The Future Proof Podcast 026
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:21
Hi, and welcome to the Future Proof Podcast. This is our monthly podcast where we chat about stuff we've been working on. And I think cool, we're planning. I'm Gregory Avery-Weir.
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:30
I'm Melissa Avery-Weir. And we are about to make a change to Exploit: Zero Day.
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:36
Yeah, we haven't done a code update that's added a feature in a bit. And the feature that we're adding is maybe not hugely glamorous, but it's one that is very necessary, which is we're adding the ability to close accounts.
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:50
Yes.
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:51
So anytime you're running an, an online game, or you know, I think kind of any online service, you want people to be able to leave. And so previously, we only kind of allowed that through a manual request process. But now... I hope you don't get tired of our online hacktivism puzzle game. But if you do, you--Once, once this update goes live, that's coming soon, you'll be able to close it out. The stuff you've put in the game will stay in the game, but it'll kind of get anonymized. Your your profile will will go away. And we'll make sure that like, you don't get emails anymore, you don't get attributed for for work anymore, and so on.
Melissa Avery-Weir 1:39
I think it's, I think it's pretty slick. Like, I think this is the first time I've been part of a deletion mechanism that was like, "Hey, we need to keep the work public and anonymize it."
Gregory Avery-Weir 1:51
Yeah. Because the, the way that like, you can play other people's levels and get credits for doing so and so on means that we need to keep all that stuff in the game, and keep kind of an audit trail and so on of all the stuff you did. So user generated content makes everything complicated.
Melissa Avery-Weir 2:09
It's that's pretty cool and exciting. If folks do want their stuff gone, they can contact us and we can sort out, you know, we can make that happen if there are reasons, either kind of in a focused way, like, Oh, we need, you know, this text removed, or something like that. But, but by and large, we think this will take care of most use cases.
Gregory Avery-Weir 2:29
Yeah, anything else will be on a on a case by case basis. But on a much simpler note, another thing we've updated recently is a quick reference sheet.
Melissa Avery-Weir 2:39
Yes, we have a quick reference, single page document for Rosette Diceless. And we just we did some reorganization of it, cleaned it up. I think it looks prettier now, and clarified a couple of rules that we found at the table folks still had questions about, which is exactly what the quick reference is for. It's like, here's your FAQ, basically, and remember how the flow of combat works. So like one of the things we clarify is that you can use Resources to block Edges during an Attack. And you know, it's this sort of thing, that's part of the rules. But when you're in the middle of a Conflict, sometimes that's like a rule that you don't remember. So enough on my quick reference that is free to download on ich, or rosetterpg.com. So there's no, you know, there's no charge or anything like that for that.
Gregory Avery-Weir 3:31
That's sort of a I guess a little bit of a preview of errata that's that's going out soon, sometime soon. With, especially with the the way Resources and Edges interact, the rules are going to be a little clearer in the book.
Melissa Avery-Weir 3:45
Yeah, I think through play, we've sort of... It's like, it's almost like working on your elevator pitch, where it's like, the first while it's a little rough. And then by the end, you feel like you've, you've kind of come up with a more concise explanation of what it is. And so we're like, hey, let's just roll with that and make it very clear, because we've had more practice at it.
Gregory Avery-Weir 4:05
One of the things that helped a lot with that is that we recorded a campaign for Tabletop Garden, which is my role playing actual play podcast.
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:14
Yes.
Gregory Avery-Weir 4:14
And there were several points during that when we were like having to actually vocalize for recording what the rules were when we went , "Oh, this could be clearer." So a lot of this comes out of that. You can check out more on that at tabletop.garden.
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:28
Yes.
Gregory Avery-Weir 4:29
Another thing that I've been working on lately is some writing for Exploit: Zero Day. We have an ongoing piece of story called Headless Swarm that is startlingly close to being finished. It's, it's been a long way going we did not plan for it to to last as long as it, as it has in terms of calendar time, but it's a paid season of story for Exploit: Zero Day where you're investigating a weird hacker group that's taking control of drones. And I am writing the next job, the next little adventure of saving someone who has been wrongfully imprisoned, or has had part of themselves wrongfully imprisoned, at a military base. And we should get to look into like, the weirdness of the United States military and the military industrial complex and how it interacts with modern technology. And it's exciting. It's, it's a, it's a tricky process, because there's a lot of, a lot of factors and a lot to keep in your head when when planning this sort of plotline. But.
