A quick taste for what I’ll be working on this month. This is a section of the eventual book that will cover “special cases” in the design process, things that stand as exceptions or as extra details outside the main body of the world design sequence.
Hopefully this will end up being enough material (10-15 thousand words or more) to justify a new release for my patrons this month. Actually, now would also be a good time for any of my readers to suggest anything else that might fit into this section. Drop me a line if there’s some special topic that you want to see addressed that isn’t in this sketch outline.
Well, February was at least somewhat successful – I managed a major rewrite of sections of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and released a new interim draft of that for a wide audience. I think in March I’m going to try to keep up my momentum there, and work on some new sections of the book. It would be nice if I could have the whole rough draft finished before summer, so I could work on final polish and layout and actually get the book out at last.
There’s one new development in how I’m planning to structure these projects. I’m going to break the Human Destiny setting bible into two distinct books for eventual publication under the Cepheus Engine game rules. The core setting bible itself will get the working title of the Human Destiny Player’s Guide, and then there’s going to be a separate Atlas of the Human Protectorate that provides location data and adventure seeds. My patrons will get free updates to the Player’s Guide, since I’ve already charged them for that once, but the Atlas will likely be a charged release once there’s enough material there to justify one.
Meanwhile, I really need to get unblocked on Krava’s Legend again if I can. it’s been well over a year since The Curse of Steel was published, and it needs to start getting sequels if the series is ever going to attract an audience.
Here’s the list for March:
Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
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.
Human Destiny: Start compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate, meanwhile giving the Architect of Worlds material a good workout.
Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
Krava’s Legend:Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine)
I think the top priority for a charged release will be to get the initial draft of the “special cases and additional worldbuilding topics” material finished. The other items are more likely to give rise to free updates for my patrons.
The best-laid plans of mice and men, and all that.
My plan for February was to get a major update of the world-design sequence for Architect of Worlds out the door, and then pivot to finishing the Human Destiny novelette “Remnants” before the end of the month. Okay, one out of two isn’t bad.
It turns out that writing a murder mystery is hard. I’ve rewritten “Remnants” three times in the past couple of weeks, and I keep finding plot holes that mean the story still won’t work. I don’t think there’s any way the story will be finished to my satisfaction before the end of February. I’m honestly not sure how long it will take me to get it straightened out, even if I stay focused on it to the exclusion of other projects.
It appears to be time to throw in the towel and move to something else, while the back of my brain works on “Remnants” on its own schedule. That means there will be no charged release for February for my patrons. I’m going to concentrate on getting started on a new project for next month, and in the meantime pushing a book review out with what’s left of this month. I’ll post a planning message early in March as usual.
Just a very quick note, for folks who aren’t my patrons and don’t follow me on Facebook. Earlier today, I released a new interim draft of the world-design sequence document from Architect of Worlds. It’s available for free on the Architect of Worlds page on this site.
This is probably the last version of this material I’ll be releasing for free – other sections of the book are exclusive for my patrons, and the book itself is slowly moving toward being ready for final draft and release. I’m kind of hoping that 2022 is the year I finally finish this project.
Still, if you’re interested in this kind of scientific geekery, feel free to have a look.
Time for a quick taste of how the new Architect of Worlds version is turning out.
Long-time followers of this project will remember the two running examples in the draft: planetary systems named Arcadia and Beta Nine that are intended to demonstrate how the system works in practice. I’m in the process of re-working all of the examples, which should be the last step before I share the current draft with my patrons and my readers here.
Here are a couple of tables to suggest some of the results of the revised system.
Arcadia Planetary System
Orbital Radius
Planet Type
Planet Mass
Density
Radius
Surface Gravity
0.254 AU
Terrestrial Planet
0.26
0.75
4470 km
0.53 g
0.380 AU
Terrestrial Planet
1.75
1.09
7460 km
1.28 g
0.580 AU
Terrestrial Planet
1.34
1.10
6800 km
1.17 g
1.00 AU
Terrestrial Planet
0.22
0.74
4250 km
0.49 g
2.12 AU
Planetoid Belt
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
4.08 AU
Large Gas Giant
460
0.20
84100 km
2.64 g
8.12 AU
Medium Gas Giant
180
0.075
85300 km
1.00 g
12.0 AU
Small Gas Giant
52.0
0.14
45800 km
1.00 g
17.6 AU
Failed Core
2.80
1.13
8620 km
1.53 g
Not too many surprises here – this resembles the previous version’s Arcadia system fairly strongly. For some context, the primary star here is a singleton K2V, with about four-fifths the mass and one-third the luminosity of Sol. The third planet (at 0.58 AU) is the Earthlike candidate that I intend to use as an example for the last portion of the design sequence.
