Worse yet, my attention has been momentarily drawn away by Safety Lies in Fear – a sort of West Marches-style prequel to the events of the game set in the years after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, where ruins and lawlessness find brave souls seeking to uncover treasures and battle a strengthening supernatural force in Henry VIII’s England.

Prevarication knows no bounds.

Therefore, I have offered a probably unplayable draft version of the current text to both patrons (on Patreon) and traders (those who sponsored a business in the Ossulstone Hundred), as there’s no UK Games Expo and no progress toward a proper release.

The version: 

• contains no art and it also contains a bunch of sections that I have scattered in notes, but haven’t written up;
• contains the adventure I’ve been running to playtest the game for the last year, along with a few bits of another adventure that I’ve run for the last five years but never taken the time to write;
• has a layout that is basically scrapped, as I have stripped all the text out in the post-v0.8 version and put it elsewhere for further work. I have a habit of worrying about style before I’ve filled out the substance.

As supporters, they deserve this. But, keep in mind that this version is far from the finished product. Far, far from finished.

I make no declaration that the core game will come replete with a detailed and lengthy analysis of the period and personalities. I plan to provide enough information to excite interest and ground the play environment, but I don’t want to force anyone to pass a test before they get started!

I have a rough plan of the releases for 2017 across Just Crunch and that includes The Dee Sanction core rules, currently with a target of mid-year. If all goes to plan, this will be a complete release of core rules, background and an adventure. If all does not go to plan, I will likely opt for a soft release of the rough game system and an adventure – akin to recent releases from much larger publishers – in an effort to provide visibility and garner feedback. However, I have playtesting from a couple of years and copious notes inhand, so I hope that the fuller option will prove achievable.

Here will be the place where I post first. I’ll aim to maintain a trickle of news on progress as 2017 runs on. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the gaming potential of what remains in 2016 – and I thoroughly recommend you watch Six Wives if you have the chance.

I have been pondering on the core principles – and therein the core mechanical tricks – of the system.

I do not want to inhibit character success.

I also want to encourage a sense of team and an interest in the characters. The Dee Sanction, for example, is firmly about the people who have been faced with the choice between serving the Crown or rotting away in a cell.

So, all characters have (about) eight particular skills, areas of lore, or otherwise snippets of expertise. Outside of these, they tend to suck. Not ultra-bad, but roughly a 17 in 20 chance of failure bad. Sort of sucky bad.

However, I would rather they move forward with a ‘Yes, but…’ than not. Onward to fun, right?

Not to say that certain collateral damage might accrue and members of the team might die horribly. However, it should probably be the die horribly that reeks of either heroism or crass and uninhibited stupidity.

If you have all the warning signs that the next encounter will result in agonizing death, to go on must mean you’re either a glory seeker or a fool. Obviously, I will allow players of either character narrate the final moments of their beloved creation.

On matters of the core rules of the game, I have started working on a rough draft with every intention of posting it up here somewhere. Anyone interested can then give the game a try and hopefully give me some feedback.

I would hope that anything I post here will have rules and an adventure, so you can both give the game a go and see where I think it should be going thematically.