Descent into Midnight

Created by Richard Kreutz-Landry

A roleplaying game about community, family, and hope on an aquatic world. Descent into Midnight is a Powered by the Apocalypse game where the players take on the role of psionic alien sea creatures who are defending their home from an otherworldly Corruption.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Finalizing Making the Game Yours, Revising Playbooks
about 1 month ago – Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 09:54:17 AM

Progress Since Last Time

Work on Chapter 9 is within a hairs' breadth of done (we needed to revise some of the formatting to make things more consistent) and we also made a brief update to Chapter 8 (we found that we were having some confusion around one of the examples and realized we needed to re-write it if it wasn't clear within the team).

In the meantime, our Concept Lead, Rich, has been running the game for kids as an educational tool and refining the play materials. We've been tweaking things to make them easier to put onto the printable Playbooks and clarifying them to make the play experience smoother. It's one of the reasons we left Chapter 5 (Playbooks) to the end; we knew that it was the most likely thing to continually develop and we wanted it to be the best it could be.

Overview

  • Covers and frontmatter: Done (except for publishing info which we'll get once we have a final page count and can produce the meta data block necessary for libraries, etc)
  • Chapter 1 - Basics: Done
  • Chapter 2 - Safety & Accessibility: Done
  • Chapter 3 - Characters: Done
  • Chapter 4 - Moves: Done
  • Chapter 5 - Playbooks: Tweaking slightly to due play-testing, needs a re-layout and brief editing pass
  • Chapter 6 - Campaign Play: Done
  • Chapter 7 - The Guide: Done
  • Chapter 8 - Running the Game: Done
  • Chapter 9 - Making the Game Yours: Almost finalized
  • Appendices: Mostly done, waiting on a few final details

Finally

I'm really excited about getting to the last major chunk of layout and editing. We're on the cusp of laying out the Playbooks chapter (one of the most critical in the book) in tandem with the new play materials.

I'm also looking forward to my new "office" for working on the project: a local aquarium! I'm able to work remotely and decided to pick up a membership to my local aquarium, where I'll have a dedicated, thematic workspace to spark inspiration and reward myself for moving things forward.

Also, I'm celebrating April 1st this year with April FOODS Day and running a food drive at the office because the best April Fools Day prank you can pull is kicking hunger's butt!

-Richard and the DiM Team

Chapter 9 In Progress
4 months ago – Sun, Dec 31, 2023 at 10:42:03 AM

Progress Since Last Time

We're moving right along as we've headed into the winter holiday season. Chapter 8 is done with a final review pass by our accessibility expert, and Chapter 9 has been laid out and is in iterations. The past month or so has seen a few vacations and illnesses on the team (pretty much par for the course for December) but we're in a great spot to move forward in the new year.

The initial layout of Chapter 9 is looking awesome and we'll be polishing it and then moving on to circle back to Chapter 5, which will then lead into redesigning the Playbook layouts.

Overview

  • Covers and frontmatter: Done (except for publishing info which we'll get once we have a final page count and can produce the meta data block necessary for libraries, etc)
  • Chapter 1 - Basics: Done
  • Chapter 2 - Safety & Accessibility: Done
  • Chapter 3 - Characters: Done
  • Chapter 4 - Moves: Done
  • Chapter 5 - Playbooks: Rewrites complete, needs to re-layout and brief editing pass
  • Chapter 6 - Campaign Play: Done
  • Chapter 7 - The Guide: Done
  • Chapter 8 - Running the Game: Done
  • Chapter 9 - Making the Game Yours: In Progress
  • Appendices: Mostly done, waiting on a few final details

Finally

We're moving right along and got some good rest over the winter holidays. Having a professional project manager shepherding things along is making a huge difference, and in my own personal life I've made a bunch of healthy changes and have lots more energy to get things done.

Happy New Year!

- Richard and the DiM Team

Project Manager Hired
5 months ago – Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 01:27:18 PM

Progress Since Last Time

The most important development since the last update is that I've hired a professional project manager with whom I have regular contact outside of this project to also manage this one. It's clear to me that I haven't been able to drive the project forward at the pace I'd like without outside help, and it's already been a very productive handful of weekly sessions with them. I'm using personal funds for this because it's a huge quality of life improvement for me to offload the responsibility of ensuring meetings happen and organizing tasks, and to have additional accountability for getting things done in a timely fashion.

