Sharrukin

Decisions, Decisions

November 14, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 3 comments

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.

Some Important Links

November 10, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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:

Patreon page. Patrons get links back to posts on this site, and (at least for now) one article or piece of short fiction each month, all for free. In some months, I make one charged release of at least 10,000 words of new content (excerpts from a novel in progress, draft world-building material, and so on). Charged releases are based on whatever I’m working on at the time – there’s no overarching theme. Patrons also get free copies of some or all of the work I self-publish, depending on their level of patronage.
DeviantArt page. This is where I’m likely to post any character art, cartography, or other visual art I produce in support of other projects. Some of that will also appear here, but that’s not guaranteed.
Amazon author page for John Alleyn. Exactly what it says on the tin. Here’s where you’ll find my more recent, self-published original fiction.
Amazon author page for Jon F. Zeigler. You’ll mostly find links to my non-fiction work here, especially old GURPS books that are still on sale via Amazon. Also, at least one short-story collection to which I contributed under my legal byline.
Fan Fiction archive. This points to my profile page on FanFiction.Net, which has its drawbacks but is the only place you can find all of the fan-fiction I wrote during that period of my creative career (roughly 2012 through 2018). Mostly Mass Effect stories, along with a bit of fantasy fiction in several settings.

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.

Review: Code of the Communer, by Kai Greenwood

November 8, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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.

Architect of Worlds: State of the Project

November 7, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I haven’t posted any new Architect of Worlds material for a few days, but the project is still moving forward. The main issue is that I’m being required to ramp up my day-job telework to full-time status, so I need to make some adjustments to my time management. That’s being worked out, so I should be able to make progress on several of my creative projects over the next couple of weeks.

To review the bidding: since early September, I’ve written and posted the first drafts for Steps Fifteen through Twenty-Three of the design sequence. At this point, the reader should be able to get some of the broad outlines of a generated world’s surface conditions: blackbody temperature, the prevalence of water, geology, and some information about the composition and density of the atmosphere.

What’s left? Well, we still need the world’s actual surface temperatures, the prevalence of dry land if the world has oceans, the final composition of the atmosphere, and the presence and complexity of native life.

There are some complex interdependencies between those items, not to mention a bunch of special cases. In particular, I want to build in the possibility of a robust carbon cycle for a more-or-less-Earthlike world. The hypothesis is that the climate of Earth, or any similar planet with large oceans and life, will tend to self-correct over long periods. Carbon dioxide, in particular, will move into or out of the atmosphere in such a way as to keep the world in the proper temperature range for plentiful liquid water. That suggests a feedback loop that may require some special logic in the world-design sequence.

So I’ve been doing some storyboarding (kind of like what’s going on in this post from September) and roughing out the proper sequence of steps. I think I may end up with six or seven more major steps in the sequence. Seven would make a nice round thirty steps for the complete sequence, but if I end up with a weird prime number or something I suppose I’ll have to live with that.

In any case, I hope to break through the logic here and start posting the last chunk of the design sequence later this month. The third major piece of the sequence may be ready for PDF and posting to the Architect of Worlds page before Christmas.

That doesn’t mean Architect of Worlds, the book, will be ready. There’s a lot more I want to write before I’m ready to think about a publishable draft. How to plan an interstellar setting, how to work with real-world astronomical data, how to build star maps, that kind of thing. Still, I could see a first edition of the book finally making its appearance – most likely on DriveThruRPG.com – sometime next year.

Looking Backward: The Silk Revolution

November 5, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Current events have me going back to re-read an old work of mine.

“The Silk Revolution” was the last significant piece of fan-fiction I wrote during that period of my creative career. Since I finished that story, I’ve been trying to spend the bulk of my time on original work. The plot centered around a set of elections in a fictional republic, but it included plenty of action-adventure scenes and a romantic subplot as well.

Not to mention an authorial experiment. “The Silk Revolution” was a novella-length work without a single significant male character appearing anywhere in it. Men appear in the background, men are referred to in dialogue, but no men have any dialogue of their own, nor do they take any significant action to further the plot. The protagonists are female, the villains are female, every supporting character is female. I asked my readers to figure out what was different about the story, and not one of them took notice of the casting. I considered that something of a victory for my art; I must be getting better at “writing the other.”

“The Silk Revolution” was, of course, influenced by the US elections of 2016. Going back and re-reading it now, I’m finding echoes to the events of today as well. I’m also detecting the onset of a certain cynicism about politics in the authorial voice. No artist can remain entirely detached from the world around him, and it’s folly to try. That’s a point those who get angry about political elements in art need to consider.

