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Planning for June 2021

Planning for June 2021

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The last few months have been very productive, and I think this pattern of posting a status report and priority list at the beginning of each month is helping. Not to mention that it’s likely to be useful information for my patrons, and anyone else who’s following my work.

May was a good month overall. I released an update to my Scorpius Reach setting bible, adding a fair amount of material to the initial draft. This gathered some good attention from the Traveller communities on Facebook and Reddit. I also released a minor-version update to the Architect of Worlds Introduction and Design Sequence document. Finally, I wrote and released the first draft of a completely new section of Architect of Worlds: the Working with Astronomical Data document.

I did not get any new fiction written, and I think I need to refocus on that in the coming month. Earlier this year I had a potential project to write and sell several stories, and for a while I was holding time and energy aside for that. Unfortunately, that seems to have fallen through, so I’m turning back to writing in my own original universes again for a while.

One very useful milestone happened this month. I’ve been developing my Scorpius Reach setting, not just as a test-bed for the Game of Empire rules, but also possibly as the backdrop for some serialized fiction to bring to market. Although the stories themselves are going to be entirely original to me, and I don’t plan to market them as anything but original fiction, there was still a potential IP problem there. I’ve been using the Traveller game rules to help develop the setting, and the “bible” for it is framed in terms of a Traveller universe. So I decided to approach Marc Miller, the owner and primary publisher of Traveller, and discuss how best to avoid stepping on his intellectual property. Once I described what I was planning to do, he immediately and graciously granted me permission to proceed without any concerns. So that’s a big potential obstacle out of the way. I plan to start writing the first Scorpius Reach serialized novel in June.

So here’s the priority list for June 2021. I’m reworking the format a little, to organize by a hierarchy of urgency first, rather than by overall project:

  • Top Priority, or the “this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful” level:
    • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few more chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write the first few chapters of a serialized novel to be published via Kindle Vella.
  • Second Priority, or the “work on this as time permits” level:
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the first short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Krava’s Legend: More research toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules.
  • Back Burner, or the “work on this only if everything else gets blocked” level:
    • Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
    • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.

For my patrons, this month’s free releases will almost certainly include a new minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a block of new fiction from the Krava’s Legend and Scorpius Reach settings. I do hope to produce some new Architect of Worlds material this month, but there probably won’t be enough of that to bundle up as a release for my patrons, so maybe look for that in July.

As always, I’ll want to complete one or two book reviews for self-published fiction this month.

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

A small administrative note: I spent some time this morning cleaning up the post tags on this site, merging a few tags and making sure they had consistent format. In particular, I merged all the tags that made any reference to my high-fantasy novel series into the krava’s legend tag. I also merged the tags that referred to the various Bios-series games by Phil Eklund into the bios tag. Might make the site a little easier to navigate.

Status Report (29 May 2021)

Status Report (29 May 2021)

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A very quick note: I’ve just finished the next section of the Architect of Worlds draft, titled “Working with Astronomical Data.” This is about 13500 words on where to get authoritative scientific data about real-world stars and exoplanets, and how to marry that information with the Architect of Worlds design sequence, so you can build plausible planetary systems.

That section is available for my patrons only at this point. If you’re interested in that material, or in Architect of Worlds in general, please consider signing up for my Patreon at any level: https://www.patreon.com/Sharrukin.

An “Architect of Worlds” Teaser

An “Architect of Worlds” Teaser

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I’ve been working on a new section of the book, with the overall title of “Working with Astronomical Data.” Here’s a list of topic headers for the material I’ve produced over the past week or two, about 7000 words in all:

  • Star Names and Star Catalogs
    • The International Astronomical Union (IAU)
    • The VizieR Catalog Reference Service
    • Traditional Astronomy
      • The Ptolemaic Constellations
      • Proper Names for the Stars
    • Bayer Designation
    • Flamsteed Designation
    • The Durchmusterung Catalogs
    • The Henry Draper Catalog
    • The Gliese Catalogs
    • The Hipparcos Catalogs
    • The Gaia Data Releases
    • Other Data Sources
      • SIMBAD
      • NASA Exoplanet Archive
      • Wikipedia
  • Developing Inputs for Interstellar Maps and the Design Sequence
    • Star Positions
      • Equatorial Coordinates
      • Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Equatorial Coordinates
      • Galactic Coordinates
      • Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Galactic Coordinates

