human destiny – Page 3 – Sharrukin's Palace

The OGL and the Palace

January 8, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 2 comments

There’s been a serious mess evolving in the indie-creator space over the fate of Wizards of the Coast’s Open Gaming License (OGL). It appears, due to leaked language from the upcoming new version of the license, that not only is it going to be more restrictive in the future, there’s a good chance that older versions of it are going to be revoked or de-authorized in some fashion. This has a lot of independent publishers and creators in a bind. The OGL is over twenty years old at this point, and a lot of publishers, a lot of livelihoods, have been founded upon it.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve never had anything published specifically under the OGL, and my plans moving forward are only minimally affected by any changes to that license. So I’m not going to offer any opinion about the potential change, other than to hope that my fellow indie creators can weather the storm. This post is just a note about where I think my own work may be affected by what’s about to happen.

First off, Architect of Worlds will be completely unaffected. That book is game-system-independent to begin with, and doesn’t rely on anything but my personal research and game-design work. I don’t expect any change in when that book gets released – later this year, exactly when depending on how long it takes me to to edit and lay out the final version.

One of my long-term projects probably will be affected by what Wizards is doing, if only indirectly. The Human Destiny space-opera setting was tentatively going to be my next big tabletop project after Architect was released. My plan was to release it as a Cepheus Engine product . . . but the problem is that Cepheus Engine relies on the previous version of the OGL and derives from the Mongoose Press edition of Traveller. If that version of the OGL goes away, the status of Cepheus Engine becomes uncertain even if Mongoose takes no hostile action against it.

As I understand it, the major Cepheus Engine publishers (Samardan Press, Independence Games, and so on) are already aware of the potential issue and are rapidly developing contingency plans. By the time I’m ready to start working on something other than Architect, the dust may very well have settled and there will be a way-forward for Human Destiny as a Cepheus Engine product as planned. I’m not going to fret about it, since there’s nothing I can do except wait patiently for the outcome.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking hard about releasing another tabletop setting – based on my Danassos setting, with the working title of Fourth Millennium – as a Cypher System product under the open license offered by Monte Cook Games. If worse comes to worst, that may move to the front of my queue, or I may consider moving Human Destiny to that venue as well.

For now, though, I’m just watching developments and putting off making any decisions until I see how things shake out. It’s important to remember that no one has actually seen the new version of the OGL yet. This may be a tempest in a teapot . . . although given a lifetime’s experience with how corporate entities deal with stakeholders who don’t actually own shares of stock, I’m not sanguine.

Planning for January 2023

January 4, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

December went about as expected – I spent a lot of time learning Adobe InDesign and starting to plan the book design and layout for Architect of Worlds, and didn’t produce much of anything new.

At this point I think I’ve learned enough that I can at least start putting together the final design for the book. The immediate objective is going to be a “toy” version of the book, no more than 18-20 pages of excerpts from the complete draft. That won’t contain anything resembling a usable subset of the draft, but it will show off all the bits of design and layout I need to assemble: blocks of text, section headers at different levels, chapter title pages, a title page and acknowledgements page for the book as a whole, tables, diagrams, mathematical formulae, filler art, and so on. The idea is to have something to show off for patrons and interested readers, while building a framework on which I can hang the whole book. That’s going to be the big project in January. Whether I’ll finish this month remains to be seen – this is a very new endeavor for me.

Meanwhile, in my spare time I’ve been playing around with my Danassos setting, the alternate-historical fantasy world in which my novel-in-progress Twice-Crowned takes place. I spent odd moments in November and December using some of my tabletop games to generate an alternate history for the setting, up through about 50 BCE. In the process, one of the Muses seems to have inspired me – I think I see how to build that setting into a very playable tabletop RPG, as well as a backdrop for more stories.

The working title for that setting book is probably going to be something like The Fourth Millennium, because the current end-date for the timeline is right around the year 3000 by the setting’s dominant reckoning. It’s got a lot of interesting features: a Mediterranean world divided between Hellenistic and Latin empires, plenty of internal conflict in each empire and the possibility of a big war between them, barbarian peoples around the fringes looking to take bites, new gods and religious movements, magic, new technologies of clockwork and steam, the possibility of monsters lurking in the shadows. It’s a world in which we could adventure at the height of the imperial era without being beholden to the actual course of ancient history. Best guess is this would make a good Cypher System game, published under Monte Cook Games’ new open license.

That’s not going to be a top priority any time soon – I’m focusing on Architect over the next few months – but it might occupy some spare cycles. Not to mention I want to make more progress on Twice-Crowned and maybe write a couple other stories in that setting.

