A Recommended Textbook

A Recommended Textbook

You may be aware that I’m in the process of picking up a second undergraduate degree, this time in the natural sciences with a focus on astronomy and planetary science, from the Open University of the United Kingdom. Mostly this is just to round out everything I’ve learned on the subject informally across a long lifetime. I’ve also got some notion of teaching the subject myself at the undergraduate level after I retire. I expect to finish my second BSc about 2028 or so, and maybe move on to pick up an MSc if I have the resources and the world hasn’t gone utterly insane by then.

So far I’m about a third of the way through my undergraduate work. At first, a lot of the course-work was nothing but review, time-consuming but not much of a challenge.

This year’s course on “Planetary science and the search for life,” on the other hand, has decidedly not been all review. It digs into details of planetary science and astrobiology that I’ve never picked up before. I’m already picking up bits and pieces that might (for example) make their way into a second edition of Architect of Worlds.

In particular, I’m becoming quite fond of the course’s first textbook, written by a trio of Open University instructors: An Introduction to the Solar System (Third Edition), from Cambridge University Press. It’s still at the undergraduate level, but it’s very meaty. Highly recommended for anyone else who is interested in picking up a solid grounding in planetary science.

Watch this space – I may have some more recommended texts as I work through this process.

Moving Social Media Presence

Moving Social Media Presence

Quick note today: a lot of my social-media presence over the past few years has been on Facebook, but for several reasons that’s about to change. If you’re on BlueSky, look me up at @jfzeigler.bsky.social.

I’m probably not going to be very active for the next few days, but once I’m back up and running you can expect a short post from me there on just about a daily basis.

Planning for November 2024

Planning for November 2024

I seem to be in the midst of an extended hiatus in my creative life: since late September I’ve been working on support for gaming conventions rather than large-scale projects.

Travellercon was pretty successful. I sat on two panel discussions and ran a GURPS Traveller: The Interstellar Wars adventure for a full table. I didn’t run myself into the ground, I had a good time, and I got to meet a lot of people in person who had just been names on the Internet before.

Ironically, one of the people I met at Travellercon was on the programming committee for another convention: Philcon 2024, set to take place 22-24 November. As of right now, I’m scheduled to sit on three panels at Philcon – one of them a solo workshop on “Worldbuilding 101” – and run two games in the evenings. So no sooner did I get finished with one convention, than I had taken on a bunch of prep work for another.

This isn’t a problem. I’m obliged to attend (and promote Architect of Worlds at) two conventions this year anyway. It gets me back into the more public side of tabletop game design and SF literature, after a very long time away. Still, it means I’m working on those short-term projects rather than any of my longer-term ones. I have several items I need to get back to, as soon as my schedule loosens up a bit after Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, I’m giving serious thought to re-organizing and re-prioritizing my creative work even after I finish with Philcon.

Part of this is that I’ve just about determined that I’m going to be shutting down my Patreon campaign soon. At this point, my patrons may be able to expect a free release or two in November or December . . . but that may be the end of it. There are a number of reasons for this, but the three most significant are:

  1. Now that Architect of Worlds is finished and on the market, it may be a long time before I have another large-scale project that will help me make consistent monthly releases.
  2. In any case, I’m seeing a lot of patrons cancelling their subscriptions now that Architect is done, or signing up only for free subscriptions, or signing up and then cancelling in less than a month. Which reinforces that what I’ve been doing on Patreon since the Architect release is probably not holding people’s interest.
  3. Meanwhile, Patreon is showing signs of enshittification. They’ve already deprecated the payment model I’ve preferred since Day One, and I keep seeing signs of increasingly arbitrary behavior and reduced customer support from them. It may be time to move away from a service which seems to be responding more to the needs of venture capitalists than its customers.

