Strife Liberated!

You will know already if you were a backer of the project, but Wild Skies: Liberating Strife is done and set out to everybody. It’s available at fine retailers everywhere and has even been reviewed. It’s March and I feel like I have not come up for air since I started putting the Liberating Strife manuscript together in August of last year. Well, I am taking this moment to breathe. *three deep breaths*

When we chose to set the first Wild Skies book in Europe we always knew “The America Book” was going to be the next one we did. Being two “Yanks” ourselves, it only made sense. We took the same assumptions about the period and the technology level we want for the Wild Skies world and adjusted everything to an America context. What if everything Nikola Tesla said he could make actually got made? What if there was no “trust busting” and bigger and bigger companies unified into one mega-corporation? What if American politics of the period was stanch isolationism backed by the highest level of tech in the world – all leased to the army and air navy by said mega-corporation? Well, that’s the America we present in Liberating Strife.

That was what Brandon and I brought to the table. This was bigger than our previous project with two additional writers brought on. To over-simplify their contributions, John Kennedy was our “company and dissidents” specialist and Josh Sinsapaugh was our “culture and counter-culture” expert. The depth of research those two went to and the results they produced fill me with joy. Instead of just giving players a bunch of American tech and some American animals, this book paints an almost complete picture of the United States of American in this alternate reality diesel punk time line. Corporate structure of the United Dennington Trust; it’s there. Boardroom politics at the highest levels; covered. The popular and underground music scenes; explained. Traveling the roadways and airways; yes. All the countries of North America; have their own section. This is a 130 page book and it’s page 67 before you get to anything with game statistics; before that it’s all world information. Considering three of the four main writers grew up with Palladium’s Rifts* Wold Books, maybe it’s not a surprise.

The book also has a lot of great art in it. Showcasing art is another thing we get from the game books which are our roots. The cover by Chuck Walton and Eduardo Domínguez is another great one. Inside, in addition to another slate of great pieces from Mike Mumah of animal people doing all the things (shout out to my favorite, the Jazz Age party on page 87) and Aspen Aten doing another map for us and Brian Manning’s work on the weapons and vehicles, we have 30s-looking national parks posters from Steven Wu and action scenes by Steven Cummings. All together Wild Skies: Liberating Strife doesn’t just give you some stuff from America, it lets you play Wild Skies in America.

Case in point: In January I ran a game of Wild Skies using some adventure seeds we had sent to Kick Starter backers right after we funded and the pre-gen characters in the book. I was laying awake in bed the night before thinking about the game and trying to account for everything the players might want to do. I knew my game was full of people who had signed up specifically to play Wild Skies – I knew they would want to test the full potential of the game. As I lay there, I feel like I went through all the stages up to cosmic brain, because with all the material in the book flashing through my head and all the sessions I have run over the last few years I knew I could handle any situation which came up. If they wanted to go on a road trip, or try to take over a night club or ride the rails, or become air pirates, or stay in the work camp and investigate the original mystery, I could run that. When it came to it the next day, I could indeed run it and we had a great time. People like a game I helped create! It’s an amazing feeling.

Wild Skies: Liberating Strife is Wet Ink Games product number WIG-108, which means there are 9 Wild Skies products out there now. I haven’t talked about them all here so be sure to check them all out on DriveThruRPG.

Overview: CAPERS by Craig Campbell

Another project I was involved with has reached print. CAPERS is “a super-powered game of gangsters in the Roaring Twenties.” The game first came to my attention almost a year ago when the creator released a preview version to IGDN members. I don’t tend to get too excited about super heroes, but with my head deeply enmeshed in the 1920s and the whole interwar period because of Wild Skies, I decided to see what someone else had done with that time period. All the Jazz Age stuff seemed pretty accurate. Good. Like AMP: Year One before it, I found CAPERS isn’t about super heroes in the comic book sense at all, but about super-powered people. I can get onboard with that. Then reading through the rules, I was fully convinced by the mechanisms. The game uses playing cards for resolution. I ran the sample adventure for my game group. I backed the project on Kickstarter. I met the creator at a convention; turns out he’s a great guy. To cement my involvement with the game, I ended up writing a small amount of content for the game. I even wrote my own adventure and ran it for a local open gaming event. CAPERS is a game that has convinced me to play along at every step. Now that the book is out, I want to talk about it.

The CAPERS book is 163 full-color pages packed with theme. Craig, (I’ll just go ahead and call the designer Craig because we’ve become friendly since we met in person) has done a great job to hit all the notes right to immerse players in that past age. The use of cards for resolution, the appearance of poker chips on the character sheets, Art Deco stylings throughout the book, and choice of a few key game terms like Moxie (a currency players expend to push situations in their favor), to a glossary of ‘20s slang all conspire to put players in the world of the setting. Put on some jazz music, play on a felt topped table and you are there. The book itself is well-printed and there are a ton of extras – don’t have any in hand myself yet, but CAPERS themed playing cards, Moxie cards, maps, GM screen, and adventures are all available. Lots of stuff for you if you like physical bits at your table.

I want to talk about the art quickly. It is all by Beth Varni. She has done a good job with the period look. Full color means all the art is digitally painted so it all pops on the page. Something I also appreciate is the choice to display counterfactual diversity. Not that there weren’t women and African Americans in the U.S. in the 1920s, just that they don’t show up in most of the images of the time. Varni’s art shows people of all sorts doing all sorts of things. Black casino owners, women with tommy guns, female Federal agents, Hispanic and Asian names and faces… It’s great to see this kind of inclusion. It isn’t just the art, either. Gender and ethnic diversity is built into all the NPCs. Well done, NerdBurger.

