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Rethinking the Human Destiny

Rethinking the Human Destiny

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A big part of my creative process involves all the work that happens entirely in my head, usually while the “active” work is happening on a completely different project. Some of that has been happening over the past couple of months, while the bulk of my time was devoted to Architect of Worlds. The target has been my Human Destiny universe.

The Human Destiny is an extended meditation on what our future might look like in a universe that is very much not designed for human pre-eminence. Humans reach the stars, but only as clients of a far older, far larger, and far more powerful extraterrestrial society. Stories written so far in this setting seem to fall into two categories:

  • Stories set right around “the Conquest,” the time (currently set about twenty years from now) when the aliens arrive and very quickly reduce Earth to a client state. Published stories in this set include “Guanahani” and “Roanoke.”
  • Stories set about two hundred years after the Conquest, at a time when human beings are first being permitted to explore and settle worlds outside our own planetary system. Most of these center around the character of Aminata Ndoye, a young woman from what we now know as Senegal, who is one of the first humans to earn an officer’s position in the alien “interstellar service.” If and when I write a Human Destiny game sourcebook, it will probably be set in this era. Published stories in this set include “Pilgrimage” and In the House of War.

So far, the Human Destiny setting has been best described as “Star Trek meets David Brin’s Uplift novels.” The “Hegemony” that conquers Earth is non-human and rather paternalistic, but it’s also generally benign. Kind of like a Trek Federation that means well to its citizens but decidedly does not have a non-interference directive.

What I’ve been wrestling with is the technological assumptions of the setting.

To put the problem shortly: I think the technologies I’ve assumed so far have turned out to be at odds with the core themes of the setting, and I’m moving toward the decision to re-think that technological base from scratch. Which may mean rewriting a lot of the existing fiction, but may also give me good hooks for new stories in the future, so on that basis it may be a wash.

The executive summary is that I’ve been assuming a very Star Trek-like technological base. Magical normal-space and FTL drives, technical control of gravitational forces, the sort of tech that allows for cheap and easy space travel. Yet the themes I want to build into the setting are that the universe is vast, that intelligent beings on the human scale can easily get lost in it, that thriving on that stage requires a mindset that thinks into the distance in both space and time. Star Trek, for all its virtues, rarely offered that kind of perspective. It’s the Age of Sail in space, with exotic but fundamentally human cultures in every port. Jim Kirk needed to be cosmopolitan, but he rarely had to think far above the human level to succeed.

One oeuvre that I really appreciate, that I think hits some of the same themes I’m looking for, can be found in the late works of Poul Anderson. I’m thinking here of some of the novels he wrote in the last decade of his life, starting with The Boat of a Million Years, moving through his Harvest of Stars tetralogy, and ending with the magnificent Starfarers.

All these novels lean toward “hard” SF, mostly sticking to space travel that’s still tied to the rocket equation even if the engines are really advanced, avoiding FTL travel entirely. The stars are hard to reach in these stories, and it’s never clear that human beings are at all suited for life on that stage. Some humans decide not to try, huddling at home on Earth and rarely looking up. Others worry that humans are going to be eclipsed by other forms of life – mechanical or alien – that can thrive on the cosmic scale. Yet in these stories, some humans do manage to keep themselves relevant, finding ways to seek out free and worthwhile lives even out among the stars.

Yeah. I don’t know if it’s the undeniable influence that Anderson has had on my creative work all along, but those are very nearly the same themes I want to build into the Human Destiny. So the worldbuilding needs to match.

So I’ve been thinking about turning the “hard SF” dial up quite a bit, and working out what the implications might be for the setting as a whole. In particular, what will the vast, old, alien Hegemony look like if they don’t fly Star Trek-style starships? What will their conquest of Earth look like? How will Aminata Ndoye’s career be different, if she can’t fly a few hundred parsecs and back and still find her family and her home town more or less as she left them?

Lots to think about here, and I don’t pretend to have everything worked out yet, but once Architect of Worlds is out the door this may be where I’ll be spending some worldbuilding time.

