I’ve posted a new short story, “Fragment,” to the Free Articles and Fiction section of this blog.
“Fragment” is an odd little story, dressed up as a short scholarly article in the discipline of Assyriology, possibly appearing in a peer-reviewed journal from some other line of history.
“Fragment” will also be released to my patrons, free of charge.
Okay, step one is finished. I’ve brushed off some old skills from my “writing proposals for GURPS sourcebooks” days, and put together an outline for what will probably be my first self-published RPG sourcebook.
I don’t have a nicely evocative working title yet, so this is just The Human Destiny Sourcebook for now. If everything goes as planned, the final shape of this will be a sourcebook for the Cortex Prime game system, about 36,000 words or a 72-page PDF. Aside from being a “bible” for the Human Destiny universe, the book will also describe three different campaign settings:
Each campaign setting will involve a slightly different application of the Cortex Prime rules, and there will also be guidelines for moving characters from one campaign setting to another. (After all, the primary character in my Human Destiny stories, Aminata Ndoye, is probably going to pass through all three settings in the course of her career.)
If and when the folks at Fandom get their new Cortex Creator Studio set up, I’ll push to get this project published through that venue. In the meantime, this will be the project I work on for their “creator confab” workshop in December.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been making slow progress on the first draft of The Sunlit Lands. I was a bit blocked for most of November, with a sequence of scenes just not coming clear, but I think I’ve pushed past that obstacle.
My original plan was to have 15-20 kilowords of the draft finished by the end of November, and release that for my patrons, but that doesn’t appear likely to happen.
Therefore, there will be no charged release on Patreon again this month. I may have a free short story to share on this blog and with my patrons by the end of November; we’ll see how the Thanksgiving holiday goes.
As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been considering the Cortex Prime game system as a potential vehicle for publishing game material related to my literary projects. That’s looking more likely by the day. In particular, I’ve learned that Fandom (the publisher) plans to set up a new version of the Cortex Creator Studio which supported earlier versions of the game. Once that’s in place, it should permit me to write and release game material under fairly congenial licensing terms.
Meanwhile, starting on 4 December Fandom will be holding a “Cortex Creator Confab,” a workshop of sorts, which will allow potential creators to get some exposure and feedback on early drafts of their work. That looks like a superb opportunity for me to get started.
Upon consideration, I’ve decided that the first setting I’m going to try to write up isn’t Krava’s world, it’s going to be the Human Destiny space-opera setting. The end result will hopefully be a complete, Cortex-driven RPG that allows players to take on the role of humans living as subjects of a benevolent (but demanding) alien interstellar empire. I’m envisioning rules that will permit the game to take place on Earth, among the colonized worlds of the Sol system, or out on the interstellar stage.
So, this is what the plan for the remainder of November and the whole month of December looks like:
More than enough to keep me busy through the holidays, I should think.
Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles: Commentaries on German Folklore by Jürgen Hubert
Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)
Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles is a collection of tales from German folklore, many of them derived from German-language collections that have never before been translated. It’s an entertaining and potentially very useful reference for a branch of European folklore unfamiliar to an English-speaking audience.
Full disclosure: The compiler and translator of these tales, Jürgen Hubert, is an acquaintance of long standing, although he and I have no professional relationship and I have received no compensation for this review.
Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles collects a little over 150 narratives, most of them fairly short. These tales have all been drawn from various 19th Century collections of German folklore that have come into the public domain. Dr. Hubert has translated these stories into English, in most cases for the first time, and he also offers some commentary on each.
The breadth of this project can be gathered from the book’s subject headings. There are tales here about the Devil and the Wild Hunt, maidens and crones, saints and sinners. Charlemagne makes several appearances, as does Frederick Barbarossa. There is a bewildering array of monsters, including several kinds of dragon, werewolves, dwarves, giants, “pressure spirits,” and the title-mentioned evil black poodles. Every story carries its own magic and presents its own mysteries. Sometimes the tales go far beyond any simple “fairy tale” and venture into almost Fortean weirdness. Often, the translator seems just as bemused as we are at the results!
Americans, even those of us of German descent, tend to forget how much linguistic and cultural diversity there is in the Old Country. In the early modern era from which these tales derive, there was no such thing as Germany. There was only a stretch of Central Europe, home to different German dialects, diverse religious practices, several non-German ethnic minorities, and little or no political unity. The tales in this collection demonstrate all of this rich diversity. Dr. Hubert helps put all of this in context by providing the geographic framework for each story: where it was told, what villages or towns were nearby, and what features of the landscape are prominent. One of the appendices even indexes the tales by geographic location.
The collection has considerable entertainment value, and it provides plenty of insight into European folklore. Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles might also serve as a valuable source for authors, game designers, or other creatives who wish to investigate the distinctive folklore and fantasy of German culture. Dr. Hubert has specifically supported such application by placing his translations under a Creative Commons license. The book is also extensively footnoted, with appendices on relevant customs and the German language to help the reader interpret the material.
