Layout Continues

I keep dotting I's and crossing T's, and I have suddenly found that the draft of the book is about 95% of the way there. I have a few small sections still to write, and possibly a little spot art to do, but this thing is pretty far along. It is going to be 48 pages. Here is a preview of the Veth Tundra Howler, which is not at all like a Wampa from Empire Strikes Back and I cannot believe you keep saying that. Anyhow, this gives you an idea of what a stat block looks like, and the kinds of information contained. I am defnitely going a little deeper with detail on each stat block, and I provide a drawing for any monster I add. With Tales of the Splintered Realm, I wanted to get 8-10 monster stat blocks per page, assuming on some level that many players would have preconceived notions of how these monsters might operate beyond what the rules provide. If you play RPGs, you know how goblins behave. I make no such assumptions here, and try to give an interesting or unusual twist for each creature so they are not just 'generic' monsters. A typical page is going to contain 2-3 creatures. The core rules give as much weight to rules for how to generate your own monsters as to giving samples.

 

Planning Ahead

I'm pretty good at publishing games. I know how to go through the process at this point, and can feel my way through the steps along the way. However, once I release that bugger to the wild, there is invariably a little drop. I send it out and just sort of wait. And wait. And noodle some drawings. And wait. And think about what I might do next. And then wait some more. Because I'm never quite sure what to do.

Remember when I said that worldbuiding starts with a vision? Well, that's true for every project - it starts with a vision.

The vision (at this point), is something called Dispatches from the Pale. It is a series of short (4-6 page) supplements for Shards of Tomorrow. Each one will be themed in some way, and will expand the game in some direction. It might detail a moon, six of the common creatures that dwell there, 2 NPCs who are important players in this place, a vehicle used here, and maybe an adventure or reason to go there. One dispatch might be a deeper dive into the messari, and another might just have blueprints for a battle cruiser with the full specs for the entire thing, including all of its resources, crew, random tables for what's in its cargo bay... I think of it like 'the Cloud City Primer' or 'Into Jabba's Palace'. The first would have the city, the Ugnaughts, Lando, cloud cars, rules of carbon freezing... the second would have sail barges and skiffs, the Sarlaac, Jabba, his guards, and maybe some rules for bounty hunting for fun and profit. I obviously cannot do THOSE books, but that's the general idea. These are also important, because they would be posted to DrivethruRPG, which is where people actually see that I'm coming out with things. It's my most direct way to routinely say to the gaming world at large "I MAKE GAME STUFF".  

These would be short enough to:

- Be able to be produced in a timely manner and with some consistency. I think at least every two months would be a minimum, and more frequently would be ideal. Monthly is a bit of a dream, but I'm very productive very quickly when I want to be.

- Stay focused on really exploring one thing well. It would lock down some facet of the game and add a layer of detail somewhere. It would give a meaningful piece to the larger puzzle.

The reason that this is important to think about now is because I'm starting to generate content that may or or may not belong in the core rules. For example, I don't know yet if the core rules include full details for Banquo II and its three moons, or if it focuses primarily on Banquo's Tooth, with the other moons and planet mentioned, but with details for each saved for a later resource. I'm leaning towards the latter, because I want to give each one the time and attention it deserves. 

Sky Stalwart 2.0

I am really enjoying the process of writing a story about Kirby and Sky Stalwart, Nisa Montrel and Vex Kalar. I have some moments I love, and the whole story is moving in a great direction. However, I have had one big problem; all of my characters are male. I mean, Nisa is not, but I am ending up with the story starting to go in the direction of a love triangle between Sky and Nisa and Vex. And, to be honest, I don't want it to go that way, but that's kind of what would happen. Because, I realized, I'm not writing Sky as a unique character - I'm just writing him as Doc Stalwart. I really love Doc, and I love writing about Doc and writing his character, but I'm already doing that elsewhere. If I want to write a Doc story, I should write a Doc story.

Thinking further, I realized that Sky Stalwart isn't this character, and is not Doc's grandson. Sky Stalwart is Doc's daughter. That is how I originally conceived her, and that is the character I knew she should be the whole time. So, I'm throwing out the design for Sky Stalwart, grandson of Doc Stalwart, and replacing him with Sky Stalwart, daughter of Doc Stalwart. Now, instead of trying to skirt along the edges of some of the more sexist tropes of the genre, I can lean into them and have my main character fundamentally challenge them by her very presence. I change the whole dynamic of all of the characters. I make my other characters more interesting, because now I can frame them even more as foils. I was struggling to find out what made Vex and Sky (boy version) different on a fundamental level. Now, that problem is gone. 