Planning for November 2023

Planning for November 2023

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A little different format this time. Now that the initial layout for Architect of Worlds is complete, I’m in the final push to finish the book for actual release. There are still a number of tasks that need to be done before we get to that point, though. That’s the list that’s going to take center stage for November – and probably for December as well.

The objective is to have Architect of Worlds ready for release by the end of the calendar year. At this moment, it’s looking as if the actual release will not be via self-publication, as I had originally considered. Instead, as I’ve mentioned, there’s a good chance I’ll be working an established small-press publisher to release the book through their own imprint. We haven’t agreed to a deal just yet, and until that happens I’m not going to say who it is. Watch this space for further news – it probably won’t be long before I know what’s going to happen.

Either way, I suspect I/we will be setting the release date at no later than March 2024. I had originally hoped for earlier, but given all the life disasters I’ve been dealing with since July, I’m actually pleased the book won’t be further delayed. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, prayers to whatever deity or luck-granting spirit you subscribe to . . .

So here’s the current list of outstanding tasks:

Editorial Work:

  • Make final alterations to the design sequence or other rules for this edition, based on recent patron and reader feedback.
  • Perform a final editorial pass through the complete text, correcting typos, style inconsistencies, errors in tables or mathematical formulae, and “page XX” references.
  • Generate and lay out the copyright & acknowledgements page.
  • Generate and lay out the Table of Contents.

Art Direction:

  • Create separate “print on demand” (almost entirely greyscale) and “e-book” (full color) layers in the InDesign layout, supporting the production of two release PDFs.
  • Correct all cases where space for filler art was allocated by changing the size of the page’s main text frame, as opposed to placing an explicit object frame.
  • Create greyscale versions of (some) existing full-color images and place those in the layout on the appropriate layer.
  • Generate additional filler art throughout the book, placing both full-color and greyscale versions on the appropriate layers.
  • Create (or receive from publisher) new front and back cover images, and integrate these into the release PDFs.

I’m probably going to work on all of these concurrently, aside from those last-minute changes to the text at the top of the list (that’s the only item that might significantly change the layout). So a clean progress bar is probably not going to work – I’ll just leave the occasional Status Report post here to let everyone know how it’s going.

It should be clear that the window is just about closed for any recommendations for altered “rules” mechanics. If you have anything you’d like to suggest, I suspect that has to be in my hands before, say, 10 November. After that, the major structure of the text is going to be set in stone for this edition. Speak up, or it will have to wait for after-publication articles, or the second edition in a few years.

In the meantime, to the extent I have any unclaimed time (or I need another task for variety) I think I’m going to get back to writing some fiction. Most likely this will be more chapters of Twice-Crowned. If I make enough progress with that between now and the end of the calendar year, I’ll publish a new partial draft as a charged release for my patrons. No predictions – a lot depends on how Architect and some other tasks are doing in the meantime.

We’re on the home stretch!

A Choice of Game Mechanics

A Choice of Game Mechanics

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As of today, the initial layout of Architect of Worlds is finished – all of the final-draft text has been dropped into InDesign and laid out on the pages. In fact, given that there are a couple more days before the end of October, I’ve gone ahead and dropped the “Fine-Tuning World Climate” material into the book as well. I’m going to try to get that laid out before I produce an end-of-month PDF for my patrons.

This is a really big milestone. My planning message for November will detail the work that remains to be done, but the bulk of the final editorial work is finished. From here to the release version is a short distance, relatively speaking.

So today, I’m taking a break from Architect to consider some of the projects I might take up afterward. In particular, the possibility of producing one or more RPG sourcebooks tied to my personal literary settings. These include:

  • The Human Destiny: Interstellar science fiction, positioned somewhere between moderately hard SF and conservative space opera, essentially a pastiche of Star Trek in a universe where human beings are decidedly not the dominant culture.
  • Fourth Millennium: Alternate-historical fantasy set in and around the ancient Mediterranean, a world in which Hellenistic civilization is dominant and (at least some of) the gods are real and active in human affairs.
  • The Great Lands: Iron-Age fantasy reminiscent of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, in which heroic demigods struggle for glory and the survival of their people.