I thoroughly enjoyed Sunken Castes, Evil Poodles, and found a great deal of inspiration in it for my own work. Highly recommended for anyone interested in folklore, faerie tales, or stories of high weirdness.
In this step, we will determine how much of the world’s surface is covered by water, either as liquid-water seas and oceans, or as a layer of ice. We will express this hydrographic coverage in terms of a percentage. A world with 0% hydrographic coverage has no significant surface water or ice, while a world with 100% hydrographic coverage has no exposed dry land.
This is largely determined by the prevalence of water, from Step Twenty. However, in some cases the amount of dry land surface will also depend on the world’s geophysical parameters, from Step Twenty-One. Large land masses are unlikely to form unless a world has a strong lithosphere and is geologically active, creating variation in topographical relief faster than it can be worn down by weathering and erosion. Otherwise, the world’s surface is likely to be dominated by shallow oceans or ice sheets.
Refer to the following table, and find the row corresponding to the world’s prevalence of water and current lithosphere. To determine the hydrographic coverage at random, roll dice as shown in the third column and apply the result.
As I work on the next few steps in the Architect of Worlds design sequence, I’ve realized that I can save myself a lot of hassle by tweaking a couple of the steps I’ve recently posted.
So, for those of you who are following along and experimenting with the sequence as I post it, here are two minor changes you may want to consider implementing immediately. The next few steps are going to assume these modifications are in effect.
Under Step Twenty-One, add the following right after the “Status of Lithosphere” block:
If the world has a Molten Lithosphere, and its prevalence of water is not Massive, then it cannot currently support liquid-water oceans or ice sheets. Reduce the prevalence of water to Trace. This does not constitute a runaway greenhouse event. If the world’s surface cools in the future, water may appear.
The idea here is to avoid cases where the world’s surface is covered with molten lava and yet somehow has significant liquid (or even solid) water. Of course, if the world has so much water that its surface is going to be covered hundreds of kilometers deep, even a Molten Lithosphere isn’t going to be able to evaporate all of it.
Next modification: under Step Twenty-Three, beginning with the paragraph that starts “Make a list of the atmospheric components that meet both conditions . . .” and ending with the block titled “Third Case,” replace the text with the following:
Make a list of the atmospheric components that meet both conditions, and then refer to the following three cases. In each case, the world will also be assigned an atmospheric class of I through V, which will be relevant in later steps of the design sequence.
This case holds if one or more of molecular hydrogen, helium, or molecular nitrogen meet both conditions from the table.
In this case, roll 3d6 and modify the result as follows:
If the modified dice roll is 0 or less, then the world will have a Trace atmosphere, with an atmospheric mass of zero. Otherwise, multiply the modified dice roll by:
The final result is the world’s atmospheric mass. Feel free to adjust this result by up to half of the multiplier.
This case holds if the first case does not, but carbon dioxide meets both conditions from the table.
In this case, the world will automatically have a Trace atmosphere, with an atmospheric mass of zero. This will be a Class IV or Mars-type atmosphere.
This case holds if neither the first case nor the second case is in effect (that is, none of the volatiles listed on the table meet both conditions).
In this case, the world will automatically have no significant atmosphere, and an atmospheric mass of zero. This will be a Class V or Luna-type atmosphere.
Assigning these “atmospheric classes” at this point will make several of the steps, starting with Twenty-Five, much more concise.
That’s all for now. I may be able to post Step Twenty-Four tomorrow, and we’ll see how smoothly the next few steps after that fall together.
My debut novel, The Curse of Steel, has been available on Amazon since early October. As of this morning, the novel has been launched on Reedsy Discovery – you can visit its launch page at:
https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/the-curse-of-steel-john-alleyn
Reedsy Discovery is a website where independent authors can promote their work, and readers can learn a little about new books before deciding which ones to invest in. Well worth a visit.
In fact, you can help me by visiting the launch page. There, you can read the first chapter of the story, check out its first formal review (five stars!), and upvote the novel. Enough upvotes, and the novel will get further promotion via Reedsy’s newsletter.
Meanwhile, the book is available for sale (Kindle e-book only for the moment, I’m afraid) at:
I’ll admit to being rather proud of my first novel-length venture into original fiction; I hope you’ll enjoy it as well.
A planned part of my creative strategy is not just to write stories and novels, but also to integrate the world-building elements of those projects into tabletop game material that I can also sell. Basically offering myself a license to my own IP, and self-publishing game material via DriveThruRPG or a similar outlet.
That suggests framing that creative material within a genre-agnostic game system. After all, my two primary creative projects involve heroic alternate-world fantasy (The Curse of Steel and its sequels) and relatively hard-SF space opera (the Human Destiny setting). Any game system that could cover both is not going to be strongly bound to any existing setting or genre.
So the question arises: do I build such a system of my own, or do I find an existing one that works for me and has friendly licensing terms?
