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Month: April 2021

Review: Nothing, by R. J. Goldman

Review: Nothing, by R. J. Goldman

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Nothing by R. J. Goldman

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Nothing is a science-fantasy novelette, set in the present day. While it doesn’t break much new ground, it’s a tightly plotted and well-written story about young super-powered people on the run.

At the beginning of the story, Juana Pérez is riding home from work on public transit, being harassed by a coarse drunk who refuses to back off. Under stress, Juana “lights up,” summoning up a burst of flames that drives the creep away with blisters. Unfortunately, the entire car full of commuters saw and heard the incident, and at least one of them caught it on their phone. Fleeing from all the eyewitnesses and the blaring alarm, Juana realizes that her cover is well and truly blown.

It turns out that Juana, and her siblings Ajay, JT, and Taro, are all the product of illicit experiments that gave them control over the four classical elements. Juana has control over Fire, able to summon it up and direct it, and her brothers have similar command over Water, Earth, and Air. Some time ago they escaped from the lab where they were created, and they have been in hiding ever since. Now, with Juana’s burst of power making the news, they fear they may have to abandon their lives once more.

What follows is a story about courage, trust and betrayal, and the ties of a self-chosen family. The dialogue snaps along, and the action scenes near the end are thrilling.

Nothing is very well done – R. J. Goldman has crisp, clean prose, with few or no copy-editing errors, and she knows how to put a story together. There weren’t a lot of surprises in the plot, but I found it a very quick and smooth read. When I reached the end, I craved more about this world and these characters. Highly recommended.

Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller

Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller

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I’ve finished designing the first draft of an abbreviated Architect of Worlds design sequence specifically for the roleplaying game Traveller. It should be compatible with any version of Traveller that uses the standard UWP codes, including GURPS Traveller. It’s available at the following link:

Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller (27 April 2021)

It’s also available on the main Architect of Worlds page.

Unlike most of my work, this document is not entirely covered by my copyright, and I freely grant permission to share or redistribute it, so long as the attribution is not altered. I’d be interested in hearing from any Traveller referees or players who experiment with it!

Architect of Worlds: A Side Project

Architect of Worlds: A Side Project

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A few days ago I had a shower thought, tying together two current projects: what if I could design an “abbreviated” version of the Architect of Worlds design sequence specifically for the Traveller role-playing game? The idea would be to produce a world generation sequence that uses mechanisms similar to Classic Traveller, and is not significantly more complex or time-consuming, yet avoids the more implausible results of those rules, and is compatible with the full Architect of Worlds design sequence.

So for the past week or so, I’ve been running experiments along those lines, with considerable success. Consider this an interim report on how it’s going, with a high degree of confidence that I’ll have a finished product ready for release within a few more days. When it’s done, I’ll post it as a freebie for Traveller fans and my patrons.

One piece of this has involved a lot of work with Excel spreadsheets.

Microsoft Excel is a very good tool for what’s called “Monte Carlo” simulation. If you’re working with a complex model that has lots of moving parts, and you can’t just compute the distribution of likely outcomes, then the thing to do is run lots of random trials and look at how those turn out. Rather to my surprise, I’ve developed an Excel spreadsheet that does this for Architect of Worlds. It takes a few parameters (the mass, density, and blackbody temperature of a putative world), then it runs through a not-overly-simplified version of Architect of Worlds and spits out 1,000 random planets. Finally, it counts how many of those planets exhibit various combinations of atmosphere and surface liquid coverage. All at the touch of a button.

It’s a rather heady experience. Amazing, the amount of computational power in a simple laptop device.

Working with my Monte Carlo setup has given me all the data I need to produce that abbreviated Architect for Traveller. I’m pretty pleased with the result – it’s a bit more ornate than the original Classic Traveller world design sequence, but most of the complication has been pushed into one big lookup table. I think the meat of the final document is going to be no more than 3-4 pages long.

This side project has also led me to find a few odd cases and possible errors in the current Architect draft, so I’ve made some good progress on what’s going to be the version 0.5 alpha release. My patrons can look for that later this month as well.

Finally, I’m beginning to think I might be able to automate Architect of Worlds with another big Excel workbook. I’ve used crude spreadsheets to do some basic testing of earlier versions of the sequence . . . but I’ve learned a lot about Excel in the past week. This might be useful for any number of other projects.

Progress!

Architect of Worlds – Current Status

Architect of Worlds – Current Status

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A quick note to let interested parties know how the Architect of Worlds project is going, and where to get the most recent material.

In December, I finished the initial design of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. For the first time, the whole process was complete: designing a star system, its planets, and the surface environments for individual worlds. That version of the design sequence is still available for free on the Architect of Worlds page.

However, in December I also released that version of the design sequence as a charged release for patrons, with the promise that they would get free updates in the future. There have been several rounds of revision and improvement to the material since then, released only to my patrons. So while the version available for free on this site is complete – you could certainly design worlds with it – it’s not the latest and greatest.

If you want to keep getting the most recent updates to the design sequence, you’ll need to sign up as a patron at the Basic Support level or higher. Patrons will also see other sections of the draft as I write those. If and when the book is published – maybe this year, more likely sometime in 2022 – patrons at the Intermediate Support level or higher will be guaranteed a free copy. I’ll probably also hand out a few free copies for folks who have been particularly helpful in playtesting.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions.

Planning for April

Planning for April

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New month, new set of objectives to be attacked over the next thirty days. April is particularly notable because by the end of this month, I expect to be fully immunized against COVID-19 and therefore back in my day-job office several days a week. This month, therefore, is the last time that I’ll have quite the same level of flexibility for my creative work, at least until I retire in another decade or so. I’d like to make the most of it.

Here’s the plan, more or less in order of priority. As always, the plan at the end of the month may not look much like the plan right now.

  • Architect of Worlds
    • Continued work on the current round of improvements to the existing design sequence.
    • Possibly an additional step or two at the end of the existing design sequence, to add some new parameters related to a world’s habitability and resource value for human (or other) settlement.
    • New sections for the book, on the subjects of designing maps of interstellar space and using real-world astronomical data.
  • Krava’s Legend
    • At least another 15,000 words on the first draft of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Some work to refine and improve my workflow for producing and promoting self-published novels. If I can develop a reasonable workflow, I might apply it first by re-designing The Curse of Steel and “re-launching” that book.
  • Human Destiny Sourcebook
    • Write a few thousand more words to fill out new sections of the partial rough draft.
  • Scorpius Reach Sector and Game of Empire
    • Develop more of the sector map and setting bible.
    • Begin assembling a third-edition draft of the Game of Empire rules.

Free updates for my patrons will probably include a minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and possibly a new minor-version release of the Human Destiny draft sourcebook.

This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a combination of the first 10-12 chapters of The Sunlit Lands and some of the new material for Architect of Worlds.

I’ll also need to complete one or two book reviews this month.

Watch this space for status reports, and as always, if any of the above interests you, please consider signing up as a patron using the link in the sidebar.