Games by JimD Newsletter – Safe Haven updates, CoG Writers Meetup!

Welcome to my 61st newsletter! I love the fall and look forward to celebrating Halloween this year. Since I moved to the suburbs outside of Philadelphia (all the way to New Jersey), I have been pleasantly surprised by all the trick-or-treaters who stop at our homes. When we lived in a high-rise in Philadelphia, we averaged about three trick-or-treaters the whole night! In our new home last year, we had hundreds of kids stopping by our house. It improved the spirit of the holiday for us, and this year we plan to buy a lot more candy to hand out.

It’s also an excellent time for scary movies! I usually watch at least one of the “of the Dead” films. This year will be Day of the Dead, George A. Romero’s film from 1985. Of course, I’m watching the last season of The Walking Dead, although it’s mostly to see how the series ends. I’m also watching the new series, Interview with the Vampire, a retelling of Anne Rice’s book. I loved the now-classic Brad Pitt movie and was reluctant to try this new show. It’s amazing. It differs from the film and the book, the acting is superb, and the plot and characters have been rich and well-developed. Check it out if you like vampire tales.

This month in the newsletter, like always, I will provide updates on my games and info on upcoming releases. Let’s get started.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 3 & 4

Part 4 is currently at 180,500 words, over 20,000 more this month. Chapter 13 of Part 4 is finally finished! I am now moving on to Chapter 14, which will be an open-ended chapter of sorts. After a lot of consideration and feedback from numerous readers as well as Patreon polls, I have decided to create several chapters in which the player can have some degree of freedom to choose common tasks like hobbies, conversations with NPCs, crafting, leadership tasks, etc. while also having the option to go on shorter missions. I think this will give enough freedom to players while making the story move forward. It will provide considerable opportunities instead of forcing players down a central path. I should be able to show off this style of chapter in November through a beta version.

Here is a list of some of the missions that are in the works (some are subject to change):

• Monica & Anders - Urgent care clinic.
• Bailey & Tommy - Small Police Station
• Madison & Brody - strip mall
• Reilly & Billie - veterinary clinic
• Kelly and Parker - campground

I’m still trying to decide what happens if those members are not in your group. They may turn into solo missions.

CoG Writers Meeting

On Saturday, October 17, we had our second Choice of Games writers meeting, and it was the first session we recorded to show on YouTube. You can watch the full video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdEXyltiL8M&t=729s&ab_channel=JimDattilo

We covered various topics, including how our life experiences contributed to events in our stories, the challenges we faced when writing our games, and how we like to use achievements. In the future, we plan to gather more questions from Patreon and social media and invite other authors to join us.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood

The True Faith patch is still in review at Paradox/WoD. It feels like this is taking forever, but it’s out of my control at this stage. I keep checking with my editor, but there is no news.

In the meantime, I have created a V5 loresheet for Amanda Chastain that you can use in your tabletop game! It is free and can be downloaded from the World of Darkness site.

https://www.worldofdarkness.com/account

You can download a loresheet from each of the Vampire: The Masquerade interactive novels (Night Road, Out for Blood, Parliament of Knives, and Sins of the Sires).

That’s all for this month. Until next time, stay safe, and thank you for your support!