Newborn Games
CREATOR
about 13 hours ago
Project Update: August Production Update
August is over, which means it's time to open the curtains again and show you what's been happening behind the scenes in Silent Læke.
And this month, one particularly big thread finally reached its end.
🧵 Book of Threads Is Finished
This one actually got its own update earlier this month, but it deserves its place here too:
Book of Threads is finished.
I had originally hoped to get there in July, but Silent Læke's mechanics turned out to need a little more time, care and refinement than my calendar would have liked.
So part of August went into finishing it properly.
And I'm very glad it did.
Book of Threads is the mechanical heart of Silent Læke. Scenes, spreads, the Oracle, Beautiful Darkness, Melancholic Horror,
Now that the writing is complete, the Book has moved into the next stage.
✏️ Proofreading & Sensitive Reading
And this is already going very, very well.
My readers have been working hard on Book of Threads, helping me refine it from two different but equally important directions:
- On one side, we're looking closely at the rules themselves: whether explanations are clear, whether procedures are easy to follow, and whether what makes perfect sense inside my head also makes perfect sense to someone encountering the game through the book.
- On the other, we're refining the language: tone, sentence construction, idiomatic expressions and all those little things that separate understandable English from natural English. I am Portuguese, after all.
And writing an entire RPG in English occasionally means discovering that a perfectly reasonable sentence has apparently never been uttered by an English-speaking human being.
This stage isn't about changing what Silent Læke is.
It's about making sure the book communicates it as clearly, naturally and confidently as possible.
And my readers are doing wonderful work.
🤫 Meanwhile... Book of Whispers
While Book of Threads is being scrutinised by people with considerably fresher eyes than mine, I've already moved on to Book of Whispers.
I had hoped to finish Whispers during August. That didn't happen, simply because part of the month still belonged to Threads.
But slowly isn't stopped.
And Whispers is now underway.
This is the fourth and final Book of Part I: For Everyone Who Conquers, covering the People, Places and Stuff that make Silent Læke more than a set of rules.
Once this Book is finished, the entire Player-facing portion of the core rulebook will be written.
And then we cross the line into Part II: By Demons Be Driven.
That's where Players should stop reading.
👕 T-Shirt Fulfilment
There's one piece of August business I didn't manage to move as far forward as I wanted.
There is still roughly one third of the t-shirt fulfilment left to complete.
I deliberately prioritised finishing Book of Threads this month, which meant some of the remaining fulfilment work had to wait a little longer.
That's next on the list, and I expect to get those remaining shirts moving very soon.
As before, this concerns the t-shirts included with Killer, Homecoming King and Homecoming Queen pledges, as well as those purchased as add-ons.
If you're still waiting for yours: I haven't forgotten you.
🌲 Looking Ahead
So August wasn't quite the month I had originally drawn on the calendar.
Book of Whispers isn't finished yet.
But Book of Threads is.
It's being proofread, challenged and refined.
The next Book is underway.
The first chapter divider sketches have been approved.
And Silent Læke is slowly making the transition from something that has existed in my notes, documents and imagination for years into the book you'll eventually hold in your hands.
September begins with Book of Whispers.
People to meet.
Places to go.
Stuff to find.
And plenty of things in Silent Læke that probably shouldn't be there at all.
Devagar não é parado.
Or, since I'm supposed to be improving my English:
Slowly isn't stopped.
See you at the lake.
Yours,
– A Máquina do RPG
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