It's finished! Well, a bit finished.

So today, I finished OSRIC 2. And when I say "finished", I mean, I didn't finish it at all--what I did was, I sent the last remaining bit of the final draft to Jim Kramer, who's kindly doing the layout for me. It's in no sense "finished"... there will be corrections and re-drafts yet.

But still, it's a major feeling of accomplishment. I've written an RPG rulebook that'll probably run to 400 pages, and I'll be able to make an interim release in less than a month.

When I say "I've written", I mean, I didn't write it all. I wrote less than half of it. The RPG community contributed the rest--I just edited. And people from the RPG community gave me the artwork for free.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Do you know what OSRIC is? I bet almost everyone who's found their way to this blog does. But I could be wrong, so here's a link to the old version: http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric

OSRIC is--was!--a system reference document for the First Edition system. OSRIC 2's the First Edition system wrapped up as a complete game. And it's all FREE. That's right, free--the OSRIC .pdf won't cost you a dime.

I said it's "complete" and I meant it. If you're used to OSRIC 1, then you've got a treat coming. OSRIC 2 runs to nearly 400 pages (did I say that already?) and it's in six chapters compared to OSRIC 1's three. The extra chapters are all GM-oriented material... so there's a complete chapter of monsters (and, like, hundreds of monsters; I bet there are over three hundred monsters in OSRIC 2, though I haven't counted them). And there's a complete chapter of magic items, probably more of them than there were in Gary Gygax's DMG. And there's a chapter that helps design and GM a campaign; it's full of information, advice, and tables that'll fill your game world with wonders.

It'll also help fill in the difficult parts of running a game world. Lots of stuff on NPCs--who are they, what can they do, where can a player hire one, how much does it cost? Lots of stuff that'll help you generate encounters on the fly, no matter how far off the track the players have gone this time.

Do I sound buzzed? I'm totally buzzed.

This is going to rock the old-school world as much as OSRIC's first release did.