Posted September 18, 2020 by Charles Simon
Hello everyone! Welcome to all those who found us through the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality!
This version control change is a big one. The most obvious change is that the layout of the Hello, World source document has moved to a 6 x 9 book format in anticipation of a future print run. Considerable work has been done to decompress the cramped layout of the previous version of the HW booklet, and the whole thing has received entire new chapters devoted to introducing the concepts of a Forged game, easing players into the process of creating their users, and understanding the concepts that underpin World.
We also have Hyperlinks.
In other news, major game concepts like Authority and the Faction Pyramid have been adequately explained for the first time anywhere.
GMs get a ton of new tools in this update! They have received advice sprinkled throughout the setting material as well as a (Currently short, and soon to get more writing) "Running the Game" recommendations chapter.
Hello, World is meant to serve as a template to create the kind of game experience you want to have at your table, and lots of player and GM-facing writing has been added that offers a look at why the game exists the way it does, and how you could change it to fit your vision.
In terms of concrete, useful setting information that can feed into a campaign, oh boy do we have lots to see. Canopus and Arcturus have received a luxury treatment, getting two-page spreads devoted to each of their districts along with new local faction information and expanded layout.
Sirius and Argus are not too far behind!
Here's a rough changelog of other major things:
Thank you all for taking the time to check out Hello, World!
And now for one last update:
Some of you may have come here from theZinequest 2 kickstarter project Pocket World that my brother and I ran back in February. By now, we are well behind fulfillment timeline and it's a huge source of embarrassment for us. For this I am deeply sorry!
Contrary to what the overall visual aesthetic around here might make you think, Pocket World is not vaporware and is still a real thing we are making and will fulfill to our backers. We just had no idea how the project would mutate during final writing and layout, misjudged the time we would have to spend on it over the summer, and then got completely wrecked by US West Coast forest fires and COVID-19's disruption of our cool synthy flow.
Here are some finished images from the PW layout. We are getting there, I pinky swear it.
If you haven't yet check out the OFFICIAL Hello, World playlist in Spotify.
Oh yeah
That is all pure skill btw