At the center of gameplay is a straightforward card-based mechanism. The Game Master sets a Target Score for whatever Checks players attempt (average is 8). The player then draws from their personal deck of standard playing cards trying to draw a card which meets or exceeds the TS. Jack-Ace serve as 11-14. Players may draw a number of cards equal to the applicable Trait. For example, if a character with 3 Agility wants to do a backflip (TS 10), they have three chances (called Card Count) to draw a card which is ten or higher, with the ability to stay at any time. A lot of nuance comes into the system around this core card draw system. Skills and spending Moxie add to Card Count, the suit of the card the player stays on can add a Boon or Complication, jokers are either very good or very bad, plus a few other things. In practice I have found a lot of tension comes in when a player is looking at a success with a Complication and wondering if they should draw again knowing they could just a likely draw a success with a Boon or end up with a total failure. It is a great system, which is both easy to learn and fast-playing at the table. I believe Craig even put the rule set out under a creative commons license as CAPERS CORE, so it’s out there for anyone to use.

The other things in the game are a primer on 1920s culture and bootlegging gangs, a section of powers (which work the same as other Checks) with 25 minor and 15 major powers which includes Cold Beam, Flight, Goo Generation, Probability Manipulation, Super Strength and Weather Manipulation, extensive setting information for gangster hot spots like Atlantic City, Chicago and New York City; with ten other cities profiled as well (my contribution was to write four of these cities, including my current hometown of Louisville, KY), some ideas for playing in alternate worlds like Capek’s Earth, the Flipside and Omega Earth, plus extensive indexes so you can find just about whatever you are looking for. It’s a great book, very well-produced, and it’s a great game. I recommend it to anyone who likes either the 1920s or super-powers and to anyone looking for a lighter to middle-weight game (similar to Savage Worlds in complexity) which offers a pleasing alternative to dice-based systems.

If CAPERS doesn’t seem like your thing, NerdBurger is raising funds now for a GM-less horror-comedy game called Die Laughing in which players create a very bad and very deadly horror movie. Check that out too.

I Wrote a Rifts World Book

My writing partner Brandon and I submitted a manuscript we called “The Sovietski Sourcebook” to Palladium Books on the last day of 2012. We knew then it takes a while for a publisher to take all the steps which lead to a book being published. We know that better than ever now that we have our own games company. At last all the steps are complete and Rifts World Book 36: Sovietski has been released! If you are a fan of Palladium, you have seen this coming for a while now. The “raw preview” edition of the book was released in summer 2016. Since then it has regularly been featured in the company’s weekly update. Even knowing it was coming, it was still a special moment to see my name on the cover of a Rifts book. Thanks to Kevin Siembieda, the staff of Palladium Books and all the artists for bringing this book to fruition.

What is the Sovietski?

Rifts is a role playing game set roughly 300 years in the future which assumes humans entered a Golden Age of technology before a nuclear exchange on the Winter Solstice provoked a magical apocalypse which opened the Rifts, magical gateways to every possible elsewhere, and demons and magic beings flooded in; destroying nearly every human civilization. In the time period of the game monster kingdoms and human nations vie with each other for control of the earth. Many human cultures have adopted magic or revived ancient mystic arts, but just as many are committed to technology and cyborgs and power armor are as common as wizards and psychics.

There was a new Soviet Union at the height of the Golden Age and the few people who survived the apocalypse in their bunkers managed to pass their brand of soviet communism on to their descendants. These descendants are the Sovietski, a small (mostly) human nation built on what used to be the great cities of eastern Russia. As the rest of Russia is ravaged by cyborg warlords, ancient demons and gargoyles, the Sovietski keeps itself safe with mandatory military service of all citizens with many converted to cyborgs. They also have tanks, hover tanks, fighter jets and walled cities. Many fans of Rifts like the high technology aspects of the setting so there are plenty of vehicles, cyborg bodies, weapons and cyborg character classes included in the book.

The aspect of the book I am happiest with, however, is our focus on the culture of the Sovietski. We included quotes from communist figures to illustrate the ideals of the Sovietski or to present its irony. We described the unique cultural feel of each of the different cities. We wrote about religious enclaves and festivals and made a random roll table for chance encounters with strangers. We included some of the non-humans which also call the Sovietski home. All of these elements (hopefully) give players the ability to play characters from the Sovietski, not just play with the equipment of the Sovietski. What have the people had to give up to survive in the hostile world of Rifts? What joys have they found for themselves despite the sacrifices?

Why did I want to write about it?

This Sovietski book was something of the perfect project for me. Brandon introduced me to Rifts twenty years ago and I have liked the expansive world of the game ever since. We have role played together since high school and have done so weekly for almost ten years. I enjoy reading about Russia’s history and we both keep up with the news from the country. Working together to write a game book set in Rifts Russia was a natural extension of all our previous experience with Palladium and our shared interests.

As a creator, I always respond to things I like by wanting to add to them. While almost every corner of the Rifts globe has been talked about, there are plenty of places where the coverage has been thin. The “New Soviet Nation” was one of these areas. It was introduced in Rifts World Book 17: Warlords of Russia, with some extra information in Rifts World Book 18: Mystic Russia; about thirty pages in total, and most of that cyborg bodies and vehicles. The nation existed, but its history was not detailed, its political systems were not explored and the motivations of its people were left blank. The challenge was to add the detail we wanted to the setting without contradicting what had already been established in previous books. I think we managed it well.

The project has an important personal aspect to it as well. I have always been interested in the Soviet Union. I attribute this to being old enough to remember the end of the Cold War and the break up of the USSR but too young to have really had any understanding of events at the time. For most of my life, America’s fallen rival has loomed in my imagination as a mysterious shadow of “something important” which is ultimately unknowable because it is gone. I cultivated an appreciation for the symbols of the USSR during my teen years because teens are always looking for ways to mark themselves as unique by defying expectations. In collage when I began to study the broad sweep of Russian history and leaned about the machinations and proxy wars between East and West which define the Cold War, I learned there is little, if anything, to appreciate in the government or leaders of the Soviet Union. Instead, I came to appreciate the remarkable capacity for survival possessed by the Russian people. They have overcome a barely hospitable landscape, defeated invasion forces and endured some of the most brutal government repression in history. I find myself having made something of a complete circuit with this project. My interest in detaining a fictional version of the Soviet Union has only made me appreciate all the more the people who struggled against the real Soviet Union. It is the heroic spirit of those people I wanted to capture. This book is my celebration of survival against all odds. It is my eulogy for the millions killed in Soviet era purges. It is an expression of my hope for a better future for the Russian people.

