drivethrurpg – Sharrukin's Palace

2023 in Review

January 1, 2024 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

2023 was . . . kind of a rough year for me and my family. Things seemed to be moving along smoothly until mid-June, at which point a series of minor disasters struck.

Past as Prologue

First, my basement apartment and workspace flooded. We had to pack everything up and move it into storage, repair some of the plumbing, tear up and repair the house’s foundation, install a new drainage system and sump pump, put in new carpet and drywall, and finally move everything back in. Along the way we replaced the water heater. Then the house’s HVAC system went on the fritz, and we ended up replacing the furnace and air conditioning equipment. Then we discovered that we had an infestation of mice, which led to us having the insulation in the attic torn out and replaced – which also caused yet another outbreak of flooding, when the work crew broke open the sprinkler lines up there. Still more drywall repair and painting, although at least we saved the carpets that time, and the exterminators picked up the costs.

By my count, I spent somewhere between 40% and 50% of my annual salary on home repairs this year. Fortunately we had the financial reserves to call upon, but that still hurt. We’re probably not going to get back to our earlier savings state until sometime next year. Assuming I’m still employed by 2025.

Meanwhile, about the time we were wrestling with all of that, I decided to start on a second university degree. As of right now, I’m aiming for a new BSc in Natural Sciences from the Open University in the UK, with a plan to earn a graduate degree in astronomy or space science by the time I retire. All of which entails a fairly healthy commitment of time. Back in August and September that didn’t seem unreasonable . . .

. . . but then, in the September-October timeframe, the biggest course-development project of my entire public-service career came down firmly upon my shoulders, a commitment that’s suddenly pushing everything else aside and probably will throughout 2024.

Well. My time-management and stress-management skills, such as they are, are being sorely tested at the moment. There hasn’t been much relief throughout the second half of 2023, and I don’t anticipate getting to relax much until very late in the new year.

Still, I’ve survived the slings and arrows so far. I’ve even managed to get some good creative work done. I had hoped to have Architect of Worlds completely finished by now, but I can’t complain about that project’s status. As of this moment, the book is finished in final draft, and I’m putting the finishing touches on art selection and layout. I fully expect to have a complete production draft ready within a week or so. Which is a good thing, because Architect now has a publisher. It’s close to a certainty that the book will be on sale through Ad Astra Games and DriveThruRPG no later than March 2024.

I also got another dozen or so book reviews done, and I seem to be attracting a small reputation as a reviewer. I’m apparently going to be serving as a judge for an indie-press writer’s award in the coming year, which should be interesting.

Meanwhile, traffic to this blog remains steady, and I have about twice as many patrons as I did this time last year. Thanks to all of you for your support!

New Ventures

Once Architect is out the door, that means I’ll be free for the first time in over a year to think about other creative projects. I think 2024 is going to be the year I pivot back to writing fiction, with an eye to self-publishing as much of it as possible.

Previous ventures in that direction haven’t been terribly successful – I’ve got a novel and a couple of smaller pieces out there, but they’ve sold very poorly. After quite a bit of thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that my approach was just flat-out incorrect.

To be a successful indie author, you need to take on a lot of roles – editor, art director, communications director, marketing guru. If you don’t have the time, energy, or skill for any of those tasks, you have to hire someone else to do them for you. I’ve been very reluctant to do that in the past, because it sometimes seems as if the entire self-publishing industry is one enormous vanity press. If anyone out there was making money on the basis of my self-published work, it certainly wasn’t me. My editor made money, Amazon and Meta made money, Adobe and Tafi made money, I made not a dime. The only money coming my way was from Patreon.

Okay, time to embrace the reality. I’m going to get back to writing fiction, but I’m going to apply some new techniques for building an audience. I’m also going to bite the bullet and set up a reasonable budget for editing, art, and promotion for each new novel or collection I decide to self-publish. Still going to avoid the worst vanity presses out there, but that doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from professional help. Which may mean that I never get much past “writing as an expensive hobby,” but at least I’ll be able to get my work in front of more people. Who knows, the lightning may strike.