Because this is not just a female version of Doc Stalwart. She is a very different character. Doc is wise and patient, willing to gently bring others along. Sky is smarter than everyone in the room, and struggles to sometimes put up with their stupidity. Kirby wants her to wear fancy dresses and drink champagne, but she's too busy pulling apart the blast engine because she noticed it lags a little upon re-entry, and she thinks there's a problem with the transitional booster. I had my Luke in Vex, I have a Han in Venn Golrik (who will eventually make an appearance I presume), and now I have my Leia who is not a princess at all, except (of course) to her father. But this is her story. 

I think I'm going to love the change.

A Shards Preview: Preliminary Layout

I thought I'd share quick snaps of two pages in process for layout. I haven't done final edits on these, and things like hitting the small caps on Feats and inserting page numbers for reference still need to be done, but these are pretty far along. This is how the game is shaping up, and I'm quite liking it.

Practicing What I Preach: More Questions Than Answers

I decided to do a piece of spot art for a section that needed it, and started doodling... and then added some things... and then came up with a name. So, I'd like to introduce you to Idrys the Prophetess. I mean, I'd like to introduce you to her, but I can't. Because I literally know nothing else about her. I mean... her name is Idrys. And she's a prophetess. And. Um. 

So. Many. Questions.

I mean, I have theories in the form of questions. Is she the last of the Naru? The first of a new species? Is she descended from Yahalla? Is she one of Yahalla's handmaidens who survived the nexus? Is she from another galaxy? Another realm altogether? Is she the greatest of intuits, or not really an intuit at all? How do the messari feel about her? How does she feel about them? Does she feel? Does she ever open her other two eyes, or is it only the third eye in the middle? Does that third eye only see into the supernatural realm? Can she see in this realm at all? 

SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.

I have no answers. And, not only am I comfortable with that, I embrace it. I'm going to drop her into the core rules as is with no further explanation, and I suppose we'll figure it out together as we go.

Worldbuilding Part 10: More Questions Than Answers

First, a revised image for the book. I cleaned up the picture and also found a new font to use throughout for titles and headings. I like it. It's snazzy.

***

I suspect that this is the final entry in the series of worldbuilding posts, although I suppose I could surprise myself with an epilogue or two. We'll see. I held off for a little while (by my standards at least), but Shards has gone into the first stages of layout. It is not completely written; it's maybe 80%. However, the first 2/3 of the book is pretty close to locked down, so I felt comfortable starting to play with layout, and have run into a happy problem to have - I'm never going to fit all this art. I'm going to try, but some pages are laying out quite nicely with no art, and I'm managing to get a whole section or topic into one page with minimal remaining white space, so I don't want to force in art just to do it, or spread a concept to a second page when I don't need to. Good problems to have, I suppose.

Okay, let's wrap up some worldbuilding. 

***

This might sound egotistical, but I used to equate creating a setting with, in effect, being its god. If I was the god of this place, I would put this here and that there. I would set up rivers this way, and have the forests grow over there. I would put these creatures here, and those over there. But the problem is I'm not a god. I don't really think like one. I don't have that intellectual capacity. And besides, how much fun is that, anyway? Everything ends up the way you want it, and that's just boring.

So, I've instead learned to view myself as the world's greatest explorer. Yeah, it's still an ego trip I guess, but not quite as bad as casting yourself as the almighty creator of all things. I end up asking far more questions than I do supplying answers. How does this work? Why did they do THAT? If this is true here, then how can that be true over there? In some ways, I think of it as the rapid-fire questioning of a five-year-old, who wants to know everything about every part of the engine when he sees it for the first time, and you are in the middle of trying to explain how oxygen is necessary for combustion when he's pointing at the connectors to the batteries and asking about that. There's a good reason that my avatars in the last two games I have written are scientists and explorers. I am trying to think like them as I engage with the setting.

Rather than trying to know everything about your setting, enjoy the discomfort of realizing that you will never know everything about your setting. There has to always be some path leading off into the woods or a door in the basement the beyond of which you have no idea about. Once you get comfortable with leaving unanswered questions and loose threads, the more confident you will get, and the more intentional you will ultimately get. Here are the three things we know for sure about the messari, but here are the ten biggest questions about what they do and how they operate.

It comes down to flexibility. You want a setting that can grow and evolve as you think of new things.

That is better game design, as far as I define it. My best adventures have been those that have at least three ways into the adventure, and at least three things that can happen after the adventure. I might actually, now that I'm thinking of it, put that as some advice in the GM section. If you have to get the note from the princess that is carried by the caravan master and which is hidden in a secret compartment in the floor of the carriage for the adventure to begin, then you are already off to a rocky start. If, however, I'm not sure how the PCs are going to get involved, but these are three pathways that could lead into the adventure (unless something else comes up), I've written a better adventure, and I've got a more flexible setting.

