Preparing for Launch: Velotha’s Flock

Tomorrow I’m going to be publishing the Early Bird Edition of velotha’s flock over on DriveThruRPG (though whether it gets approved tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

It’s not my largest project ever (I estimate about 9000 words; LibreOffice doesn’t calculate the text in sidebars when I do it the way I do), but it’s got a lot of passion and a fair amount of sweat and tears (no blood, however; trying to do away with dangerous keyboarding habits) poured into it.

It’s also my first “finished” game to be released under the Loreshaper Games logo, so there’s that going for it. Yay, Loreshaper Games.

In case anyone’s interested, here are the things that I put into the final day of work (AKA what I was working on today and will be finishing tomorrow).

1. Finishing up the campaign hooks.

Because velotha’s flock is written in free verse, and I’m hugely averse to doing a whole lot of pre-done writing (and, let’s be honest, it’s a ~55 page game), there isn’t a whole lot to the sample campaign. I want people’s ideas to take flight, not be railroaded along my points.

I also want the game to feel fresh for players. There’s no rules for character advancement, and that’s not an accident. It’s meant to be played across 3-9 hours, telling a single story with any set of characters.

You don’t have to follow the one in the core rulebook, but it’s a start, an example to build on.

2. Adding a final “thank you for reading and here’s links you might want” thing to the rulebook.

I have a Spotify playlist and a Discord server that tie into either the game or Loreshapers in general, and need to see the light of day here. Add to that the links to the product pages (PDFs tend to get passed around the internet), and the

3. Making a page over on loreshapers.net to add some presence to the game.

This one should be pretty simple. I’m probably not going to post the game directly up on loreshapers.net, both because I want to drive to my distributors (DriveThruRPG and maybe a couple other places), and because I don’t think the system I have can handle it.

Yes, I could dump it up via FTP, but that’s not terribly great for analytics.

4. DriveThruRPG

So, in the interest of full disclosure, my DriveThruRPG account is still set up for Homoeoteleuton Games, the branding I was using when I published Street Rats.

We’ll see when velotha’s flock gets released over there.

It could be a while. It’s on me. I should have shot them an email sooner.

5. Character sheets

I have actually already made character cards for velotha’s flock, but they are formatted for tarot cards (4.75″ by  2.75″), and I have not yet made 8.5″ by 11″  formatted character sheets.

At some point, a form-fillable character sheet will probably follow. In the past I’ve tried to have these be one and the same, but I think with velotha’s flock I’ll up the production value a little and have a dedicated form-fillable sheet that isn’t beholden to the traditional “pencil stuff in here” format (e.g. no lines by default).

I don’t think this will take very long.

6. Proofing

Once everything is done, I go back through and do a little proofing. I give away games for free and this is just the first public release, but you can never go wrong with a first impression that says “quality”.

7. Announcements

This is pretty simple; Facebook and Twitter. A couple other posts in places I tend to post stuff.

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