Of the three, I suspect The Human Destiny and Fourth Millennium are most likely to come to fruition. I do want to do more with The Great Lands, but that setting has been getting a lot less interest from the potential audience, so I’m a bit less motivated to push it forward.

One question that keeps coming up is how these settings might best be translated into tabletop RPG material – in particular, what game system might be the best choice for me to work with and publish under?

My first choice, of course, would be GURPS. I’ve got plenty of experience writing for various editions of GURPS – no fewer than 17 full-length books for which I was sole author, co-author, contributor, or editor would argue for that. To this day I’m fond of the system, and I’m quite convinced that any of my personal settings would translate well into it. Not least because I suspect a lot of GURPS idioms have embedded themselves into my personal world-building style.

The problem is that GURPS doesn’t have any form of open license. It’s certainly possible to write and sell third-party GURPS material. Douglas Cole of Gaming Ballistic, for example, has managed a small but successful product line tied to Dungeon Fantasy. As someone with a long track record of both freelance and on-the-payroll work for SJG, I could probably do the same. The barrier to entry would be steep, though, and probably not something at which a one-man development shop working around the constraints of a day job could succeed.

A few years back, I briefly considered writing my own RPG system. You can probably find a few references to the Eidolon system in old posts here. I eventually set that idea aside, because frankly the market is already absolutely glutted with RPG game systems. Anything I publish along these lines is going to be very marginal to begin with; tying it to an idiosyncratic game system would reduce the audience size from “few” to “none.”

I considered the new Cortex Prime system, and even wrote up a bunch of Human Destiny material for it. I still like that system, but the promised creator-friendly licensing scheme never materialized, so I had to set that aside too.

I thought about publishing Human Destiny under the OGL, possibly by way of Cepheus Engine, but the blowup over the OGL at the beginning of this calendar year kind of scotched that notion. I have absolutely no interest in building a dependency into any of my work that Wizards of the Coast could yank out from under me at any time. There was some talk of placing Cepheus Engine on a different licensing basis, possibly with cooperation from Mongoose Publishing, but I’m not sure how that shook out. I’m still kind of leery. Besides, I’m not entirely convinced that the Traveller-like mechanics of Cepheus Engine would quite fit the Human Destiny setting.

More recently I’ve been looking at Monte Cook’s Cypher, and Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying (BRP), both of which are available under very creator-friendly licensing terms.

Cypher is perhaps a little more streamlined than I like in a tabletop system, but it seems to have a bigger and growing audience. Monte Cook Games has been pushing it hard this year, especially after the OGL debacle. Cypher is available under its own open license, and the System Reference Document (SRD) is pretty extensive.

On the other hand, Basic Role Playing is an established and very solid system, more GURPS-like than most of the others. It’s been applied to a variety of settings over the years, and I think some of its mechanics would fit my settings very nicely. It’s not clear how much of an audience it has outside the very popular Pendragon, Runequest and Call of Cthulhu games. BRP used to be under a fairly restrictive open license – the SRD included almost nothing but the core task-resolution mechanic – but the most recent release of the engine includes more mechanics, and is apparently going to be placed under the much broader ORC license.

None of this is urgent yet; it’s going to be a while yet before Architect is finally out the door and I can turn to the next big project. Still, that seems to be the current state of play. I need a tabletop game system that will be a good fit for the settings I want to write, which has at least some established audience, and which exists under a licensing scheme for which I won’t have to be a full-time developer and marketer to succeed. It’s encouraging that the intersection of those three sets doesn’t appear to be quite empty . . .

Status Report (25 October 2023)

Status Report (25 October 2023)

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Some good progress to report for the month of October, along with some potential news about the marketing of Architect of Worlds once it’s finished.

Mind you, my run of bad luck has been continuing strong through this month. Let’s see: basement flooded in June, just about all my worldly possessions moved to storage, major repair work to the house’s foundation in July, worldly possessions moved back in, water heater replaced in July, furnace and air-conditioner replaced in August, the discovery of a mouse infestation in September, a really nasty bout of medical issues in late September through early October, dishwasher replaced in October, and yet another incident of flooding which damaged the house’s upper floors in October. Add to all that a really big project at the day job since the beginning of September, and the fact that I’m starting to take some distance-learning classes in pursuit of a new degree. This has been quite the year . . .