We've made long-overdue minor updates to the website, fixed access to the email at the descentintomidnight.com domain, and organized the remaining tasks in a way that mirrors my day job, which has been incredibly helpful. 

In terms of progress on the book itself, we've continued iterations on Chapter 8 to make it fit properly into the layout while still preserving the essential examples of play necessary to demonstrate the game well. The writing team has had a bit of extra availability recently and with the onus of project management off our shoulders, we should be able to focus on the actual work of iterating on the text necessary to finish the layout.

Overview

  • Covers and frontmatter: Done (except for publishing info which we'll get once we have a final page count and can produce the meta data block necessary for libraries, etc)
  • Chapter 1 - Basics: Done
  • Chapter 2 - Safety & Accessibility: Done
  • Chapter 3 - Characters: Done
  • Chapter 4 - Moves: Done
  • Chapter 5 - Playbooks: Rewrites complete, needs to re-layout and brief editing pass
  • Chapter 6 - Campaign Play: Done
  • Chapter 7 - The Guide: Done
  • Chapter 8 - Running the Game: continuing iterations with layout
  • Chapter 9 - Making the Game Yours: To do
  • Appendices: Mostly done, waiting on a few final details

Finally

I can't overstate how excited and motivated I am by having realized I needed help, asked for it, and it having an immediate positive impact on the project. Thank you all!

- Richard and the DiM Team

Playbook Rewrites Done!
8 months ago – Wed, Aug 16, 2023 at 09:19:01 PM

Progress Since Last Time

We've finalized Chapter 7 and continued iterations on Chapter 8 to fill space and figure out which examples are important enough to need a full page or even a two page spread. In the meantime, Rich has finished revamping Chapter 5 (Playbooks) including reworking the Traveler playbook into the Explorer. With as much inspiration as we've drawn from marine scientists, it only felt right to lean more heavily into the idea of exploration for the sake of knowledge.

Overview

  • Covers and frontmatter: Done (except for publishing info which we'll get once we have a final page count and can produce the meta data block necessary for libraries, etc)
  • Chapter 1 - Basics: Done
  • Chapter 2 - Safety & Accessibility: Done
  • Chapter 3 - Characters: Done
  • Chapter 4 - Moves: Done
  • Chapter 5 - Playbooks: Rewrites complete, needs to re-layout and brief editing pass
  • Chapter 6 - Campaign Play: Done
  • Chapter 7 - The Guide: Done
  • Chapter 8 - Running the Game: continuing iterations with layout
  • Chapter 9 - Making the Game Yours: To do
  • Appendices: Mostly done, waiting on a few final details

Finally

We're excited to continue to refining the Playbooks and smoothing out the game experience as we move forward with layout.

- Richard and the DiM Team

More Chapter 5 rewrites
9 months ago – Mon, Jul 10, 2023 at 10:14:03 PM

Progress Since Last Time

We've continued apace with the Chapter 5 rewrites, streamlining the Move text to slim it down a bit (the new temporary playbook printouts were getting a bit overstuffed) and making a few adjustments like swapping out a Playbook Move for a Core Move on one of the Playbooks to better fit our experience with it in play. We're about 70% complete with the rewrites, with just the last three Playbooks to go. We're expecting to have most of the done within the week.

Additionally, we've had another iteration on Chapter 7 and 8. Chapter 8 will probably need a bit more work to fill/trim space since it has large examples that will likely be whole pages or two page spreads. It's the chapter that has the most in-depth examples that require demonstrating a back-and-forth and more of the tone.

Overview

  • Covers and frontmatter: Done (except for publishing info which we'll get once we have a final page count and can produce the meta data block necessary for libraries, etc)
  • Chapter 1 - Basics: Done
  • Chapter 2 - Safety & Accessibility: Done
  • Chapter 3 - Characters: Done
  • Chapter 4 - Moves: Done
  • Chapter 5 - Playbooks: Rewrites (adding context, removing unnecessary mechanical bits, 70% done)
  • Chapter 6 - Campaign Play: Done
  • Chapter 7 - The Guide: Final iterations
  • Chapter 8 - Running the Game: first layout pass complete, needs significant iterations
  • Chapter 9 - Making the Game Yours: To do
  • Appendices: Mostly done, waiting on a few final details

Finally

The team is continuing to move forward with the work and the pages we're iterating on look absolutely fantastic. We hope everyone is safe and comfortable as we head into the warm summer months here in the northern hemisphere.

- Richard and the DiM Team