Most likely candidates for new fiction include work set in a re-imagined Human Destiny setting, and the novel Twice-Crowned and its adjacent Fourth Millennium setting. Both of which may also give rise to my next tabletop gaming projects as well. Human Destiny is a decent candidate for that – Ken Burnside, the fellow who will be publishing Architect of Worlds, has already expressed some interest.

The Year’s Blog Traffic

The top ten posts for 2023 turned out to be:

The high-traffic posts seemed to be a mix of Architect of Worlds material, general world-building notes, discussion of possible future tabletop-game projects, and status reports about the year’s setbacks. Not unexpected.

So those are my objectives for the coming year: get Architect of Worlds out the door at last, pivot back to writing fiction on a regular basis, and experiment with new ways to get my work in front of interested eyeballs. All while keeping my day job happy, studying for my university courses, and hopefully finding a little time to unwind here and there.

Not expecting any boredom, that’s for sure. With any luck my health, the state of my finances, and the political climate in the country I have to live in will all stay favorable.

Status Report (25 October 2023)

October 25, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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.

Status Report (14 August 2023)

August 14, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

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.

Looking Backward: Game of Empire

March 15, 2021 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

One of the more interesting phases of my creative career was my involvement with the Traveller tabletop roleplaying game. Between 1999 and 2005, I wrote, co-authored, or edited at least seven books for the GURPS Traveller product line. In fact, for much of that time, I was effectively the backup Line Editor, assisting Loren K. Wiseman in that capacity, and even taking over entirely for a few months at one point. It was a neat experience; I kind of miss it even today.

In 2000, I was writing the Solomani Rim sector book for GURPS Traveller. I was also helping Loren to produce an online edition of Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society (JTAS), the venerable Traveller fan magazine. One thing I did in that period was to help Loren wrangle Traveller News Service (TNS) entries, little scraps of “current events” from the Third Imperium setting that were meant to maintain the game’s meta-plot and suggest interesting adventures.

There was a side project I undertook, relevant to all of that activity: a set of rules with the working title of Game of Empire. This was a set of Traveller meta-rules, designed to allow “movers and shakers” roleplaying across a region of space. Instead of playing ordinary Imperial citizens, players could take on the role of very senior nobles, megacorporate executives, planetary political leaders, rebel-faction commanders, and so on. The actions and decisions they carried out would affect whole worlds. There was some resemblance to other Traveller products such as Pocket Empires or Dynasties, although the scale and emphasis were a bit different.

As part of the project, I wrote up a scenario, titled The Alderamin Scramble. The premise was that an Imperial duke’s title had fallen vacant in the Solomani Rim sector, and a number of notables were in a position to compete for an appointment to that seat. There were a lot of other events in the scenario – at least two local wars, a visit from Empress Iolanthe to the Rim, and so on.

I recruited 20 players from the JTAS message boards, and we spent several months “playtesting” the ruleset and the Alderamin Scramble scenario. It was a lot of fun – and along the way, we generated dozens of potential TNS items. I think most of the TNS entries from the in-game years 1119 through 1122 came out of that one game.

I often thought about building Game of Empire into something that could be published. I did write a second edition of the ruleset, based on our experience with the playtest, and thought about running more games with that. Unfortunately, with one thing and another, further development never happened before GURPS Traveller started dying on the vine a few years later.

In fact, I somehow misplaced my copy of the game’s files at some point. Fortunately, in 2017, I happened to be talking with Keith Alan Johnson when he mentioned he had a complete copy of both versions of the rules, the Alderamin Scramble scenario, and a bunch of his notes from the playtest. He was generous enough to bundle the whole package up and send it to me.

