2025 in Review

January 2, 2026 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

This year was . . . an experience. Almost nothing went as I was expecting a year ago.

Personal Life

I began the year still employed by the United States federal government as a researcher in cybersecurity, an instructional designer, and an instructor. I knew the incoming administration was likely to disrupt my professional life, but I was in a wait-and-see mode.

Then the new administration came in and immediately demonstrated that it planned to be far worse than in the President’s first term. Federal departments, including mine, were being handed over to right-wing influencers who had absolutely no competence in the fields they were being asked to lead. Federal policy was immediately being oriented toward far-right-wing ideology, without regard to any facts on the ground. Critical elements of our national security were being tossed on the trash-heap. Personally, I was already being directed to do things that I considered ill-advised at best, abominably stupid at worst. I fully expected to be fired at some point for non-compliance with idiotic or outright illegal orders.

As it happened, I reached a critical age milestone about a week after Inauguration Day. My wife and I reviewed our finances, and concluded that although it wasn’t ideal for me to retire at that point, it was quite a bit more feasible than I had realized. So I started the paperwork to retire from federal service, and that evolution was completed in mid-May. I’ve been retired on my own pension, my wife’s Social Security, and 40+ years of savings ever since.

(The three months between “deciding to retire” and “walking out the door” were among the most productive in my federal career, ironically. I wrote two full-length graduate-level courses in cyber leadership in that time – not from scratch, as I had helped build earlier versions of the same curriculum in 2023-2024, but there was a lot of new material. God alone knows whether either of those courses will ever actually be delivered to students. I’m honestly not sure whether the department I worked in even exists today as more than a skeleton crew.)

Retirement has been fairly pleasant, actually. I’m eating more healthfully, I’m getting more exercise, and while my stress level is not zero it’s certainly much lower than it was before. I’m having no trouble at all filling my days, including spending a lot more time with my wife and my adult children. So that’s all to the good.

University Studies

I’m currently in my third year of working toward a second bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences (Astronomy) and a master’s degree in Space Science and Technology, all from the Open University in the UK. That program is likely to take until the spring of 2031 to complete, unless I pick up the pace at some point. So far I’ve passed all my courses with distinction, so I’m on track for my original plan. Don’t know if I’ll ever do anything with this education professionally – I’ll be pushing 66 by the time I complete my graduate work – but if I’m still capable, I might find myself an undergraduate teaching position somewhere. At the very least, it will be nice to actually have the formal training to back up all the astronomy I’ve picked up and used over the years.

To be honest, I’ve been glad I retired this spring, because my coursework in 2025 has been a bit more challenging. Had I stayed employed, something would have had to go on the back burner, and that might have been the bulk of my creative work.

Speaking of . . .

Creative Work

At the beginning of 2025, my tentative plan for creative projects involved re-releasing some of the original fiction I wrote in previous years, writing some new original fiction, and working hard on RPG material for the Human Destiny and Fourth Millennium settings.

Basically none of that happened.

In part that was due to a new book-length project: Composer of Cultures, which is likely to become the third book in the Ad Astra Games “insanely detailed worldbuilding series.” Architect of Worlds took me the better part of eight years to write, and we’re trying to produce the new book in less than a year, so it’s soaking up a lot of my development and writing time. Fortunately this time it’s a team of three writing the book: Ken Burnside, a paleontologist named Jess Miller-Camp, and me.

It’s been interesting work so far. I’m in the process of designing a “Cultural Evolution Game” which will likely be the last 40% or so of the book (Dr. Miller-Camp is writing a “Biological Evolution Game” which will come first). We’re hoping to have the book ready for the summer convention season, but we’ll see how things go.

Meanwhile, I may not have been writing much original fiction in 2025, but I did write just under 200,000 words of new fan-fiction.

Okay, when I wrapped up my first fan-fiction phase in 2017 or so, I swore I would focus on original work from that point on. My Muse isn’t always that easy to keep disciplined, though. Over the past few years I fell in love with the new Star Trek series Lower Decks, and when that had its finale in early 2025 I found myself wanting more. So I started writing not just fan-fiction, but Star Trek fan-fiction.