A role playing game book may not be fine art, but I like to think Rifts World Book 36: Sovietski is in the same tradition as the many works by Russian poets, composers, writers and musicians which have been expressing the same hope for centuries.

Wild Skies is Flying High

This past weekend we celebrated the official launch of Wild Skies: Europa Tempest with two gaming events. First was open gaming day at The Louisville Game Shop where we played Wild Skies with backers and gamers new to the game. Then at Nerd Louisville’s Slur Your Role XXXVII we ran two games and introduced even more of the local gamer crowd to our game. It was a great weekend. All the games went smoothly and everyone seemed to have fun. It is great encouragement to see people new to the game and the system jump right in and get how everything works. It is very satisfying to have the printed book in hand to show off art, call for random rolls from our tables and read out the bonuses listed for all the skills. We got to answer additional questions about the game from a good number of people who came to check it out. All this bodes well for the future of the game.

Brandon and I are working to put our book out there in as many places as possible. It’s time for some shameless self-promotion!

You can take a narrated tour of the printed proof for yourself. We will be making some more videos in time, so watch that space.

Wild Skies got a nice introduction from Geek Watch.

We appeared on the weekly #RPGnet creator live chat and our conversation with the folks there has been archived. It was a two hour chat and we got into all aspects of Wild Skies including inspirations, game mechanics, the setting and what comes next. RPGnet is a registered trademark of Skotos Tech, used with their permission.

Brandon appeared on a podcast by the fine folk of Creative Play.

We have also been featured on the blog of the Indie Game Developers Network. We are members of IGDN and Wild Skies: Europa Tempest will be for sale at GenCon at the IGDN booth (#2437). You can get your copy there. IGDN’s blog will be featuring member’s products throughout the run up to GenCon so check back to see what other exciting things are happening in the world of small-scale games production.

That’s everything I know about so far, but Wet Ink Games has more events and podcast recordings scheduled so there will be more to report in time.

The Launch of Something

Wild Skies: Europa Tempest is for sale! It has been almost two years since the KickStarter, over three since I started work on my parts of the rules system and something like seven years since Brandon and I first cooked up the setting. We have PDF copies for download right now. We are getting the proofs of the hardcopy version and there will be both hardcover and softcover copies available soon.

There are a lot of reasons to be happy about reaching this point. First off, I have to say, the book looks great! I keep saying it looks like a “real” game book. We made a role playing game! I give a lot of credit to Knox, who did all the layout work. He took it upon himself to make the flavor texts I wrote look like the type of document they are supposed to look like. He played with fonts and layouts to make advertisements, medical reports and letters look like pieces of ephemera from the world and not just descriptions of this fictional world. The art is another big part of the success of this product. To work with so many talented artists and get such good pieces to illustrate the concepts and rules adds more than I can tell to the overall impression we have managed to put together a real product.

This first product for Wet Ink Games has been a non-stop education process for myself and Brandon. I’ve written manuscripts before, and seen my words published by game companies in the past. This is, in fact, the third book-length project I have written with Brandon. All the editing work was stuff we were used to, even if there was more to do this time around. Beyond that it was all unknown paths for me. Before now, my part was only to get the words on the page. I’ve never had to (maybe I should say “gotten to”) work with artists before. I didn’t have to think about layout. There was no process of back and forth about column length and where information appeared on a page. I didn’t have to pay attention to details like whether a title was underlined or bold. That was always someone else’s job. Putting the Europa Tempest book out there means we have overcome all the challenges we didn’t know we would have when we decided to do this book. I know it’s an achievement.

I hesitate to add a “but” to this post, but there is a “but.” Firstly, this Wild Skies project has been a big effort and has taken up so much of the background (and sometimes the foreground) of my life for years. I know getting this far is not the end; it’s just one step in the process. We aren’t finished with this first book until the hard copies are out. The KickStarter isn’t fulfilled until be do a couple more supplements, which are already in process. Then there’s the promotion events we have lined up. Provided all this goes well, we have plans for the next book in the Wild Skies game line and plenty of ideas for more books after that. This no time to stop and celebrate. There is no end, nothing ever ends. Secondly, and I want to be brief about this one, there is something very melancholy for me about seeing all the work of the last three years boiled down to a link and a price tag. I’m not sure I understand my own feelings on this, but there it is.

To bring the mood back up, let me once again say, Wild Skies: Europa Tempest is for sale now! Pick it up from DriveThruRPG.
Follow the project on KickStarter.

A Call for Dialogue

I have worked out how the novel will end. As I’ve written some themes have emerged which I did not except. This was always a novel about political turmoil, but it has certainly been influenced by the political outcomes of this week. Other themes are just part of the normal process of sitting down to craft a story. I did not plan on exactly how Thutmose would relate to his siblings or how Ahtinanum would be brought into the plot to make Thutmose pharaoh. I also did not expect my priestess to be the one who was cynical about religion. Perhaps it is cliché and maybe I am bringing impacted a bit by The Last Days of Pompeii. Whatever the case, I’ve written it so she is now. There’s no time to go backwards in NaNoWriMo.

Eloy, my friend and the head honcho over at Third Eye Games, has taken up the November challenge for the first time this year. He’s writing a screen play. He mentioned the other day that a screen play is so much more about dialogue then other writing. That has been in my mind, and I have noticed I don’t put a lot of dialogue into my NaNoWriMos. I like description of places, actions and feelings but I rarely make my characters interact. I guess that’s a blind spot for me an introvert, or it’s just weakness as writer I need to work on. Anyway, I wrote some dialogue I’m pretty happy with today. Here you go.