Beta Nine Planetary System
Orbital Radius
Planet Type
Planet Mass
Density
Radius
Surface Gravity
0.027 AU
Terrestrial Planet
1.22
1.09
6610 km
1.13 g
0.038 AU
Terrestrial Planet
0.94
1.01
6220 km
0.99 g
0.062 AU
Planetoid Belt
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
0.135 AU
Small Gas Giant
12.0
0.29
22000 km
1.00 g
0.390 AU
Failed Core
2.80
1.16
8540 km
1.56 g
The Beta Nine primary is an M4V red dwarf, with about 0.18 solar masses and less than 1% of Sol’s luminosity. It also has a brown-dwarf companion that cuts off planetary formation too far away from the primary. This planetary system is actually quite a bit different from the previous draft’s Beta Nine. The new model I’m using provides enough planetesimal mass for at least a small gas giant world, and it also allows for the possibility that some of that planetesimal mass “migrates” into the inner system to help form rocky worlds. So we end up with more planets this time, and the terrestrial worlds are considerably bigger.
One inspiration here is the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. My old model didn’t have much trouble generating a planetary system like that for a small red dwarf, but it needed a pretty massive protoplanetary disk to do it. Under the new model, a red dwarf star doesn’t need an improbably big disk mass to have a chance at Earth-sized worlds. Given how many red dwarfs we’ve found with planets of significant size, I suspect the new model fits the facts better.
I’m hoping to have the new draft out as a free update for my patrons, and as an update to the version posted on this site, within a few days.
Well, my day job is a little less demanding as January turns into February – my two big projects for calendar year 2021 are almost finished and I don’t have any big new projects for 2022. At least not yet. So I’m expecting to make good progress on a couple of creative projects this month. Here’s the main list:
Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
Architect of Worlds: Rewrite sections of the Introduction and Design Sequence segment, based on new research, hopefully simplifying several steps of the sequence having to do with the placement of planets. I may also take this opportunity to update all the worked examples and make all the mathematical notation more consistent.
Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
Human Destiny: Finish writing an article for the Cepheus Journal about the game-book project.
Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
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.
Human Destiny: Produce a high-level map of terraformed Mars.
Human Destiny: Research and produce a timeline for the terraforming of Mars.
Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
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 second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine)
The work on Architect of Worlds is probably the top priority this month. The end result there will probably be a version 0.8 draft of the Introduction and World Design Sequence. That new document will be a free update for my patrons.
I’m also considering releasing the new partial for free on this blog site, in an attempt to generate some new interest for the project. There have been a lot of changes and improvements since the version that’s currently available to the public. My patrons will continue to get any further updates to that document as free rewards, until there’s another major overhaul or the book as a whole is about ready for layout and release.
Meanwhile, I should be able to complete the novelette “Remnants” this month, and if that ends up being long enough, I’ll likely make it the charged release for February.
Well, the honey and the biscuits are not quite coming out even.
I’m making decent progress on “Remnants,” a new Human Destiny novelette. However, that’s going more slowly than I had expected; I’m discovering that writing a murder mystery is a bit more challenging than my usual genre. I’ve also settled on an indie novel to review before the end of the month, and I’m plowing through that text at a rapid pace. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have enough free hours left before the end of the month to get both tasks finished.
Doing at least one book review a month has to take precedence, so as a result, there will be no charged release for my patrons for January 2022. I’ll most likely be able to finish “Remnants” in the first week or so of February, and that will probably be the next charged release. I haven’t settled on the next major project to get attention, but I suspect I may be looking hard at a major round of revisions to the Architect of Worlds design sequence, based on the new research I mentioned in this post from last week.
Rings in the protoplanetary disk around the young star HD163296 (Image courtesy of Andrea Isella/Rice University)
The science of planetary formation has been advancing in leaps and bounds for the last decade or two, driven by the discovery of thousands of exoplanets and fine-detail imaging of other planetary systems. This has been giving us a lot of insight into not only the history of our own Solar System, but also the general case of planetary formation elsewhere.
With my Architect of Worlds project, I’ve been trying to keep abreast of the current science while designing a world-building system for use in game design and literary work. The current state of the system is pretty good, I think, but it’s a bit complicated. I’ve built a model that tracks the formation of a system’s primary gas giant (if any), follows that planet as it migrates inward (and possibly outward), and uses the results of that evolution to determine the mass and placement of the rest of the planets. Lots of moving parts there, and a few of the steps are kind of unwieldy.
