This came up over on the forums enough that I think it deserves a more permanent home. A number of folks are concerned about the direction of Fantasy Craft and other upcoming products utilizing the Mastercraft engine, as well as the speed of Crafty Games' production. Allow me to respond...

Mastercraft is easier to run and play than Spycraft, no question, but it's only fractionally less complex. The response to Spycraft 2.0 has almost overwhelmingly fallen into two categories: a) "I love this game, though I recognize it's a little challenging to digest and play," and b) "I love what it's trying to do but I can't wrap my head around it."

Mastercraft is expressly designed to address both these issues. Only once have we made a decision that wasn't equally beneficial to the current audience as any new one we'll get with the shift, and that was the decision not to make Mastercraft 100% compatible with the 500-page beast. Because any attempt to do that would undermine the entire effort.

The goal isn't to exclude you guys (and by "you guys," I mean all Spycraft 2.0 players) — it's to make your lives easier. There's a lot of stuff in Spycraft 2.0 that's honestly just overwritten, which made sense when we had an exacting tournament organization to support, but we don't anymore. The game doesn't have to run itself to have just as much depth and power. The GM can make calls without the game losing its crunch medals. The language can be less difficult to digest, easier to reference, and faster to use. None of that takes anything away from you.

We're reasonably certain that when Fantasy Craft is released most if not all these concerns will go away. Remember, we made Spycraft 2.0 as much for us as for you. There's no reason to believe we're suddenly building something none of us will like. Benefit of the doubt, people. That's all we ask.

On the topic of production, we'll grant you that getting Crafty Games up and running was a rocky, rocky road. We never should have mentioned anything beyond our first book for a start. Biggest mistake in our history, and one we're not keen to repeat (thus our relative silence about production until it's very close to release). We had all those printing issues, which took a good long while to resolve (imagine if we'd pushed more books out when that was still going on - oi!). There have been myriad delays, big and small — some of which were large enough that they could have sunk a less durable operation. Fortunately, we're still here, and quite excited to still be bringing you product on a semi-regular basis.

Let's talk about that for a second. We'll also grant you that it's been a little bit since our last release. We had GenCon in there, which always slows production down, but it's also been an uncharacteristically chaotic period for behind-the-scenes business. One of the things that folks rarely consider is what might cause gaps between product releases. It's rarely that we're blowing Crafty off for a couple weeks — a day or two here and there, sure, but we're professionals, and more importantly we love what we do. When there's a gap, there's usually a good reason.

This time around the gap had everything to do with production, and though the results of it won't become evident for a couple months they'll be felt almost immediately. There's a critical change in how we do things that speaks directly to the fact that Crafty Games has expanded beyond anyone's expectations. Those who read our very first press release will remember that we never planned to do books at all. We never thought we'd get a license, let alone one with the potential of Mistborn. We never thought we'd be entertaining some of the plans we've currently got brewing. Crafty Games is growing, and we're always looking for ways to make good on that promise — for you and for us.

Give us until the end of the year. Check out our releases between now and then, and read our annual State of the Company post. Then we'll chat — if your concerns are still valid. I suspect many of them will be behind all of us by then.