Thutmose sat on the low wall of the courtyard where he had just completed his vigorous morning routine. He had run the length of the yard several times, lifted the stones, pushed his body up from the ground by his arms and several other exercises he had learned. He had worked himself until he could not work any more and now he sat on the wall exhausted. He relished this quiet moment. As he sat in the morning sun feeling the sweat on his back dry and skin of his face begin to finally cool he had no thoughts. He had outrun everything. He was not thinking about the clouds he had left behind nor was he thinking about the monumental project which lay before him. He was thinking about nothing for a few silent, quiet moments.

Then the world he could never outrun for long caught up to him and he heard the rustle of fabric and the hiss of a sandal on sand. He did not look up. Let this fragment of the world outside his resting mind speak first. In the darkness behind his closed eyelids Thutmose could not miss the sounds of someone sitting beside him. An older person who eased down onto the wall with a grunt of old age exertion. The one to intrude on his space did not speak. Thutmose could almost feel the shape and face of the person in his mind’s eye, but identity of the figure still escaped him. Still they both waited.

“Thutmose, my son...” It was Shamenkmet. “Tell me what troubles you.”

“Do you not know?” Thutmose’s voice was almost a whisper.

“I know many troubling things,” the wise old man admitted. “You must be the one to speak it.”

“My father...”

“You haven’t seen your father in years. Your relationship never had gave you life. His imminent death does not trouble you now.”

“I do not know if I will be able to uncover the body of the sphinx.”

“Closer. You are worried about your project. Speak the truth of it.”

Thutmose sat up straight and looked into the face of his teacher, healer and guide. The man’s face was serene, as always. His thin lips curved into a subtle smile and his eyes flashed and danced like fish rising to the surface of the pond of his face. His clean-shaven head was covered by a hood made of part of the long wrap of cloth he wore as his only outer garment. He had pulled his feet up under himself. He looked almost like a chunk of rock broken in a odd way and laying at an odd angle such as one could find below cliff faces in the southern desert. Old and darkened by the desert patina in places and bright white along the newly broken edges. Shamenkmet’s fish eyes kept roiling in his patina face and kept begging Thutmose for an answer. He knew he could not keep a secret from this man.

Thutmose leaned closer to this teacher and he felt small and helpless like a child caught filtching honey from the family supply. “I did not speak with honesty upon the matter of Khepri’s statue.”

“You lied?” There was no value judgement in the words. It was simply an observation.

“I lied.”

Shamenkmet nodded with satisfaction. He snaked a thin arm tipped with long fingers out of his wrappings and gripped Thutmose’s bowed head. He pulled the younger man forward forcefully and Thutmose let his head be dragged. Shamenkmet held their foreheads together and looked awkwardly up and forward into Thutmose’s eyes. “Remember, my son, commitment to truth is the highest ideal.” His voice hissed, “The highest!” Thutmose winced and the disgust in his master’s voice. Shamenkmet returned to a whisper. “Maat will weigh your heart someday. Do not weigh it down.” He released the younger man from his grip and caressed the the side of his student’s face as his hand slid away.

Thutmose felt emotion pull at him like carrion birds picked at a corpse. He had been slain with simple words. He pushed the image from his mind. Part of him knew it would not change what his teacher had said but he mumbled, “I acted on an opportunity to serve Khepri.”

“You choose the easy path.”

“I did. How else could I have achieved my commission so quickly?”

“Legacies are not built quickly of inferior products. Do you want to erect a house of dry reeds or a temple of stone?”

Thutmose could not answer. Each of Shamenkmet’s statements came quickly like a series of blows in a melee. He knew where to strike and he delivered crushing damage. Thutmose again saw himself as a corpse being feasted upon by vultures. This time he rested with the image for a moment. His sick father, the false hope he had given him, the chance arrival at the same time as his two brothers. It has seemed like a perfect conjunction of events. If he was Khepri, the light of the morning sun, as he felt and as Amenemhat had said, he should have acted more carefully and more precisely. The dawn came at the perfect time, but its influence was soft and gentle. It was full of promise but not yet full of power. He had done wrong and acted against the request of the god who had spoken to him.

Thutmose looked back into Shamenkmet’s face and he was there, as serene as ever watching his pupil work out the impacts of his actions for himself. Thutmose reached out and said, “Father, please forgive...”

Shamenkmet cut him off with an upraised hand. “Do not ask my forgiveness. You are yet a pupil. You are to err and I am to correct you. You must ask forgiveness of those you have offended. Pharaoh and the god who asked you for protection.”

Thutmose nodded. Then questions came to him. “How do you know I saw a god in a dream? How did you know I lied?”

“I attend upon The Living Image of Horus from time to time. I was there when you spoke with your father and I could read on your face your lie.” Thutmose said nothing, he looked across the court yard. For a moment he did not see the white limestone walls and the palace the and flag stones of the court. He saw again the desert. The desolate landscape. His teacher’s voice reached him through the emptiness like a voice on the wind. “Even if you had not retold the dream yourself, I saw it in your face when you first entered the room. You have seen a god. That vision is part of you now. It has changed you.”

Right now my word count is 19,129 words.
By now I should have 18,337 words.

Wild Skies Character Primer Updated

As I discussed previously, Wild Skies: Europa Tempest has been my major on-going project for almost a year now. Brandon and I are happy to show off some of the progress we have made on the project. The Character Primer 1.2 is now available! The document contains everything needed to create a Wild Skies character; information about the nine attributes, all forty animal types and dozens of animal abilities, twenty career choices, rules for the Moral Compass and ten different party affiliations. This is not the complete game. Histories of various nations, vehicles, equipment, combat mechanics and full skill descriptions are not included. Still, the Primer should provide a taste of the theme and the kind of game we are making. Do have a look if you are at all interested in an alternate history, anthropomorphic, diesel-punk, pulp adventure role-playing game. If you still want to get in on the creation of this game, contact us. Keep watching the horizon, because more is on the way. Thanks.

