10-12-2005: Advanced Dungeon Bash Lite?
Sometimes I can't keep my design projects at bay. See, I don't just design, write and publish the Complete Spell Cards (and it's many siblings), Dungeon Bash and other TOGC stuff, I'm also working on board- and cardgames too many to name here. One of them (a superhero game) is the only one that's both more or less complete and plays well, and I'm currently looking for a publisher (a "real" or "big" publisher who actually prints the games they publish), and it seems like it might get published in 2007 (and you thought TOGC is slow ;) ).

But I digress - this is the DB Blog, after all. Well, you might already know of the various stuff that's in development for this game. In case you don't, let me list it again (note that this is not necessarily the order in which this material will be released):

* Web-enhancement: Goblinoids
* Web-enhancement: Drow
* Web-enhancement: House Rules
* DB Rules Update (including cards and the high levels)
* DB Expansion: Urban
* DB Expansion: The Wild
* DB Print-On-Demand (POD)
* DB Expansions POD

That's quite a herculean task as it is, but being the guy I am it won't stop there. One thing I gladly don't need to develop - not now, not ever - is Advanced Dungeon Bash (although you might call DB and its expansions Advanced DB). Thanks to the d20 rules DB is already an "advanced" game insofar that it's much more complex than similar games.

But what about a simpler game - Dungeon Bash Lite? While DB is the adventure game I always wanted to design, the use of the d20 mechanics means that I only used half of the wacky ideas I have for this game. Maybe one day I'll tell you more about the DB Lite mechanics and how it'll play totally different than any RPG combat system you've ever played (note to self: watch that big mouth of yours).

I'm not sure if it would sell as well and be as well-received as DB. Heck, I don't know if it would sell at all. But after it's all done, that's the game I'd love to do, and I won't consider DB finished until I have.

Anyway, here's a promise: I won't start working on DB Lite until at least all the stuff mentioned in the list above has been published. Or else I'll never finish that stuff - and while I'd love to rebuild the DB core, there's still so much to add to the game as it is. And this too will be a blast to design.

A quick update on my progress before I leave: the first web-enhancement is nearly complete, ticking in at well over 4,000 words not including stats and NPC text. The main text will be send to the editor today, but then I still need to finish the stats. There's the SPIEL '05 starting tomorrow, and because I plan to go there every day (Thursday till Sunday) I won't continue to work on the web-enhancement until next week. But it's making good progress nonetheless, and once it's out I'll work on both the first expansion and the core rules update at the same time, and I hope to get both out before 2006.

[DB Blog main page]