(Talk about getting back to one’s literary roots! I was reading – and writing, although none of that work ever saw the light of day – Star Trek fan-fiction back in the 1970s, and that era has had a significant impact on my literary life ever since.)

So far I’ve written ten complete stories, most of them novelette or novella length, and I’m currently at work on the eleventh. It’s been fun, I’m not nearly out of ideas yet, and I’ve acquired a fairly consistent audience. So this is probably going to be part of my creative output for a while.

Looking Forward

It’s difficult to make plans for the coming year, because let’s face it – my country and much of the rest of the world are currently in the hands of malicious incompetents, and I don’t think we’ve even begun to see how much destruction they can inflict on us. Just surviving with our integrity and sanity intact is likely to be a victory.

Still. Day by day I’ll have my household to keep together, my university coursework to stay ahead of, and many more creative projects on the stove than I’ll have time to bring to fruition. Most likely creative goals for 2026 will involve completing Composer of Cultures, and writing more Star Trek fiction. Pushing my own original creative projects forward will be on the agenda too. I’m improvising from one day to the next, but I haven’t fallen off the piano bench yet . . .

So for all of you who keep track of my work, many thanks and here’s hoping you’ll find some value in my output in the coming year.

Planning for August 2025

August 3, 2025 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

July 2025 didn’t go quite as planned, largely because of the new Symphony of Cultures project taking up a lot of space. I’m not dissatisfied with how the month went, by any means. These planning messages, and the project white-board I maintain in my office, are intended to make sure I stay creatively busy and don’t get side-tracked into unproductive channels. If a worthwhile new project crops up and pushes other items aside, I have no objections.

So here’s my current status, with the tentative plan for the month of August.

University Studies

I’ve learned that I passed both my physics course and my planetary-science course “with distinction,” which rounds out the 2024-2025 academic year nicely. I’ve successfully enrolled in two new courses for the coming academic year: a straightforward astronomy course, and a course on advanced mathematical methods. Tuition is paid, I’m good to go, but the courses don’t formally start until early October. No new objectives for this item.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I wrote a Star Trek: Lower Decks novelette titled “A Temporary Madness” in July. Be warned, if you’re considering reading that one – it’s mildly smutty. Fan-fiction leans that way sometimes.

I’m currently working on a new story, titled “Mariner’s Seven.” This is a pretty straightforward heist tale, in which Beckett Mariner and her friends are breaking into a high-tech casino on behalf of Starfleet Intelligence. Naturally, things are not going entirely according to plan. The objective for August is to complete that story.

Architect of Worlds & Symphony of Cultures

Ken Burnside and I (finally) reached an agreement on a “policy document” describing what we consider appropriate for projects to automate the Architect of Worlds design sequences. That document is located here.

The biggest development in this category was the new Symphony of Cultures project, in which I’ll be collaborating with two others to design and build a sourcebook for producing alien species and cultures for interstellar fiction. That’s going to be a big project, likely to take up a lot of my time over the next year, so it’s going to be prominent in my planning messages for months to come.

The objectives for August are:

Design a complete mini-game for the development of an alien society’s history based on its planetary environment and psychological traits, and begin writing that section of the Symphony of Cultures rough draft
Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Symphony of Cultures
Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller“
Reconstruct a formal errata list for Architect of Worlds, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

I had a burst of cartographic activity early in July, and was able to produce and publish two maps for the Human Destiny setting. The third map – a small scale map of the so-called “Human Protectorate” – is still on the drawing board.

The objectives for July are:

Build a revised map for the “Human Protectorate” region and release that to Ko-fi
Produce a one- or two-page document that describes typical starship designs and mission profiles, and release that to Ko-fi
Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
Revise existing “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” documents to reflect the reappearance of FTL in the setting, and release the new versions to Ko-fi
Resume producing new documents in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely starting with the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons to Ko-fi

Upcoming Conventions

Attendance at Travellercon this year is looking less likely, but there’s still time for me to get everything set up for that, so we’ll see.