Crafting Alternate History

Since our Kickstarter for Wild Skies: Europa Tempest was successful back in October last year, Brandon and I have been working on the book. Most of the rules have been at last ironed out (more on that in time) and it is time to turn back to our setting and get it all fleshed out. That is what I have been mainly working on for the last two weeks. It has been great! I love crafting alternate history. From the beginning our jumping-off point was always, “What if the First World War never ended?” With that as the basis it's been my job to turn that core idea into a description of the dozen or so years since the 11 November 1918 date we are familiar with from real history.

We are well aware we are not the first to offer an answer to the question, “What if the First World War never ended?” Harry Turtledove, Michael Moorcock and the makers of Tannhäuser, among many others, have all been over this terrain before. Throughout these last two weeks, I have been thinking a lot about one of my literary heroes; Lawrence Watt-Evans. He once wrote he's never been into writing historical fiction because he's always troubled by the why. Why that particular divergence point in human history? Why that particular version of events from the infinitely many possible versions? My answer can only be; we wanted to create something broadly familiar, but unlike other story worlds we have seen before. We started with a few assumptions about our setting. The first being the on-going war led to revolutions in all the major participants. From there, we assume Bolsheviks would not win the revolution in Russia (at least not outright) and fascists would win a revolution in France. We didn't want Germany to be the Third Reich ten years ahead of time. We did want Britain to lean Orwellian. The United States never entered the Great War.

Excepting those basic assumptions I have been digging through histories of the era and looking at events which followed the Armistice to find little incidents and factoids both to justify and to inform our setting. In our previous projects Brandon and I have both taken echoes of real cultural fragments and recast them in new ways within our fictional settings. Working backward through the list above we take the pro-Wilson 1916 campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war,” and just say he did. Not even the sinking of Lusitania brought American troops to Europe, thus everything which follows is different. We have a lot of ideas for America, but they will not be the focus of Europa Tempest.

The countries of Europe have been our biggest focus. As I said, I'm very happy with the way things have come together. Churchill, famous for his role in WWII, was also in the government during WWI. He fell from power over how the war had been fought. Now take that to the extreme. If the whole government of 1918 is replaced because no one in the country is happy about how the war has turned out you become able to posit the kind of drastic changes Orwell envisioned thirty years early. With Germany we have focused more on a return to pre-war war fever than moving forward to the Nazi bugbear. Kaiser Wilhelm II left at the end of the War. In our setting he has returned to power as an bit of an older and wiser figure. He's not as eager for war in our 1930s setting as he was in 1914. He's the voice of reason now trying to keep in line the newer generation eager for war. It's this reuse in a different form of all the part of history you may have heard of that really gets us excited as creators.

Our inspiration for our other main countries comes less from inversions of specific people and more from ideologies. The basic inspiration for a fascist France comes right out of the Second World War period. I read a few books looking at the tensions within the Third Republic and the origins of the Vichy regime. To make the story very short, the same kind of militant nationalism which became fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany existed in France as well. It is not hard to imagine a cadre of young fascists forming in France during the war and not much harder to imagine an opportunity for them to seize power in the aftermath of the war. Speaking of cadres seizing power, in Russia we have declared the civil war following the October Revolution is still on-going even into the 1930s. Reds and Whites and many other factions are still trying to work out who will win. Our vision of Russia is perhaps the least possible because we haven't pushed anything which helped the Whites or which hurt the Reds. We just want it this way.

I haven't explained much about the setting, I know. This was only supposed to be the briefest mention of some of the bits of the story I've been working on recently. If anything mentioned here does interest you, please have a look at the Kickstarter page. This project is funded and moving along and you can still jump on by contacting us there. Until next time.

AMPed Up!

Another project of mine has come to fruition. Third Eye Games has just published United Human Front: Affiliation Guide for AMP Year Two for its AMP: Year One game line. In the game, AMP stands for Accelerated Mutant Potential. When the game first came out I wasn't too interested because I'm not a huge superhero fan. I miss-understood things. AMP is not a superhero game, it's a super-powers game. Maybe it's not that big a difference, but it's an important one. AMP has plenty of “faster than a speeding bullet” without a lot of spandex costumes. When Eloy asked me to write for the game and I actually read the book I liked how dark it was. AMP is full of 1990s-era Marvel-style angst; “they hate us, yet we are dedicated to saving them from themselves.” It's also full of government distrust, secret machinations and downright nastiness which seem to have been pulled from the headlines of recent years. A good setting for a game.

I was asked to write a guidebook for members of the United Human Front. These are the people doing the hating of the AMPs. Explicitly. At first I was not excited. No one wants to be stuck writing about the one-dimensional “bad guys.” Well, I didn't anyway. I took it as a writing challenge, how can I make the anti-mutant faction in a mutation-based super-powers game into something which seems positive? How can I make the UHF a viable option for players picking their character's affiliation? How can I make this faction into something more than a stereotype?

I decided to focus on two things. Conspiracy theories and the kind of anti-government domestic terrorism America saw in the 1990s. McVeigh, Kaczynski, Koresh; they all came from within American culture. That part of the culture hasn't gone away, either. There are even more conspiracies afoot than ever these days. I tried to present the UHF members as thinking people (maybe thinking too much). They have looked at all the evidence and come to their own conclusions. Two members don't have to agree on what AMPs really are, or who created them in the first place to agree they are a potential threat to decent folk everywhere. AMPs are people who can turn into fire or smash rocks with their hands and who are drawn to fight with each other whenever they meet. That's dangerous! The United Human Front is circling the wagons and defending what they know. It's a noble position, in a way. I've also put out the idea not everyone who looks down their nose at an AMP is actually a member of the official UHF organization. This lets GMs use human antagonists claiming UHF affiliation who aren't actually acting by the more careful and deliberate means of the UHF hierarchy. Since the game establishes the UHF was founded by a geneticist, I played up that element too. The UHF top tier people know AMPs are different on a genetic level. It's not technically wrong to say they aren't human. Maybe the man on the street uses it as a cover for racism and fearmongering, but not all members of UHF take the same lessons from the founder's genetic tests.