Still, as of today I am only eight pages away from completing the initial layout of Architect of Worlds, and I have every expectation that task will be finished by the end of this month as planned. Which doesn’t mean the book will be completely ready for release, but it does mean the biggest part of the work will be done. My goal remains to have everything ready for release by the end of the calendar year. More about that in my planning message for November, most likely.

There’s also a very good chance I won’t be marketing Architect entirely on my own once it’s ready. I’m in talks with an established small-press publisher to release the book, through their own imprint and by way of DriveThruRPG. That would mean royalties for me, in exchange for not having to do all the work of being an indie publisher, along with access to my partners’ marketing network and almost certainly much better sales. I suspect I’ll come out well ahead. This won’t make any difference to my patrons – all of them at the appropriate level will be getting a free e-copy of the finished book regardless, probably in advance of the public release. More on that if and when we work through the details and come to an agreement.

Planning for October 2023

Planning for October 2023

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It never rains but it pours. I had hoped for September to be a really productive month, and I did get some good work done, but it was one thing after the other getting in the way. Our HVAC system went out in mid-month, which left us sweltering for a few days until we had everything replaced.

Then, no sooner did that get resolved, than I had a nasty flare-up of kidney stone that’s still not cleared up. Kind of hard to concentrate on any work – for your day job or your side hustle – when you’re subject at any moment to feeling like there’s a knife buried in your back.

Still, I managed to get another big chunk of Architect of Worlds laid out, and I did most of the work to write a new section of material about modeling local surface temperatures. I think I’m within striking distance of having the entire layout finished in rough draft, so that’s the primary objective for the month of October.

So here’s the plan for this month:

  • Top Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Finish writing new material to streamline the estimation of variations in local climate (originally Step Thirty-Two in the design sequence).
    • Architect of Worlds: Complete the initial layout of the book.
  • Second Priority:
    • Danassos: Continue work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • Danassos: Continue work to rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.
    • Fan Fiction: Continue to write a Runequest-based story of at least novella length.

As far as releases for my patrons are concerned: I expect a free update of the growing Architect release draft – in fact, this is likely to be the final free update for that project before the book is released. If I produce enough new prose for Twice-Crowned or the Runequest story, I may offer partial drafts of those as a reward too (charged for Twice-Crowned, free for the Runequest story).

Planning for September 2023

Planning for September 2023

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This will be the first more-or-less-normal planning message since June, given the last three months were massively disrupted by the basement-flooding incident we had late in that month. We’re still working to recover. In particular, my personal and work space is still kind of tucked in around a lot of unpacked boxes and furniture that hasn’t been returned to its usual place. On the other hand, I can get to my bed, my bookshelves, and my workstation, and there’s a good chance I’ll be able to set up at least one of my two game-and-other-project tables this weekend. One step at a time.

Meanwhile, as of late August I had actually finished editing and laying out Architect of Worlds through the end of the main design sequence. That’s a huge milestone, leaving me with only about 50-60 pages yet to polish up and lay out, and the remaining sections aren’t likely to need as much finicky attention. Much easier to do layout when you’re not working around tables and mathematical formulae on every page!

Meanwhile, I’ve been slowly writing new material for Twice-Crowned. My muse has also provoked me into an active side project to write . . . something fan-fiction-like, set in the fictional world of Glorantha that appears in the Runequest roleplaying game. So I’m producing a little bit of new prose fiction as I go, even while I try to remain focused on getting Architect ready for its formal release later this year.

So here’s the plan for September:

  • Top Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Write new material to streamline the estimation of variations in local climate (originally Step Thirty-Two in the design sequence).
    • Architect of Worlds: Continue work to design and lay out the finished book. Plan to finish through page 152 (out of approximately 180), or the end of the Special Cases in World-Building section. May continue past that point if time remains in the month.
  • Second Priority:
    • Danassos: Continue work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • Danassos: Continue work to rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.
    • Fan Fiction: Continue to write a Runequest-based story of at least novella length.

