Wing Commander RPG

Ugh. The WCPedia entry on Janet McCullogh has been updated since the last time I checked it; my apologies to the WCPedia folks. I'm sorry that one wound up on the front page...

On the plus side, all the headers should be finished up momentarily - just leaves the stat tables.
 
It's a tabletop RPG - no screenshots, unfortunately (unless you count the cover image). The full rules are at http://wcrpg.wikia.com (the first link under the Project Gateways section, the one for the Table of Contents, leads to the full rules.)
 
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens!! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

This week saw several "midway points" in Chapter 12.2. A total of 14 profiles were completed this week, which brings the total remaining down to 95 - less than a hundred to go. Considering I started with over 200 profiles in the chapter, there's a midway point right there. The fourteen profiles completed were the remaining profiles in the End Run/Fleet Action section, which means the first six sections of the Chapter (Action Stations, Academy, WC1, WC2, End Run/Fleet Action and P1) are completed. There are twelve sections in the Chapter, so there's another midway point. I also completed all principal work on the remaining profile headers on Tuesday; each character profile consists of a header and a stat block, which means half the work is completed for all the characters at this point (yet another midway point). It helps me to think in those terms; I've got another RPG project that I'd really like to begin working on in earnest, but I've committed myself to completing WCRPG first (despite the monotony of the work that remains after 12.2 is complete). At this point, the remaining work on character profiles is solely in their stat blocks, which I'm divvying up into four sections: basic information (species, gender, height, weight, place and date of birth), trait sets, skill sets, and derived statistics. I've gone through the remaining profiles to make sure the bulk of the basic information is in place and for the most part it is, with a key exception being place and date of birth for some characters - 25 of the remaining character profiles have neither bit of information in place and I intend to fill that in when I'm not working on full profiles in the coming weeks. If that work gets done I'll move onto trait sets. The plan is still to do twenty character profiles a week but laying down some more preliminary ground work may allow me to pick the pace back up.

I do need to issue a quick word of apology to the WCPedia folks for talking about latter-era data (stuff from Fleet Action and False colors) missing from Janet McCullough's profile last week. It wasn't there when I gathered the initial data back three months ago, but the profile has been updated since then; unfortunately, my statement wound up on the CIC front page this last week when it wasn't true. I should've checked my facts first, and I'm sorry.

Other news this week included some corrections to the Administrator archetype table in Chapter 2.4, and (in case you missed the posting very very early last Tuesday morning) the completion of WCRPG stats for the RSI Constellation from Star Citizen. The Constellation was a pretty fun ship to do, though I do hope the RSI folks will release some stats on the P52 fighter that goes with it in the coming weeks. I did have to do a number of fudges to get the ship to work with WCRPG (giving it P1-era strength weapons and defenses, using the Rapier from the movie as a stand-in for the P52, etc.), and I hope the final product does the ship justice. Certainly I can imagine a lot of folks having fun roaming around Gemini in one of those (or the Tri-System, or anywhere in the Confederation for that matter).

(I would be willing to try to translate ships from other universes, BTW...I just need some suggestions on which ones to do).

I'm pretty sure I won't have much of anything new to report from here on out; been that way for the last couple of weeks, it seems. The Grand Master Plan remains the same: finish 12.2, tie up any last minute lose ends and get to work on the Index. I have a few overnight shifts at work this week and I'm hopeful that this week will prove to be at least as productive as this last one (particularly since, like the Thanksgiving break, I don't forsee the week of Christmas and New Year's being particularly productive).

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread. I will continue accepting submissions right up until work is completed on the Index.

