Over the last few weeks, we have been getting high-level developer feedback from Leonard Balsera (Fate God and D’ni fan) on the Unwritten manuscript. This input has been absolutely invaluable to us, giving us some new insights and ideas, and pointing out things we need to polish. It has shown us that while Unwritten is both true to the Myst franchise, and a good, playble game as it stands, we could do better.

Unwritten as a ‘good’ game isn’t good enough for us. We want (and we hope you want, as well) Unwritten to be a great game, one that really captures the feel and depth of the D’niverse, with fresh, dynamic game mechanics that support our three key concepts- Exploration, Discovery & Accomplishment.

In looking at where we are now, and what we want to accomplish, we’ve realized we are going to need to take several more months to focus on development, writing and playtesting. Doing so will make absolutely sure we’re giving you the best game we possibly can. Timeline-wise, this means we are looking at going to print in August, rather than May. It is a delay, but we feel it is a delay that can only have positive results.

What’s Going on with X ? 

The manuscript has another editing pass to go before it will be available to Beta backers. This version includes five sample Ages designed by our Guild of Writers level backers, intro fiction by Ryan Miller, and a first look at our map of Ae’gura. It’s clocking in at over 100,000 words… If you are a Beta backer and you don’t have access to the Beta forums on our site, please message us privately with your forum username and we will make sure you get access.

The first stretch goal of a short story by Hugo award winning SF writer David D. Levine is complete and in editing/layout. It will be distributed as a simple PDF and as an ebook.

Our supplement books are in design right now. We have no solid time line on those yet, although our target is that they become available for download soon after the book goes to print.

Shipping Dates for the Books

We are slipping our ship date to late May/early June. We have had some opportunities come up to really fine tune the manuscript and make it as solid as possible. In order to take advantage of those, we’ll need some added time before we go to print. The delay is frustrating (for you and us!) but we promise the it is for a good cause!

Things have been quiet in the guild hall recently, but we continue to work on Unwritten. We are planning a Kickstarter to pay for editing, artwork and publishing late this year if possible. (No promises.)

I wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the concepts and philosophy behind Unwritten as a sort of initial preview.

First off, what you will not be getting for Unwritten is a rule book. That is, Unwritten is not intended to tell you how you must run a role-playing game set in the D’niverse. Rather, Unwritten is a ‘tool book’. The mechanics and guidance that are going into the book are intended to give you a wide array of tools that you can use to make all sorts of stories. The Fate community has a saying: “Fiction, not physics.” This is key to Unwritten. It’s not a linear walk-through like you would see on how to play Myst. Rather, it is more like a travel guide that points out all the interesting places, suggests travel routes and lets you build your own journey. The story does not emerge from the rules; the rules support the story.

Second, I wanted to describe the central themes of Unwritten as I am writing it. The D’niverse is a place for adventure. There’s room for all sorts of pulpy goodness that would fit just fine into an Indiana Jones movie or as part of a Steampunk novel. Unwritten gives you tools for having epic adventures. It’s also a place for discovery. There are always mysteries to solve. Some are puzzles, and others are like crime scenes. And beyond that, there are mysteries about ancient civilizations and strange sciences to delve into. Unwritten provides ways to role-play the journey into the unknown. And finally, the D’niverse is a place to accomplish things. “Find a way, make a home” as Yeesha said. You’ll be able to create amazing machines, take advantage of the strange things you find in the Ages, as well as work together with others to make changes to the your world, both local and cosmic.

We’re really looking forward to bringing this to you. You’ll be seeing more frequent updates come along as we finish the first drafts of the game and begin to plan the next phase.

Hello my friends.

I wanted to take a few minutes to talk to all of you out there about where we are in the production of Unwritten. We are strongly committed to making Unwritten a top notch RPG product. We want it to both capture the spirit of the Myst franchise as well as open up new vistas for adventures and experiences in D’ni. In that light, we’ve been trying out a lot of different options and variations of the Fate system, and even more so now that the FateCore version of the Fate game has been made available to supporters of the FateCore kickstarter.

So, we have been grinding away in terms of designing and redesigning the basic game, as well as engaging in alpha playtests of various mechanics. None of that is in a final form, but we continue to design, discuss and refine. I will be posting more often as we start to bring together the disparate elements together in more tangible forms. I hope to give you more insight into the philosophy behind Unwritten and how it develops.

Shorah