Inching Closer to Production

Well, it's taking a long time, but I'm definitely making steady progress. It's pretty exciting for me. I started out in 1978 with a rules system which was loosely based on the first three RPG rule books and from there GM'd my little heart out for three decades. Along the way I became a programmer in order to program my little system into something useful for me as a GM. Now, after one major rules simplification (MAJOR SIMPLIFICATION), I am almost ready to host the application online ... after 10 years of programming effort (well, most of the 10 was spent working on a prior version of my Rules system into a vb6 application, but that's been put on the shelf for the time being). All in all, I'm quite pleased! Soon... soon... soon it will be online... and then ... I can actually USE the darn thing finally! :)

Anyway, Summer 2008 play testing as pretty much concluded. We wound up with an 8 Chapter story named "The Revenge of the Weasel King". As is common in RPG stories there are a number of loose threads left remaining which can be picked up later to create another book. So for now there are two books. "The War of the Mice and the Weasels" and "The Revenge of the Weasel King". The Tarot deck is also coming along very nicely!

Once I get the application online then I can start using it in earnest to fill in the Elthos World and that will be the next leg of the journey. Stay tuned.

ODS Application Testing

Well, today was a very good test of the Elthos ODS Web Application with Jon. We pretty much went over it soup to nuts, with the exception of the character generation screens (due to a glitch, which I fixed tonight). Overall the feedback was excellent. I found out that clarification is required in a number of screens to make the site more understandable at a first glance by a new user. That's very important feedback. Jon, kindly soul that he is, was very complimentary towards the application as a whole, and is excited to start using it live, when I get it online, which won't be long from now. The biggest issues have to do with the initial logon and registration. I really need to think through how that should work. Some re-coding will be required but I'm not all that worried about it. All in all I'm very pleased with the progress.

Additionally, some absolutely great work is being done with the Elthos Tarot Deck, an example card being shown above. I'm tickled pink!