I've still got 95 character profiles left to complete and WCRPG remains at 98.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens!! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

When I mentioned that last week was the mid-point, I really didn't think it also meant everything would be downhill from that point. This week seems to have challenged that notion; it was an exceptionally productive week (one of the best I've had in the last couple of months), with a total of forty character profiles completed. I began on Monday with working on the non-unique character profiles, completing twelve of them that day and another seven on Tuesday. After taking some time to put in some last minute notes from the official cluebooks on the WC3, WC4 and Prophecy characters late Tuesday night, I completed the remaining non-unique profiles on Wednesday (with the exception of the Prophecy profiles for Wilford and Maniac, both of whom were finished up on Thursday). While I was finishing up profiles, I also continued to fill in the remaining missing place and date of birth information as I mentioned in last week's update. I am happy to report that that effort was completed on Wednesday, and so I moved on to filling in information on trait sets. As of this morning, the trait set information is complete for all remaining incomplete characters with the exception of about two dozen characters in the Privateer 2 group (which have turned out to be pretty entertaining to do, on account of no-one in that game being exactly as they appear at first glance). I anticipate finishing up my efforts with trait sets next week, which would just leave the skill sets and derived stats as the only incomplete portion of each remaining profile. The completion of trait sets in other character groups allowed me to finish up many unique characters in those groups; I was able to finish up the character set from False Colors on Friday, and a good chunk of the character set from WC3 was completed on Thursday. If this week goes like this last one did, I should be very close to finishing up work on 12.2 by next week's update. Even if I only work at my established twenty-character-a-week pace, I'm only looking at about another four weeks until work is finally done on the chapter (and that's assuming no work at all is done over the week of Christmas).

So, onto the crap I usually repeat every week at the end of these updates: The Grand Master Plan remains the same: finish 12.2, tie up any last minute lose ends and get to work on the Index. This next week should be pretty standard, but as I mentioned work is starting to wind down and there's not a great deal left to do on each individual character, so I'm hoping it will be productive. I hope to finish up the WC3 and WC4 character sets at a bare minimum this week but if things go particularly well I might try to knock out the Prophecy set as well, leaving the P2 set for after the new year.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread. I will continue accepting submissions right up until work is completed on the Index.

I've got 55 character profiles left to complete and WCRPG remains at 98.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Merry Christmas, Wingnuts and Citizens!! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

I find myself kinda wishing that Christmas was not tomorrow, and more to the point that I didn't have this coming week off of work. Granted, it's been a long year and things have been hectic in RL, and I could really use the break at this point. But I'm also convinced that principle draft editing of WCRPG will take no more than two weeks at the most before it will finally be complete. This is a very inopportune time to take a break; nevertheless, I am taking one. Anyway, on to the update...

This was another productive week with the Who's Who. I was able to accomplish the goals for this week that I mentioned at the end of last week's update, namely the completion of the WC3, WC4 and Prophecy character sets. I had all that work done by Thursday, and so I spent about half the day Thursday and the day on Friday beginning work on the Privateer 2 character set, the largest of the sets (and the only one that remains at this point). Work on trait sets for all character was finished up on Tuesday, so that leaves just the skill sets and derived stats as the only piece of unfinished work for all the P2 characters. There's not much work left to be done at this point in 12.2 overall; if I actually had the week to work, I daresay I would finish 12.2 before the end of it. Alas.

Alright - so for what will probably be the last time, here's The Grand Master Plan: finish 12.2, tie up any last minute lose ends and get to work on the Index. The plan is to take this week off, and I'll go ahead and say that I'll be skipping next week's update (because I should have nothing to report for the week); the next scheduled update will be on Monday, January 7, 2013 sometime between 12-15Z. If all goes well the week of New Year's (I'll be returning to work on January 2nd, so I should still have half the week to do steady work), I hope to be able to report the completion of 12.2 at that time. Keep your fingers crossed.

This may be a good time to begin talking about what will happen after first draft editing is finished. Since the game's mechanics have not been properly playtested by anyone (to my knowledge), I may delay publication of hardcopies for a while (if anybody has tried out the game, I would dearly love to hear about it and get some feedback). Certainly the proofreading process will begin immediately thereafter, a long and boring process that (unfortunately) is going to take two to three months minimum. I do plan on taking only one pass with the proofreading, so I'm hoping the final versions of the game will be ready by this coming April. I won't know for sure until everything gets further along, of course, but I will continue to keep y'all updated as much as I can. I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; I will continue accepting submissions right up until work is completed on the Index. This isn't that far off now: if you've been waiting until the last dog, this is it.

