¦ dialling in from workstation ¦
08:47 GMT, Monday 7th January 2008. I suppose I should be celebrating. Yellow Dawn (2nd Edition) was finally released today. It's described as a 2nd Edition because the 1st Edition was a grubby, badly put-together PDF... so this 2nd Edition really represents the first true incarnation. However, it has been born amongst the mucus, burst blood vessels and cerebral aching of a full-on flu... so I'm in a vague mental state, hardly conducive to writting lots of promotional copy or shouting from the rooftops.
Yellow Dawn has been a journey. Closely intwined with my departure from the Agency (Mid-2005) and rebuilding my life from this point. I started putting together the crappy PDF 1st Edition around late 2005. It was early 2006, sitting in my mum's study in Jesus Mound, that I first launched it upon an unsuspecting world... it was around this time that I pulled together the old-players from Game who still lived in Bristol, and brought in some fresh blood. The first ever Yellow Dawn session happened early 2006, at Simon P's house, in Bristol. I was apprehensive, desperately hoping it would work as a concept; I needn't have worried...it was an amazing session. The 1st EditionPDF had a 1,000 requests in 6 months. As a proof-of-concept it was a roaring success. Apart from this, nothing of real significance happened with Yellow Dawn as a product, until early 2007.
I'd just come back from 6 weeks in Newcastle, following my Dad's death (Nov 2006) and launched into an amazingly productive and creative period. I published my novel God Seed, and several other projects, and then I sat down to take the crappy Yellow Dawn PDF and write it up as a professional product. It took me until the middle of June, working flat-out, day after day, week after week, for months...
So Mid-June 2007 arrived, Yellow Dawn was written, the cover art was done, the project seemed finished and I crashed out, went back up to Newcastle and spent a month partying (and cat sitting) in Jesus Mound whilst mum went off to the arctic for a four weeks. It was now 2 years since I'd left the Agency, and most of that periodI'd avoided any kind of employment, giving me the time and creative freedom I required. After a month out, I got stuck back in. A proof copy had arrived, it looked fantastic, but there were typos..., and some of the systems were brand new and needed play-testing. July to December saw a large number of Yellow Dawn sessions taking place in Cosy Castle, Bristol... and I'm deeply grateful to the support and loyalty of the guys who turned up every couple of weeks and dedicated an entire Saturday to the game.
So it's done now. Polished and published and available to be bought. There's a handfull of free scenarios for people to download to get them moving, but really, Yellow Dawn has been written to be played with scenarios from any-other game system. It's a soft launch; I'm going to leave it to simmer for a few weeks whilst I build up a marketting plan, and push on with writing the major campaign (Shadows of the Quantinex).
Here's to success in 2008.
Djr