Hey, there’s something coming up that I want to tell you about!
We’re launching the Planet Mercenary RPG Kickstarter on April 14th, 2015. That’s just a week away.
Here’s a wallpaper featuring one of Planet Mercenary’s best-selling brands, Strohl Munitions, makers of the iconic BH-209 Plasgun.
Don’t let that weathered metal texture fool you! Strohl products are shiny and durable*.
(*Not bulletproof. Do not pour alcohol into the reaction chamber. Illegal where non-legal.)
Kickstarter backers got the first alert, which is only fair because they’re the ones who funded this two years ago. Our original delivery deadline was set for around six months after the Kickstarter closed. We only missed that by 18 months! Fortunately, the “how late are you?” clock can finally be stopped.
An Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins is a free PDF full of challenge coin stories. It is not an authoritative attempt to codify the rules of coin challenges, nor is it a scholarly treatise creating an historical narrative. It is a collection of stories that are similar to the sorts of stories you might hear if a bunch of people were sitting around at the bar one night draining pints and talking about challenge coins. We’ve done our best to present these stories in a way that respects the various challenge coin traditions, and pays appropriate tribute to those who have served.
The document is currently hosted in two places:
If you would like to host this document yourself, you may!
This document was released under the terms of Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 International, which means that you are allowed to share the document freely, and you may remix, transform, and re-distribute the document provided you notify us, credit us in your document, and create a publicly accessible change-log.
The life-cycle of this document is an open question. It is possible that we will be able to update and maintain it regularly (semi-annually?) incorporating new content from the widely varied challenge coin communities. It is also possible for us to hand the whole project, source files and all, to someone else for maintenance. For the time being, however, we, Sandra and I, own this, and will endeavor to correct anything that’s wrong with it.
We do not yet have this in eBook format. We lack expertise with those file formats. Volunteers? See “Contact Information” below.
There are no plans for a print edition, but the CC BY-SA license allows anyone to upload this to a Print-On-Demand service and create just that sort of thing.
As of this writing the document is version 0.99. We expect a rash of edits (rash, red, get it?) to come in during the next few weeks, at which point the document will be updated to Version 1. The version number goes up by hundredths and tenths when small edits are made, and whole numbers when content is added. The edition number changes in whole numbers only, and only when new content is added. The cover and title page will be updated to reflect this.
Our journey—Sandra’s and mine—with this document has been drawn out a bit further than anyone would have liked, and has induced exhilaration, guilt, anxiety attacks, and spurts of creative fury in various turns. At some point we may tell that story, but this page and this book are not the place for it.
Please direct all inquiries to schlockmercenary@gmail.com, and include the unpronounceable acronym “UAHCC” in the subject line. We welcome submissions, hosting updates, suggested changes, and requests for source.
In my previous post I said that everything was done except the pictures. Well, this morning I finished the last of the illustrations for The Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins. This one is definitely my favorite:
Everything has been handed off to Sandra. An update will go out to Kickstarter supporters first, and then the PDF will go live, probably by Tuesday of next week.
Yes, we’re delivering this about eighteen months later than we wanted it to, but we ARE delivering it. We’re sorry to have kept everyone waiting, and we look forward to sharing the stories that people have shared with us.
(We will not be using those stories to buy beers.)
This has been WAAAY too long coming, I know.
The Unofficial Anecdotal History of Challenge Coins needed two things from me: An introduction, and some illustrations. Both jobs seemed simple enough, but I’ve been hung up on the words for over a year now. In January of 2014 I wrote an introduction that was all over the map, and wrong, and I lost hope (and then track of time) for quite a while.
This morning I realized what the problem was. I was trying to use my own challenge coin story as an introduction, and that was artificially inflating my story’s importance. It was ego-bloat, and this document is not the place for that.
The solution? I wrote an introduction that serves as an introduction. It’s not a story, though it’s got story stuff in it. It is written to properly introduce the stories that follow.
And THEN I went ahead and told my story, which will get tucked into the meaty parts of the PDF along with everybody else’s account. So you get to hear from me twice. After this long of a wait, it seems like the least I can do.
Both of my documents have been handed off to Sandra for editing, which means that everything this document needs from me has been delivered, except the pictures. And those are what I’m sitting down to work on next.
I get to draw an elephant!