Lots more to work on in this section. I’m not at all sure whether I’ll have the whole section finished by the end of this month, but if there’s enough there (say, 15000 words or more) then I’ll make the interim draft a charged release for my patrons, after which they’ll get free updates while I keep working on and adding to the material.

Once this section is finished, there will be only two more chunks of the book that need to be written: the “how to generate random maps of interstellar space” and “special cases that don’t fit neatly into the main design sequence.” I’m beginning to think I’ll have a complete pre-layout draft for Architect of Worlds by the end of summer 2021 . . . which means the first edition of the book may be ready for release late this year or early in 2022.

Status Report (16 May 2021)

Status Report (16 May 2021)

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Since the beginning of this month, I’ve returned to my day-job office on a mixed schedule that allows for a couple of days of telework per week. It’s been an adjustment, but so far the results have been pretty good – I’m continuing to be productive on my creative projects. So here’s the state of things as of mid-month.

Biggest push right now is to write a completely new section of Architect of Worlds. This is a section titled “Working with Astronomical Data,” and it’s intended to document most of the tricks I’ve learned over the years for taking real-world data and turning it into plausible star system designs and maps of interstellar space.

So far I’ve got about 4500 words down on how stars are named, what the best data sources are for information on stars, and where on the Web one might go to lay hands on useful star catalogs. That piece is about finished. Then I’m going to start working on material describing how to read star catalogs and other data sources, and translate those data into inputs for the main Architect of Worlds design sequence. I’m hoping to have this whole section finished in rough draft by the end of May, at which time it will probably be this month’s charged release for my patrons.

This is a big deal! This section is one of the three blocks of material that still needs to be written before I can seriously start thinking about laying out Architect of Worlds and getting it ready for release. (The other two blocks are “how to design maps of interstellar space” and “special cases that aren’t explicitly covered in the main design sequence.”) I still have no clear idea as to when the book will be ready for its first-edition release, but I’m increasingly confident that will be either late this calendar year, or early in 2022.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to investigate improvements to my process for publishing new fiction. Right now I’m focusing on finding a reliable source for book cover designs – the cover I designed for The Curse of Steel was okay, but it didn’t pop, and I suspect it’s one reason why sales have been a bit disappointing.

I’m also continuing to work on development of some serialized fiction to be published through the new Kindle Vella outlet, based on the Scorpius Reach setting. I had a big step forward on that a few days ago – more about that once things come closer to fruition – and I suspect I may be in a good position to have a story in place once the platform is released to readers.

Finally, of course, I’m continuing to work on The Sunlit Lands as time permits. That might be a back-burner project for what’s left of May, since I released a few chapters to my patrons last month and I’m focusing hard on Architect for the moment.

Planning for May

Planning for May

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Making a post like this at the beginning of the month seems to work, at least for certain values of “work.” Insert comments about plans never surviving contact with the foe, plans being useless whereas planning is essential, that kind of thing.

Biggest change-of-plans in April involved a sudden side project for both Architect of Worlds and the “Scorpius Reach” setting. This was the “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller” project, which ate up a lot of hours through the middle of the month. Still very productive, both by teaching me a lot of Excel Fu, and by helping me produce a document which attracted a lot of attention from Traveller fans.

So although progress on all the goals I identified at the beginning of April was a bit anemic, I’m not unhappy with how things went. I did a free minor-version release for the Architect of Worlds design sequence. I got unblocked with respect to Krava’s Legend and was able to write a few more chapters of The Sunlit Lands. I also picked up several new blog readers and patrons – welcome to all the newcomers!

