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:
Chapter 5 rewrites, Chapter 7 progress
11 months ago
– Sat, Jun 03, 2023 at 04:38:19 PM
Progress Since Last Time
Over the last two months, we've made significant progress on the layout. Chapter 5 (the Playbook chapter) has been undergoing rewrites. Originally, everything that was on the printable Playbooks you would use during play was being reproduced in the chapter, but we've moved toward adding more context and letting some of the mechanical bits live just on the printable sheets, where they're most needed. We're adding a bit more information about each Playbook and how to make it shine as a player.
In addition, we've reviewed the Chapter 7 updates and should be in the final rounds of minor iterations for it.
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)
Appendices: Mostly done, waiting on a few final details
Finally
I'm really excited about the revisions to Chapter 5. Rich has been taking the lead on the updates and his vision for the Playbooks has really been shining through in the new content. I'm still getting used to my new position at work (my first time in management) and helping support family through medical issues. I'm grateful for the team and for all of your support.
- Richard and the DiM Team
Chapter 4 Complete, Chapter 7 in Iterations
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 11:32:41 PM
The Update
Like it says on the tin, we've now had our accessibility pass on Chapter 4 so it's fully complete!
In addition, the Chapter 7 edits are still in iterations (edits means reflowing means more edits, etc). Now that we've made a number of cuts and reorganized things slightly, we should be ready for a few more of the styling decisions as things slot into place.
Example - Embracing the unexpected
As promised, here's another one of our samples that may be left on the cutting room floor:
PLAYER: "I don't know, all I can think of is that scene from the animated Robin Hood movie where Sir Hiss is flying around the archery tournament in a balloon trying to find Robin Hood in disguise.”
GUIDE: “Actually, with all the biotech available, there’s literally no reason we can’t have a sea snake who wears a living dive helmet and swims around in it.”
PLAYER: “Great! Yeah, so this scout is a sea snake who wears a genetically modified jelly that acts as a combination dive helmet and rebreather. They can be from the mangrove city nearby in the shallows. Maybe we trade with them for some sort of moss or fungus that grows above water on the trees?”
Finally
I'm very excited about the progress we're making and the smoothness of the workflow at the moment. We've been posting more regular updates between the monthly updates on the Twitter account (@DiMRPG) and Facebook, so if you'd like a little more detail as we go, you can follow us there.
- Richard and the DiM Team
Chapter 7 Edits
about 1 year ago
– Sat, Feb 11, 2023 at 08:24:59 PM
The Update
Just a quick update this month!
We've now made some of the very difficult cuts we needed to make to Chapter 7 (The Guide) to make the layout work. We've been saving the original version of the examples for our own reference and we'll be sharing some of them with future updates.
We'll probably have some additional iteration on the Chapter 7 layout next before moving on to Chapter 8 (Running the Game).
Example - Presenting information as a gift
The example below was inspired by the second game of Descent into Midnight ever played, where our friend Darcy Ross told us about the Aristotle's Lantern.
GUIDE: “Someone at the construction site comes over to you. What do they look like? What species are they?”
PLAYER 1: “I’m imagining them sort of like a construction worker, except they’re their own backhoe. Here, look up a picture of an Aristotle’s lantern on a sea urchin, you’ll get a kick out of this. It’s got these five interlocking teeth that look sort of like horrifying shovels or something...”
GUIDE: “(Looking it up) “Oh no. Well, that’s gonna haunt my nightmares forever. I love it!”
Finally
On a personal note, we'd just like to encourage folks to reach out to the people they love this month, even if only to just say hello.
- Richard and the DiM Team
January Update
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 09:55:53 AM
What have we accomplished since last time?
We've added a bit more content to Chapter 4 (Moves) to massage the layout and get rid of an ugly blank page and create some symmetry for the pages where the Moves are explained. Here's a sample page featuring one of the fantastic drawings from Taylor Livingston (and of course part of Devon George's city illustration peeking in on the margin).
Page from Chapter 4
We've also started in on refining the layout for Chapter 7. We're still iterating on the example text to make it fit well but also maintain the tone we've found to be most effective at our tables.
What's next?
We're continuing work on Chapter 7. We need to lock in a style for the examples then re-write until they fit nicely within the layout, so I'd expect a bit of back and forth on this for the next few weeks.
A few final words
The ball's continuing to roll on this. Things slowed down a bit in December and early January due to illness and time dedicated to family but we've kept things moving. If you'd like more frequent updates, we're posting on Facebook and Twitter between the official backer updates.
Hope you all are safe and healthy,
- Richard and the DiM Team
2022 Year End Update
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 05:27:43 PM
Where are we?
The Chapter 4 layout ended up having an awkward blank page, so we've added a bit more content ahead of it to smooth out the layout. We'll need to reflow everything and make some minor adjustments for the content ahead of that page.
Chapter 7 presented us with a challenge in the layout for differentiating between Move text and example text, and with the issue that some of the examples are rather lengthy. We've done some revisions but will need to massage the layout and the example text quite a bit to make everything look nice and flow smoothly.
We may be moving some of the material from the appendices to another location, so we're working through whether we want to move it and where.
What happened?
The short version is I've been burned out. The long version is it's been incredibly difficult to find caregiving help for an ongoing family medical issue and I overcommitted myself to help out. What we thought would be a stop-gap arrangement has lasted around 8 months now. The last year has been tough for my family dealing with both chronic medical issues and COVID. During the last few months especially I had let it affect both my work and personal life to a degree I couldn't ignore, so I've scaled back a bit and asked for help.
What's next?
We're shifting some responsibilities on the team around and our Concept Lead, Rich, will be driving the project management. I'll still be doing the bulk of the updates and working with our layout designer to manage the edits and iterations, but we'll be doing regular check ins to ensure we're maintaining momentum. Speaking of updates, as part of the check ins I'll be posting to Facebook and Twitter with more frequent updates in the style of a dev blog so folks can follow along with the details more closely if they'd like.
Content-wise, we're looking at iterations on Chapter 4's new suggestions to fill in that blank page, decisions about how to present examples and whether that will differ from Move text, editing the examples in Chapter 7, and potentially moving that appendices content. We're continuing to move forward with the project
Finally
I again can't express the appreciation I have for everyone's patience and support. We're not going away, we're committed to continuing work on the project until we can get everyone their copy, and we're excited to have all of you along with us on this journey.