Here’s this month’s priorities:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Finish studying book layout techniques.
- Architect of Worlds: Begin setting up a “toy” design for the book.
Second Priority:
- Danassos: Continue work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
- Danassos: Write a short story drawn from the setting timeline.
- Danassos: Produce a new interim draft of the setting timeline, and otherwise gather notes for an eventual Fourth Millennium book.
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
- Human Destiny: Produce a map of late 23rd-century Mars for the Atlas.

As before, the “second priority” items are likely to function as a list of smaller creative projects that I might work on in odd moments while I focus primarily on Architect. It remains unlikely that any of this will amount to a charged release for my patrons this month, but there may be a couple of smaller freebies. We’ll see how the month goes.

2022 in Review

January 2, 2023 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

For all the chaos out in the world at large, 2022 was a decent year for me as a part-time creative and blogger. Traffic to this blog continues steady, although there wasn’t quite as much as during the previous year. I still have a couple dozen patrons who are supporting my work.

I also managed several major accomplishments this year. In particular, I finished writing the first full draft of Architect of Worlds in 2022 – not bad for a project I’ve been working on for over six years at this point. There’s a near-certain chance I’ll have that book ready for release sometime in 2023.

Meanwhile, I did some work on the Human Destiny setting, putting together early partial drafts of the core book and the Atlas of the Human Protectorate. These seem likely to be tabletop RPG releases at some point, most likely under the Cepheus Engine system. Once Architect of Worlds is released, this is likely to be a good candidate for more attention.

I also revived an old novel project, Twice-Crowned, and got perhaps 40% of the first draft of that written. That’s another good candidate for more progress in the coming year, especially since its alternate-historical fantasy setting has been growing on me at a rapid pace. I may start writing that up as another tabletop RPG setting in the coming year, most likely as a Cypher System RPG under Monte Cook Games’ creator program.

Meanwhile, I got a round dozen book reviews done. I seem to be a success at that – I’ve been able to push out a review every month like clockwork for a couple of years now, and those reviews seem to be bringing at least a little attention to my other work too.

One thing I didn’t do much of this year is short fiction. I did push a couple of short items to this site as free stories, but those were mostly old writing being given a new venue. I’ve got several concepts for new short fiction that I want to work on soon, if I can get Architect moving toward release.

The top ten posts for 2022 turn out to be:

Interesting that most of the high-traffic posts all had to do with Architect, although I’m not overly surprised at that. A couple of my book reviews, a couple of status reports, and a side project (the Space: 2049 setting that I’m playing with). Fairly typical.

My objectives for the coming year should be pretty straightforward. I want to get Architect ready for release, and that currently involves teaching myself Adobe InDesign and some basic book-design principles. I want to make progress with at least one novel-length project, and maybe write a few pieces of shorter fiction. And once some of that is well in hand, I may start looking at publishing one of my settings as a tabletop RPG book. Plenty to keep me busy, that’s for sure.

Planning for December 2022

December 4, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

November saw a big milestone: the first complete rough draft of Architect of Worlds, shared with my patrons and a few selected readers on the last day of the month.

That accomplishment doesn’t mean the content of Architect has been finalized, by any means. While I don’t expect any more big changes to the “rules” mechanisms, I’m almost certainly going to polish the prose, clean up the mathematical formulae, and produce a number of graphs and diagrams to help support the text.

The big task, though, is going to be to start laying the book out for publication. Layout is a completely new skill set for me, so I expect to spend a fair amount of time mastering the basic skills before there’s substantial progress on the book. That’s where most of my creative time in December of 2022 is likely to go.

So, here’s this month’s priorities, arranged the same way as in November:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Study and master book layout techniques.
Second Priority:
- Danassos: Continue work on the new rough draft of the novel Twice-Crowned.
- Danassos: Write a short story drawn from the setting timeline.
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
- Human Destiny: Produce a map of late 23rd-century Mars for the Atlas.

As you can see, the “second priority” items are likely to function as a list of smaller creative projects that I might work on in between studying Adobe InDesign or examining other small-press products for layout pointers. At this point I find it kind of unlikely that any of this will amount to a charged release for my patrons this month, but there may be a couple of smaller freebies as pseudo-holiday-gifts.

Incidentally, I’ve already mentioned this elsewhere, but for my patrons and anyone else who’s interested: last month is the last time I plan to charge my patrons for any Architect of Worlds content. Any further changes to the draft are going to be incremental, in service to getting the book ready for release sometime in (hopefully the first half of) 2023. My patrons at the $2 and above can expect to get a free copy of the book if and when it’s ready.

What’s in store for Architect after it gets released? Well, I’ll almost certainly continue to keep an eye on the science as it develops, and I may write the occasional blog post here on the subject. Good chance there will be a second edition of the book in a few years, too. That endeavor isn’t going to be a “once and done” project, I suspect.

