Posted by EarthDragon on 11th October 2015.
It's been a month or so since the last update, and I've been pretty busy getting stuf together (and re-working stuff once I changed my mind on how to present it half-way through). At current pace, we're on track for a campaign launch ariound the end of the year, give-or take a couple of weeks.
The character rules have had some updates, namely some additions to the feat tables page to take into account more feats from more sources, and the release of five base classes (the draetha, the fedaykin, the forreska, the freth-yarl, and the ghul-na. When reviewing these classes, take the time to read the entire class, even if it seems on the surface to be a straight port of a core character class, because there are a number of tweaks that have been made to many of the classes, especially the melee combat classes. More classes will follow in coming weeks as I release other sections of the rules and background. Finally, the equipment page has some rules and information about special substances in the campaign and their pricing and creation. Further information on some of these items can be found in the section on The Red Curse.
The Magic section has been mostly released and has been the biggest part of the delay in getting this release out. All of the sections have content, with only two sections being "under construction". These pages are the combined spell lists for the san-li, veratni and vraedun classes which roll up all of the allowable spells from the various sources used in the campaign. The original presentatiuon of the spell lists was a combined single page, which was over 15,000 lines of HTML and was slow to load and scroll through. These have now been split into mini-pages for each class, and given that the merging of Spell Compendium spells with other spell lists has the most impact on the wizardly san-li and the priestly veratni and vraedun, these pages are going through the final stages of merging the lists and will be released in a mini-releasde when they are ready (i.e. when I find the time to do them and complete them).
The magic release also covers such topics as magic zones, which covers magic dead zones, wild magic zones and hard magic zones. It also covers some new spells that are specific to The Red Curse, and introduces the concept of incantations - magical rituals that can be performed by non-spellcasters to achieve any number of things, and provbide an element of flexibility for growth and development within every player's character outside the usual strictures of their class.
The first three of the nine player maps of the campaign world have been finally released. These show the westernmost portion of The Unification and its surrounding lands. The next two sets of maps deal with the heartlands and the eastern lands and will be available in coming weeks. The maps are relatively high level, and once new characters are created and their homelands and backgrounds established, more detailed maps for each player will be provided so that the character can demonstrate local knowledge.
The rest of the menu items on the site within the left side menu are not completed, unless they appeared in the previous update, and they redirect to a placeholder "under construction" page. The next few releases will focus on a specific menu at a time (such as completing the Sorcery menu and any relevant sub-menus that are not currently showing), along with some campaign background material and five or more classes in each release. The remainder of the classes will have placeholder pages until they are ready for release. Classes will be among the last things to be completely uploaded, partly because there are so many and there is so much work involved (all those fiddly tables), and partly because I don't want players to be ready to game in the world before the world is ready to game in them.