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Planning for February 2023

Planning for February 2023

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January was a good month for working on Architect of Worlds. I started out planning to build a “toy” version of the book, mostly to learn Adobe InDesign techniques and have something to show off for patrons, but plans change. At the moment I’m going all-in on building the book itself, and so far I’ve finished initial layout and design for about the first 22 pages. That’s going to be the primary project for the next few months, I think.

I didn’t get a lot of other creative work done last month, and I do want to make some forward progress on something while I continue to work on Architect. In particular, I’d like to get some fiction written; it’s been a few months since I’ve produced any new stories. Best candidate right now is to write a few more chapters of Twice-Crowned.

All of which makes this month’s priorities pretty straightforward:

  • Top Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Continue work to design and lay out the finished book. Tentatively plan to finish through page 60 (out of approximately 180).
  • Second Priority:
    • Danassos: Continue work on the new draft of Twice-Crowned.
    • Danassos: 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 has been consistent for the last few months, 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. There might be a charged release for my patrons this month, if I end up producing enough new items to justify that, but we’ll see how things go.

Status Report (22 January 2023)

Status Report (22 January 2023)

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A few items to report incremental progress on today.

Layout for Architect of Worlds has started in earnest. I’m learning Adobe InDesign as I go, but I’ve already taught myself a number of techniques that will prove useful. At the moment I’ve got about 20 pages of layout roughed out, all of the “Introduction” and getting into the “Science of Star Maps” section. I had thought to build a “toy” layout using excerpts from throughout the draft, but instead I’m just forging ahead and building the final layout in full. At the end of each day’s work I export the current state of the book to a PDF and give it a once-over to catch any obvious problems. Once I have 40-50 pages finished, I’ll probably take that to a printer and make sure it looks okay on paper as well. In the meantime, I think I’ll share the interim layouts with my patrons each month so everyone can see progress.

I’ve been applying Architect to a side project – developing a planetary system for the Dune: Adventures in the Imperium RPG. Call it a bit of playtesting for the main book, and a worked example for how it might be applied to a given game universe. Might post some of those results here over the next couple of weeks.

One thing this side project has accomplished – it’s forced me to work through the new Step Thirty-Two (Fine-Tune Climate) of the design sequence, and I find that material needs more work. It’s clumsy, it seems to provide unintuitive results, and at least one of my readers has been having trouble with it as written. So that’s high on my list of components to test and rewrite as I work on the layout. Step Twenty-Four, Geophysical Parameters, is also likely to get some polish – if only because the math in that step is very ugly at present.

Meanwhile, in odd moments I’ve been collecting notes for the eventual Fourth Millennium project, and I’m about to start reading a novel or two for the end-of-month review.

Biggest obstacle in the past week has been that my whole household has come down with some nasty seasonal crud – not the plague, apparently, just a bad cold. I’ve been severely lacking in energy and focus for the past few days. Still, I seem to be on track to have a few things to share by the end of the month. No charged releases for my patrons, but maybe a freebie or two.

Fourth Millennium

Fourth Millennium

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Alexandros III of Makedon, called “The Great,” first Great King of the Argead dynasty (2702-2735 EK) (Image by Arienne King, original found here)

By the reckoning of years used in the Danassan Hegemony, the date is 3000 Ἔτος Κόσμου, the three thousandth year since the creation of the world. A new millennium is at hand, an age of prosperous cities and growing empires, new gods and ancient mysteries, science and darkest magic. It seems likely to be an age of conflict as well. Ambitious generals and kings struggle for power, and barbarian peoples look with envy on the wealth and sophistication of civilized lands. What history will reveal next, not even the gods can know for sure.

Fourth Millennium has been conceived as a game setting, derived from some of my own fiction: short stories set in the Greek “Heroic Age” as well as the novel-in-progress Twice-Crowned and its eventual sequels. It’s grown past its literary beginnings, though, taking on shape as a rich alternate-historical fantasy world.

Fourth Millennium echoes the Mediterranean world of our own history, in the first century before the Common Era . . . but fate has taken its own turns here. An offshoot of Minoan civilization survived, creating a neo-Hellenic culture in which women hold religious and political power. The Peloponnesian War may have taken place, but its outcome was less viciously harmful to the Hellenic civilization at its peak. Alexander the Great may have died young, but his son survived and came out on top of the civil wars that followed his death. The Roman Republic is on the rise, but it faces tough competition in the East, in the form of an Hellenistic world that is stronger and more unified.

Adventurers can come from a variety of origins: Greeks of several varieties, Romans and other Latins, Celts, Germans, Berbers, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Judeans, Persians, and many more. They may be warriors and soldiers, oracles and seers, legates and senators, or philosophers and scientists. There will be a variety of possible campaign structures: military stories, politics and intrigue, high-stakes commercial ventures, mysteries, exploration, possibly all of these at once.

The concept in my head is for a Cypher System game, published under the Monte Cook Games open license. I can already see the broad outlines of the game, and a lot of details that will fit the setting. I’m still debating whether to write one book or two here – there may be so much setting detail, so much to suggest a variety of structures for campaigns and adventures, that it won’t all fit in one volume.