As far as releases for my patrons are concerned: I expect a free update of the growing Architect release draft. If I produce enough new prose for the Runequest story, I may offer a partial draft of that as a free reward too. There won’t be a charged release this month, and probably won’t be any until fairly late this year, while I concentrate on getting Architect of Worlds ready for release.

Status Report (14 August 2023)

Status Report (14 August 2023)

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Well, the good news is that I’ve just about finished unpacking my library, getting my writing work-center back into fully operational condition. I still have a big pile of boxes and miscellaneous items in the middle of my basement apartment, so I can’t set up my gaming tables yet, and that part of my creative enterprise is still off-line. Maybe in another couple of weeks, if my wife and I can work our way though more of the unpacking and re-homing.

The even better news is that as of this past weekend, I’ve gotten back to work on Architect of Worlds in a major way.

I started by doing a review of the portions of the book I had already laid out, making minor editorial and layout adjustments, adding a few pieces of new text. I also finished the task of correcting all the extended examples in the design sequence – those should be more or less consistent now. As of Sunday evening, I finished that review and moved on to actually laying out new material. If you look at the progress bar in the sidebar on this site, you’ll notice movement there for the first time since late June.

I fully expect to be done laying out the main design sequence by the end of August. The one possible hold-up is that I want to rewrite Step Thirty-Two of the design sequence almost from scratch. The current version of that material is really ugly and hard to apply, and I think I see ways to simplify it and make it a lot more user-friendly. I’ll have to see how long that rewrite takes, but I can’t imagine it will require more than an evening or two.

At the moment, I would estimate a 85% probability that I’ll have a free update for patrons and readers by the end of August, including the entire edited design sequence.

That still leaves a few tasks:

  • Laying out the last two sections of the book
  • Going through the entire draft for a final editing pass, to resolve all the “p. XX” references and correct any last-minute errors
  • Generating or collecting and placing in-line art assets
  • Producing a back cover
  • Building a credits-and-acknowledgements page and a Table of Contents
  • Preparing the book for publication through DriveThruRPG (and possibly through another outlet as well – that conversation is in very early stages, so we’ll see)

I had originally planned to have the book out the door by late this summer, but obviously that’s not going to happen. I still think, barring any further setbacks, that it will be on the market before the end of this calendar year.

Planning for August 2023

Planning for August 2023

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As of today, we’ve reached another really big milestone in recovering from the basement-flooding incident in late June. A moving crew has come to return all the furniture and boxes that were packed out on 3 July, and I also hired them to move everything back in out of the storage pod we have in front of the house. My library and all of my office items are now at least back down here with me, although they’re almost all still in boxes. I’ll be unpacking (and searching for critical items) for days at least, possibly a couple of weeks.

A lot is still up in the air – in particular, I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get most of these boxes unpacked, and clear space down here for the game tables that are the other half of my creative enterprise. I hope that by mid-month I’ll be more or less back to normal. So I’m not going to establish any hard-and-fast objectives to meet this month.

On the other hand, for the first time in about six weeks, I can at least think about having a firm plan of action for creative work in the coming month.

My plan is to focus on Architect of Worlds this month, recovering the battle rhythm and forward momentum I had going before all this happened. My primary objective will be to make enough new progress on Architect that I can reasonably release a new free update for my patrons by the end of the month. Ideally, I’d like to have at least some idea as to what the new release date for the book might be, but we’ll see how the month goes.

Meanwhile, I do have a couple of small items to write up – some world-building work for the Danassos setting, and another book review for August. I don’t anticipate any real trouble hitting those milestones. I may also keep banging out some new prose for Twice-Crowned, although I don’t expect to make enough progress there to release a new update.

Stay tuned.

Status Report (25 July 2023)

Status Report (25 July 2023)

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Things are moving more slowly than I’d hoped with respect to getting my basement back into livable and usable condition. Here’s where we are as of this morning:

  • Furniture and almost all of my personal goods, including the bulk of my library, moved out.
  • Foundation repair and installation of a new drainage system and air-quality system complete.
  • Water heater replaced (this wasn’t on the critical path, but the old one was a few years past its warranty date, so better safe than sorry).
  • Replacement drywall hung, holes in ceiling left by plumber during emergency repair patched, everything trimmed and spackled and ready for painting.
  • Walls and ceiling have been painted.