The idea is that it wasn’t specifically the migrations of Jupiter that brought about the architecture we see of the inner Solar System. Instead, the protoplanetary disk probably had several “pressure bumps,” places where infalling particles released gases due to the increasing temperature close to the embryonic Sun. These pressure bumps tended to accumulate dust particles, and created an environment where planetesimals could form and coalesce, without continuing to spiral into the Sun. The authors of the paper predict the presence of three such “pressure bumps,” which ended up giving rise to the rocky inner planets, the gas giants, and the Kuiper Belt objects respectively.
The idea makes a lot of sense, especially since we’ve started to get fine-detail images of young stars and their protoplanetary disks, and we sometimes see exactly the system of “rings” that the model would predict. Take the image that leads the Rice University article, which I’ve included above.
Scientifically, speaking, the neat thing about this new model is that it explains several things that previous models (which assumed a more uniform disk and relied on Jupiter-migrations to make things work out) had trouble with – especially the specific isotopic composition of inner-system as opposed to outer-system material. The new model also doesn’t have any trouble producing a small Mercury or Mars, or a planetoid belt (with mixed composition) between Mars and Jupiter.
From my perspective, it may mean that I can simplify the model on which Architect of Worlds is built, making the whole thing much easier for people to use. I’m going to be reading the literature on this, and thinking about the implications.
Things have been a little hectic here at the Palace lately. The period since Christmas has, ironically, been one of the busiest I’ve had at my day job in some time, with three major projects all coming to a head at the same time and demanding a lot of my attention. On top of that, throw the disruption of the worst surge since the pandemic started and our usual pattern of getting heavy snow in January, and it’s kind of been chaos. Not conducive to getting creative work done.
Still, I have a calm weekend at the moment, and it’s a good time to outline work for the rest of this month.
Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
Human Destiny: Finish a draft of the character design rules and release the first partial draft of the Human Destiny setting bible as a Cepheus Prime sourcebook.
Human Destiny: Finish a new novelette for eventual collection and publication.
Human Destiny: Produce a high-level map of terraformed Mars.
Human Destiny: Research and produce a timeline for the terraforming of Mars.
Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
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.
Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release. This work may involve updating all of the worked examples, and making mathematical notation more consistent.
Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine)
I’m clearly focusing on the Human Destiny universe some more this month. I’ve actually worked out most of the Martian material, although it’s all scattered notes at the moment, and producing the map is proving a little more challenging than I thought. I’m making good progress on the Cepheus Engine hack for the sourcebook. Meanwhile, I’ve come across one of my older partial stories – possibly the first piece of fiction I ever wrote in the setting that eventually became Human Destiny – and it seems likely that I’ll be able to finish that fairly quickly. So that’s where the low-hanging fruit are at the moment.
For my patrons, the most likely releases this month will be the next partial rough draft of the sourcebook (free release) and the new story (charged release, if it’s long enough). As always, I’ll update as the month progresses and it’s clearer how things are going to go.
In some ways, 2021 was a pretty good year at the Palace. The blog has been growing steadily every year since I resumed it in 2018, and 2021 was no exception. We got several thousand distinct views, which isn’t bad for a non-themed, meandering blog by a part-time creative. On the Patreon side of things, I’ve reached almost two dozen active patrons. I’m not sure yet, but I think income from my original work is approaching the level that I make on the long tail from my tabletop industry period years back. Not a bad milestone, even if it’s still orders of magnitude short of “quit the day job” money.
This was the first full year after I started cross-posting to social media. It was also the first full year since I started posting one or two reviews per month of self-published or indie fiction. Those no doubt helped.
As usual, the main factors holding me back are the part-time nature of my work, and the fact that I likely have too many distinct projects under way. Those items make it hard for me to hit major milestones. For example, it’s been over a year since my debut novel, The Curse of Steel, was released – yet the sequel, The Sunlit Lands, is still not nearly complete in first draft. I started a space-opera novel, Second Dawn, for Kindle Vella but that project has been stalled too. My main non-fiction project, Architect of Worlds, made significant progress but still isn’t close to being finished.
My creative style seems to work for me – I don’t get completely blocked very often, and I usually make progress on something every month. I worry that it demands patience from my readers, though.
Anyway. I usually take this opportunity to look back on the top-ten new posts from the previous year. This year looks kind of different on that score. My book reviews are clearly driving some traffic, and when I can connect my work to the popular RPG Traveller, that seems to bring a lot of clicks. Something to keep in mind.
Overall, I think my goals for the coming year are going to involve two meta-objectives: to make progress on all of my outstanding projects, and at the same time to finish one of the book-length items. The best candidates for the latter are Architect of Worlds and The Sunlit Lands. Still, we’ll have to see how things go.
