Kickstarter

The Next Project website is down right now, and that's an oversight.  I made the decision this weekend to move the site to a new, uneditable format, but a crossed switch between me and the hosting provider instead got the site shut off entirely.  That will be corrected by this weekend, and thus far the only content lost appears to be a few of the discussion pages.  That sucks, because there was some great stuff there, but all of the content that had been "official" should be right as rain.  The URL will remain the same: thenexted.com.

After that, I will no longer actively be working on the Next Project.  Though it will remain a back burner project and labor of love, it was never meant to be a roleplaying game that I designed mostly by myself.  It was supposed to be a community-driven, fan-made game, whose overall direction I merely managed.  I was supposed to get the ball rolling, and then let the community take over.

I didn't do a good enough job at that.  Community building is hard, and when I wound up taking a hiatus a little earlier than planned last May, when my twins arrived to this world about five weeks early, the community just wasn't ready to handle it.  No edits have been made to the wiki since I stopped making them.  That's not what the Next Project is all about.  And I just don't have the time right now to rebuild from scratch.

For those of you who found value in what we were doing, the content should all be available to you once more this weekend.  You can do with it as you like, and I would be honored if you did.  I do still plan to work on this material again someday, but I don't know when that day will be.  Between raising three small children and planning for some other upcoming changes in my family's life, my time right now is completely strapped.

If you have concerns, please reach out to me via email at j@dmbaldw.in, and I will try to make things right.

Happy gaming!

Things are going well.  We've reached and exceeded our funding goal, and have gotten through the skills sprint quite well.  As I just posted, even though skills aren't completely and totally perfect, they're in really good shape, with the majority of the meaty stuff in where it's supposed to be.  The game is going to be a continual work in progress, and that's how it's designed to be, so I'm taking my lesson as learned: editing isn't going to be locked, and if it's up on the wiki, it's fair game.

To our backers: one of our rewards was the ability to edit locked content on the wiki.  That was supposed to be in regards to systems that we'd settled on, and didn't need to go back to.  I propose an alternative reward: the ability to work on things that we haven't gotten to yet.  As I explained in the post, working on spells before we decide whether the system is fully-Vancian or not may lead to problems.  But on the other hand, we just need someone to decide how the system should be, and then support that decision with the rest of the game's mechanics.

So here's what I propose: to those of you who have generously donated under the understanding that you'd have unrestricted editor access to the wiki, you still do, and that includes future systems that aren't yet up for development.  You want to do spells, then by golly, you can do spells.  We'll design something to support you.  That is not a privilege I'm extending to just anybody: content that isn't up for development yet isn't available to anybody except our Design Groupie-level contributors.

All I ask is that you let me know what you'll be working on, and what your broad-brush vision for it is.  First, if there are a couple of you working on spells, we'll have to iron out a system that works for all of you.  Second, if somebody is designing the wizard and somebody is designing the sorcerer and their casting systems are completely different, we need to be able to work both systems into the game.

If this presents a problem for anyone, please don't hesitate to reach out, but I firmly believe that this is the best way to keep the system in development, and keep the content fresh.  Additionally, I think this is actually an even better reward than you'd been originally promised, because you'll really be setting direction for the game.  If you've got strong feelings about some system or another, this is a great chance to get the ball rolling.  However, if your understanding that you would have exclusive rights to change locked content was a driving force behind your contribution, I get where you're coming from.  You aren't beholden to me, and if this change in the wiki policy is a big deal, I fully understand if it impacts your willingness to contribute.

Please reach out if you have any concerns, and I hope you're all still excited to be a part of the Next Project.

For everybody who's still around: we're going to pick a non-spellcasting class to work on developing in the very near term, because it's fun, and because it'll help us get a practical feel for how these systems need to work.  Vote in the comments at the site, or on Twitter with the #getnexted hashtag.

Happy gaming!

Just put up a post on skill exploits.  I'm really pretty excited about these: they encourage you to try cool stuff on the fly, think creatively, and live in the gameworld.  They're a great example of system supporting story.  I don't think I've seen anything quite like them in another fantasy RPG, so I'm extra-excited to see them in Next.  Check them out and let us know what you think!