The Roach manuscript (the 45th revision since we started counting) is in Patrick’s hands. Over Thanksgiving’s long weekend, he’s doing the preliminary layout while Jason is re-scanning all the art at 1200 dpi, just to be sure.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the Shab-al-Hiri Roach have been edited. Once the copy editing was complete (two passes by two different people), Jason took the whole shebang and physically cut it into chunks. It was then pretty easy to see dependencies and areas where the logical flow of the text was screwed up, and put it back together. Of course having an editor on hand helps.
Copy editing is hard. Thanks to Steve for making the first brutal pass. The text is getting better and better as it gets tightened and refined.
The Shab-al-Hiri Roach text has been expanded a bit, padded out with little “nota bene” hints and tips. It turns out many of these were already embedded in the text, so teasing them out really helps the tone. One thing to do as we get to copy editing is physically sort all the sections in chapters three and four and make sure they are in the correct order – there seems to be some dissonance, and we need to make absolutely certain the text is clear and well-ordered. An extended play example still needs to be written as well. But we’re getting there!
Jason ran three Roach sessions and won the Iron Mace Chef contest for Grey Ranks. The Roach games exposed some areas that need additional tweaking, and participants (including a bunch of Forge goofs) made many good suggestions for improving the game, particularly the end-game. Steve came on Saturday, helped run a Roach game, and played Burning Wheel hard-core. Next year we’ll definitely return to the con with a Bully Pulpit Games presence and maybe some stuff to sell!