Philcon is definitely a go, though – I’m already committed to being on the program for a seminar and some other panels, and I’ll be running a session or two in their gaming track. So that’s definitely on my schedule for a lot of prep work between now and November.

The objectives for August are:

Continue to attempt to register for convention programming for Travellercon 2025
Begin preparing a world-building seminar, tentatively titled “World-Building for Science Fiction: Getting the Astronomy Right,” for Philcon 2025
Begin preparing two tabletop game sessions to run at Philcon 2025
Sign up for up to 3-4 panel discussions at Philcon 2025

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

I continued to make very little progress on this item in July, and it’s probably going to stay close to the bottom of the priority list. The objective for August will be to continue researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it.

Symphony of Cultures

July 30, 2025 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

I have a contract in hand for this project, and the design is starting to come together nicely (although there is a ton of work to be done), so it’s about time that I pulled the tarp off of it.

As of this month, I’m working on (part of) a new book, with the working title of Symphony of Cultures. This is conceptually a “sequel” to Architect of Worlds, and it’s essentially going to be a book of tools and design sequences for building alien species and alien cultures for interstellar fiction. Ad Astra Games will be publishing it. The objective is to have it ready for release in about a year, in time for next summer’s big conventions. We’re aiming for a book that’s about the same length and heft as Architect of Worlds – that is, about 192 pages of rules, worksheets, and scientific/historical/literary background.

I’m not the sole author for this one. Ken Burnside intends to write at least a short section. We also have a third collaborator who has both gaming chops and considerable relevant expertise in evolutionary biology – honestly, they’re likely to end up writing more of the final draft than I do.

Prior art that might be relevant includes the various Traveller animal-design rules, the old Digest Group Publications release Grand Census, the alien-design rules in GURPS Uplift, and the Civilization tabletop and video game franchises.

The intention is to have a “short” design sequence, something a writer or gamer could complete in an hour or two, generating a “planet of the week” for a piece of fiction. There’s also going to be a “long” design sequence, that would take a lot more work but would help the reader generate the whole evolutionary and cultural history of an alien society in detail. That “long” sequence is where a lot of the scientific and historical mojo is going to be applied.

At the moment I’m drafting an initial design for a major portion of the “long” design sequence, and giving some thought to what the “short” sequence might look like. I’m hoping we can actually start writing big chunks of material by this fall. We may be looking for beta readers and “playtesters” at some point, so feel free to drop me a line if you might be interested in that. I probably won’t be posting portions of the draft here, as I did during development of Architect of Worlds. We’re on a much shorter development cycle for this one, and it has a publisher from day one, so we’ll be working through Ad Astra’s usual playtesting pipeline.

Should be an interesting project, though, and I’m looking forward to making it come together.

Automation for “Architect of Worlds”

July 30, 2025 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

It took us a lot longer than it probably should have – I can attest that other things kept grabbing higher priority – but Ad Astra Games and I have agreed on a general policy for anyone who would like to build a computer application to implement some or all of the Architect of Worlds design sequence.

The policy is sitting in my Google Drive, at this link. Ken Burnside and I have agreed on what’s in this document.

You’ll notice that Ken is interested in hosting a full implementation of Architect of Worlds on the Ad Astra Games site, as a convenience for writers and gamers who might want to use the design sequences without having to plow through the book by hand. Developers who would like to talk to Ken about submitting a design proposal are welcome to email him at Ad Astra Games – be sure to use the subject line “Architect of Worlds Automation Design Proposal.”

Planning for July 2025

June 25, 2025 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

It’s not quite the end of June yet, but I find I’ve made decent progress on all my objectives for this month, and I’ve discovered a couple of dependencies in my creative work that mean I need to move a few tasks up in the priority order. So I think I’m going to lay out the plan for July a few days early and get started on that now.