There is one more really, really practical reason to do this, and this comes from my experience doing this for 30+ years now. If you know too much about your setting, and you lock everything about it down, you will get bored. Okay, I know that I'll get bored. I suspect you would, too. That was part of the problem I ran into with Army Ants. It was a small setting - the back yard - and I had figured how all of it worked together. There weren't any big pieces of real estate that were unexplored, or new species to discover. I knew everyone who was there, what they were up to, and how it would all interact. At that point, what more is there to do? What more is there for me, as the creator of the whole thing, to discover?

It is, ironically, a problem that the creative people behind Star Wars have run into. Yes, it's an entire galaxy - but we know how it all fits together. We have defined all of the important, and the vast majority of the unimportant, parts. The Mandalorian, again, has solved this by going smaller rather than bigger. Yes, we know about the big picture stuff. But what about that hole over there, or what's inside of this egg right here? It has to go to the micro level, because the macro is so well defined. They've done such a good job defining the setting, that they have very little new to discover.

Make sure you always have something new to discover.

Worldbuilding Part 9: Thin Slices and Snapshots

We use the term 'thin slice’ at the middle school where I teach, and it’s a term I just learned this year, but I kind of like it. The idea is that you get a single sample of student work, and you use this to make some large-scale holistic evaluations. You understand when you do it that this is an incomplete profile of what’s going on with this student. In my class, I present this as a snapshot. I explain to students that this writing today is going to be a selfie; it is a picture of where you are right now, today, at this moment, but it’s not the whole thing. I won’t know everything there is to know about you as a student from this, but I’ll get at least an idea. I’ll be able to get a good initial sense of who you are as a writer from this sample.

When moving into the more intricate parts of setting construction, my temptation was always to work in layers. I wanted to figure out what was happening at the national level. Then I would work out the local level, and how this is impacted. Then, I’d look at the micro level; how does a family live within this? I suppose I was inspired by (or maybe overwhelmed by) the World of Greyhawk setting books, and the details therein on what different nations were producing as resources, and who they traded with, and how that sort of socio-economic system worked. Now, it might have been a carefully-crafted interconnection of balanced concepts, or (more likely), Gary made a list of things that societies might have of value, and sort of randomly assigned these to different nations (hmmm…. Four countries already trade silver. I guess these guys get copper. Sorry, Pomarj). Regardless, it made an impression on me; your setting must have this huge level of interconnectivity to really be ‘alive’.

And it does, but not necessarily in that way. I have learned instead to do the deep dive in a small area. That’s what I’m doing with the core rules for Shards. I don’t know (yet) how the macro economy works in terms of trade between hundreds of worlds. However, I am really, really starting to understand how the guilds on the moons around Banquo II interact, how resources are gathered and distributed, and how important contracts and writs and land rights are. I can see how the mandates of the guilds and off-worlders really rub locals the wrong way, and lead to all sorts of land skirmishes between the more tribal native species who have dwelt there for generations and those who showed up one day with skim miners and started tapping gas wells a hundred kilometers below the surface. I can see what life is like for a day laborer on Banquo’s Maw (it kind of sucks by the way). However, the other benefit in this is that I’m working out a form of template that I can apply to other worlds and other locales. Once I really understand how this one micro system works, I will be able to generate a sort of grid to plug information into. I will then be able to move to the next planet and fill in the details. Once I know how the various forces interacting in one of these micro systems work, I can jump to the next planet over and start the process over again. I don’t have to figure out how all that other planet’s resources interact with everything else; I only need to tie a few threads back to my first snapshot. When I detail the planet called Prospero (if that’s what it’s called), I only need figure out how it links to Banquo II.  

It also helps me to make very concrete decisions. I know that bounty hunters like Gat Parmetheon here often do the dirty work of taking out tribal leaders who openly resist guild force, or who a family might hire to take out their own nephew who won’t fall in line, a nephew who keeps making noise about wanting to break off and form his own guild. There are some jobs you don’t want your own crews doing. He’s not generic bounty hunter doing generic jobs; there are very specific types of things one calls a bounty hunter like him for.

Oh, and a side note, I found for myself that I wanted there to be consistency of naming planets and moons. I wanted it to be easy to remember, and evocative. I like that the planets of our solar system are named after Roman gods. It gives the whole thing a nice uniformity. So, I’ve picked Shakespeare character names. Each planet is a Shakespeare character name (a lot of them end in ‘o’ by the way), and then the moons around that planet are a facet of that character (hence the planet Macbeth might have moons named Macbeth’s Eye or Macbeth’s Fist). I find having this consistency creates an automatic sense of uniformity to the setting. If you’ve got the city Ko next to the city of Vilizainatkhwona, you’ve got some consistency problems.