I know that I get excited about each of my releases, and that I have a bit of a bias towards something that I've invested time and energy into. That said, I have a few reasons to be particularly excited about the rules for Tales of the Splintered Realm.
1. I have a plan for updates that I can actually, you know, UPDATE. The reality of online game publishing is that you need to be turning out new products and updates in order to keep the game alive. People are going to move on. It's the nature of the beast. the reality of my life is that I have neither the time nor energy for routine updates of 20+ pages. The entire model of the game is predicated on having the ability to constantly provide smaller niche updates that move the game in new directions. The 'core' of what you need is right here in 16 pages. It's all of the basic rules, and enough character archetypes, magic, monsters, and treasure to get you started and keep you playing for a while. It's the best of the red book of D+D. When paired with the existing SSR rules, which are still a pay-what-you-want download by the way and easily backwards compatible (I'll post about conversions soon), you have a WIDE range of options.
2. I have an actual plan to get YOU involved in growing the game. As I've been thinking about it more and more, one of the things that has allowed D+D to grow and thrive was that it was not just one vision for the game; D+D was the messy stew of a hundred different designers all pitching in. This was a big part of what has made D+D so wild and chaotic over the years. If you have ideas and a Paypal account (you will need both), I will publish your work (and do the layout; and provide a little art if you'd like); you can publish expansion modules through Splintered Realms Publishing as 'official releases'. I'll say more about this soon. I am thinking of this as the "Ed Greenwood" model; he started by fleshing out parts of his game world through shorter pieces in Dragon Magazine, and eventually created an important corner of the larger D+D universe. You could decide to publish your own collection of monsters, or spells, or items, or an adventure... and start building your own corner of the Splintered Realm. And, if it sells a million copies, I guess you've just made a lot of money. I figure that people will want my core rules to get your amazing supplements, and I get to keep all of the yummy publisher points so I can roll advertising forward, so it's a win/win.
Of course, you can also publish your own expansions on your own, and I'll soon share the template that I use so that you can just go in and plug in your own content and build you competing empire that sells millions of copies and when you get the designer of the year award at GenCon and you don't even mention my name and I'm crying in a corner somewhere I will bring up this blog post and tell everyone about it and no one will care because you are so cool.
Ahem.
The game is done, but I'm spending a few days on edits so that this little package is wrapped up with a bow. I don't want a single typo, and at only 16 pages (one of which is the OGL), I should be able to do this.
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