Discord Endeavors

[Gamerprinter]

So, I've been repeatedly invited to join Discord and a particular community on Discord. While they are familiar with my maps and deck plans, they are also aware that I design and publish Starfinder supplements and adventure modules. Well I wasn't involved in Discord at all, but finally joined last weekend. The DSC League or Derwoods Starship Combat League is a community that primarily design custom Starfinder starship designs, then either run them in adventure scenarios or as starship combat situations. They gave me my own channel, since a lot of my ship designs use Starships, Stations and Salvage Guide, which is a 3PP product that I published, rather than sticking with the Starfinder Core Rules and the Starship Operations Manual. When Paizo Publishing releases their supplements on Vehicles and Mecha, the DSC will be building and fighting with those as well.

Anyway, I posted a 3D illustration of an Imperial Navy Battle Cruiser for my upcoming Kaidan Star Empire project (a sci-fi update of my published Japanese Horror setting). However, I couldn't find the ship stats that I did for this ship, but posted the illustration anyway. That inspired the owner of the community to initiate a Challenge. So now members of the community are designing custom Battle Cruiser designs with a Tier and Frame limit, and the illustration as the only reference to designing their ships. Five have joined so far. After their designs are complete (by end of week), then they are going to engage in combat bouts between the ship designs. Whomever wins I will put their name on the credits page of the supplement that this ship will be published in, as Associate Designer, and any one of my published products as a free download. I look forward to the Roll20 fights between those ships.

So then after a day or two, I casually asked their thoughts on how to improve the Starfinder Planet stat block. I'd just published a planetary war rules supplement for Starfinder, and included a one-shot module at the end of the supplement that featured a planet, and I had to create it's stat block - and thought, boy, this stat block is even less mechanically then a Pathfinder city stat block. Since the community is a starship building and combat community, somebody suggested I create Planet Building rules that is formatted like the Starfinder Starship Building rules. So now I have a group of 6 DSC members collaborating with myself to design a Planet Builder book for Starfinder, which will be published as a Gamer Printshop (my company) and DSC League collaborative publication.

So one moment, I was reluctant to join Discord, and the next I'm head long in running a contest and doing a collaborative publishing project with them - in the first week of joining!

GP

P.S. here's the 3d illustration of the Imperial Battle Cruiser being used in the Design Challenge...

imperial-battlecruiser.jpg