Some news and a poll for the near future (Patreon)

After your incredible outpouring of support and comments, an update felt necessary to clear up some things.

First off, thank you all for your kind words, support, and understanding. Some good news about me, after the weekend all my flu symptoms are now fully gone. Thus, I’m back at doing things like thinking about new features for the sheet, answering questions/comments, and eating less-than-healthy, as it always should be.

Some good news about my friend, she has gotten a spot at the most state-of-the-art military revalidation centre in the Netherlands. Thinking of her privacy, I do not intent to keep you updated on her progress or share more information about her and her family. I am sure all of you understand.

Financial support

A couple of you asked about or suggested financial help for my friend. Let me assure you that this is not something to think about at the moment. All medical care is covered by the insurance and her income is also secure for the moment.

[In the Netherlands, you only pay the first € 385 of medical costs yourself per year, and you can’t be fired for medical reasons. Only prolonged (more than a year) health issues or (semi-)permanent disability would be a cause for financial concerns. This is not the place to discuss these things further because of the privacy of my friend, so please take it from me that there is no reason to worry about the finances of my friend at this time or the near future. If you have questions about this, I’ll be happy to answer them in a private message.]

In fact, there was such an outpouring of support from friends, that they had to ask people to stop sending flowers/stuff due to the limited space in the hospital. They instead asked to make a donation to a charity, which is exactly what my friends and I did. Besides that one-time donation, I have set up a monthly donation to a charity in the Netherlands that helps the victims of and those affected by violent crimes, traffic accidents, and missing person cases. They offer both practical and emotional support for the victims and their friends/family. Please know that part of what you donate to me will directly flow to this charity.

Emotional/practical support

My friend has a lot of support from friends, family, and neighbours. I live quite a drive away and am not able to help with the practical side of things as I would like. The good thing is that I’m just one of many and there is a waiting list of people who want to help.

“Take your time”

Many of you have given me this simple but great advise. I have never experienced working on the character sheet as a chore. I do it because I thoroughly enjoy it. I will definitely not do anything to compromise that. I wish I could say I have a great work-life balance, but when work involves playing D&D, that is hard to say with a straight face. Honestly, working on this is a great way to focus on something positive and joyful. I’ll do the work at a manageable pace, a bit slower than usual.

“Whatever works best for you MPMB (I have no opinion or don't care)”

Looking back, it might have been better if I had not included this option in the poll. I get the impression that many of you voted for this as a way of showing your support, which is appreciated, but I really only included is as an option for those who are not interested in the new additions. I expected this option to be one of the least voted for… guess I was way a bit off on that one.

I’ll see how far I get this week and I’ll release whatever is finished at the end of the week.

I have been getting a lot of messages about when the new content will be available for MPMB’s Character Record Sheet. However, I figured that instead of replying to several messages each day, I’ll make a post here about it.

I am sorry if the following paragraph is a bit of over-sharing, but I feel that only posting positive things online gives a skewed vision of the human experience. I have tried to keep it as much matter-of-fact as possible, both to keep it short and because it is a hard thing to write, but honestly it does feel good to share.

The same day that the Eberron book dropped, the 19th of November, I got some news that was hard to process. A close friend of mine was hit by a car while cycling with her 4-year-old daughter. Her daughter did not survive this accident. My friend is no longer in critical condition, but it was close for several days. She has many months (possibly years) of recovery ahead of her and a full recovery is unlikely. The driver of the car became unwell and lost control of the vehicle. This is a rare occurrence in the Netherlands and it got national news coverage.

As you can hopefully understand, I wasn’t in the right mindset for a while to work on something fun like Dungeons and Dragons. I had to take some time off from working on the character sheet.

To add to this, I have spent the last week in bed with the flu. Fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, restlessness, I was spared none of those pleasantries. I used my time that I was able to do something useful to answer some of the messages/comments and to have a look at some reported bugs, but focussing on something for a long time was not really an option.

I am just now beginning to work on the new content, starting with the artificer. Because there is a lot of it, I figured I should ask all of you what I should do first and how/when to release it. Thus it is time for another poll!

The new content I am talking about is that from the book Eberron: Rising from the Last War (E:RLW) and the Unearthed Arcana article with the psionic subclasses Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard (UA:FRW).

Taking all the new content apart, it roughly comes down to this:

1) Artificer class from E:RLW

2) 17 (sub)races from E:RLW

3) Magic items, feat, and other smaller stuff from E:RLW

4) UA: Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard

Please let me know in the poll below how you would like me to approach the release-schedule for this new content. It really is not a question of if it will be added, just a question of when and in what order.