Melissa Avery-Weir 5:41
Yeah, it's it's short chunks of prose, split by puzzle, right? Like, there's before a puzzle, after a puzzle, across several puzzles, and then sort of the the larger sort of emails that come in to you, as you're, as you're going along. It's, it is a complicated writing process. And we've at various points done flowcharts--because there are decisions made, and that causes branching.
Gregory Avery-Weir 6:09
And the puzzles themselves have a sort of, have a structure to them that needs to make sense with the the chunks of writing, you're getting along with them. So yeah.
Melissa Avery-Weir 6:18
Yeah. And I'm excited to do the puzzle design on this on this chunk. It's been a while. I'm a little nervous, because I am a little rusty. But it's, it's been a while since I've played in Exploit: Zero Day land. So I'm ready to do it.
Gregory Avery-Weir 6:31
Yeah, our main focus is, of course, still been on Rosette Diceless, and the upcoming Companion that we're doing. So those pair of role playing books are still in progress.
Melissa Avery-Weir 6:44
Yeah, so we've talked before about how we need to order proofs of the print version of our books before we put them on the market. So it's just like, make sure that when the printer gets this PDF, they don't print it completely sideways, or offset by, you know, two inches or something like that. And that the artwork prints okay, things like this. And so, we're doing two interesting things here. One is that we are replacing the Diceless, the original Diceless book with an updated version that has errata in it fixes for some of this rules stuff we've been talking about.
Melissa Avery-Weir 7:20
So that's done differently on different stores. Like Amazon, you make a new book, you say it's version two. And then eventually, I assume I'll decommission one and, you know, publish the other one. So that process was actually easier to get a proof, because I had a distinct entry, I just said, "Okay, I've got this far in the process. Give me, you know, send me the book."
Melissa Avery-Weir 7:43
DriveThruRPG is a little more complicated. We're going to have to actually take the book down for a while, while we're doing this proof process. We don't want to like lose reviews and lose our links and any of that sort of thing. We kind of want to do an upgrade in place for this, because it is just such a small increment. But we want people who already bought the book to be able to, if when they redownload their ebook, from Drive Thru RPG, we want them to get the new one, and not have to like mess with "Oh, should I go buy it at a discount?" Like, that's just not what we're doing here. So it's an interestingly complicated process involved communication back and forth with the wonderful folks over at Drive Thru RPG to be like, "hey, how do we do this so I don't break everything? And you know, is this really what the process is?"
Melissa Avery-Weir 8:27
So we do have our Amazon proof in hand. So there are two cool things about this. One, I love getting a printed copy of our book. It's just like the dorkiest thing ever, but I love it. And two, it's the first package we've gotten in our post office box. So when, when we, each of us has relocated our homes in the last year or so. And one of the things we wanted to do is like, make sure that the address of our business was not necessarily like one of our houses. And so we set up a post office box, you know, it's just the thing small businesses do. We can't completely detach everything, but regardless, but we have this little Post Office Box. We, we, like 99% of our mail is for other businesses who had our post office box before us. So not only was this almost the first piece of mail that was actually for us, it was also a package. So it was very exciting. I go in to the post office every couple of weeks and leave empty handed or with a bunch of trash. So that's fun.
Gregory Avery-Weir 9:28
Yeah.
Gregory Avery-Weir 9:29
So hopefully more news on Exploit: Zero Day and on Rosette Diceless soon. You can find all of our stuff at futureproofgames.com you can follow us on Twitter at PlayFutureProof where on YouTube at Future Proof Games. We do twitch streaming at twitch.tv/AveryMD and GregoryAveryWeir, respectively and do that every every couple of weeks if you want to hang out with us and watch us play video games. Feel free to send us questions or comments, anything like that over on our blog, on social media, jump into one of our Twitch streams, email us. However you're most comfortable. We like hearing from folks. Our theme music for the podcast is "Juparo" by Broke for Free which is used with permission.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai