The next book in my independently-published Christian book series is tentatively entitled Do You Trust Me?. I had started it in parallel with the current Quick Word radio show series on faith, but the two lines had diverged significantly–the episodic examination of examples of faith from Hebrews 11 is working extremely well for the radio series, but was starting to create a rather disjointed book text, which needed to cover some points in more detail and others not at all. I had reached the point at which I knew two conflicting facts: one, that there was no point in writing much more about examples of faith in the Old Testament, and two, that the book was not finished, but needed to say something more.

Over the past week, that something more started playing in my mind. It came to the fore in a discussion with my wife, and pushed itself a bit more solidly into shape in the days since. As of yesterday, the final chapter was drafted, a piece about the Big Picture, looking at creation not as a project derailed by man’s sin, but as a perfect plan unfolding perfectly, in which suffering is a needed tool toard the desired outcome, the perfection of eternal sons and daughters of God. Well, that’s the synopsis; whether that says too much or not enough I won’t guess.

What I did not do which I should perhaps have done is work on Multiverser projects, particularly the second edition of the rules. I am hoping that I can tackle this later tonight. I’ve been feeding draft sections to insiders via that private development forum previously mentioned, and I’ve just posted the last section of the last chapter I’d finished drafting, so I have to get the next chapter organized (it is partly written) so I can post pieces of it for comment. Not that I’m getting much in the way of comment, but we’ve started talking a bit about the artwork, which is a positive thing.

–M. J. Young

I made progress on some of the same fronts as yesterday, getting through several pages of the Romans notes while waiting in the car in the parking lot in the middle of the night, but also making some headway on the next chapter of the second edition rules. This chapter, too, is new–not new material, but reorganized under a new heading, Resolution Mechanics. Somewhere people got the idea that the system was complicated because the book was long; it’s not really more material than several other games out there, and actually has only four resolution mechanisms. The rest is really resource and application. The hope is that explaining all four mechanisms in a single chapter will help referees see how simple it really is. Anyway, that is, as I say, the hope.

I also added a link to the Eric Ashley page of the Multiverser support site. He had posted McCallister’s quick world menu here, and I’d stared at it for a few days attempting to decide what to do with it. I confess that this is partly because I’ve never been a fan of random world generation, not when they tucked it in the back of the OAD&D DMG, not when E. R. Jones suggested rolling dice to determine biases, and not when I saw a die-driven menu of world descriptives. However, obviously people like them, among these Gary Gygax (can’t fault him too much), my partner, and Eric. Thus the other problem was how I included one item from someone I knew only by a surname, about whom I knew nothing, who had not even posted the work himself. The answer turned out to be, add it to Eric’s list. If McCallister, whoever he may be, comes up with more stuff sometime and posts it to a site somewhere himself, we’ll create a page for him.

I got a bit derailed tonight, which is why I am so late. I had just gotten back from church–I was even still pulling into the driveway–when my son visiting his brother in Delaware called to ask whether someone could bring him home tonight so he could be here for his brother’s birthday tomorrow and then take him back tomorrow night so he will be able to make it to orientation for his new job on Sunday. His mother is working through the night (which was an additional complication, as we are still a one-car family, so I had to get one of our houseguests to follow me over and bring me back tonight so that she would have the car early tomorrow morning), so it was up to me whether to bring him home; but I checked to confirm that she would be able to take him back tomorrow, and so put the two hour tour into motion. I still have work to do tonight, of course, but tomorrow is the day off, so that should work favorably.

–M. J. Young

I was done early enough last night that I was able to turn my attention to one of the other important tasks, and make a fair amount of headway. Working from a partial, I was able to complete a chapter of the forthcoming Multiversere second edition.

This chapter is not found in the original rules. That does not mean that it contains new rules. What it does is provide better organization for the rules as published, plus give some tools to referees to streamline play. The new second chapter of the rule book (unless some really major editing happens) is called Character Creation, and pulls together basic information about attributes, skills, and equipment, plus distinct approaches to creating player characters (the On the Fly Character Creation System available on our support site), bulk characters (on spreadsheet format similar to what I use for the forum game), and highly detailed special characters such as the “not-I” player character, the major villain, or the mysterious mentor (the old highly detailed character sheet approach).

I have an incentive for this. Years back when I was writing the novels, I was also reading them to my youngest son in nightly installments. This meant that I had to keep writing to stay ahead of him, so that I would have enough to read each night of the week. In something of the same way, I am posting the new edition of the rules in daily installments to a private list of Valdron insiders, to get editorial comment as I proceed. The reason for doing it this way is so that I don’t reach the end and have to wait for several other people to get through the entire book before giving feedback; it also should mean that everyone with a legitimate interest in contributing will be “on the same page” (quite literally) as the discussion progresses. Thus far comment has been minimal but not non-existent, and changes have been made.

Otherwise we had a bit of concern over a missing houseguest, and a boy who missed the bus whose school is not around here, each of which cost me some sleep. On the other hand, I made some progress editing my Romans notes while waiting in a car for someone who usually gets out an hour or two later than predicted.

Speaking of cars, there has been a development on the new car front that sounds very good to me; however, since a lot of these developments go up in smoke I’m not going to say more about this at this point.

I am going to do a spot of light shopping today, though. I just have not quite decided when.

–M. J. Young

I wound up running a short but late game last night. I mentioned previously that a new player had been brought to my house by an old player, and that they were going to return on Saturday night for a game. The old player did; the new player was rather disappointed at having been called back to work a day early, and thus was not available. This might have been for the best, however, given that it was near eleven by the time we started (and only minutes after his arrival). We played until well after two–breaking my usual rule that games end between one and two, but the exception seemed reasonably appropriate since he had started in Prisoner of Zenda years before, taken a long absence from play, and recently picked up where we were (it often surprises me that we can do that). On Saturday night he managed, through many awkward moments, to rescue the king. It cost the lives of Fritz Tarlenheim, five soldiers, and seven chimney sweeps.

My wife had gone visiting in Delaware, so I put on the end of a taped episode of Burn Notice I had been watching (still not yet decided whether I like this), and then after that forwarded it to the beginning of the recent episode of Monk, and fell asleep watching this sometime after three.

Three hours later I was awakened. It seems that our dear daughter-in-law panicked over a dying kitten, and that there was an outrageous vet bill that had to be paid before it doubled. I had to travel to Delaware to sort out the matter, and had to be there before eight when the shift changed and another doctor would charge another fee. I knew I was asking for serious physical exhaustion, but it seemed the only way, so I went.

It was after ten by the time I was home, and that serious physical exhaustion was rising fast. I crashed, fully dressed, and did not move again until after five. By that time I knew I had to grill my hamburgers before I lost the light, so dinner became the priority. It was dark before I started my day; I still have chores to do.

I was not up very long before I got word that the kitten had died. That’s unfortunate, of course, but it was never really about the kitten.

Now that I have lost your attention entirely with those boring details of my life, I’ll quietly make a momentous announcement which no one will notice because you’ve stopped reading by this point. Years ago when we first went to print, we announced that if there ever were a “second edition” or updated version of the game, it would be one hundred percent compatible with the original. That means (as I keep explaining to the idiots who want to rewrite the game with an entirely new engine) that people who own the old book and people with the new would be able to sit at the same table and play the same game. Sporadically over the years efforts have been made to start work on this massive undertaking. However, it has now risen to a priority, and I have put myself at the helm of a reorganized rewrite.

It is fatal to make such announcements in this industry, because people assume that the new edition means the old one is obsolete. I will thus reiterate right now that the old edition is not obsolete, and will have some advantages over the new–the most evident one being that the old edition contains the full game system in a single book, and the new will be a three-book set. The advantages of the three-book set will be that it contains more material, more aids to play, and is better organized.

The first of those books will be the Multiverser Core Rules. This will take all the essential operating rules and put them together in a coherent and orderly fashion; it will include better character creation instructions, such as the on-the-fly character generation system. It will have what is needed to run a game.

The second book will be the Multiverser Skills System. This will primarily contain the skill listings, of which there will be some expansions and additions, more explanation of skill packages, umbrellas, and such, and some cleanup to remove mechanics that should have been elsewhere.

The third book will be the Multiverser Universe Creator’s Handbook. Material on how to set bias will be expanded with some aids that will make it clearer for the referee what is possible and impossible under any given bias curve. Explanations of special universe rules creation will be expanded, showing the spaces between the Multiverser Worlds, Story Worlds, and Game Worlds described in the original rules.

The appendices will be edited and included in the third book.

It will take several years before all three books are available, but the first is well underway (as I discovered when I opened the long-neglected file). I will keep you posted on my progress, as I am able.

We are also examining the possibility of releasing the old books in PDF format through an online e-tailer, but what I thought was a firm decision has become less firm, so we will have to wait on any announcement there.

–M. J. Young