Still, I think the plan for May is going to look a lot like the plan for April. As always, we’ll see how things actually go. One wrinkle is that I’m fully immunized against COVID-19 now, so I’ll be going back into the office starting Monday. That shouldn’t cripple my creative schedule – I’ve been fully on the clock, albeit working from home, for months already. Still, my daily routine is going to need some adjustment.

Here’s the agenda, more or less in order of priority:

  • 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 10,000 words on the first draft of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Write the first item to go into my “reader magnet,” a collection of short pieces telling some of the back story for the lead characters of Krava’s Legend. The idea is to release that widely and for free, and use it to attract readers to the novel series.
    • Do more investigation toward improvements to my release-and-marketing workflow: find affordable sources for professionally done book cover art, read about techniques for book marketing on a budget that won’t take away too much time from writing, and so on.
  • Scorpius Reach Sector and Game of Empire
    • Develop more of the sector map and setting bible.
    • Develop a set of characters and a rough story outline for serialized fiction, possibly to be released on the new Kindle Vella platform.
    • Begin assembling a third-edition draft of the Game of Empire rules.
  • Human Destiny Sourcebook
    • Write a few thousand more words to fill out new sections of the partial rough draft.

Free updates for my patrons will probably include a minor-version release of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and possibly a piece of Krava’s Legend short fiction. This month’s charged release, if there is one, will probably be a combination of additional 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. Fortunately I’ve found a few self-published novels by way of this blog’s contact form, which may lead to reviews.

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.

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.

Status Report (27 March 2021)

Status Report (27 March 2021)

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I swear, sometimes my muse has the attention span of a squirrel.

My plan for March was to release a new minor update to the Architect of Worlds partial draft, and then write several more chapters of The Sunlit Lands so I could send out a good-sized chunk of that as a charged release for my patrons.

Architect of Worlds did get bumped up to Version 0.4 as of last week – a bunch of tweaks, some of them substantive, many of them driven by the flood of good feedback I’ve received from Brett Evill since the beginning of the year. With that out of the way, I was all set to buckle down and concentrate on The Sunlit Lands. I expected to be finished through Chapter Six or Seven and about 20,000 words by the end of March.

Meanwhile, I posted a couple of weeks ago about an old Traveller project, the Game of Empire rules that I originally developed about twenty years ago. At some time in the near future, I intend to revisit that project and produce a new version of those rules, possibly working toward publishing them as a paid product on DriveThruRPG. I hadn’t intended to work on that just yet, though – Krava’s story was calling me!

Yet early this week, I got the first hint of an idea for a Traveller setting that could act as a test-bed for Game of Empire. It’s a “Milieu Zero” concept of sorts, a single world striving to establish a new interstellar empire after a Long Night. Every day, while I worked on projects for my day job and made progress with Krava’s story, the Traveller idea kept growing in the back of my head, grabbing hold and not letting go.

Today I sat down to try to jot down some notes and get it out of my system, so I could get back to work on Krava . . . and new material just poured out onto the page. Over 3,000 words of it since I got up this morning. Not to mention that I’ve already come up with at least two or three ideas for short fiction, attached to this setting.

Well. I know not to argue when my muse is at work. Even if I wish she were more consistent.

Apparently, by the end of March, I’m going to have something new and worth sharing, it just isn’t going to be enough of The Sunlit Lands to meet my objective. Nor will this block of new Traveller material be useful as a charged release, since I’d like to share it widely and attract some attention to the potential project.

So here’s the (revised) plan for the last few days of March:

  • There will be no charged release for my patrons this month. (Again.)
  • I should have about 5-6000 words of new Traveller material that will be posted here, shared with my patrons, and possibly shared via social media as well. This will be a free release.
  • I still need to finish and publish a book review for the month of March. I’ve already selected and read the book, I just need to bang out the review.

We’ll see if April goes any differently. At least I seem to have gotten out of the creative slough I was mired in for most of February and the first week or so of March. There’s a good chance I’ll be able to produce a worthwhile amount of material next month.