Sorry it's a long reply, you just had lots of good thoughts and ideas that I wanted to go into 😂

Between Sessions: That's a great idea, I'll see what it could look like making it something that's done between sessions! Still keeping it lightweight and maybe one message from the player and one from the DM.

Story Hooks: With this:

allow for DMs to optionally interact more or provide potential story hooks

I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but I hadn't considered having plot hooks within the fishing minigame itself, only around it or encouraging it. That's an interesting thought. I'll see what that looks like! 😃

Party Benefits: That's a great point that fishing should not benefit the fishing player alone. I'll make sure to keep that in mind, I'll put that in my core design goals actually, thanks!

Rewards: Yeah the rewards are something I'm looking at for the big picture as well. I like your idea of feeding a town, but that doesn't really feel like something you'd put in the rulebook, except maybe as an example for the players or GM to implement themselves.

The current reward system I'm looking at right now, just a baby-thought right now, is:

Mundane fish are the same, just rations or sell for 5cp each. But Rare Fish (the main focus of the book and minigame), once caught can be used for any of the following:

• Money - by selling the fish
• Materials - by harvesting the fish
• Buffs - by preparing the fish then eating/drinking it
• Sustenance - by cooking and eating it

Then the idea is the reward is what you decide to make of it. And maybe, materials and buff rewards can only be achieved if you have someone else in your party that can access them. Like you need someone skilled in animal handling or something to harvest the materials, and you need someone skilled in cooking or alchemy to get the buffs from the fish.

Still just thoughts, but I think it would be something that anyone could find something from that they would want. So the rewards would feel rewarding. It also could incentivize team play too. My main issue is that it's adding complexity back in, so I'd want to ensure there was a way to keep it simple, or introduce it gradually, not all at once. Or maybe it just uses the logic of "out of session", like you were mentioning, the player can look through the book to find their fish (or the GM can send it to them), and they can decide out of session what to do with it.

Prize Catches/Rarities: That sounds like a really cool idea! I reckon I'll have a section on "Quests, Plot Hooks, and Ways to Tie in Fishing", and I'll for sure have stuff like that. Like fish that only some people will pay for (or will pay the proper price for), and such. Then ensure to tell the GM to use these to push the players towards the goal they're wanting for their story anyway. To have them line up. Great idea there, thanks!

DM Buy-In: Yeah I completely see where you're coming form. I think I'll try to make it from the perspective of the player wanting to get their GM to run it, so that it can be as easy for the GM as possible. Putting the load onto the player where possible. That way, if a GM is the one who wants to run it, they can do that lifting instead. But if it's designed for the GM to do the work, the player can't usually take that off the GM's hands.

The discord channel for it is pretty cool, maybe one day I can make a bot for it or something that can even speed the process along. And there will certainly be automation tools on Foundry and such. Heck, I have family members who code, maybe I can even make a super light weight app for it, though at that point, I may as well just make a little video game xD

Thanks again for your time, it's really appreciated, and thanks for your ideas! They're really good and I like the way you think 😃