I've tried to weave the idea of conflicting views of reality into the adventure which forms part of the Affiliation Guide. I have crafted stories as a GM for my weekly game group and I tried to write part of a choose-your-own adventure one time, so I didn't think an RPG adventure would be hard to write. I was wrong. I've not written an RPG adventure for publication before and I found it difficult to present a story where the players were forced to question their own definitions of human and mutant. My first attempt was roughly twice as long as it was supposed to be! I had trouble creating characters players were supposed to care about. I had trouble accounting for everything a group of players might do. I wanted to have multiple paths so different UHF groups with different visions of what it means to be “defenders of humanity” could enjoy the adventure. Ultimately a lot of the branching pathways had to come out to bring the thing down to size. The manuscript I delivered has been polished to a nice gleam by Eloy and the rest of his team. It can only improve when the creators of the game give it a once-over, right? I love seeing ideas I labored on over my keyboard turn into pages with proper layouts and illustrations. Well done, Third Eye Games!

If you want to check it out, the United Human Front Affiliation Guide is available now.
If you want to get started with the AMP game, check out AMP: Year One.
You can also back the Kickstarter for the latest book in the series; AMP: Year Three.

Off to a Good Start

First of all, I want to point out the Kickstarter we've been running has ended with great success! We ended with 139% of our goal raised. Thank you to all our backers! This is a great showing for a first-time company. We'll have the comic, custom dice, two bonus adventures and forty different animals because of the stretch goals we reached. I'll be posting about this project here throughout the year as Brandon and I get everything written and tested and ready to go, but you can follow along on the updates page as well.

The timing has worked out great. Just as the Kickstarted ended on 31 October, NaNoWriMo began on 1 November. I am very happy with the progress so far. Having a good idea has been a great help. I've chugged along to a little over the minimum word count each day so far. I'm not over my count for the day yet today, but the day is far from over. I say I had a plan, but that isn't really true. I had no idea what the plot of the story was going to be beyond the vaguest rise and fall of the action. The only think I was clear on was the journal format. That has been going well. I've always loved the books where part of the story was in the “extra” information on the page. Information hidden in the footnotes or encoded in the dates of diary entries has always appealed to me. I am getting to do that here. Somehow it's great fun to skip three days in the dates and come back in with my protagonist making an oblique reference to what else he has been up to. That is where my plot is slowly building up. It's like Shakespeare, a little, where all the action happens off stage and you just have the characters talking about how they feel about the action in soliloquy.

Not that I'm writing Shakespeare, but I am tying to affect an “old-timey” style. My story is supposed to take place in 1648. I don't know if I have an accurate “old-timey” vocabulary for that year. In fact, I would say I don't. My word choice is much more Nineteenth Century, I'm sure. I can't actually think of anything I have read from the Seventeenth Century other than the King James Version of the Bible. The great thing about NaNoWriMo, though, is that getting it “right” doesn't much matter on the first pass. If it sounds old, it'll read as “old.” I can always go back and fix it to the right kind of old if I develop the novel beyond the writing of it this month!

Here's a taste:

I have re-read again the passage from Goloksh. So convenient to have it written out so near at had. Again, I am drawn to de Chapallon's straight-forward amateur's method of simply asking the crystal whence its power derives. The practiced magus often shies away from direct confrontations with power because he has come to know their hazards. I suspect the first small text I transcribed under its influence is the same text he records. With Goloksh I pine for the proof of this theory by the actual page itself! On what misapplied hearth did that great artifact go up in the halls of Savoy? Alas. As I say, I believe I have begun as he did and this text we both produced is the answer to the question he posed. In short it is the proper appellation of the power to which the medium of this black stone opens the way.

Right now my word count is 6700 words.
By now I should have 6668 words.

Fully Funded

Big, big news! The Kickstarter for Wild Skies: Europa Tempest has reached its initial goal of $8,000! As of now the project is go. Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far! From this point on, everything else pledged in going toward the stretch goals. That's the cool extra stuff we want to add. Let me be clear, when Brandon and I planned this out beforehand we decided the initial funding level would allow us to the make the game we want to make, with all the art and world information needed to understand the game. The stretch goals are just that; stretches, extras, icing on the already delicious cake.

The first stretch goal is a bonus adventure written by Brandon, and the second is a short comic set in the Wild Skies world by accomplished industry artist Mike Mumah. Mumah played in the sessions where Wild Skies was first developed so he knows the setting. I would be surprised if his character does not feature prominently. Ever seen a giant sheep leap out of a flaming airship falling into the sea? You won't unless we reach that stretch goal. Then more factions, more adventures, even custom diesel punk-themed dice. My point is these are not “make the book complete” stretch goals, these are truly bonuses which will only increase the fun and awesome factors of this project. If you haven't put your two cents toward the project yet, there's never been a better time.

If you want to read more about the game, there is a growing list of updates on the Kickstarter page where we have dished out a lot of information about the setting and the game mechanics. If you want to read even more after that, you can read the chat log from last week when Brandon and I were guests of #rpgnet for an old school IRC Q+A. Really!

Wild Skies: Europa Tempest Raising Funds Now

It's been a while. I haven't been idle, though. This has been a very busy year for writing so far. I have been working on a lot of projects at once in rather piecemeal fashion. I've had a couple writing projects on at any one time and I've also been doing a lot of research for ongoing and future projects. I aim to work through discussing all the things I've been up to over the next couple weeks.

