Story, edits, and rules

I just got back from like a 3 week Greyhound trip, and then a couple days after arriving home moved to Tucson for grad school, which starts in a week. So, life has been a tad crazy lately. That said, conversations with one of the friends I visited, and too much time on the bus have given me a lot of new ideas.

First, perhaps the biggest: changing the story. During my visit I saw a good friend who’s a bit of a history buff (certainly more than me). He read my backstory, and was able to pick apart a number of weak elements in the theme. Also, after he read it, he said it reminded him a lot of the Soviet Gulag system, and recommended some books to read on that subject. The little I’ve read so far, it sounds kind of perfect. So, I see a somewhat major change coming soon, maybe. There is a good chance though that the owner of the island will be modeled somewhat after Stalin. Isn’t plagiarizing from history so great? You get such amazing off-the-wall stories, and no one owns them. Not just that, but you are actually thought highly of if you steal history’s ideas. I had another friend make this funny comment about how people who read the game will say, “Hey, he’s smart for knowing this about history, and I’m smart for also knowing this about history. This is great!”

I also have some ideas for shortening the textbook. I’m not sure if they will simplify or complicate the rules, basically I will spell out categories for things that were already de-facto categories. I guess the best example of this: it’s possible to do something in this game called storing spells, basically where you prepare them to be used once. Because they are a little obscure, I didn’t make note of them in the original rules. However, looking over it again, I have 4 abilities that use them, so I decided that rather than explain the rules individually in 4 places, I would explain it once in the rules. I don’t know whether that make it more or less complicated, since now everyone has to see those rules. I don’t know, maybe I’ll talk to my old roommate, he seems to be good at finding the simplest way of explaining things.

Other than that, I did a really thorough edit. Why does it take so many tries to make something sound right?

Lastly, I had a friend suggest, if I am hoping to run simulations, that I should just program them in C++. I used to know how to write C++ code, I’m a bit rusty at this point. This should be a good review.