Summer Turns to Fall(out)

Hello again. It’s Mark Della-Croce, the Product Lead for Lore Link. August was a big month, and September is just as exciting. So let’s talk about it!

In August, the Lore Link Players were excited to check out the new Starfinder Second Edition Playtest, so I took two sessions over on our Twitch channel to cover that. In the first session, I discussed how Starfinder differed from Pathfinder and how that changed how you ran those games. In the second session, I sat down and showed off our newest feature in Lore Link: Player Sharing! I showed how you could use Player Sharing to help in TTRPGs where a particular race or location might not immediately be known to your players, so you could share that information with your players to let them quickly brush up on what a Vesk or Skittemander looks like and acts like to keep them in the world without you having to stop and explain. Also, I showed off how player sharing in combination with sessions can help give your players (as well as you and the GM) a place to review what happened in the last session quickly! I then hosted an actual play session of the Cosmic Birthday adventure for Starfinder 2E with the Lore Link Players. That ended up filled with the usual chaos but oddly with a soundtrack? To learn more about that, you can check out that adventure and more on our YouTube channel!

We started off September with Tony (our poor communications director, who has to help edit the newsletters I produce into something professional) and I wrapping up our cleaning of Imperial ships in the Warhammer 40k expansion for PowerWash Simulator. I then planned out Redsky (from Solar Studios), a 5e-compatible world with fantastic world-building, in Lore Link. It’s a science-fantasy / low-magic setting that does an excellent job of giving you not only an entire world to set your story in but multiple points in time of the civilization’s history to be able to change the tone of your game. From grand explorations from an early age to triumphant battles, and finally even a desperate last stand during an apocalypse, Redsky gives you plenty of opportunities to work on many different types of stories in its world. Finally, I asked the Lore Link Players about what game they might want to play for our actual play in September, and they wanted to revisit Fallout: The Roleplaying Game. Fallout is a 2d20 system from Modiphius games we’ve covered previously (check out the VODs here), and everyone enjoyed it. So, I’ll expand on the next section on the starter adventure Machine Frequency, doing a pair of planning sessions, building it out, and setting up information to use our new Player Sharing feature.

Speaking of the Lore Link Players, if you want to catch more of our excellent Lore Link team, you can check them out on their streams. Twenty has exciting gaming streams, including PUBG and Horizon Forbidden West, on her channel, twenty20sight. Luna is spreading their brand of chaos on other play streams, such as the excellent Tales of Initiative, where they played the delightful 1920s roleplaying game Flabbergasted! Tony streams as TonyTroxell, and he likes to start the mornings with a cup of tea and conversation, sometimes while he plays something laid back like PowerWash Simulator.

Dev-wise, we’re looking to wrap up Player Secrets this month and make that available to our Early Access supporters (those at Galaxy tier and above). After we finish that work, we’ll move on to more significant projects, such as getting ready to make all tiers available for purchase and taking a deep dive into our data hierarchy to make some of our most exciting features more universal across the application. Once that’s complete, we’ll also be able to offer other highly requested features such as Data Importing, Dark Mode, and more!

Gen Con was our last big convention of the year, so we’re able to put our heads down and focus on development and marketing for Lore Link these past few months, but that’s not to say we aren’t looking forward to getting back out on the convention scene. We are looking forward to revisiting some old favorite conventions, and we’re also looking at possibly attending some new ones. If you’d like Lore Link to visit a tabletop convention near you, reach out and let us know (either by emailing us at contact@lorelink.com or via our website). We’d love to get out and show off Lore Link to new people as well as host panels on GMing!

Alright, it’s time for me to head off to GM yet another game. Until then, may colder weather help clear up schedules and get your favorite group together at the table!