As I began with last month, the planning message for July is going to be organized around a list of high-level projects, with a few paragraphs for each. Note that for any item that has multiple objectives listed, those will be more or less in priority order, and I’m not making any commitment to finish all of them in the coming month.

University Studies

I successfully completed my two courses for the 2024-2025 academic year at the beginning of June. Haven’t seen the results of my finals or my overall grades yet, but I’m reasonably confident I did well with both courses. I’ve selected two courses for the 2025-2026 year, but those don’t start until September, which leaves the rest of the summer free. No objectives for this item.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I completed the Star Trek: Lower Decks novella “Panem et Circenses” a few days ago. Turned out pretty well, I thought – at least it’s been keeping my regular readers over on Archive of our Own happy and calling for more.

I haven’t come up with a title for the next story, which is going to involve character development, identity politics, and dealing with family issues, all of it happening on Vulcan. As I’ve observed, someday someone is going to write a story involving pon farr in which the characters involved resolve the situation without complications, and just end up happily married and ready for the next adventure. I’m not going to be writing that story!

The objective for July is to write the next story in my Lower Decks fan-fiction series.

Architect of Worlds

Today I had a lengthy conversation with Ken Burnside about a number of items having to do with Architect of Worlds. In particular, we had a long-overdue discussion about his vision for providing automation for Architect. We also talked about some possible follow-on products, most notably an expanded and improved version of the “Architect of Worlds for Traveller” document I put together a couple of years ago.

The objectives for July are:

Draft a one-page specification document for an automated utility for Architect of Worlds which can he hosted on the Ad Astra Games website, and get that approved by Ken Burnside
Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller,” with the objective of being able to start final layout in August
Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

I was able to rework my basic “structure of interstellar civilizations” document for Human Destiny in June, and published that for my Ko-fi readers. The next step in reworking that setting is going to involve some cartography, and some general notes on ship design. One I’ve finished those steps, I think I’ll be going back to the star system writeups I’ve already done and revising those, then starting to produce new ones.

The objectives for July are:

Build revised maps for near-Sol space on two scales, one for just the “Human Protectorate” region, another for a substantial portion of the Orion Arm that places the 8-12 other civilizations that humans will interact with most frequently, and release those to Ko-fi
Produce a one- or two-page document that describes typical starship designs and mission profiles, and release that to Ko-fi
Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
Revise existing “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” documents to reflect the reappearance of FTL in the setting, and release the new versions to Ko-fi
Resume producing new documents in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely starting with the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons to Ko-fi

Upcoming Conventions

I had originally intended to hit some of the conventions closest to me this year, but the windows for getting on con programming and making other arrangements passed while I was still employed by the federal government, and I missed a lot of those opportunities. So in 2025 I think I’m going to hit the same conventions I attended last year: Travellercon in October, and Philcon in November. I’ll revisit my plans for conventions in the Baltimore-Washington area next year.

The objectives for July are:

Register for convention programming for both Travellercon 2025 and Philcon 2025
Begin preparing a world-building seminar, tentatively titled “World-Building for Science Fiction: Getting the Astronomy Right,” for one or both conventions
Begin preparing 2-3 tabletop game sessions to run at both conventions

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

I made very little (although not zero) progress on this item in June, and it’s probably going to stay close to the bottom of the priority list. The objective for July will be to continue researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it.

Planning for June 2025

June 1, 2025 Sharrukin Comments 2 comments

Well, here we go, my first creative-planning message in close to six months. Now that I’m retired and have a lot more open time, I intend to get back into a regular schedule of creative work, organized as before around a loose plan that’s updated each month.

I’m going to experiment a little with the format, though, starting with this month. Instead of publishing a bullet-point list, I’m going to have a few one- or two-paragraph sections, each of which describes the current state of a project set and sets out tentative goals for the coming month.

So, without further ado . . .

