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Planning for July 2024

Planning for July 2024

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June was a productive month. I made progress on building the Fourth Millennium timeline, especially using Notion to collect and organize all my notes. I also wrote a complete novelette, “Penthus at Bay,” from a standing start – over 15,000 words of new fiction set in the Fourth Millennium universe. All that and keeping up with my other commitments, too. Whew.

This month, I’m going to continue to focus on Fourth Millennium. I’m not planning to write any new fiction in July, unless a story idea really leaps out at me, but I’ll be continuing to push the timeline forward. I also plan to lay out the outline for the eventual Fourth Millennium setting-bible-slash-TTRPG-sourcebook, and possibly get started writing chunks of that.

Meanwhile, I have a few chores in relation to Architect of Worlds that need to be done, so that’s going on the agenda too.

Here’s the list:

  • Front Burner:
    • Fourth Millennium: Continue work to rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.
    • Fourth Millennium: Begin work to outline and write the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
    • Architect of Worlds: Deal with outstanding reader comments and errata, and finish setting up the page(s) for the book on this site.
  • Back Burner:
    • Fourth Millennium: Resume work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • 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.
    • Human Destiny: Continue rewriting and adding to the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
    • Great Lands: Begin work to revise the geography and back history of the setting.

For my patrons: At the moment, I’m skeptical as to whether I’ll have enough genuinely new material to justify a charged release in July. Some combination of new Fourth Millennium timeline material and the first interim draft of the setting bible might reach the threshold, but we’ll see. Watch this space for status reports.

Status Report (20 June 2024)

Status Report (20 June 2024)

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I spent the first half of June mostly working on tasks for my day job, and collecting notes for the Fourth Millennium universe. A lot of those notes are going into a specially designed Notion database. If I can figure out how to share that out in read-only form, as a flat document or as an online wiki, I’ll make it available for patrons and readers as a free release before the end of this month.

Meanwhile, earlier this week I had an inspiration for a story set in the Fourth Millennium timeline. Specifically, a story about the death of Alexander the Great and its immediate consequences, but with a number of alternate-historical details to lead the event in a different direction than happened in the Original History. I took a couple of days to work through the details in my head, and then I started writing. So far I’ve been knocking out at least a thousand words per day on that story. Best guess is that it will end up novelette length before it’s finished, and it’s likely to serve as a charged release for my patrons by the end of the month.

Progress! It’s nice to get back to work on a project that’s been lying fallow for a long time – my creative process seems to need that kind of refreshment every now and then.

Planning for June 2024

Planning for June 2024

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May was a pretty big month. The final round of edits for Architect of Worlds is done, and the book is well and truly on the market. PDF sales are under way, and I’ve been hearing about sightings of the hardcopy book in the wild, although I haven’t personally seen it yet. I pulled together a submission package for the “Human Destiny” setting for the Chaosium design challenge. I also finished my university courses for the year, and although I haven’t seen my final grades yet, I’m reasonably confident I passed both courses “with distinction.”

That closes out one of the more demanding years I’ve ever had in my life. Starting last June I’ve had a flooded basement (which pushed me out of my usual living quarters and office space), some pretty extensive home repairs, an infestation of mice, yet another flooding incident (this time on the upper floors of the house), a nasty outbreak of office politics, and the biggest course-development project on the shortest time-scale I’ve ever had to work on. Amid all of this, it’s been a bit of a challenge to take on an aggressive course of university study and keep pushing my creative projects forward.

So, now that I’ve reached the summer of 2024 with my sanity more or less intact, I think I’m going to pivot to something different for the next few months. I’ve barely touched my Fourth Millennium or “Danassos” universe in over a year, and that’s going to make for a nice change of pace.

What will that involve? Well, I’m almost certainly going to get back to working on Twice-Crowned, my half-finished novel set in Danassos and Athens in the time of the Second Peloponnesian War. I also have a couple pieces of short fiction in the back of my mind, and I might try to get those into readable form. Finally, I think I’ll work on the Fourth Millennium back story timeline a bit, and start collecting notes for what may one day be a setting bible and tabletop RPG supplement for the universe.

None of which is to say that I’m not going to work on plausible interstellar world-building or the “Human Destiny” future history any more. Just that I feel the need to take a break from those for at least 2-3 months and see if I can make progress on some other projects.

So, here’s the planning roster for June:

  • Front Burner:
    • Fourth Millennium: Resume work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • Fourth Millennium: Resume work to rebuild the alternate-historical timeline.
    • Fourth Millennium: Write at least one short story set somewhere in the timeline.
  • 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.
    • Human Destiny: Continue rewriting and adding to the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
    • Great Lands: Begin work to revise the geography and back history of the setting.

As far as items for my patrons go: I’m going to work hard to have at least 10,000-20,000 words of new material down by the end of June, in which case there will be a charged release for my patrons. Most likely this will consist of some new fiction, and possibly the first stab at a Fourth Millennium setting bible. Look for a Status Report or two in the course of June.

Planning for May 2024

Planning for May 2024

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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)

Status Report (23 April 2024)

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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.

Planning for April 2024

Planning for April 2024

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The planning messages remain fairly short and simple, as my status isn’t changing much from one month to the next.

I know, it’s April and Architect of Worlds still isn’t out the door. Ken Burnside has been having a difficult few weeks, and the final textual edits on the book are still on his plate. At this point I’m not going to make any more estimates as to when the book will be finished – hopefully sooner rather than later, but it’s not in my control.

For the moment, I’m focusing on the Human Destiny setting bible and RPG sourcebook, with an eye toward being able to send an interim draft off to Chaosium at the end of May for their “design challenge” contest. I was able to push out a medium-sized update to my patrons on 31 March, and I’m hoping April will be a productive month for that project.