At the time, I still didn’t have any place to publish the game, but that may be changing. There’s an “open source” version of Traveller in existence now (a game called Cepheus Engine) and several independent publishers have released material through that venue. I’m already exploring ways to release other game material, as for example through DriveThruRPG. So a few days ago I got the notion of reviving this old project.

Yesterday I made a post on the Traveller Facebook group, describing the project and its history, and asking whether the audience would be interested. The response was a pretty resounding yes – so this certainly looks like something that would be worth moving to the front burner. I already have a lot on my plate for the rest of this month, but I may be spending odd moments looking at the old material and letting my subconscious mull over ways to improve and add to it.

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.

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.

Proposing a Patreon

December 15, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last couple of weeks considering how to re-activate my Patreon campaign. It’s looking more and more like that will be a thing in the new year.

My objectives here are, in no particular order:

Offer patrons a steady and predictable stream of creative products that they will find entertaining, and (in some cases) useful at the game table.
Raise some money for my creative work, specifically to help offset the cost of professional assistance in editing, cover art, or other aspects of book production.
Build up the potential audience for my books and RPG products when those are released.
Possibly gather some feedback for my creative projects while they’re still under development.

That first bullet used to be a serious problem, as when I kept an active Patreon through 2015-2016. Back then, I tended to flit from one project to another as time and inspiration moved me, so I had a hard time producing work on a steady and predictable basis. I really couldn’t justify charging anyone money for that!

Now, however, I seem to be in a position to plan my creative work more decisively and effectively, sticking to a small set of projects and producing regular output for months at a time. So that obstacle may no longer be relevant.

So, here’s the rough draft of a plan for how to structure my creative output in such a way as to sustain a Patreon campaign.

I foresee three “product lines” from my workshop:

Original fantasy and science fiction: This will be centered around a series of full-length novels, each of which will be published (possibly with some hired professional assistance) via Amazon. I can foresee producing and publishing at least one novel per year. There may be occasional shorter pieces as well, from short-story up through novella length.
Tabletop-ready fantasy and science fiction world-building material: This will most likely shake out as a series of short books, in the area of 25,000 to 40,000 words each, published in PDF form by way of DriveThruRPG.com or a similar outlet. Naturally, these are going to be closely tied to whatever novel I’m currently working on. I can foresee producing two or three of these per year.
This blog will continue as an outlet for status reports, scraps of material that will eventually go into products for sale, one-off articles, maybe some short fiction, discussion of potential future projects, and so on. Pretty much the same content I produce here now. At most, I might commit to making sure I produce at least one substantive blog post per week. I’ll continue to post to this WordPress site, but cross-link posts to Patreon so my patrons can read there if they want.

Along with this structure, I think I’ll maintain a loose plan for future projects, so patrons will know what to expect. So, for example, when people come to my Patreon front page they’ll see something like:

The current novel in progress, with a plot synopsis, links to an excerpt or two, and a tentative release date, similar information for the next novel in the queue, and mention of two or three novels I might work on a year or more out.
Similarly, the current RPG product in progress, its status and tentative release date, the next one in the queue, and maybe a list of what might be forthcoming after that.
The “back burner” – a list of possible novels, settings, and other major projects that are in the stage where they’re just percolating in the back of my mind during spare cycles. May turn into releasable products at some point, but it won’t be soon.

With a dashboard like that in place – possibly as a sticky post that’s visible on Patreon? – potential patrons will be able to tell if I’m actively working on something they’ll be interested in, and make their level-of-support decisions on that basis.

Meanwhile, I need to think about how to structure the actual release of material to patrons. I’m thinking there will be a low-cost tier that’s basically the “thanks for your support” level and only gets access to this blog, a medium-cost tier that gets access to monthly partial drafts of both fiction and RPG material, and a high-cost tier that also gets free copies of finished e-books and PDFs. Still considering how to set that up, especially that middle tier – I want to be sure I can define a sustainable flow of output that will justify the cost to patrons.

Watch this space!

Sharrukin's Palace

Building fantastic worlds of the mind

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