University Studies

This month I’m wrapping up my university studies for the 2024-2025 academic year – this is my effort to acquire a second degree in Natural Sciences (Astronomy) and maybe acquire a graduate degree in the discipline in the coming years. The first week in June is probably going to be spent mostly on studying for my final exams, which are scheduled for 5 June and 9 June.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

The one creative outlet I managed to maintain, during that last stressful five months of my federal career, was a new burst of fan-fiction writing. That’s been in the form of a series of Star Trek: Lower Decks stories, forming a personal continuity that picks up where the television series left off. So far I’ve written five complete stories and am busy with the sixth.

If you’re interested in reading any of those:

“Lower Decks Continues” is the series as a whole
“Panem et Circenses” is the current effort, which will probably end up novella length before I’m finished

The objective for June is to finish “Panem et Circenses,” and maybe get started on the next story.

Architect of Worlds

Now that I have some time free, there are a few things I’ve been wanting to do with Architect of Worlds that may be rising to the top of the priority list. Most of this is just product maintenance.

The objectives for June are:

Talk to Ken Burnside about how to approach the question of automating Architect – do we want to license one pro developer to be able to sell a piece of software, do we just want to be able to offer a seal of approval for amateur developers, or do we want to try something else?
Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
Start collecting new research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

This is my primary space-opera setting, which has seen a few published stories already and is intended eventually to support more fiction as well as a tabletop RPG.

Lately I’ve been continuing to re-think the setting’s core premises, possibly because I’ve been on a Star Trek kick of late and I’m looking for ways to make the stories and the eventual RPG more Trek-like. For a while I was thinking in terms of a slower-than-light-only universe, but in many ways that’s a poor fit for pseudo-Trek, and it makes it much harder for any one character to have lots of interstellar adventures in their lifespan. I think I see a way to keep the over-arching premises of the setting while re-introducing FTL starships, but that will require some re-thinking of the structure of interstellar civilizations.

The objectives for June are:

Re-work the document I have that describes the shape and structure of interstellar society in the setting
(Tentative) Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
Finish writing another document in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons on my Ko-fi site

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

This is probably the last item in the priority list, but I eventually want to evaluate my previously published fiction (3-4 ebooks, mostly published on Amazon Kindle Direct) and prepare to re-issue all of it. That’s going to involve removing these ebooks from Amazon, possibly giving them each an editing pass and rebuilding them, and then re-publishing them on a few less-billionaire-owned outlets. (I’m making almost no money from Amazon anyway, so I don’t anticipate losing much by moving my work elsewhere, and who knows? Sales may actually improve.)

The objective for June is probably going to be limited to researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it. I may get a first ebook re-issued this month, but that seems unlikely.

Status Report (17 May 2025)

May 17, 2025 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

This is the first update to my writing blog in over two months, and I’ve got a lot to discuss.

Where I’ve Been

My absence over the past few months can be tied back to the results of last year’s elections here in the United States. I have plenty more to say about that, you may be sure, but not in this space – this blog is solely for my creative work and isn’t intended as a current-events commentary. Still, the immediate impact of those elections on my personal and professional life was profound. I was, after all, employed by the US federal government at the time.

Suffice it to day that late in January, my wife and I looked at our finances, and realized that it would in fact be feasible for me to retire now, rather than three or four years from now as was my original plan. Watching what was already happening elsewhere in the federal government, what was already happening in my own piece of it, we decided that was the best move to make. I put in for retirement, and as of today (17 May 2025) that’s in effect.

However, that meant I had less than four months to finish one last really big project for my office. This at a time when almost daily, major changes were being imposed on my workplace that made actually doing that work more and more difficult.

I managed to get it done – that final project was completed two days before my retirement – but at the cost of almost all my creative production from about the end of February. After taking care of my other commitments, I just didn’t have the time or the emotional resources to focus on creative work at the end of each day.

So that’s why I haven’t updated this blog, or my Kofi page, or most of my other online presence, since early March.

Fortunately, that dry spell is over. I’m now retired, and I have no plan to look for a new full-time job anytime soon. Which means I now have the time – and, once I’ve adjusted to the new state of affairs, the energy – to get busy with my own projects once again.

In short: I’m back.

