Leaving the manuals at V1.098 for now

Since the 23rd, I've kept working on the RPG books. The Player's Manual, the Narrator's Manual and the campaign setting have taken up a good part of that time. There's always another paragraph I want to change, or an explanation I think I can make clearer. At some point I have to leave an edition alone long enough for someone else to read it.

So I'm locking the manuals at V1.098 for now. I'll come back to the next round of revisions later this year or early next year. In the meantime, I want to hear what happens when people actually use them.

The tabletop side of P.A.T.H.: Vietnam (Pivotal Actions Through History) now has four books. Here they are together.

The Rule Primer is where I'd start if you're new to the game. It introduces the setting and the Lucky 8 rules without asking you to work through the larger manuals first. I know how much material I've put into this project. I also know that handing someone a stack of books isn't much of a welcome.

The Player's Manual takes you further into building and playing a character. LifeP.A.T.H.—Previous Activities, Training, History is part of that: the life someone had before we meet them in the campaign, what they've learned, and what they bring with them. I want that background to give you things to work with at the table. A person you can play, with a history you can draw on when you have to make a decision.

The Narrator's Manual is for the person running the campaign. This is where I have to think about how all this material is going to be used by somebody who hasn't been writing it. They need to be able to find things, make a ruling and keep the game going. If an explanation makes sense only because I already know what I meant, then I still have work to do.

The Vietnam Campaign 1955–1975 is the setting book. I've done a lot of reading and research on Vietnam, and there's a lot I want to include. Deciding what is useful for a campaign is another job. Dates and background matter, but so does helping someone understand the place their characters are in and the people around them.

Working on these books alongside the digital game keeps sending me back to the explanations. A passage can look perfectly reasonable in a manual and still leave you wondering what to do when you try to use it. The reverse happens too: something that feels obvious while playing needs a proper explanation on the page. I keep going back and forth between the two.

I use different technologies and AI models to help with the code and game tests. I still read the work, decide where it's going and check that it fits the campaign I've been building with P.A.T.H. and Lucky 8. That part takes time. Generating more material isn't the problem I need to solve right now.

What I need is feedback on this edition before I bury it under another round of changes. If you read a section and get stuck, tell me where. If you and another player read the same rule and come away with different answers, I'd like to see both. Even a page number and “I don't understand what I'm supposed to do here” is useful.

I'm keeping notes for the next revision. For now, V1.098 is the version I'm asking people to read and try. I'll keep sharing the work through the Dispatches, and you can find the project at pathvietnam.com.

If you're coming to it fresh, start with the Primer. Let me know where I lose you.