It’s Ryan again, posting up another project update. Everyone on the project is pretty hard at work, and while it’s hardly exciting to type “so, we’re still working!” it is exciting to be in that state. Fred’s been tweeting about working on the magic & spellcraft chapter, and Lenny & I have been pushing to revise the various chapters, incorporating playtester feedback. Amanda & Adam have been taking the drafts and working on them as fast as we can get them out. Overall, we’re working like a well-oiled machine.

In fact, we recently got to celebrate declaring some chapters as “layout ready.” I can’t get into specifics yet, and the chapters we’re revising will undergo pretty heavy scrutiny by everyone in development & editing before they’re considered also ready. But, I’m happy to see the results of our progress.

So, here’s where I get to share some news that might, at first glance, disappoint some people: we won’t be doing a public “beta” playtest. We feel like the two rounds of playtesting we got gave us much of what we need, and everything we have remaining to try out falls until what I call “spot playtesting,” which some of us are handling with local groups in order to see how those specific rules call out. Now, I know some of you were hoping to get into the beta, and this might be a bummer, but the cut & dry of this is: public playtesting adds months to a production schedule. If we don’t have to do that, why delay the book further?

Overall, we would rather get a quality finished product to everyone sooner than half-edited manuscript to a couple dozen people while everyone else waits.

(And before you comment or email with “So, when’s it coming out?” be patient. When we’re ready to announce that, you’ll see it here first.)

Also, progress on art! Check out some more fantastic Jennifer Rodgers work, this time a color version of Little Chicago (it’s not in its final state– she still has some additional detail work to do in the color & effects):

That’s it for this update. The phrase we’ve been throwing around Team Dresden has been “light at the end of the tunnel.” We can see it – we’re not quite there yet, but seeing it has been a source of excitement and energy on this project.

- Ryan

The last update was pretty lengthy, since I had all sorts of news to share. This one will be shorter, but not because we’re lying down on the job! Indeed, we’re hard at work going through the revision process on most of the chapters – particularly the basics, like Aspects & Skills. A lot of the text was inherited from Spirit of the Century, so we’ve been going through and fix any inaccuracies that came up in tweaking FATE for the Dresden Files. Combine that with our editors hard at work going through the drafts we give them, and there’s a lot of work going on but not a lot to blog about.

Still, I have a couple neat points. One is that going back through chapters like Aspects has given us a neat opportunity. Often, we’ll get on the FATE mailing list or on various forums about how aspects work, such as if you can, as a player, compel an NPC’s aspect (which, by the way, you effectively can – check out “To Catch a King (Tagging for Effect)” on p. 42 of Spirit of the Century). Given the last couple years of experience in answering these questions, we’re going through the text to see how we could better present these options to players, focusing in part on making sure the terminology makes sense in the face of three years of public “playtesting”.

Lenny’s looking forward to talk about such things on the site in the future, though probably not often – we want him working on the book first and blogging second!

The other is that I got a chance at Dreamation to sit down with Jennifer Rodgers. She shared with me some pieces that are still in progress, and I have to say I’m always stunned by her work. But rather than tell you, let me show you one:

Oh yeah, that’s The Archive all right.  I can’t tell you how forward I am to seeing the finished version. I hope you’re as eager as I am!

Meanwhile, Fred and Clark are digging in on turning setting guru Chad Underkoffler’s text and notes into DFRPG style “statblocks”.  February did get away from them a little, but Clark’s Baltimore chapter is fully statted (if not yet fully vetted), and our “Goes Bump” (as in, “monsters what go bump in the night”) chapter is practically done as well.  The biggest monster of all, though — the “Who’s Who of the Dresdenverse” chapter — lies ahead of them.  They’re working on the battle plan as we speak.  Soldier on, gentlemen.

Before I sign off, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to our crack editing team: Amanda Valentine, Adam Dray and Chad Underkoffler. I mentioned above that we’re hard at work – we’ll, they’re definitely hard at work with what Lenny & I throw them. In particular, Chad’s been great with keeping the voice & tone of the text consistent. Good editors are too often unsung heroes in the publishing world, so I wanted to take a moment to tell them, “Thank you.”

With that, I’m back to the grindstone. I’ll catch up with you all in a few weeks.

- Ryan

http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/

You can filter just the posts about the Dresden Files RPG this way:

http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/tag/dresden+files+rpg

Recently, Fred gave us some previews of an art piece Jennifer Rodgers is working on for the RPG:

http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/354561.html
http://jenniferrodgers.livejournal.com/26637.html
http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/355699.html
http://jenniferrodgers.livejournal.com/26887.html

Over in Bleeding Alpha playtest land, Rick Neal’s had a lot to say:

http://www.rickneal.ca/?tag=dresden

But he’s not alone:

http://spazingames.blogspot.com/search/label/Dresden%20Files
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=387839
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=388884
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=387347
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=386779
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=387348

And did we mention that Small Favor is out, and dancing around the top of all sorts of bestseller lists?

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Favor-Dresden-Files-Book/dp/0451461894/iagonet

Or that the Dresden Files comic book will be coming out next week?

http://dabelbrothers.com/index.php?categoryid=37

In other playtesting news, the “bleeding alpha” group is tearing into the rules, making Dresdenified cities, and working through some core components of the system. We’ve still got many more weeks to keep swinging at it, but the initial response is pretty good.

Keep an eye around the blogosphere, you might even see a few of them talking about it!

Talk about this over on the Jim Butcher forums