Creative Projects

So, in which creative projects do I intend to start investing some of my newly available time?

Architect of Worlds

At the moment I’m mostly in maintenance mode for Architect of Worlds. I’ve started collecting some notes for an eventual second edition of the book, but it may be a few years before I feel prepared to seriously start work on that. In the meantime, Ken Burnside and I keep collecting errata and releasing new minor updates to the book.

Ken and I also need to have a discussion about possible automation for the design sequences in the book. In particular, whether we want to work with someone to produce software that can be sold, or whether we want to take a different approach. That discussion is months overdue, and there are people who have done great work producing candidate software that have been in limbo because I just haven’t had the time to give the matter my full attention. Time to get that figured out.

Meanwhile, I think I have enough material to start producing at least one or two blog posts a month on new research or extra “rules” for Architect of Worlds. Special cases, new design sequences for additional detail, worked examples, all of those are possible.

The “Human Destiny” Universe

The Human Destiny setting is my primary space-opera universe under development.

Before my hiatus, I was working on using Architect of Worlds to produce short write-ups for specific star systems in the Human Destiny universe, and publishing those via my Kofi page. I’d like to get started with that once more, and hopefully get up to producing at least one new writeup per month. All this material will eventually go into an “atlas of human space” that might be published as a complete book.

I also want to get back to serious design work on the Human Destiny tabletop RPG, using some game system that has a third-party-creator-friendly licensing scheme. Most likely candidates are Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying engine, and the Modiphius 2d20 engine.

Finally, I have three or four new pieces of fiction in this setting at various stages of development. Plus a couple of previously published works that I’m considering taking down, re-working, and republishing on a more creator-friendly platform. (Self-publishing on Amazon certainly makes money for Amazon, but the available evidence suggests it doesn’t do much for most authors.) Those stories are likely to appear as I find my hindbrain has finished processing them.

Writing Fan-Fiction

The one creative outlet I did manage to pursue over the past few months has been writing some fan-fiction, specifically Star Trek: Lower Decks fan-fiction. That’s been so much fun (not to mention useful therapy for stressful times) that I’m likely to continue with it. The stories I’ve written thus far are all available on Archive of Our Own: Lower Decks Continues.

The portion of my subconscious mind that I call “my muse” also handed me another insanely ambitious fan-fiction idea recently: write a sequel to the classic Arthur C. Clarke novel The City and the Stars. As often happens, I keep telling my muse to drop the idea, and she keeps ignoring me and handing me concept after concept in support of it. I suspect I’m going to have to write the thing just to get her to shut up about it.

Other Projects

There’s also my Fourth Millennium historical-fantasy setting, which got a fair amount of my attention last year and will probably rise back to the top of the queue at some point.

One project that’s long overdue: over the past couple of years, I’ve purchased several tabletop games that I’ve just never had time to bring to the table. Now that most of my days are going to have plenty of free hours, that’s going on the agenda. Some of those titles are nicely evocative and thematic, and they may well suggest some ideas for stories. I won’t know until I’ve tried them out . . .

Finally, I’m still working on a second undergraduate degree, and eventually a master’s degree, from the Open University. That’s going to continue, and in fact over the next 2-3 weeks it will take up a significant chunk of time – final assignments and exams are coming up. By next fall I’ll likely be enrolled in a couple of new courses. Still, with my day job no longer a factor, I expect I’ll be able to be a better student and still get a lot more creative work done.

Current Status

So there it is – I’m on the cusp of a major realignment in my time and creative work. I plan to spend what’s left of May just adjusting to my new status, working on my university courses, and starting to build some new habits. You may see some new work from me before the first of June, but I’m not prepared to make any promises.

About the beginning of June, though, you can expect to see the monthly planning message resume, and I’ll hopefully be producing new items on a regular basis for the first time since early this year.

My thanks for everyone’s patience. Looking forward to the new adventure . . .