I've got 24 character profiles left to complete and WCRPG remains at 98.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens!! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update. I hope you all had a most excellent Christmas and New Year; I know I did.

Let me begin by giving congratulations to the Elite: Dangerous project for meeting their Kickstarter goals. I am definitely looking forward to seeing the finished product. On a related note, members of the ongoing Starflight III project (of which I am one) did have a discussion this past week on whether or not we wanted to attempt a Kickstarter of our own in order to try and finish up the game (finally). Not much has happened on that note as yet beyond the initial discussion, but I thought I would at least mention it.

Anyway, as I indicated in the update on Christmas Eve, I took the week of Christmas off to spend time with my family, despite being nearly finished with Chapter 12.2. I was out of town that week and I did not get back to going full throttle until after I returned to work on Wednesday (January 2nd). I did get four profiles done between December 29th and New Year Day (one a day, not too shabby or stressing considering I was still on break at the time). Aside from pausing to correct an error with the Clerk archetype on Thursday, the rest of the week was spent finishing up profiles from the Privateer 2 set, with six profiles completed Wednesday, eight on Thursday and the remaining six on Friday. As I had hoped, I am able to report this morning that at long last all work is finished on Chapter 12.2, rounding out Chapter Twelve entirely. For those who are curious, the final character profile to be completed was that of Xavier Shondi.

The last piece of the Grand Master Plan is now to tie up any lose ends and start work on the Index. I did remove my notes from the Index page on Friday and have made preparation for the Index entry table, and I imagine next week will see heavy work taking place there. On Saturday, I adjusted some notes I had on the Nagga in the Bestiary, added a blurb about "difficulty levels" to the game which would add to (or subtract from) difficulty classes (the impetus behind this was the fact that I have no playtesting data for the game as of yet and so I don't know if things are too easy or too difficult as they stand, and I would prefer not to delay publication for lack of playtesting if at all possible), and began work on an image illustrating relative bearings and the notion of combat arcs for Chapters 6.2.3 and 9.4. Before I can do the Index, I still need to finish up that image and add a step-by-step set of images for Sector generation for Chapter 10.2.1 as per QuailPilot's request (something that's needed to happen for a long time now). I've also had a notion of adding a series of range and bearing calculators to the game, though I don't quite know where I'll put them just yet. I don't anticipate the remaining lose ends taking very long at all; a day or two at most, perhaps, but they must all be finished before I can begin work on the Index.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; I will continue accepting submissions right up until work is completed on the Index (which if all goes according to plan, will be sometime this week). If any of you have playtested any portion of the game (whether from the full rules, Enyo or Prelude to Goddard), I'd dearly love to hear about your experiences so far.

WCRPG stands at 99.09% complete as of this morning.
 
Principal editing of The Wing Commander Role Playing Game was completed today at approximately 1841Z (12:41 PM CST).

I'm now in the process of determining the best way to begin the proofreading process. I think for now I'm going to hold off on dumping the materials to Word pending corrections to materials on the wiki. This will (hopefully) yield yet another version of the game for players (the others being the PDF and hardcopy versions, of course).

Thanks for all the help you given me so far, y'all.
 
Principal editing of The Wing Commander Role Playing Game was completed today at approximately 1841Z (12:41 PM CST).

I'm now in the process of determining the best way to begin the proofreading process. I think for now I'm going to hold off on dumping the materials to Word pending corrections to materials on the wiki. This will (hopefully) yield yet another version of the game for players (the others being the PDF and hardcopy versions, of course).

Thanks for all the help you given me so far, y'all.
any ideas on who your distribution is going through?
 
any ideas on who your distribution is going through?
I'll set it up through Lulu.com; I've used them for the publication of Enyo, Prelude to Goddard and The Starflight Role-Playing Game. It's a self-publication website specializing in print-on-demand services of a number of products, including hardcover books. Since it's print-on-demand, I won't have to worry about printing off too many copies and not being able to sell them all; people can just come and get the game if they want it. I don't intend to make a profit; the final cost that will be listed there will simply cover the cost of publication and there will be an extra fee to the company for shipping and handling.

