicated in their respective sources) and I think it added to the overall flexibility of the system. The second issue addressed the problems I was having with reducing the game's content under the 800 page limit. In a test run, I was unable to reduce the amount of spacing between paragraphs without the end result looking like crap. I therefore bit the bullet and made an executive decision on Tuesday: despite my intent and the fact I didn't want to do it, I decided to go multi-volume. The print version of WCRPG will be a two-volume set, divided into a "Player's Manual" and a "Gamemaster's Manual", with the GM's manual beginning at Chapter Ten. Both volumes will include the full TOC, appendices and Index, so they'll both still be fairly hefty; Volume 1 will still be close to 700 pages long. Probably will mean less hardprint units sold overall; so be it. It was either that or forgo a print version altogether, and since the whole point was to produce a print version, well...

So, with those decisions made and the game getting wrapped up, I took the time to incorporate my last set of tweaks. This involved adding the weapon adjustment rules for military vehicles in 6.2.3 on Monday, prepping the relative bearing calculators for addition to the print versions of Chapter 6.2.3 on Tuesday, conversion and formatting of Chapter Nine on Wednesday and Thursday, collating Chapter Nine and adding pagination data to the remaining sections of the game on Thursday, and finishing up all remaining tweaks to Chapter 6.2.3, 6.3 and 6.4 on Thursday (including the addition of Star Citizen's P52 Merlin in Chapter 6.4 since data had become available on it, with corresponding tweaks to the previously finished RSI Constellation). After that, I began setting final pagination; this was basically making sure all the chapters flowed into one another correctly and making sure no "dangling parts" were left at the end of each page; that effort began on Thursday and was completed on Friday. At that point, I was able to build the final version of the Table of Contents and began final work on the Index. Over the weekend, I continued the indexing and built images for the back covers and spines. I'm still indexing as of this morning. I did have some problems getting all the chapter PDFs merged but I have a good idea of how I'll deal with that and hope to get that problem circumvented later today.

Here's what I have left to do at this point: I have 184 entries remaining in the Index, all of which refer to the main combat sub-Chapters (9.2, 9.3 and 9.4). With any kind of luck I'll finish the indexing up later today. Once the Index is done, I will append it to each of the revised compilations and convert each one to a PDF. It will then be a matter of uploading the files one by one to Lulu, filling out all the details they need, building the final complete cover images out of what I've got, and then releasing them to the general public. We're almost there; another day or two and I'll have it.

And then it'll be time to pick up work on Vespus again.

Proofreading of the final draft is 100.00% complete as of this morning with 184 Index entries remaining.
 
In the distant future, mankind is locked in a deadly war...

It is the Twenty-Seventh Century, mankind's darkest hour. For nearly thirty years, the military forces of the Terran Confederation have been locked in a desperate struggle against the Kilrathi, a cat-like warrior race whose thirst for conquest knows no bounds. Despite horrific losses, humanity fights on; to surrender to the Kilrathi means enslavement, or worse yet, extinction.

Will you stand with Earth or with the Kilrathi? Will you join the military, choose the life of an independent privateer or perhaps seek a life of piracy? Will you pilot a fighter, command a mighty capital ship, explore the universe, or sit around all day high on Brilliance? The potential for adventure is limited only by the bounds of your imagination; your destiny is entirely in your hands.

The Wing Commander Role-Playing Game brings the wonder and grandeur of the ground-breaking video game series to the gaming table. Compiled using information gathered over two decades by fans of the original series, WCRPG has everything you need to create your own adventures in the Wing Commander Universe.

Now available at Lulu.com:
Volume 1: Player's Guide ($40.34)
Volume 2: Gamemaster's Guide ($32.98)
PDF (Free Download)

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After two long years of work, I can finally report WCRPG's completion; it went to the press about half an hour ago. A couple of quick notes for those of you who are planning on picking the game up: at the moment, the eBook version lacks bookmarks. This is because Acrobat was being persnickety about merging the files and I couldn't find a descent PDF merge program that left bookmarks intact but didn't leave watermarks all over the place. This is a problem I mean to address in the very near future; right now, I wanted to get something ready for y'all. I'm not convinced I got the covers right on the print versions (Lulu won't let you put in a custom spine and their default spine designs look like crap), but the content is definitely correct and in full. If any of y'all were planning on picking up the hardprint, you might want to wait until my proof arrives so I can report back about it (unless you can live with a cover image that might be slightly off-kilter, then by all means go right ahead).

The eBook is free, meant for all; the hardprints cost a fair chunk of coin, they're for people who want them. The prices listed cover production costs only; I'm making no profit on it and it doesn't include tax/S&H.
 
I lack the funds at the moment to experiment on a proof copy but I'll be happy to pickup a set after you're sure it's finalized. I rather like the idea of a two volume set. It makes referencing a lot easier when you can have both in front of you. No surprise on the cost. RPG manuals are usually expensive in their own right for FAR less content. My Jedi Academy Training Manual from SWRPG cost $34.95 before tax and only 160 pages!

Considering they legally have to be at cost the price is a bargain!
 
I confirmed the cover images are off on the hardprints; I've got one inch guttering on the edges when it should be 3/4". I'll need GIMP to fix that. Unfortunately, I came to work today sans laptop (as usual), so it'll have to wait until I get home. If you order a hardcopy today, the cover images will be slightly off center. Not a problem necessarily on the back cover but the front cover may look a bit jarring. I'll try to take care of this tonight.

As for the PDF, I've got a trick I want to try out; that might be something that happens this morning.
 
Covers have been fixed, everything should be good to go.

The trick I wanted to try with the PDFs merged the files but purged the bookmarks. I did find an online solution today; hopefully I'll be the only person to have to shell out bucks for the game. Unfortunately, it introduced two fonts without fully embedding them, so while I've got a merged PDF with bookmarks, Lulu won't accept it. I could use some assistance from anybody who's got a current version of Adobe Acrobat available, or some program that will let you open up PDFs and either embed or remove fonts.

Alternative is to host the PDF somewhere else.
 
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