Dun dun dun!

Actually, this is by no means the entire plan - I just figured after the tangent I threw off in another folder today I'd put something a little more official up here for you guys.

Basically we've had approval for awhile now to design Bards 2.0. Or 3.0 if you want to keep it in sync with everything else. I doubt this comes as a surprise to many of you given the discussions we've had over the past months, but you can take this as confirmation.

This is a thumbnail sketch of what's ahead. The order may seem a little weird, but it's more or less locked in due to how all the pieces rely on each other technically.

I'm not going to really dig into the "Why" in this post, though in short the goal is to reshape Bards into a guild with a holistic vision, for the sake of playability, future development and consistent lore.

1) Voice Rewrite - As mentioned, this basically is a minor change to allow non-Bards to have a vocal range, allow Bards to change their vocal range, and fix a rather large technical issue to allow work to begin on other projects. This is currently in QC, and I'll give you full details when it's released.

2) Recall Additions - Not ready to call this a rewrite yet, though it may end up one. I'd say this is going to be about 50/50 things you'll never notice (But will really make life far easier on the backend) and things you will notice, and hopefully make recall a more enjoyable experience. The recent suggestions have been noted and many will be addressed. The only particular one I'm ready to announce right now is that there WILL be a way to locate nearby recalls without having to look up a list or check every single room.

3) Heritages - It's hard to summarize this release as there is a lot going on here. Suffice it to say it will include a fair bit of lore, the ability to join a Heritage, advance in it and show off your membership. Non-cosmetic functions are unlikely to be included at this point.

4) Mojo Rewrite - No details here yet, though if you want some idea of the general plan you can review the theoretical mojo thread from a few months back.

5a) Abilities Rewrite - This is the Big One, and I promise to give ample heads up on what's going on as we get closer. Generally this will be a review of "What a Bard can do with mojo". What I'm talking about would currently include things like bluffs, screams, and whistles. The main goal here is to address a slew of bugs, some design issues etc and form Bardic abilities into a holistic system designed to work together instead of the conglomeration of abilities that has been patched together over the years. Who knows, some of them might finally get off preview! wink

5b) Magic 3.0 - This is really a parallel project, but I note it here for completeness since it's Kind of a Big Deal.

6) Feats - Not a ton to say here either, though most of what was discussed at the mini meetings hasn't changed. They'll still be tied to Heritages, but this hopefully makes it a little more clear why they won't be part of the initial release.

As for my status, I'm still a little swamped with Hollow Eve and a dash of Real Life. Bardic work should pick up in pace again as that stuff shakes out over the next month or two.

As a final note - if there is interest in a GM held meeting to talk shop, I could be convinced to arrange one. However I'm not sure how much new ground there would be to cover that I haven't already covered in this post or can be answered in some quick forum Q&A.

-Raesh

PS: Send your entries to the Recall Contest at Bardrecall@gmail.com you've got just 9 more days to make it in for September!