The hardcopies will be available for those who really want them; the game will also be available as a free download in PDF for those who want to try the game out before they commit the kind of money a hardcopy will cost, and for those who simply don't feel like spending the money. I'll probably use Lulu for the download site for the PDF version as well. As for other electronic formats such as epub, I could stand to do more research.
 
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

Well, in case you missed the announcement last Wednesday, principal editing of WCRPG is now complete. After last week's update, I spent a fair portion of the day tying up lose ends. This began by creating a set of relative bearing calculator images, one for hex grids and one for orthogonal grids. These images should help players using physical grids in calculating angles between targets, which would be useful for determining if a target is within a given firing arc or not (something that might also be applicable to games like TacOps). After adjusting the text in 6.2.3, 9.3 and 9.4 to account for those images, I focused on creating the step-by-step sector creation images for Chapter 10.2.1, which didn't take nearly as long as I originally thought it would (sorry for making you wait so long on that, QuailPilot). After finishing that up, I still had time to adjust the credits in the Table of Contents as well as some of the text in Chapter 1.1 and final rule recommendations in Chapter 9.1. By the end of Monday, I had finished up the loose ends, and was able to devote Tuesday to the search of Index terms. After correcting, distilling, removing duplications and consolidating entries on Tuesday, I built the final Index table on Wednesday and got it uploaded, the last piece of editing that needed to take place in the game.

So now the focus is on proofreading. Here's how I'm planning on doing it: when I was proofreading The Starflight Role-Playing Game, I took the text from the individual wiki pages, converted them into MSWord format and distilled them from there into PDF files, keeping the Word versions for editing. I would then use Acrobat Reader's built-in text reader to listen to the text and read along, correcting errors in the Word versions as I came across them. Using the text-aloud method forced me to read more slowly than normal pace and let me catch a greater number of typos than I would've probably found otherwise. The only problem with the method I employed for SFRPG is that it did nothing to correct the original online draft text; to this day there's an unedited version of that game sitting in a public wiki. To avoid that happening again, I hit on the idea to correct the text before it gets distilled into Word/PDF format with WCRPG. To that end, I've spent the last few days trying out various webpage reader extensions in Chrome. On Saturday I found one that worked well enough for my purposes, and I can report that proofreading has begun in earnest. Proofreading of the final draft is complete through Chapter 2.0 (4/111 pages) as of this update. I do have some concerns about this method, but I'll know by next week's update whether I can overcome those concerns or not.

The time for non-canonical fan submissions for the game has come to a close at this point; I am no longer accepting submissions. I had hoped to see a few more generated items make it into the game from the community at large, but I'll go ahead and work with what I've got. And I may still be nice about adding a late entry or two...

My updates are going to be fairly paltry from here on out; I won't be able to give y'all a lot of detail on the proofreading process unless some major change takes place, something I dearly hope to avoid. I do hope to be able to say something of interest as time goes on. Perhaps if I can get some playtesting going, I can let you all know how that's progressing. I've also had another Wing Commander-related project waiting in the wings for WCRPG to get finished up; now that it is, I might get started on it as well.

Well, that's it for this update. I've been waiting for this one, so let me sign off this way:


WCRPG stands at 100% complete as of this morning.
 
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens!! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update. I hope those of you in the states were, like myself, fortunate to have MLK Day off today. I also hope that, like me, you were able to actually sleep in a bit for once...

Before I get into this week's update, I just wanted to thank all of y'all who voted for this year's CIC Web Site of the Year and Fan Project of the Year. I'm most grateful for those of you who voted for the WCRPG Wiki in the Web Site of the Year contest and I am deeply honored and thrilled that the site was voted as this year's runner-up. It's not often that I receive accolades of any kind and I really haven't got the words to express what even second place means. Really. Thank you, all.

So, on with the update.