The biggest thing in my writer's life right now is my long-time writing partner and I have decided to launch our own role-playing game company, write our own game system and start our own game line! This is huge news for me. We don't exactly aim to become market leaders, and we know it's a crowded market, but I think we have something no one else it offering. If you want all the details, quit reading this and head over to Kickstarter right now and check out Wild Skies: Europa Tempest. If you are like me and you want to know what you are going to find before you follow a link, I'll describe the project.

This has been a project long in development. Brandon, my friend, writing buddy, brother-in-law and all-around fellow nerd, cooked the basics of the setting up a few years ago. We wanted to play a certain anthropomorphic animals game, but the setting didn't quite suit us. We developed a new setting for that game's rules. We imaged a world where the First World War didn't end in an armistice, but in civil wars in all the combatants. The 1920s were complete chaos across Europe. Our game is set in the 1930s when things are more stable, but borders and governments are very different. I started with a map of every division line Europe has experienced in the Twentieth Century and starting filling in new country names. Brandon wanted “diesel punk” so big engines and well-muscled mechanics feature prominently. We've put in flying airships as well for a hyper-reality one of our friends called “historical steroids.” The fact that everyone is an animal allowed for so many animal jokes. One of our mantras for playing the game was never let the opportunity for a good animal joke pass. I don't know about other people but we love pirates who are rats, elephant security guards who never forget and a rhino and a tick bird who work together as an assassin team.

After playing several adventures in this setting, we moved on to other games, but we began to develop a set of our own rules to use with our new setting. Unlike some other rpg-systems, our game isn't focused on “winning” by dealing the most damage or earning the most XP. We've put the storytelling first and foremost. Our experience system rewards players for advancing the story lines they choose for their characters. We call this mechanic the Moral Compass. Character creation is point-buy for stats, two careers are chosen which determine the character's skills. The rolls in the game are percentile (D100) but skills are buffed by additional six-sided dice called Skill Dice. The more training, the more dice, the better chance a character can ensure a favorable result on the role. There are 30 animal types to choose from each with a unique mix of animal abilities. So, now that you know more about it, follow the link to get all the details and see some of the art we've already commissioned from the game. Help make Wild Skies: Europa Tempest a reality. You have our thanks.

A Brief History of Recent Times

I have been a busy, busy guy in the last few months. I don't feel there has been time to post. I have no idea how I had time to post almost daily during NaNoWriMo and still get my stuff done. No idea.

You may remember I mentioned other projects in the background during my November posts. Let me give a rundown of what I have been up to. I submitted a manuscript to Third Eye Games in August for the game Part-Time Gods. It's a role-playing game where everyone plays the role of modern-day gods trying to balance their divine duties with the human side of their lives. They are only part-time gods. The power that is over at Third Eye Games liked it well enough to ask me to write more in the same game line. I submitted the first draft for that on 7 November. Then for a couple weeks I just focused on my NaNoWriMo.

However, I had also been working on a very long term project with another guy for Palladium Books. He declared (and I agreed) after four years of working on it on and off, 2013 was the year to finish. I realized along about 22 November there was no way I could wait until 1 December to get back to the Palladium project. At about the same time the edits came back for my Third Eye Games draft. That's three projects that needed work ASAP!

I worked on The Valley of Insects as a warm-up or cool-down activity but I considered finishing my Palladium manuscript my first priority. I was still working on my NaNoWriMo on 30 November, putting in a little bit more here and a little bit more there. I got just over the mark. I'm a NaNoWriMo winner! There was no stopping, though, I finishing my writing for the Palladium project on 4 December. Next I re-read the whole manuscript, both my sections and the sections my co-author had written. It was very helpful to see the whole project at once for the first time. It's the book we wanted to write (good thing, right?). There was a little bit of adjusting we needed to get the tone consistent throughout. My co-author and I met throughout the second half of December to hash out how to clean up problem issues and who was going to tackle what. I am very happy to say we completed all our work on 31 December at 14:00 or so. We were not freaking out at 23:55 that night. It was great to put that project to bed, go home and go to bed early myself.

I took the first week of January off from writing, but it wasn't off completely because my wife and I always host a big end-of-the-holidays party. There was a lot of work needed to get ready for that. It was not until 6 January that I first looked at the feedback I had on the Third Eye Games manuscript. It needed a lot of work. I assumed I could finish it up in a couple weeks, but I had submitted such a poor first draft (at least in my opinion) it all needed to be significantly reworked. It took me most of January and February to get that done. In Part-Time God, characters ally themselves with various Theologies (not the same thing as religions) and for me the hardest part was developing the special ability which makes each Theology unique. Making each ability simple, unique and thematic was a tough balancing act. Almost as hard was crafting the characters which exemplify each Theology. They had to fit in the game world, into their Theology and into the real world, at least as I understand it. I think it all came out pretty well, but I guess I won't know until I get the next round of feedback.

Of course, I am not just sitting on my hands while I wait. I have taken the time in the last few weeks to clean up my NaNoWriMo just enough to send it out to some early readers. I hope they can tell me if it has potential. If they like it, I will consider expanding it and possibly sending it around to see if I can get it published. I also have a few other projects in mind for Palladium Books. One has already begun!There will be updates about all of these projects as there are developments to report.

Peace.

Published Again!

 

I have a (somewhat belated) announcement to make. I have been published for a second time! I was brought on as a contributor to a project for Third Eye Games and I worked on it in fits and starts for much of 2013. The book was published in January of 2014. It is Divine Instruments, a sourcebook for Third Eye's game Part-Time Gods. In the game, players are modern-day gods who have to split their time between their human lives and their divine demands. They are only part-time gods. The source book I helped write deals with some of the tools of trade which were only hinted at in the main book. Worshippers, Relics and Territory are all covered. Learn a bit more about the game and go buy thebook. Better yet, do both! Thanks.

