Table of Contents (Tentative)

I haven't forgotten Van Gogh, but I've been rather busy with other things this past week. I've been working on a section about duels. I've covered a pretty good variety so far and I think the system can handle any of the types of duels I enjoy seeing. Dogfighting for battles with everything from biplanes to dragon knights to starfighters. "The Chess Match" for duels that go back and forth until one sudden finishing move ends everything like a "checkmate": good for those duels that end with one fighter suddenly disarmed and at the mercy of the other. "Raising the Bar" is a type of duel where competitors challenge each other to progressively more difficult tasks: like playing a game of "chicken" (with the Driving skill) or engaging in a round of "snaps" or "yo' mama" (with Taunt) or trading displays of fighting prowess by making impressive weapon flourishes or breaking bricks (with Fighting), etc. "Quick Draw" duels are for duels like old west gunslingers or (old east) samurai who stare each other down then, after a sudden blur of motion, one falls. I still haven't finished this section but I'm enjoying it. These tense scenes are some of my favorites in cinema and literature, so I like seeing how they fit into the Van Gogh resolution system. As much as I like fiddling with the dueling section, I really need to get to work on other sections to finish up the system. This is a list of the sections in progress, a sort of tentative table of contents:

• Core Rules: how dice rolls work and how they're used for skill challenges (95%)
• Attributes and Skills (95%, just needs some editing)
• Talents and Drawbacks (90%, rules are done but the examples need to be cleaned up)
• Gear (around 70% done, I'm not including a big list of equipment, but I'm going to explain how to choose gear and resources for characters. I've never cared much about encumbrance rules or counting pennies in the games I've played or run, so I'm not interested in writing such things. I care that Han Solo has the Millennium Falcon, but I don't need to know how many changes of clothes he has or how many ammo packs he has for his blaster.)
• Campaigning: rules for character advancement and running different kinds of sessions (80%)
• Minor Characters: Mooks, background extras, followers, cannon fodder, etc. All those characters that give the world depth and fullness while possessing little of their own.
• Powers: Unusual abilities like magic, psychic powers, hyper-science, supernatural kung fu, etc. This section has been a tangled mess since the beginning. I think I have all the powers covered that I want to cover, but I still need to consolidate things and trim the fat. I don't want a long list of specific powers. I want a short list of versatile powers that can be adapted to specific uses for different settings inspired by the "generic powers with specific trappings" from Savage Worlds (I think I saw this first in the Hero system, but Savage Worlds was the one that made me realize it could be done without a crazy level of math). I'd say this is about 40-50% done.
• Social Conflict: How to get the best use out of the social skills. (95%)
• Combat Rules: How to handle combat, including how to use the social skills, maneuvers, and other creative tricks for advantage to win instead of just saying "we need a bigger stick!" (About 85%, mostly done but in need of some cleaning up and better examples) 
• Mass Combat: How to use the skill challenges system to set up and run large scale battles. (About 75% done, needs some good examples.)
• Chases and Races: How to use the rules to handle chases and make them more interesting than just comparing movement scores. (I think it's about 95% done, but I'd like to provide some cool examples)
• Dogfighting and Dueling (About 85% finished. I'm still in the middle of writing up the Quickdraw duel)
• Environmental Rules: For storms, harsh deserts, and other situations where the setting itself is an enemy. Not started yet.
• Planning and heists: For running complex bank robberies and other infiltration schemes and cons without spending a lot of game time dealing with all the dull planning parts. Still in the brainstorming stages.
• Vehicles: Rules for handling vehicles. I have only got a paragraph or two on this but I'm expecting it to go quickly. I don't want to introduce a lot of special rules, so the vehicles will use the same rules as everything else. This section will be about how to recycle the rules for use with vehicles, rather than adding a lot of new rules.
• Organizations: Rules for handling the actions and interactions of organizations from street gangs to nations. Like the vehicle section, it's just barely started but it's going to be about how to use the existing rules for organizations instead of adding new rules.
• Optional Rules: An appendix of extra rules for things that some players might like to use, but which I don't want to include in the basic rules. For example, methods of random character generation (which will add randomness without turning character creation into a mini-game with "winners" and "losers") and a "wild die" like in the D6 System (with an explicit explanation that it's not a critical failure system). So far this is just a file of random notes and some pieces of scrap paper with notes sketched out.

Right now, I suppose I should finish up those sections that are almost done and then get to work on cleaning up the powers section, so I can move into the editing and layout stuff. I've got to rustle up some illustrations too. I'll start working on getting the illos together and start laying out sections as they get finished. If the powers section takes a while to sort out, maybe I'll save it for last and release a "light" version of Van Gogh without the powers section while I work on finishing it.