The plan at present is to migrate over to Kofi (“buy me a coffee”). I’ll have my page set up to permit people to make one-time donations, or to sign up for a monthly support subscription (with the understanding that I will not necessarily be releasing any significant “rewards” on a monthly basis). There will also be a store-front, where I’ll be selling PDF and EPUB e-books of my fiction, and maybe a few game-design items. Regular supporters will get steep discounts on these. I’ll make interim drafts of big projects available for free as well – but those will be taken down if and when they lead to published products.

I’m not sure when the transition will be taking place – it depends on how quickly I can get a few more pieces of fiction into my store-front so there’s a substantial amount of material in place. Almost certainly by the end of the calendar year, though.

Another factor is that I think I want to buckle down and focus on writing more fiction over the next year or two, rather than working on big game-design projects. I’m sensing that’s where my creative energies are likely to be better spent for the immediate future.

So yeah, some changes in the weather are approaching.

Planning for October 2024

Planning for October 2024

September was mostly about getting ready for Travellercon. I made a lot of the necessary progress for that, but there’s still a fair amount to get done and only a few days left to do it. It didn’t help that I was dealing with some minor health issues throughout September – nothing life-threatening, but several bouts of minor illness that were kind of distracting.

Between today and 10 October I need to get one last tranche of writing done for the day-job project that’s been taking up my time for over a year now, and get a bit of work done for the coming year’s courses at the Open University, and get everything squared away for Travellercon. So if you’re in my queue for any other action at the moment, you may need to cultivate patience until I get back from Lancaster in a couple of weeks.

Once Travellercon is over, I’ll have a little follow-up work to do for that, and I have some other items that need attention too. In particular, I owe some responses to the developer of a draft automation scheme for Architect of Worlds, which is looking very encouraging. My guess is that I won’t be getting back to serious work on (e.g.) Fourth Millenium until late in October. My patrons can therefore expect another month of no charged release, and we’ll re-evaluate in November.

One possibility is that I may take the second half of October and make a full-court press to get more of my back catalog of fiction edited, turned into e-books, and dropped into my Kofi site’s catalog. If I can get a good chunk of work done on that effort, I may be ready to start migrating patrons over to Kofi by sometime in November, when the subscription schemes start changing on Patreon.

No formal list of projects for this month. The above should give you a good idea what’s on my agenda at the moment, and the priority order for all of it.

Earth with Rings?

Earth with Rings?

An interesting result in the current issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, suggesting that Earth may have had a significant ring system lasting up to 40 million years during the Ordovician period, about 466 million years ago:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X24004230

The mechanism is particularly interesting, and has implications for Architect of Worlds. At present, the design sequence simply will not produce rings around a terrestrial planet comparable to Earth. In this case, the hypothesis is that a largish asteroidal body had a near-miss encounter with Earth, within the planet’s Roche limit, and broke up to form rings. Which suggests that any terrestrial planet in a system that includes at least one planetoid belt might have a temporary ring system at any given time.

I’ll have to think about this some more, but there might be some additional guidelines forthcoming to cover this case. Not to mention that a ring system would cut back on insolation and have a profound effect on planetary climate . . .

Planning for September 2024

Planning for September 2024

I spent most of August on the first tranche of writing and cartography for Fourth Millennium, and ended up with about 10,000 words of new material (and a snazzy master map for the setting). That all went out to my patrons on 31 August, so that hit my marks for the month. Which means several of my “front burner” items for August have actually been completed.

September is going to be a bit different. I have an obligation to run two events at Travellercon 2024 in October, so I need to focus on preparing for those.

One is going to be an Architect of Worlds “world-building workshop.” Up to six Traveller players and I are going to take four hours to work out a complete, Traveller-compatible planetary system using the Architect rules. I’ll need to do some prep work to make sure that runs smoothly and keeps the participants engaged, considering I won’t have a full-on computer on hand. After the convention is over, I’ll be writing up that planetary system in detail and sharing that with the workshop participants.

The other event will be a GURPS Traveller: The Interstellar Wars scenario . . . which will be the first time I’ve run any RPG for strangers in over twenty years. Yeah, that’s going to call for plenty of prep time too.