Well, here I am after the first full week of proofreading and I can already tell I'm in for a long slog. It's too early to tell, of course, but my initial estimate of an April release may have been optimistic; I will of course keep y'all up to date as to any changes. This week was spent getting the proofreading procedure set in stone and beginning work in earnest. I started this week out by attempting to get the public workstations at my workplace to read the text off the wiki in Firefox, an effort which failed spectacularly. I had to stick with my initial selection of Chrome for my browser of choice, which is unfortunate largely because it isn't ubiquitous on those terminals. Fortunately, the terminals in the library school's computer lab (which is in the same building where I work) are all equipped with Chrome, and getting Chrome Speak installed on them is ridiculously easy. The downside there is that the lab is clear on the other end of the building where I work, which means ten minutes that I could be using to work are lost coming and going. I'm in the process of trying to get Chrome installed on my work terminal so I can just work there without wasting any time in transition; I don't know if/when that will happen (our Systems department is notoriously touch-and-go sometimes, particularly at the beginning of a semester). Available time to work on proofreading is going to be an issue; as with the draft editing, I have my breaks at work in which to work, which amounts to a total of ninety minutes per day (and not all at once). Any proofreading I can get done at home is going to be incidental, on account of the fact that I have to spend some time with my family (and with a three year-old and a baby in the house, the ambient noise level is not conducive towards concentrated reading). It's this fact that has me thinking this is going to take longer than I'd hoped.

Anyway, once I figured out that I could get the actual proofreading work done, I spent time on Monday afternoon proofreading Chapter 10.2 and 10.2.3 (I've got another RPG project in the works, and those chapters cover the same topics I need to cover first with this new game). On Tuesday I used the finished Chapter 10.2.3 as a guinea pig for the final conversion to PDF process, helping me to establish the necessary procedure and to shore up any deficiencies in the proofreading process to date. I also got Chapter 10.2.2 out of the way that day. I began proofreading 10.2.4 (the planet building procedure) on Wednesday, which I did not finish up until late in the night on Saturday. 10.2.4 is the first page I've worked on involving any significant amount of length, and I know I have some longer ones in the game. I couldn't tell you how long the Who's Who is going to take, or the Vehicle Catalog...

This last week I also opened up discussion on the next WCRPG campaign I'd like to do, entitled Vespus. So far the discussion hasn't gone anywhere; I'm hopeful that may change in the near future. I've had a notion for yet another WCRPG campaign, and this week I broke ground on work I've been waiting to do on a WC-related project I've been sitting on for a while. All of these other projects have taken a back seat to proofreading, but I'll still be working on them from time to time and will keep y'all up to date on any significant progress on them as well.

Proofreading of the final draft is 7.27% complete (8/110 pages complete) as of this morning.
 
One of the things I've been considering lately is putting a picture at the beginning of each of the game's Chapters, preferably something related to the Chapter's topic. I've got a few images down already but some of the others I'm having problems with - just thought I'd see if any of y'all had any suggestions. Here's what I've got so far:

Chapter 1 (Introduction): The conductor warming up the orchestra (WC1)
Chapter 2 (Characters):
Chapter 3 (Skills):
Chapter 4 (Traits):
Chapter 5 (Equipment and Trading):
Chapter 6 (Vehicles):
Chapter 7 (Capital Ships): Midway, being escorted by fighters
Chapter 8 (Navigation):
Chapter 9 (Combat): Part of the scramble sequence from WC1
Chapter 10 (Gamemastering):
Chapter 11 (Adventures and Campaigns):
Chapter 12 (The WC Universe):
Appendices:

I'm willing to change anything I've already got if anybody's got anything better. As you can see, I've got quite a few holes left to fill in...
 
these are the ideas i have for source images
Chapter 2 characters either a briefing scene from one of the wing commander games
Chapter 3 from the cartoon a technician working on a fighter or movie
chapter 4 the traitor talking to the kilrathi
Chapter 5 the commerce in p2 or p1
chapter 6 a fighter attack scene from the movie or the grunts flashback scene of the kilrathi when he was a marine
chapter 7 or the fleet scene from wc3 before the attack on kilrah or the kilrah fleet attacking earth.
chapter 8 a picture of the wc universe or a sector nav map from p1
chapter 10 a picture of tolwyn on the platform addressing the senate
chapter 11 a briefing room picture from the movie when blair first brings the information from tolwyn
chapter 12 a picture from the end of wc3 when the kilrathi surrounder
appendices a picture of rachel with the tech book for the excalubur bar scene or a picture of mister kat from wc card game.

here is my 2 scent worth
 
These are some good suggestions. I've also been getting some good suggestions from GenVagabond over on the RSI forums. Definitely have to make some decisions here.

