Wow! It’s been a while since I last made a post about tabletop. Since last year I’ve made a lot of progress on the game, which is now officially (for now) known as Steel Forests. There’s been a TON of cutting. I’m hacking through overgrown jungles of text with my trusty ctrl + x machete. Everything is coming along, albeit slowly.

I write the manuscript for the rules using Google Docs, but I keep in mind that someday I’ll need to get all this nonsense into a layout program. To smooth that along, I write in a document with approximately the page and font size that I’ll want for the final book. In my case that’s A5 (what Shadowdark and Old School Essentials use) and 9pt font. I also limit myself to rules that have to fit on a spread. As soon as a chunk of rules gets longer than two pages, I know they either need to get cut down or separated out into multiple spreads. The less page turning, the better.

When this goes really well, I get a nice spread like my settlement rules below. This used to be about 17 pages of rules! I had wishy washy fluff about government types, the kinds of places you’ll establish settlements, procedures for holding assembly, types of settlement projects, the works.

But I had a realization… I didn’t use any of that at the table! I skimmed over it! And if I’m not using my own rules, then why should I expect anyone else to? That’s how we got AD&D!

Anyway, here are the current prototype settlement rules. They prioritize flexibility while also offering simple, tangible ways to measure the state of a settlement. I also wanted a big emphasis on the potential for settlements as story generating tools. Anyone in the know will notice a lot of parallels to Mythic Bastionland. I like good rules!