Erratum in “Architect of Worlds”

January 7, 2025 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Quick note this evening, to report that I’ve caught an erratum in Architect of Worlds. Somewhat significant one, too, affecting the generation of Galilean-like satellites for gas giant worlds. Fortunately, it’s an easy fix.

In the formula for the mass of a gas giant’s major satellite at the top of page 85, the multiplier up front should be 10^-5 instead of 10^-6.

Essentially, we’ve been developing satellites that are one-tenth as massive as they should be, if we’re going to match the results we see in our own planetary system.

I’ve reported this to Ken Burnside, so it should appear in the Ad Astra Games errata at some point.

Planning for May 2024

May 9, 2024 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

As of this evening, I’ve completed the final edits for Architect of Worlds and sent the release-draft PDFs over to Ken Burnside. Assuming all goes well, that’s the project finished. Ken tells me he ought to be able to make the complete PDFs available for purchase (and for me to share with patrons and playtesters) very soon. I imagine the process of printing and shipping physical copies won’t be too far behind.

My next big project is going to be to put together a Human Destiny package for the Chaosium design challenge, due at the end of this month. I suspect that’s not going to involve just adding to the existing partial draft of the sourcebook. Instead, I’m probably going to take the material I already have, maybe add some additional content, and assemble a package specifically for the contest.

Meanwhile, I have the finals for my university courses coming up at the end of the month too.

All of which is to say that there probably will not be a substantial new release for my patrons this month, although I may have a small item or two for them that won’t amount to a charged release. Once I get into June, however, a lot of my prior commitments are going to be off my plate over the summer. I’m hoping to get a bunch of useful and interesting creative work done in the June-September timeframe.

Here’s the current lineup, notable as the first time in years that Architect of Worlds hasn’t appeared as a front-line item:

Front Burner:
- Human Destiny: Continue rewriting and adding to the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
- Human Destiny: Complete and send a contest entry for the Chaosium design challenge.
Back Burner:
- Human Destiny: Write a new Aminata Ndoye story, set when she’s about seventeen years old and attending an academy for officer candidates for the interstellar service.
- Great Lands: Begin work to revise the geography and back history of the setting.
- Fourth Millennium: Resume work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
- Fourth Millennium: Resume work to rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.

I’ll keep everyone posted with a Status Update or two as the month progresses.

Status Report (23 April 2024)

April 23, 2024 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Looking forward to the next few days, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I’m in the midst of some rather aggressive prioritizing.

Since September, I’ve been involved with a big course-development project at the office, one which has been shattering every barrier that would normally allow me to avoid office work in the evenings and over weekends. This is the biggest course-development project I’ve ever been involved with – one which I would normally have said required 18-24 months of research and development before starting the pilot offering – and we’re having to pull it together in a fraction of that time. So that’s item #1.

Item #2 is the university courses I signed up for last summer, on the assumption that my established work-life balance was going to hold and I would have plenty of time to study . . . yeah, that hasn’t turned out as expected. My last set of exams came back with lower marks than I was willing to accept. I have two exams due at the end of April, and finals due at the end of May, and I am feeling a wee bit under-prepared.

Item #3 is Architect of Worlds, for which (good news!) I now have final edits in hand from Ken Burnside. Unfortunately, that means (bad news!) I need to get those final edits implemented and a release draft back to Ken ASAP so we can finally get the book out the door, right when #1 and #2 above are already demanding a big chunk of my energy.

None of this rises to the level of existential crisis, but I need to prioritize and manage my time a lot more aggressively than usual for the next couple of weeks.

This afternoon, I pulled together an interim draft of the Human Destiny setting bible and RPG sourcebook, and sent that to my patrons as a free update. I now expect to set that project aside for at least the next 10-14 days while I knock out other tasks.

I’ve got a commitment to appear on a Traveller podcast on 1 May, but aside from that I think I’m going to be limiting my social media time for about that long too. Don’t expect any posts here and only minimal noise on Facebook, and my May planning message may be later than usual as a result.

Hopefully by about 8 May I’ll be in much better shape, and I’ll have some good news to report, especially about Architect of Worlds.