Growing the TBR Pile

November 2, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Last month, I got started on my new project of reviewing self-published science fiction and fantasy. I will admit to having ulterior motives there – I have work of my own that needs attention – but it’s also worth doing for its own sake.

I got started with the first three volumes of Gordon Doherty’s Empires of Bronze series, which I certainly enjoyed. Then the question arose: how to find more books for the TBR (To Be Reviewed) pile? I’m not widely known as a reviewer yet, since I’ve just started to put myself forward as such. I could always browse Amazon’s virtual shelves at random, but that’s no fun.

So I ended up doing the obvious thing: I posted a query to Reddit.

I now have a list of twenty self-published fantasy novels to choose from, already recommended by at least one reader. That should keep me going for the remainder of the calendar year, long enough to build up a back catalog of six to eight reviews that I can point to as proof that I’m serious about this. Hopefully, by then I’ll be getting the occasional request directly from other authors, and that will keep the ball rolling.

(If you have a self-published novel you’d like me to review, have a look at the Review Policy link in the menu bar, and drop me a line.)

In the meantime, I have a bunch of new novels to browse through and read, which is the fun part of this venture. Look for some more reviews to appear in this space over the next couple of weeks.

Minor Site Reorganization

November 1, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’ve just finished doing some minor shuffling of pages on this site:

Architect of Worlds is now a top-level page.
The “Building a Better Barsoom” article has been filed under Free Articles and Fiction.
The Sharrukin’s Worlds page has been eliminated. All new articles will most likely be filed under Free Articles and Fiction for the time being.

The Pages widget has been eliminated from the sidebar, but you should be able to access the major sections of the site from the menu bar at the top. I’m not sure anyone was using the widget anyway.

This process may have broken a link or two, but you should be able to reacquire without too much trouble. Hopefully, this should make navigation a bit easier in the future.

Review: Thunder at Kadesh, by Gordon Doherty

October 31, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

Thunder at Kadesh (Book Three of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

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

Thunder at Kadesh is the third (and at this writing, last) volume of Empires of Bronze, Gordon Doherty’s ongoing historical fiction series set in the ancient Hittite Empire. In this volume, Mr. Doherty has produced a powerful rendition of the earliest well-documented military campaign in human history.

Thunder at Kadesh continues to follow Prince Hattu, the younger brother of the Hittite king Muwatalli II. In the years since the previous story, Hattu has become case-hardened by a life of violence and loss. Now the war he has long dreaded is about to begin: an epic conflict against New Kingdom Egypt under its new Pharaoh Ramesses II (one day to be known to history as “Ramesses the Great”).

Ramesses intends to destroy the Hittite kingdom, and he may have the army he needs to do that. On the other hand, under Hattu’s leadership, the Hittites have spent years building up their own army, including innovations in tactics and technology. They gather all of their allies – including some well-known names from their vassal-kingdom of Troy – and march to meet Ramesses.

As always, Mr. Doherty’s careful research pays off here. He has done a careful study of the Kadesh campaign, and of the critical battle itself, based on the most recent research in several disciplines. This novel offers plausible solutions to some of its outstanding mysteries, while still telling a suspenseful story of military struggle and sacrifice.

The plot of Thunder at Kadesh is a bit tighter and more believable than that of previous volumes of the series. The stakes of the conflict are clear, as are the identity and motives of the antagonists. Prince Hattu and his supporting characters deal with their challenges with intelligence, determination, and iron discipline. Even the villains of the piece are more nuanced and well-developed than we’ve seen so far. Only at the very end of the story is there a sudden reversal, setting up a conflict for the volumes to come. As I’ve come to expect from this self-published series, the production is of very high quality, with very few copy-editing errors.

Readers should be aware, of course, that the story is set in a brutal and violent time, focusing on one of the greatest battles of the ancient world. Descriptions of violence are common and very explicit.

I thoroughly enjoyed Thunder at Kadesh and am looking forward to the next books in the series. Strongly recommended for readers who might enjoy an action-packed war story set in ancient times.

Short Story Now Available: “Safe Haven”

October 28, 2020 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’ve posted a new version of “Safe Haven,” one of my oldest short stories, to the Free Articles and Fiction section.

“Safe Haven” is a tale set soon after the Trojan War, in a world that isn’t quite the same as the one familiar to us from the poems of Homer. Aside from the links on the Free Articles and Fiction page and in the sidebar, here’s a direct link as well.

“Safe Haven” will also be released to my patrons, free of charge.

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