Best guess is that I’ll be pulling together notes for Fourth Millennium while I work on getting Architect of Worlds out the door in the first half of this year. I might post a few fragments and notes here, or push them to my patrons as small freebies. Once Architect is finished, assuming my muse is still engaged by then, serious work on this project is likely to get under way.

Have to say, the more I think about this project the more excited I am for it. The ancient Mediterranean world has been a personal fascination for over half my life; it will be nice to get back to it as a game designer. Not to mention I’ve learned a lot since I wrote GURPS Greece, coming up on thirty years ago . . .

Planning for January 2023

Planning for January 2023

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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

2022 in Review

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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:

  1. Rethinking the Placement of Planets
  2. New Release for “Architect of Worlds”
  3. Architect of Worlds: The “Special Cases” Outline
  4. Breakaway!
  5. New Models for Gas Giant Formation
  6. New Models for Planetary Formation
  7. Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert
  8. Status Report (16 April 2022)
  9. Review: Obelisks: Dust, by Ari Marmell
  10. Status Report (29 March 2022)

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.

Review: Write Magic Systems Your Readers Won’t Forget, by Stant Litore

Review: Write Magic Systems Your Readers Won’t Forget, by Stant Litore

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Write Magic Systems Your Readers Won’t Forget by Stant Litore

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

This is a rather different review than my usual. The book in question isn’t a work of fiction, it’s a coaching toolkit for would-be authors who want to write fiction.

I first came across Stant Litore when I read his book on Scriptural exegesis, Lives of Unforgetting. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that he was also a genre author, and that he has written a lengthy series of “toolkits” for writers. Many of these have titles of the form “Write [X] Your Readers Won’t Forget,” and for the most recent book in the series, the “X” is magic systems.

I’ll confess that when I write fantasy fiction, the notion of developing a “magic system” mildly repels me. I think of magic as wonder-working and miracle, not the kind of formal, rule-based endeavor that ought to be governed by a “system.” To my delight, this book addressed exactly that tension on the very first page, which was enough to pull me into the rest of the text.

The book is organized in a very workmanlike manner. Each section addresses a single question that the writer needs to think about when developing a magic-infused world. What is magic like, how do people in the world experience it? How do magicians experience it, and how is that different from everyone else’s understanding? How do magicians fit into the community, if they do at all? What are the personal and other costs of magic? And so on.

In each section, Stant Litore discusses the issue at hand, explaining why it’s crucial to the author’s vision for their fantasy world. He provides plenty of options and examples, quoting from well-known works of fantasy fiction. Then the section is closed out by one or more writing exercises, encouraging the reader to work through the details for their own fantasy setting. The book closes with a sample worksheet, collecting in one place all the considerations discussed throughout.

I don’t normally find books of this kind to be all that useful, but I suspect Write Magic Systems Your Readers Won’t Forget is going to be an exception. I’m considering formally working through it to help flesh out the two fantasy settings in which I work. If I have any quarrel with the book in its current state, it might be that it’s too short. Just on first reading, I can see several ways to expand on what Stant Litore has done here.

Still, I suspect anyone interested in developing a fantasy setting, whether for gaming or literary purposes, will find this a useful resource. And if the quality of this book is any indication, I would seriously consider checking out the rest of the Litore Toolkits for Fiction Writers. Very highly recommended.

Planning for December 2022

Planning for December 2022

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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

Planning for November 2022

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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.
Status Report (22 October 2022)

Status Report (22 October 2022)

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Between a very busy time at my day job, and a bout of illness over the last week, I’m feeling under the gun to get anything creative finished this month. I think I have a couple of milestones that are feasible to reach in the next nine days, but a lot depends on whether I can carve out enough time.

The first milestone is to finish rewriting a big section of Architect of Worlds, reworking the process of placing planets in a star system under development. We’re talking about what is now Steps Nine through Twelve, although I’m breaking up a few of those and the final result will be Steps Nine through Fifteen instead. That’s making decent progress. I’m currently working Step Fourteen (determining the mass of planets) and once that’s finished the last step is almost a cut-and-paste from the previous draft. I think that’s going to come out to be about 7,000 words of reworked material – no examples, no modeling notes, just the bare sequence – but I think that will be one part of the release this month for my patrons and beta readers.

The other item is probably going to be a few new chapters of Twice-Crowned, set after Alexandra arrives in Athens as a penniless exile for the first time. I actually wrote this next section a couple of years ago, so it’s just going to need a once-over and a coat of polish. That should come to about 13,000 words. I think that will be easy enough to get ready by month’s end.

So, in all, we’re talking about 20,000 words of extensively reworked or completely new material. Kind of a patchwork for my patrons for this month, but enough to justify making the combination a charged reward.

I’m also plowing through a new indie novel for review, and with luck that will be done by the end of the month too.

Now, if I can just get all that done and juggle a rather terrifying number of projects for the office, all at once . . .

Planning for October 2022

Planning for October 2022

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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).