So I suspect most of my creative time in September will be taken up getting ready for the convention. My patrons can expect there to be no charged release for the month of September, although at some point after the con I may share my results of the two events as patron rewards.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a project to rescue a lot of my old fiction and republish it in forms that I can sell on my Kofi shop, once that opens up. As of today I’ve finished polishing up one novelette, incidentally working out the workflow for future items. This will be an “as time permits” project throughout the next 2-3 months, most likely.

So here’s the formal list for September:

  • Front Burner:
    • Travellercon: Finish designing the scenario for the adventure “Raid on Markidu.”
    • Travellercon: Complete setup work for the Architect of Worlds world-building workshop.
  • Back Burner:
    • Fourth Millennium: Write a gazetteer of major regions in the setting, tied to the master map.
    • Architect of Worlds: Finish setting up the page(s) for the book on this site.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start making at least one post per month (errata, edge cases, new material) supporting the book.
    • Publishing: Continue polishing and reformatting legacy fiction for publication via Kofi, as time permits.

More news as the month unwinds, no doubt. I hope to get back to Fourth Millennium as my primary project after the convention, in mid-October.

Minor Site Update: “Science!”

Minor Site Update: “Science!”

As part of the slow-but steady process of upgrading the site’s organization – the better to support Architect of Worlds in particular – I’ve just created a new tag: science!

The purpose of this tag will be to focus on posts that are mostly about specific results in the scientific literature, as they pertain to world-building for fiction. Most of these will have obvious relevance to Architect of Worlds.

The architect of worlds tag will remain, but that tag will also include posts about the process of writing, editing, selling, and maintaining the book. If you’re mostly interested in reading what I’ve had to say about astronomy, exoplanetary science, and so on, look for the science! tag instead.

Yes, the exclamation point is required. If you like, read it in the voice of Magnus Pyke in mad-scientist mode.

Fourth Millennium: Rough Draft Outline

Fourth Millennium: Rough Draft Outline

For general interest, here’s a first cut at an outline for the Fourth Millennium core book. This is going to be my working outline while I start writing sections of the rough draft. Naturally, this outline will be subject to change while I develop the project.

As a review: this is planned to be a Basic Roleplaying (BRP) sourcebook, relying on the BRP Universal Game Engine book under the ORC license. It will be the first of (possibly) several sourcebooks detailing the Fourth Millennium setting. Fourth Millennium is a universe centered on the Mediterranean region of Earth’s classical antiquity, but with an alternate history and fantastic elements built into the setting.


Fourth Millennium (Core Book)

