Newsflash: Jan 28

We're nearly finished with January! Time... has very little meaning anymore. But I did write a bunch of Royal Affairs Chapter 8!

Royal Affairs wordcount: 187,444 words

I'm around a third through Chapter 8. This is the Verdancy holidays, where you go home to Fenburg to hang out with your family. Meanwhile, Parliament is voting on what to do about suffrage! Here the player can make a big difference to the future of Westerlind, and cause a lot of drama whatever they choose. Some of these actions will change the plot in totally different directions for the upcoming chapters, so I'm excited to set them all up!

There is also a WHOLE BUNCH of discussing your love life and marriage plans (or lack thereof) with Queen Estell. Here's where you get the gossip on who she approves of, who she really, really doesn't, and how you can persuade her to get onside.

Behind the scenes

I've been thinking about a couple of overarching things for Royal Affairs. One may be interesting for game design reasons - I'm wondering whether to get rid of the ruthless/softhearted stat as it rarely gets tested and often other stats would work in its place. Another is about how the Asher/Hyacinthe relationship is handled - I've had a few comments suggesting that players feel like even when Asher's romancing them, they feel Asher's interested in Hyacinthe. I've tweaked it a bit, but am pondering whether it needs a slightly different approach.

Non writing

My online roleplaying group has restarted our Scum and Villainy space opera game! This has been on hold while we play other games for two years so I'm extremely excited to carry on with it. My character is an affable ex-hitman in his forties (after a big breakup when his husband found out that he was a hitman, he quit to become a non-assassinating bounty hunter with a ragtag crew) who is superhumanly strong but is starting to manifest psychic powers. He... does not know how to handle that as he is very much a down-to-earth kind of guy. It's really lovely to be back in this setting with these characters again!

Next:

Next week I'm going to  put up the NSFW answer page for Spicy Section subscribers. Then the rest of Royal Affairs Chapter 4 will be up for early access. I'll be carrying on writing Chapter 8, and hoping to finish the draft by mid February, when I'll swap back to Noblesse Oblige for a bit. Fingers crossed!