In the Background

So, all this month I have had 2.5 projects on in the background. It is better to say that NaNoWriMo is in the background of those other projects. Those are writing projects in the gaming industry. They will see print and I will write about them when appropriate. One of these projects finished up this week, so that’s off my plate. There are still the other 1.5 projects. I spent much of yesterday and today working with my co-author on the biggest one. There are some parts of a project that work better when the two authors can sit together and play off each other’s ideas in real time and write everything down right then. We sat in the local coffee shop and worked together. Actually, he did most of the work. What we produced turned out well. He is a coffee shop writer. I am not, except when I meet with him.

Then, as it happened, I had two hours to kill tonight and as I had not yet worked on NaNoWriMo for the day I went to coffee shop and wrote. It was a different location of the same local chain. That’s the first time I have gone to a coffee place to write just for my own project. Even on a Friday night, there were plenty of other people in there working. It wasn’t a bad time. I can see the appeal. There is just enough chatter and low key music and bean grinding noise to turn into a nice white noise. I’m not sure I will ever become a regular, but I would be willing to try it again.

In the story the Genji made it all the way to the hive tonight. I expected him to meet with warriors and fight his way in. Instead he was met with a group of chanting insects who lined the path for him like an honor guard. I didn’t expect that. I imagine they are some kind of apocalypse cult within the hive which knows what is about to go down. In editing, I’ll have to develop that idea some more and drop in some hints.

The benchmark word count for today is: 36674

My total word count so far is: 36958

How’s Your Novel Coming?

Today I was asked how my novel is coming along. It seems to be going alright. I am on target with my word count, but how is the story? Again, it seems okay. There are some details which need more explanation or merit exploration, but I cannot spend that much time on any one thing if I want to get to the end of the story. My story? I haven’t explained it yet. I will have to do that another time, I am always up against time limits these days. For now, it must suffice to say that I am confident about the weird cultural elements and the brutal fighting scenes. I am less sure about the love story aspects. I will be getting to that soon.

The benchmark word count for today is: 11669

My total word count so far is: 12009

A Challenge for August

One of my writing buddies has clued me in to the Write Fifteen Minutes a Day challenge. The gauntlet has been thrown down by Laurie Halse Anderson and I am going to pick it up. Every day in the month of August, write 15 minutes. That’s the only rule. As others have pointed out, it’s more than a little like a warm-up for National Novel Writing Month in November. I accept the challenge! I have just finished a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. book (a review is coming…) and I can’t help but be inspired by his artfully compassionate cynicism. The last time I read a Vonnegut I was inspired to emulate him in my failed 2009 NaNoWriMo. This time around I had also begun a story inspired by Vonnegut. I already had a page or so about a mundane anti-hero and his strange connection to a pseudo-science movement when I learned about WFMAD. It’s a natural fit. The stream of consciousness style I am going for with this probably can’t be (shouldn’t be?) maintained for too long anyway.

Published!

I have been published. A friend of mine (and now an official writing buddy) and I published some supplemental material for one of our favorite role-playing games. Palladium publishes a quarterly sourcebook with additional and alternate rules for its many games. This is mosly fan-submitted material which is a great way to draw in new talent and it gives us fans a chance to contribute to "the Megaverse." It’s a pretty nerdy achievement but still an achievement. Palladium Books is a small (-ish) company but has a big reputation in the industry. You can support them by picking up a copy. Hopefully, this is the first of many such announcements.

Stirrings

So, as you could have guessed, I did not win NaNoWriMo 2009. I wound down and despite encouragement (and then justified chastisement) by my writing buddies I never got started again. This last year is the worst I have done yet. Well, there’s always next year… Speaking of which I have already started planning. I have too many ideas. I think I want to write a magical realist piece. Something set in an identifiable time and place but that doesn’t hold itself strictly to reality. Maybe it could be called symbolist historical fiction?
Current ideas:
A semi-biography of three Chinese pirates. It seems that in the early years of the Nineteenth Century the Pirate King of the South China Sea had both a wife and a male lover. After his death (accident or murder?) this bereaved duo teamed up and ruled the waves together. This is based on real events! Go read about Ching Yih and you’ll know as much as I do.
I also like (again loosely based on reality) the idea of an Icelandic family that takes a traditional New Year’s Eve trek to the foot of a local glacier. Except the glacier is receding farther each year. The changes in the landscape reflect the breakdown of multi-generational traditions in the modernized world. (Oh wait, did I tip my hand too early?) There’s Ma and Pa, the “good” son, the “bad” son and the daughter with her American lawyer husband. I know “the journey is a metaphor for life” type stuff has been done; but not in Iceland! There’s the opportunity to mix commentary on environmentalism, the debate about aluminum smelters and American thrill-seeking with references to Viking mythology! I’ve tentatively called this one “Twilight of the Gods.”
Lastly, the American Southwest desert. I’m a big fan. I’m thinking of a tale set in three or four times. A Hohokam, an early Anglo settler and someone in Phoenix circa 1970. There is something that resonates about that place for all of them an even back and forth between them. It’d be kind of an exploration of “the more things change the more things stay the same.” The desert is the symbol of that. Saguaros are so slow growing and just outside of the blacktop of today’s Phoenix the scrub looks the same now as it always has. There’s something powerful in that kind of ever-present landscape. Something…
In other news, I have something really close to fruition that isn’t at all related to writing novels all on one month. Official announcements to follow before too long.
Anyway, that’s all the news that fit to type. TTNF.

Steam Lost

For some reason I have lost all motivation for my story. No. I’ve lost almost all motivation for my story. It’s just not interesting to me and that makes is really hard to write it. I did only about 100 words yesterday and none today (so far). That’s a real hard thing to recover from. I’m not sure I want to.

I lot of people that do this say their books are no good and I know the point isn’t to make it good. The point is to just keep writing anyway. But, but, but…

By now I should have 13,336 words.
My current count is 10,248 words.