Skip to main content

FLOODED (with ideas)

Had a storm two weeks ago. Basement attempted to turn into a pool. We won this battle...

The up side is that I got inspired to get off of my butt and begin REALLY working on a RPG rule set for the whole Greenshore book series. It's something I've been kicking around for the past year or so, but I've been putting all my writing energy into the first three books, plotting the series, and filling in an offline wiki with all my Greenshore musings and such. In late August, I gave myself a week to get the framework for the RPG down, if only to have something to play around with in my spare time.

With the flood came a desire to simply step out of the normal routine and fully embrace something game-like!

The weird thing is, I was also inspired to begin keeping an electronic journal of the day to day along with the writing. Below is the first week of said journal...

Design Notes:
 Aug 21: Day 3 of creating the Game! After looking over the plans for the book series and all of that, I’m beginning to hammer out the character creation process. Still working on the balancing act as far as where this game falls in the “Crunchy” category.I’m also going with fave elements from various game systems. The core magic system is my own, with the whole C.E. thing, but the spellcasting mechanic will be akin to Ars Magica. Combat is more cinematic and will follow the general structure of Feng Shui. Character creation is inspired via a point-buy mechanic that is a little influence by Traveller (with emphasis on a character’s history forming the basis of the skills / stats).I’m sticking to the 2d6 dice mechanic for base rolls, only because I prefer the bell-curve percentage! Aug 22:Putting ideas together for PC generation, looking into how PC’s crunch ties into the big elements of the game:·         Long-term R&D stuff·         Combat·         Adventure skillsCombat day. Time to work out some concepts… Aug 23:Never really delved into Adventure Skills yesterday.Two more elements reared up yesterday: the concepts of Powers and Psychic / Chi abilities. Although these elements play secondary roles in my Greenshore book series (usually as part of an antagonists schtick), they are in the book series, and therefore should get some rules built around them. For both elements, I’m going to use an ‘energy point pool’ to draw from, with each of the two concepts being different ‘pool types’. The reason for the two types of pools is that Powers fall across the gambit of “Mystical ßà Mundane ßà Psychic”, where Psychic (and Chi) are woven deeply within the realm of the Mundane and counter / overpower Mystical elements fairly easily… Aug 24:Well, the Chi and Psychic rules are set down in a generalized kind of way. Slowly building the Strengths and Weaknesses section as I write. Lots of back-and-forth right now. Better to have too much on the core book buffet than not enough. Raze and burn later.Thinking about REALLY delving into the magic mechanics (with an eye towards combat and the Chi / Psy thing). Of course, that means looking into forging the good ‘ole character sheet.I’m at the point where I gird up the loins of my mind, take a deep breath, and push my way into the writing… Aug 25:First version of the character sheet is done. Starting to scribble notes all over it. I can already see that I’m going to watch the Chi and psychic powers (don’t over-focus on them! The books underlying theme is magic / radical / artistic thinking facing off against the sterility of science / ‘established ideas’!!!!!). A couple of goals over the next few days is throwing together some spells / magic items, and to start copying the magic notes over from my wiki page… Aug 26:Another day in the world of combat rules! Might give a few minutes to expanding the magic list as well…


Aug 27:Still at it. Specifics of combat and setting up unique templates for the physical, mystical, psychic, and chi elements…


Aug 28:Basement flooded yesterday. 9+ inches of rain hit the area in the wee hours of the a.m.That was fun.Back to the therapy of writing. Today's plan: write stuff. Probably combat…

I'll put in more stuff next week. Thanks for stopping by!
-Dave

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

About "Ashland"...

It dawned on me that should this book series be published, there will be certain folks who start pointing out the flaws in the facts about Ashland. Being the kind of guy who likes to stay out in front of such issues, I thought that I would set a couple of things straight... "Ashland does not have that geography" Yep... and nope. From the macro point of view, most of the Ashland in this series is written to the scale of our Real World. However, there are changes in the landscape caused by a ritual cast a few centuries prior. Greenshore is located on a plot of land that has a much larger (and much less soggy) footprint than its Real World counterpart. The Old Hollow is in a lumber region lifted up out of the marshy landscape by the creation of the Omni Magna some few hundred years ago. The artist guild's mall is located on public park in town. Many of these changes came about from the arrival of the various mystical fonts, which spurred landscape or developmental chan...
Post a Comment
Read more

Letting the Inspirations Happen

Hi everyone! Well, the first week of NaNoWriMo is winding down and I'm hitting the marks (so far!). It's been a very writer-y (Dave English) year. Looking back at last year's NaNo, I've come to realize that I have put together three novels / novelettes. This has been the year for me to 'put it on paper'. Not just the planning and the copious number of notebooks and Word files. Write it! Has been my mantra. I've been preaching this at my bi-monthly Writer's Block down at the Niederkorn Library and (up to 2017) and personally, I've had varying degrees of success at that myself. This year has been different. The question is 'why?'. The big thing is that I've moved from keeping my structure and research in various places, shifting to putting all research and planning down in the document that will (eventually) become my final edit. One-stop writing, as it were. The other big thing is that I've been open to any and all thin...
Post a Comment
Read more

NaNoWriMo 2017... Working the Numbers

Hello all! National Novel Writers Month is coming up in November and this is the time of the year where I like to start plotting out my goals for that month! First off, although we are given a full month to complete our 50K word project, reality has proven (time and again) that this author really has about 25 days to make it happen. That works out to a clean 2,000 words a day to hit the goal. (I aim for the 2,200 to plan for the burn-out / sickness / to-do-list days) Secondly, This year is going to be different from other years. NaNoWriMo is a time for me to play around in new arenas. I try different genres, or new story arcs. This year I'm sticking to the Greenshore world. It's been too much fun plotting and writing out the first five books of the series and that is where my brain naturally goes to. Third, in writing the Greenshore books, I've got Book 1 down to beta reader edits and Book 2 at a VERY rough draft of 27,000 words. My plan for NaNoWriMo is to hammer...
Post a Comment
Read more