v2.31 and Roadmap to Full Release

Hello all, and thank you once again for your patience in following this project. Since the release of Part Two, I have been hard at work finalizing Part Three. This has been a greater task than expected; the final mission in Ironbound Shadows is a bit of a monster, and it's required more polish than any other section of the module for me to feel fully satisfied. 

Even so, progress continues, and our roadmap is taking a final, more cohesive shape! The module is now ready for final revisions up to Combat 7: Cutting Production - now Combat 8 (more on that later) - as is our Epilogue section, and Appendix: Sitreps has seen the inclusion of a new sitrep to help simplify the rules found in Combats 7/8 and 8/9.

Where Have You Been? OR, Version 2.31 Updates

Our last update to Ironbound Shadows brought with it a much-needed formal layout and description of Arakawa Marble, our primary setting for Part 3. This came with the inclusion of the Underground Armory - now named the Underground Hangar - which created an obvious conundrum; what happens if, instead of heading down the Level 3, the PCs want in? 

As a result, I have retooled an optional fifth combat I had originally cut from the module for pacing, providing the PCs with a chance to gain additional resources. I have also introduced a branching narrative fork here, where the PCs may either rescue Dulcinea during this optional combat, or find her further into the facility as seen in the original draft. This will, hopefully, give our damsel a touch more narrative agency, though I may do some consolidation of this branch in our final editing stages if I think it serves the pacing better.

As you might imagine, this has also led to a bit of an explosion of the narrative sections from the PCs' discussion with Ari to the skirmish in Research and Development - now named the R&D Offices. Structuring and writing these new beats properly has been a surprising devourer of time and energy. 

A more extensive changelog will be included in a following post - as you might be able to tell, this one got a little long!

What's Next? OR, Roadmap

Part Three of Ironbound Shadows is far from finished - I still have significant work to do on writing narrative intros for Combats 8 and 9, expansions to their Narrative sections, and rewrites to bring the Tactics sections for our final three combats up to par with the ones that came before, as well as some in-depth work on the final beat of our story and interactions with Lord Antoninus. When these are complete, I plan to update this draft to v.2.6 and send the full release draft to my editor for final revisions. With luck, this will be done by the start of August, though it may stretch further into the month. 

Unless this process brings significant changes in structural layout (like a rework of Dulcinea's narrative fork), v. 2.6 will be the last iteration of the full free draft.

The Full Release

As editing and revisions occur, I will move to the final graphical assets of the project; revisions to the map of Arakawa Marble and simple maps for all five combats introduced in Part Three. If I have the time and energy, I would also like to update the simple maps for Part One and draw some simple emblems for the Hand of Alesia and the Scions of Iron. 

With luck, all of these tasks will be completed by the end of August, leading to the full release of Ironbound Shadows as a single, standalone document. With the full release, I will delist Part One, Part Two, and the full free draft, leaving them accessible only to those who own them. I will also make sure to throw in a discount on the full product to anyone who as previously purchased Parts One and Two - after all, it would not be right for me to charge you twice for the same content.

Due to, among several factors, a general desire to not prolong release even further, I will be scrapping my plans to put in motion a Kickstarter to fund some more pretty art for the full release of Ironbound Shadows. As dearly as I would love to spruce this labor of love to Massif Press standards of visual fidelity, I would like to release this project somewhere before the two years of solo development mark - though this won't stop me from slipping in a couple new visual treats.