Planning for November 2022

November 2, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

October turned out to be somewhat productive – I finally broke through that logjam that was holding up forward progress on Architect of Worlds, and I finished another few chapters of Twice-Crowned.

I think I’m going to concentrate on Architect this month, trying to flesh out the text where it’s incomplete (extended examples, modeling notes, and the few sections that are still just stubs instead of completed prose). The goal, as always, is to get to a more-or-less complete nd integrated draft so I can start a final editorial pass and get started with layout of the finished book.

Meanwhile, I’ll probably try to write a few more chapters of Twice-Crowned this month, or maybe write one of the short stories that’s been hovering in the back of my brain. I might also tinker with some more items for the Atlas of the Human Protectorate – that hasn’t gotten any new material in a while.

The planning schedule for this month is pretty much the same as last month. I’m going to trim out some of the low-priority and “back burner” items – which isn’t to say that I’m abandoning those, but I suspect I’ll be focused enough on my top priorities that I won’t be spending any cycles on the rest for now. Once I get one of my top items – the book-length projects – finished, I’ll re-evaluate what might rise back toward the top of the queue.

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Continue work on preparing a complete draft of the book for eventual layout and publication.
Second Priority:
- Danassos: Continue work on the new rough draft of the novel Twice-Crowned.
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.

Planning for October 2022

October 2, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

September was mostly about getting more incremental work done on Architect of Worlds, although I also spent a few hours updating some of the research and background for my Danassos setting. My patrons got some of that as a free update, and there wasn’t any charged release for September.

The biggest holdup for Architect is that I’m struggling with some of the intermediate steps in the design sequence – the ones where a planetary system is laid out. Every day I think I get a little closer to a workable overhaul of those guidelines, but it’s a slow process.

As before, if I can get that stumbling block dealt with, and I can get the Architect draft as a whole into some kind of semi-polished condition, then I may release that in some form in October. I may also spend a few hours this month writing a few new chapters for Twice-Crowned.

The planning schedule for this month, pretty much the same as last month:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Continue work on preparing a complete draft of the book for eventual layout and publication.
Second Priority:
- Danassos: Continue work on the new rough draft of the novel Twice-Crowned.
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
- Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
- Human Destiny: Begin work on a new Aminata Ndoye story, set during her first year at the Interstellar Service academy.
Back Burner:
- Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
- Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
- Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- 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).

Planning for September 2022

September 3, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Once again, the planning for this month is likely to be pretty straightforward.

In August, I got some incremental work done on Architect of Worlds, and I also finished writing the first section of my Hellenic-alternate-history-fantasy novel Twice-Crowned. That last went out to my patrons and readers about mid-month.

In September, I think those two projects are going to be reversed in priority. I’m planning to spend the bulk of this month working on the draft of Architect of Worlds, and maybe making a little incremental progress on Twice-Crowned and the Danassos setting in general.

In particular, I think I’m going to be focusing on three tasks for Architect:

Rationalizing the mathematical formulae throughout, so I’m using consistent variable names and the format of the formulae is consistent.
Making sure each step in the design sequences has a “modeling notes” section, to point readers toward some of the scientific literature if they want to investigate further.
Polishing the steps in the design sequence that involve placing planets in their orbits – I’m still not entirely happy with how this works, and there may be ways to streamline the process.

If I can get the Architect of Worlds draft into some kind of polished form by the end of this month, and there’s enough genuinely new material in there, then that may be a charged release for my patrons. The other option, if the amount of new material isn’t extensive enough, is to make it a free update. We’ll see how things go.

The planning schedule for this month:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Continue work on preparing a complete draft of the book for eventual layout and publication.
Second Priority:
- Danassos: Continue work on the new rough draft of the novel Twice-Crowned.
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
- Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
- Human Destiny: Begin work on a new Aminata Ndoye story, set during her first year at the Interstellar Service academy.
Back Burner:
- Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
- Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
- Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- 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).

Planning for August 2022

August 3, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

This is going to be an unusually short monthly planning message!

July worked out pretty much as I expected:

I made quite a bit of incremental progress on the first complete Architect of Worlds draft, in that I assembled that first complete draft and began going through to polish and tighten up the text.
I also made good progress on the new rough draft for the novel Twice-Crowned. I’m up to about the middle of Chapter Six and have about 16000 words down as of this moment.

In neither case, though, did I reach a significant milestone that would have merited a big release for my patrons and readers. So aside from a couple of small items and an about-weekly status report, you folks didn’t hear much from me in July.

August is going to be much the same, although I’m a little more confident that one or both of those projects will generate something that I can release for my patrons. So here’s the planning schedule for this month:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Continue work on preparing a complete draft of the book for eventual layout and publication.
- Danassos: Continue work on the new rough draft of the novel Twice-Crowned.
Second Priority:
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
- Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
- Human Destiny: Begin work on a new Aminata Ndoye story, set during her first year at the Interstellar Service academy.
Back Burner:
- Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
- Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
- Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- 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).

