Editing and Spotlight Development
about 5 years ago
– Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 11:39:19 PM
Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-Philes,
Just a quick update to catch you up on the status of things here in Cortex-ville. You've all got your final pre-edit draft of the Game Handbook, and folks are discussing it over at the Cortex Prime MeWe page. I do answer a lot of rules questions there, so if you're interested, sign up and join the chats.
Jess has the manuscript for editing, which is probably going to take an extra week since I pushed turnover a few days. So maybe end of the first week of April? In the meantime I'm putting together the System Reference, which is still on target to be complete April 14. It's not going to have examples or settings in it, but I'm hoping to include every single mod or rule in an easy-to-reference layout. To settle any confusion, this book is what's actually going to serve as the foundation for any Cortex Creator's Studio works by third-party developers, not the Game Handbook. If it's in there, you can make stuff with it and for it and make a little money doing so through DrivethruRPG.
Josh has all of the Cortex Prime Spotlights in their hands and is going through them with a rules editing and developer's eye. Josh knows exactly how I think about Cortex Prime (no surprise given how they co-designed Smallville with me) and I'm eager to get some drafts of those to backers eventually, too. They're all quite different from settings I would come up with, but that's exactly why I brought these folks on board in the first place. Can't wait!
Peace,
Cam
Abilities, Examples, and A Primer!
about 5 years ago
– Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 04:02:33 PM
Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-Philes,
The Game Handbook final draft is ready. I'm sending it out to all the usual backers, that's anyone who has the Game Handbook PDF in their rewards, or who pre-ordered the PDF on BackerKit. This is the last version of the book for a couple weeks, while it's off to Jess to get edited.
Thanks to the feedback of many of you, I've gone through and added in a sample contest in Prime Scenes, rewrote and revised the Cortex Hacker's Guide "How to Hack Cortex Plus" article as a Cortex Primer and included that in the first chapter, and included in Prime Lists the entire Smallville Abilities list, both from the core rulebook and the Watchtower Report, minus any Kryptonian flavour. I also added Abilities into the Prime Characters chapter as a mod under Powers, so the rules for using them are clear and unambiguous. There's some revision and clarification in other places, too, such as how interference works, whether Powers can be a prime set, and so forth.
Some of you may notice that there's still a little more content that needs to go in this book: backer characters! I'll be reaching out once again to everyone who's expecting to have original characters included in the book as part of their backer tiers, and working with them to find a place to put them. Look for those requests in your inboxes.
See you in a couple weeks with the next update!
Peace,
Cam
Almost There
about 5 years ago
– Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 01:42:22 AM
Hey folks. There was a little more that I wanted to add into the manuscript based on feedback I had this past week, which together with the news here in New Zealand on Friday has pushed out the last pre-edit manuscript version out to tomorrow. Thanks for checking in, and I look forward to sharing it with you soon.
Cheers,
Cam
TRACE 2.0 in Latest Game Handbook Draft
about 5 years ago
– Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 01:25:07 AM
Ahoy, Cortex-Philes!
I've pulled the trigger on the latest PDF manuscript preview, which is now distributed to all PDF Game Handbook backers and pre-order folks. This includes the TRACE 2.0 setting, which includes examples of archetypes, talents, and an asymmetric approach to PCs vs GMCs as well as managing regional levels of corruption. Lots to loot from if you don't end up using it as-is. Fans of the original Classic Cortex Book should find this to be familiar territory.
Next update brings added lists, tweaks, fixes, and examples, at which point the Game Handbook content is locked. Now's a good time to remind me of any rules issues, errors, or weirdness in the Game Handbook that you may have noticed in the past but has yet to be addressed. Drop me a message and let me know: seth at magic-vacuum dot com.
Do let me know, too, what you think of these three settings. In the coming month or so, you'll be seeing a lot more as the Spotlights get developed, too. More genre-mashups and interesting mods for your own games!
Peace,
Cam
Heads Up: Update Tomorrow
about 5 years ago
– Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 03:01:04 AM
Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-Philes!
Quick note to say that I'm almost done with TRACE 2.0, but I've still got a list of talents and some Cortez City resources to add in before it's good to go. I estimate that's something I can do with another 4-6 hours, so I'll do that tomorrow and post the new update and new version of the Cortex Prime Game Handbook.
Did not want to just not post anything after I'd laid out the schedule last week. Thanks again!
Cheers,
Cam