Funny you mention Tolwyn at the podium for Chapter Ten...I got a shot of Paladin swinging his gavel. Same scene. A bit more GMish...
 
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens!! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

Week two of proofreading was not particularly productive overall, owing to time lost on Monday due to the holiday and again on Thursday due to RL. I was able to get Chapter 10.2.5 in the can, beginning with work done late in the day on Monday and continuing on into Wednesday morning. Though it wasn't the next section I needed to finish, I decided to head over to Chapter 10.2.8 next to see if I could knock it out, which I was able to do by Friday morning (that page is deceptively large owing to that huge conversion table smack in the middle of it). I then headed over to Chapter 10.2.6 to begin work there, and that's where I'm still at as of this morning (I'm roughly halfway through it at the moment). I was able to continue my guinea pig work for the game's final production draft on Tuesday, and I can report that there now exists a final PDF version of the entirety of Chapter One. I am worried that the margins aren't set up properly for printing; that's something that can be easily remedied, though, and probably something I need to take care of sooner rather than later.

As part of my effort to make the final print version, I began a search for images to include at the beginning of each chapter on Friday. I had a few ideas for what I was going to use prior to that time, but I figured the time was approaching where I would actually need the imagery I was going to use. I have asked for some help from the community on this; thanks to GenVagabond on the RSI forums and Wilenburg on the CIC forums for their assistance so far. They've given me a lot of good ideas for what I might potentially use. I have prepped a series of images for each chapter as they stand so far, which I've attached to this update. I'm not completely sold on all the images as yet; more opinions would definitely be welcome. In particular, I don't like what I have for Chapter Twelve; I want an image that wraps up the series as a whole and while a fighter launching probably covers it, I'd like to see if I can do better (on the other hand, it's the only entry from WC2 I've got in those images at the moment).

The current plan is to finish the proofreading of Chapter Ten. With as much work as has been done there so far, I haven't really got any reason not to do so. 10.2.7 (creating creatures) is going to be the big one there, given its length. It may be a while before I can set down the final page numbers for Chapter Ten, but that's not that big of a deal. Next I'm headed to Chapter Eleven (I really think I can knock that one out fast; those pages are pretty short) before heading back to Chapter Two to pick things back up there. That's probably...oh I don't know...work for the next month or so. If I can make it go faster I will; I can't report much progress in increasing the amount of time I can spend proofreading each week as yet. I've still got a few ideas on what I might do on that front, though, so keep your fingers crossed.

Proofreading of the final draft is 9.09% complete (10/110 pages complete) as of this morning.
 

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GenVagabond here, happy to contribute. Do most of my posting in RSI for the poor saps who don't come here so much. Not like any of us are going to miss anything over here. Have posted here as a guest for a number of years but this reg's official.

Well despite my RP vessel sitting in Dry Dock my Generalcy is up in the air these days, so just call me Whistler. Perhaps I can convert her for use in this game. Need a capable battle platform after-all.

Thankfully, Reocities archived her. I'd like to thank Michael "Hellbringer" Lu for her original design as it was once his ship. I just worked there, then a Colonel, till he passed on command to me and Phil "Avenging Angel" Chapell. Hope you guys are still out there somewhere reading this. And of course, Capi for bringing WCRPG back from near-death. I haven't seen a dice roll since #wc-aces.

http://www.reocities.com/Area51/9044/data.htm
hyperion2.jpg


See you in #wingnut
 
Nice looking ship. Making stats for it shouldn't be too big of a problem and with the help you've given me the last couple of days, I'd be willing to accept a late entry to Chapter 7.4 if you'd like to add it.
 
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