So, in other words, a set of priorities pretty much identical to those of last month. Right now, I’m reasonably sure I’ll be able to release Act I of Twice-Crowned as a charged release for my patrons (at least 25000 words of fiction), and I may have a complete draft of Architect of Worlds that’s coherent enough to share, but we’ll see how the month goes.

Planning for July 2022

July 1, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

June went fairly well, it seems. I was able to get a new section of Architect of Worlds written and pushed out to my patrons, I also shared a timeline for my Danassos setting as a free release, and I got another book review written.

The usual list of projects is getting a big overhaul this month. The thing is, that section of Architect that I wrote last month is the last section that wasn’t complete in draft. I’m now in a position to meld all of the pieces of Architect together into a combined draft for the complete book. The result won’t be finished by a long shot, of course. I have a lot of work to do before I can start thinking about layout and getting ready for final publication:

Build the first complete draft for the book out of the separate parts that exist now.
Polish up the world-design sequence.
Polish up the “working with real-world astronomical data” section.
Complete a few minor sections, especially in the “special cases” chapter.
Add “modeling notes” sections, with references to scientific papers and textbooks, to any portion of the design chapters that doesn’t have them yet.
Clean up the extended examples.
Clean up the math throughout the book (rationalize variable names, be consistent about how computations are described, and so on).
Develop images (diagrams, flowcharts, public-domain astrophotography, alien-worlds images) to fill out the content.

I suspect this is going to take at least a couple of months, and it’s going to be one of those cases where the draft looks terrible for a while before I get it under control. I don’t think this is going to generate any releases for my patrons until I’ve waded through most of the above steps. I’m therefore announcing now that there will almost certainly be no new Architect of Worlds releases to my patrons for at least the month of July, possibly the month of August as well.

Once I get close to having a really clean and complete draft for the entire book, ready to start on layout, I may share that with my patrons as a final charged release before publication. There will almost certainly be enough new material to justify that. We’ll see how things go. I’ve still got my fingers crossed that I might be able to release the first edition of Architect of Worlds by the end of this calendar year!

Meanwhile, regarding my literary projects, I’m switching over to the Danassos project as my top priority for the time being. I’m going to start working, as time permits, on a draft of the novel Twice-Crowned. If I can put down, say, at least 25 kilowords of polished narrative at the beginning of the novel, I may share that with my patrons as a charged release.

My intention is to divide my time between Architect and Twice-Crowned more or less evenly this month, and we’ll see what results I get. Watch this space for updates, as always.

Here’s the planning list, with two items in the “top priority” category:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Work on preparing a complete draft of the book for eventual layout and publication.
- Danassos: Begin work on a new draft of the novel Twice-Crowned.
Second Priority:
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
- Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
- Human Destiny: Begin work on a new Aminata Ndoye story, set during her first year at the Interstellar Service academy.
Back Burner:
- Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
- Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
- Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- 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).

Aside from these items, I suspect I may end up doing a little cartography, certainly for Danassos, possibly for Human Destiny as well. I may have a couple of free sketch maps to share with readers and patrons this month.

Planning for June 2022

June 1, 2022 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

Well, May didn’t go quite as planned. I originally planned to write the last open section of Architect of Worlds, but early in the month my muse decided to go and live on Mars instead. I ended up writing about 10000 words describing Mars in the Human Destiny setting, and giving myself a ton of new ideas for the universe and for fiction set therein. So my big project for May turned out to be a new partial interim draft of the Atlas of the Human Protectorate instead.

Okay, Mars is (more or less) out of my system now, so it’s back to Architect of Worlds for the month of June. Here’s the formal planning list for this month:

Top Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Write a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings. Also carry out further additions and revisions to the “special cases in worldbuilding” section. These two tasks are expected to give rise to a charged release, assuming they amount to at least 10,000 words of new material.
Second Priority:
- Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “working with astronomical data” section. May lead to a free v0.2 update, or may simply be integrated into v1.0 of the complete book.
- Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
- Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
- Human Destiny: Begin work on a new Aminata Ndoye story.
- Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
Back Burner:
- Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
- Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
- 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).

About the only change from the initial plan for last month is that I’m bumping a new Aminata Ndoye story up in priority a little. My main focus is going to be on Architect this month, but I may spend some time working on a story about Aminata’s first year at the Interstellar Service academy in France. Basically an immediate sequel to “Pilgrimage.”

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to tinker in my extensive spare time with QGIS and the NASA topographical data for Mars. I may work on one or two maps of 23rd century Mars for the Atlas, and if that works out it may yield a couple of free rewards for my patrons. We’ll see how the month goes.

Sharrukin's Palace

Building fantastic worlds of the mind

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