The sticking point is the new carpeting. That wasn’t delivered until yesterday (24 July), and we’re supposed to hear from our sales rep today to schedule installation. The earliest we could get the carpeting done would be tomorrow (26 July), and later in the week would be a safer bet.

The problem is, that almost certainly pushes Moving Day – the day I get back all my furniture, and we recover almost the entirety of my library from the storage pod – into next week.

From a logistical standpoint, that’s not a disaster. I’d almost prefer to have a free day or two between Carpet Day and Moving Day, so we can pre-move a few items and get things set up for the big effort. Even better if there’s a weekend in there, so I can focus on getting my house in order without having to juggle my day job too. Still, pushing all these dates to the right (again) means there’s no time left for creative projects to hit good milestones before the end of the month.

I have managed to get some creative work done in July: some world-building work for the Danassos setting and a few thousand words of new prose for the novel Twice-Crowned. None of that has amounted to enough to roll out to my patrons, though.

Meanwhile, I’ve found it almost impossible to make any forward progress on Architect of Worlds under current conditions. It really needs my full workspace and all my research resources on hand. So if Moving Day isn’t going to be until next week, and it will probably take me one or two days to unpack enough to get back to work on Architect . . . well, that means that July will have been a dead month with respect to that project.

So this is, unfortunately, my best estimate for my patrons and readers: there will be no updates for the month of July, no charged updates for any project and no free update for Architect of Worlds.

We are approaching “back to normal,” and I anticipate being able to get back to all my creative projects on a more typical basis in August. I sincerely hope I get no worse disruption to my home and creative work for a long time . . .

Status Report (15 July 2023)

Status Report (15 July 2023)

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We’re making progress on getting the basement (that is, my living space, home office, and creative headquarters) repaired after last month’s flooding incident. The current state of play:

  • Furniture and almost all of my personal goods, including the bulk of my library, moved out.
  • Foundation repair and installation of a new drainage system and air-quality system complete.
  • Water heater replaced (this wasn’t on the critical path, but the old one was a few years past its warranty date, so better safe than sorry).
  • Replacement drywall hung, holes in ceiling left by plumber during emergency repair patched, everything trimmed and spackled and ready for painting.

We have painters scheduled to come in on 19-20 July, and the new carpeting should be delivered about then too. I’m hoping we can get the new carpet installed sometime between 21 July and 24 July. At which point, we’ll be ready to call the movers to bring back all my furniture and help us move all our goods back into the house.

Current best guess is that I’ll be able to call the move finished and release the storage pod we’re renting by about 26 July. At that point, at least, I’ll have my bed back and will have my workstation set up in its usual place once more. Unpacking all my books and games, and otherwise getting everything back to normal, may take some time beyond that.

Unfortunately, I am not making much progress on Architect of Worlds during this period of disruption. I’ve tried to do a few pages, but my current work area is very cramped and some of the physical materials I’ve been using are hard to deal with at the moment. I’ll keep at it, but I suspect the best time for me to forge ahead with that will be after that 26 July milestone.

Fortunately, there’s a solid weekend at the end of the month. I plan to get some minor creative work (notably my book review for July) out of the way over the next week or so, so I can focus on Architect editing and layout for 3-4 days at the end of the month. I see a good chance that, together with what I managed to knock out before the disaster, I should have enough new layout done to permit a free update for my patrons. Expect to see that by the end of July.

Meanwhile, I’ve been carrying out an interesting experiment with respect to my Danassos setting. I thought of a way to model some specific elements of the setting’s back story, and the results have been very interesting. Some revisions are underway to my “historical timelines” document. I doubt I’ll have a new version of that ready for anyone else to see by the end of July, but it’s already suggesting some new stories for that setting, and I suspect there may be some revisions to the Twice-Crowned draft before I’m finished. More about that as it develops.