  • Introduction
  • The True Kosmos
    • On the Shadow Kosmos
    • On the Reckoning of Years
    • How We Arrived Here
      • The Kretan Diaspora
      • The Athenian Hegemony
      • Alexandros the Great
      • Successors of Alexandros
    • Lands of the Hellenes
      • Kingdom of the Seleukids (Europe)
        • League of Korinth
        • Bosporan Kingdom
      • Kingdom of the Temenids (Asia)
        • Kingdom of Bithynia
        • Kingdom of Pontus
        • Kingdom of Galatia
      • Ptolemaic Kingdom (Egypt)
        • Kingdom of Judea
        • Kingdom of Nabataea
        • Matriarchy of Danassos
        • Republic of Karkhedon
        • Kingdom of Numidia
      • Republic of Rhodos
      • The Lost Kingdoms
    • The Great Rivals
      • Republic of Rome
      • Kingdom of the Parthians
      • Kingdom of Armenia
    • The Barbarian Peoples
      • Kelts
      • Thrakians
      • Sarmatians
      • Arabs
      • Nubians
      • Libyans
  • Adventurers
    • Getting Started
    • Procedure
    • Step 1: Homeland
    • Step 2: Family History
    • Step 3: Characteristics
    • Step 4: Base Skills
    • Step 5: Occupations
    • Step 6: Personal Skill Bonuses
    • Step 7: Wealth and Equipment
    • Step 8: Other Information
  • Game System
  • Skills
  • Combat
  • Passions, Traits, and Reputation
    • Passions
    • Traits
    • Areté
    • Reputation
    • A Hero for the Ages
  • How to Be a Hellene
    • Hellenes, Hellenists, and Barbarians
    • The Hellenic Personality
    • Speaking the Hellenic Language
    • Worshiping the Hellenic Gods
    • Participating in Hellenic Exercise and Sports
    • Appreciating Hellenic Literature and Theatre
    • Studying Hellenic Philosophy and Science
    • Fighting like a Hellene
    • Women in the Hellenic Kingdoms
  • The Working of Wonders
    • Humans and the Gods
      • Gods of the Hellenic World
      • Public Cults: Prayer and Sacrifice
      • Mystery Cults: Initiation and Enlightenment
      • Philosophical Schools: The Examined Life
      • Being a Priest or Priestess
      • Omens, Astrology, and Divination
      • God-Touched Men and Women
    • Spirits and the Spirit World
      • Spirits and Spirit Allies
      • Summoning and Binding Spirits
      • Catalog of Spirits
    • Mageia
      • High Mageia (Theurgy)
      • Low Mageia (Goetia)
      • Catalog of Spells
    • Powers of the Mind
      • Philosophical Schools
      • Being a Philosopher
      • Catalog of Thaúmata
  • Wealth and Equipment
    • Coinage
    • Standard of Living
    • Households and Retinues
    • Property and Investments
    • Goods and Services
  • Between Adventures
    • Experience
    • Training and Research
    • Increasing Characteristics
    • The Winter Phase
    • Passing the Torch
  • Bestiary
  • Library of Adventure Components
Planning for August 2024

Planning for August 2024

I spent most of July building out the alternate-historical timeline for Fourth Millennium, by playing through several of my tabletop historical-simulation games and compiling logs of the results. That effort is basically complete, although it didn’t generate much finished material so I didn’t have a patron release for July.

August is going to be a different matter!

I plan to spend most of this month on Fourth Millennium again, and this time I have a specific plan in mind, which will likely result in some solid material for my patrons and readers. I also need to do some maintenance work for Architect of Worlds, and get started on some prep work for Travellercon in early October. All that is more than enough for the next few weeks, so some of my other projects are going to be pushed off the raft for the time being.

So here’s the list for the coming month:

  • Front Burner:
    • Fourth Millennium: Produce an initial outline for the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
    • Fourth Millennium: Write a summary of the alternate history.
    • Fourth Millennium: Produce a master map for the setting, covering the Mediterranean world with terrain features, political borders, and the most significant cities all marked.
    • Fourth Millennium: Write a gazetteer of major regions in the setting, tied to the master map.
    • Architect of Worlds: Finish setting up the page(s) for the book on this site.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start making at least one post per month (errata, edge cases, new material) supporting the book.
  • Back Burner:
    • Travellercon: Begin designing the scenario for the adventure “Raid on Markidu.”
    • Travellercon: Begin setup work for the Architect of Worlds world-building workshop.

All this work for Fourth Millennium is very likely to amount to more than enough new material for me to consider making a charged release for my patrons, so look out for that at the end of August. Meanwhile, the material I produce for Travellercon will also be a patron release at some point, whether part of a free or charged release remains to be seen.

Looks like it’s going to be a very busy month. Not a problem I mind having, as long as I can keep up with my other commitments at the same time.

Status Report (31 July 2024)

Status Report (31 July 2024)

Quick end-of-month status report here, mostly for my patrons.

I’ve gotten a lot of interesting work done on assembling notes for the Fourth Millennium universe this month, and I think I’m about at the point of beginning to write the first interim rough draft for that sourcebook . . . but that doesn’t leave me with any significant amount of new finished material for my patrons for July. So, if it’s not clear yet, there will be no charged release for this month.

Next month I plan to be a lot more ambitious. I may have some combination of new cartography and game material in August, and a fair amount of it at that. Look for my monthly planning message this weekend, most likely, and then we’ll see how August goes.