I have been gathering design notes for a personally owned game system, under the working title of EIDOLON. There would certainly be no licensing issues there. On the other hand, time spent designing a completely new tabletop game is time I’m not writing. Also, a completely new game system would start with zero market presence. Why should anyone buy such a product, when they would almost certainly have to convert the material to their favorite system before using it?
GURPS is certainly a possibility. I’ve been a GURPS player (and writer, and editor) for many years. Unfortunately, it’s been a long time since I did any work for Steve Jackson Games, so I’m no longer in close contact. In any case, the GURPS licensing terms are pretty strict. Far from impossible to work with – I’m certainly aware of other creators who have published their own GURPS material for sale – but maybe more trouble than it’s worth for what I’m planning to do.
I’ve considered using FATE Core, which certainly fits the criteria (setting- and genre-agnostic, and very congenial licensing terms). Unfortunately, that system is a little too rules-light for my taste. I’ve never quite been able to wrap my brain around how it works in play, so writing material for it feels like a bit more of a challenge than I’m after. I may just need a little more crunch in my game rules.
I’ve glanced at a few other systems over the past couple of years – notably the Genesys system from Fantasy Flight Games – but nothing has quite hit the sweet spot I’m looking for.
Now I see that there’s a new edition of the Cortex system out – the Cortex Prime core rules. These were Kickstarted back in 2017 and have just been released to the public.
Cortex Prime doesn’t look like a playable game right out of the box, so much as it is a toolkit for constructing playable games. Well, that’s true for systems like GURPS or FATE as well, so that’s certainly not a drawback. Reading through the core book, I’m getting a good feeling for the system’s crunchiness and flexibility. Previous editions of Cortex have carried fairly generous licensing terms, and the current publisher seems interested in following suit.
Hmm. I may have to contact them and see if this would be a good fit for what I want to do. If it does work out, then EIDOLON may go on the back burner. Or off the stove entirely.
Since I have a fair number of new readers these days, I thought it might be worthwhile to reinstate a few cross-links in the sidebar and point those out. (Thanks to Jürgen Hubert for indirectly encouraging me to overcome inertia and get this set up.)
There’s now an Important Links widget at the top of the sidebar. The links here will point you to other places on the Internet where I maintain a presence:
All of these links should be working properly, but if any of them look strange to you, drop me a note and I’ll see if I can fix them.
Code of the Communer (Book One of Shadows in the Wildwood) by Kai Greenwood
Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)
Code of the Communer is the first book of what appears likely to be a series titled Shadows in the Wildwood, by Kai Greenwood. I found it to be a flawed but still very readable work of dark fantasy, set in a world much like our own about ten thousand years ago.
Code of the Communer has several viewpoint characters, but the core of the narrative follows Caida and Fingle, young-adult siblings belonging to a hunter-gatherer people who call themselves simply the “Ten Tribes.” Despite her youth, Caida is a “communer,” a shaman-like leader. Her authority derives from her ability to commune with the godlike patron of the Ten Tribes, a spirit called the Long Walker.
Unfortunately, the Ten Tribes have come under intense pressure from a more sedentary people called “the Settlers,” and are no longer able to follow their ancient nomadic lifestyle. At the beginning of the story, Caida’s band have suffered from several violent confrontations with the Settlers. As far as they know, they may be the last survivors of the Ten Tribes.
Despite her private doubts, Caida leads her people northward. They cross a narrow sea to reach a land called Maerida, where the ancestors of the Ten Tribes may have originated. Her tribe tries to return to their old way of life in the new land, but they quickly learn that their ancestors had very good reasons for abandoning Maerida. What follows is a story of human folly, natural terrors, and competing gods that had me turning pages to the end.
The setting for the Shadows in the Wildwood intrigued me. It’s clear that the geography is loosely inspired by our own world at the end of the last glacial age. Caida’s people begin in what we might recognize as central France, and Maerida clearly resembles Britain (complete with the presence of wide coastal marshlands, still connecting it to the continent). Characters openly refer to an ice age that is still retreating. At this point it appears to me that the geography and human cultures of the novel are only inspired by European prehistory, but the resemblances were strong enough to keep my inner world-builder interested.
In fact, the world-building in Code of the Communer is probably its strongest feature. Kai Greenwood clearly belongs to the “show, don’t tell” school of fantasy writing. The reader is thrown into the world without a compass from the very first lines of the story, and the mysteries of the world are a strong incentive to keep reading. Many of those mysteries are still outstanding at the end of this first novel, which encourages me to look for the next books in the series.
That being said, Code of the Communer could have used the attention of an editor before publication. The level of copy-editing errors, odd word choices, and inconsistent prose style is just high enough that I was pulled out of the story at multiple points. I’ve seen far worse, but a writer of Kai Greenwood’s obvious talent would be well served by a bit of editorial assistance.
Overall, I enjoyed Code of the Communer, had no trouble getting through the story, and am eager to read more. Recommended for anyone who might enjoy a dark-fantasy tale inspired by human prehistory.