In particular, I’m going to be concentrating on those parts of the book that are directly tied to game mechanics. The Chaosium blog has mentioned that one of the things they’ll be looking for in a successful entry is clever and original ways to apply the Basic Roleplaying rules to support a game’s themes. That’s something I think Human Destiny can do very well, once it’s closer to completion – in fact, I have several game systems in mind that are not quite like anything that’s been done with BRP before. So that’s where my focus is going to be, leading up to the deadline for the contest.

Which is not to say I won’t be continuing to add to the setting background, of course. The sourcebook has a lot of outline sections that are still incomplete, and I’ve found it’s best to work where my muse wants to work on any given day.

So here’s the formal plan for April, very similar to the plan for March:

  • Front Burner:
    • Architect of Worlds: Implement final-release changes to the text and turn the release draft over to Ken Burnside for publication once his editorial work is finished.
    • Human Destiny: Continue rewriting and adding to the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
    • 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.
  • Back Burner:
    • 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.

There may or may not be a charged release for my patrons this month, most likely some combination of new Human Destiny setting-bible material and a new Aminata Ndoye story. As always, that depends on whether my other commitments leave me enough time and energy to get creative work done.

An Unexpected Opportunity

An Unexpected Opportunity

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This was announced yesterday: a contest for indie designers who are working with the Basic Roleplaying (BRP) engine.

Normally I dislike creative contests. My experience with literary contests in particular has been invariably bad. I’ve lost control over some of my work in exchange for promises of publication or other opportunities that never materialized. I no longer pay any attention to literary contests, and I don’t advise anyone else to enter them either.

Game design contests are usually more well-founded, and my experience with those hasn’t been so negative. I participated in (e.g.) the design contest that eventually gave rise to the Eberron setting for D&D, and that went well even if I didn’t make the short-list. Of course, my usual problem is that I almost never have the right project under way when a contest is announced, so – given how many irons I usually have in the fire at any given time – I rarely have a good shot at producing a viable entry in time.

This one looks like an exception. Chaosium has already placed their BRP engine under the ORC license, making it available for indie designers under very friendly terms. Now they have just announced a design challenge for BRP, with a planned short-list of 10 entries and pretty substantial cash prizes.

Oh, look, and here I have an (admittedly early and incomplete) draft for a BRP-based game. To which I had already planned on devoting most of my creative time over the next few months.

I think I know what I’ll be doing between now and the end of May.

Planning for March 2024

Planning for March 2024

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Fairly short planning message this month – things are straightforward at the moment. Getting Architect of Worlds into people’s hands is taking a little longer than I expected, but we’re getting there.

Ken Burnside is still working on the final round of textual edits, but it sounds as if he’ll be done with that sometime around the GAMA Trade Show this week. He and I have discussed the number and nature of his editorial requests, and aside from the tweaks I’ve already made it sounds as if I’ll be able to rip through the whole list in just a few hours. So the current guess is that he’ll have the final release draft in hand by about 9-10 March, after which he’ll be able to do his first print run and start shipping hardcopies. The e-book version should be available about then too, including rewards for my patrons. Further delays aren’t impossible – Ken is a one-man shop too, and he has a lot more on his plate than I do – but we’re certainly getting closer to release day.

Meanwhile, I was able to release a substantially revised version of the Human Destiny setting bible to my patrons as a reward, the first charged release I’ve made since April or May of last year. That’s still going to be my primary creative project over the next few months. I feel as if I’ve underestimated the amount of setting-bible work I need to do before I start writing new fiction in that universe, but I’m at least getting closer to the point where I’ll be confident.

Here’s the formal plan for March:

  • Front Burner:
    • Architect of Worlds: Finish editorial work on the release draft and turn that over to Ken Burnside for publication in the mid-March timeframe.
    • Human Destiny: Continue rewriting and adding to the setting bible (BRP sourcebook).
    • 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.
  • Back Burner:
    • 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’m betting on a charged release for my patrons this month, most likely some combination of new Human Destiny setting-bible material and a new Aminata Ndoye story. That all depends on whether my other commitments leave me enough time, as usual.

Status Report (28 February 2024)

Status Report (28 February 2024)

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Just a quick note, especially for my patrons.

I’m coming down to the wire, but I think I’ll be able to release a new interim draft of the Human Destiny setting bible and tabletop RPG sourcebook by the end of this month. This includes a fair amount of new and substantially revised material, in particular a first rough cut at the Basic Roleplaying-driven character design rules.

This means you can expect a charged release by sometime tomorrow, 29 February. This is the first charged release for my patrons in about a year.

Meanwhile, Ken Burnside and I are still working to wrap up final edits for Architect of Worlds, and I’m hoping the ebooks will be available before too much longer. I beg a little more patience, please.

“Architect of Worlds” Page Under Construction

“Architect of Worlds” Page Under Construction

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With the imminent release of Architect of Worlds, I’m starting to rework the page for that project on this site.

First and foremost, the partial draft once offered from that page has been taken down. The release draft is significantly different, and at this point I want to encourage people to pick up the actual book once it’s available. I’m not going to take down any of the original blog posts in which I posted a very rough draft of the design sequence – if anyone wants to page through those, they’re welcome to it.

Meanwhile, moving forward I intend to use the project’s page to offer long-term support for the book: a place to ask questions, a (hopefully well-maintained) errata list, and a place to collect any blog posts I make about new science or more detailed world-design techniques. There’s some possibility I’ll be looking to produce a second edition of the book in five or six years, and the rebuilt page will be a good place to collect material for that project.

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen it already, here’s a link to the Ad Astra Games catalog page for the book. Pre-orders are under way!

Meanwhile, here’s a link to the first (glowing!) review the book has received, from Amazing Stories.