It’s kind of crazy that July’s already ending—I feel like this month just started! This year is flying by. As usual, I’m going to take some time for a wrapup of what I’ve been working on this month! Unlike usual, this month’s “behind the scenes” isn’t a patron-exclusive. Patrons get to read articles a week early (including this one), and most of the time this type of peek into my creative process is exclusive to my patrons, too.
So if you like this type of content and want to read more of it, head on over to Patreon and sign up! The subscription costs about the same as a cup of coffee, and is a big help in funding the time it takes me to keep creating articles and fiction each week.
That said, let’s dive on in!
I’m writing this a bit before the end of July, because I’m taking some time to visit family at the start of August and I don’t want to worry about content creation. That said, I do still have a solid overview of how the month has gone. I’ve written about 30,000 words so far, and crossed the 200,000 word milestone for the year! I’d like to be getting a bit more writing in before July closes, but for now I do feel pretty much “on track.”
For those who don’t know, 30,000 is the mark I consider “acceptable” for a monthly word count. I’d love to be writing more, but I’m trying to keep in mind that writing is a marathon, not a sprint. I tend to spend about half my time writing, and half my time doing everything else (including but not limited to editing, graphic design, social media management, art direction, playtesting & feedback, reading, etc.). My long-term goal is to average 40,000 words per month, but to achieve that I’ll probably need to be doing less freelance work, and more creative work.
One thing I’ve noticed this month is that I’ve been very distractible. I do feel I’ve accomplished progress on my projects. This contrasts to earlier this year when I was having trouble keeping anxiety under control because when nibbling away, I feel like I haven’t got anything finished. The major factor in my distraction, I think, is that most of my “pays the bills” work has been smaller projects. My preferred rhythm is to do two weeks of freelance, then a week of creative work. Instead I’ve received consistent small work. Between projects, I’ve nibbled at my creative work—but not the same project each time.
Basically, short-term (hours and days) and long-term (weeks and months) focus are still capacities I’m trying to wrangle.
Glorantha
July’s Glorantha nibbles have been a bit of freelance, and Treasures of Glorantha V2. Naturally I can’t talk much about the freelance work since they aren’t my secrets to spoil. One project I’ve been writing, and one I’ve been editing. I’ve had a lot of joy working on both projects, and I think that y’all will be excited too once there’s more to be revealed.
For my Treasures V2 nibbles, I’ve been working on the introduction, a few more magic items, and an article titled “Vows of Power.” The article’s not done yet, but the basic concept is adding a new common Rune spell to RuneQuest designed to help players acquire agency in their campaign’s drama through swearing vows to the gods. My inspiration for this stuff is the vows that get sworn in epic literature, like the Iliad or the Mahabharata. It’s a common spell so players have easy access, but one-use so the spell’s Rune point cost will be high enough they don’t overuse it.
After all, overusing the power of mythic promises (in my opinion) was a contributing factor to the downfall of the God Learners…
Eden Fallen
I’ve got a fair bit of work done on Eden Fallen in this month’s nibbling! I basically had a day or two where back-of-head ideas burbled to the surface and I hammered out a bunch of thoughts on downtime, hit point damage and wounds, and further fleshing out the augmentations system (which I talked about in last month’s update).
This led me to think a little about Eden’s economy, because I needed to know how to guesstimate the cost of installing an aug. Character development—whether emotional or mechanical—is a major motivator for player action. One of the key gameplay loops for many games, in my mind, is “go on adventures to get treasure, treasure buys cool toys, cool toys are fun to use on adventures,” and repeat. This simple cycle encourages risk-taking and ongoing play.
Peter and I decided early on that the basic currency of Eden is the Meat. This is a 250 gram sausage-like unit of protein slurry, which provides 500 calories. The economy is mostly a barter economy which utilizes the Meat as a basis of value (and a convenient abstraction for the game). This plays into Eden Fallen’s survival element, “The Grind.”
As a decrepit generation ship, resources on Eden are limited. There’s nothing like a teleporter, so what was brought on the vessel is pretty much everything the inhabitants have. Now, the Founders did send a gigantic pile of supplies and resources, but human nature has been very natural and squandered much of that wealth. A character’s daily bread—or in this case, Meat—is not guaranteed.
The Grind is basically a downtime minigame that describes how a character’s life is going outside of adventures. This is measured in Meat spent to survive, and Meat earned on the day-to-day. For some handy abstractions, I’m currently assuming 3 Meat on daily Grind, an 30 Meat on a weekly Grind. That’s 1,500 calories per day, or about 2,150 calories/day during a week. These numbers aren’t quite raw calories consumed, but would also include a few odds-and-ends expenses (but not stuff as big as where you live). Work in progress!
Working on augmentations, this tells me that 30 Meat is the basic cost of 1 week’s life. So currently I’ve got a brain-installed computer chip priced at 360 Meat, or 12 weeks of life. Does that need to go up? Go down? I don’t know! That’s what playtesting is for.
The playtest manuscript is at about 15,000 words. I have no clue what that’ll translate to in actual publishable text. It’s intentionally messy, trying to pump ideas as quickly as possible onto the page. I’ve pretty much got all the main game elements down, now. There’s a lot of augmentations to write still, but I don’t want to wait until I have EVERYTHING written before we start playing it.
Freelance
As I mentioned above, I’ve had mostly smaller projects this month. As usual a significant chunk of my wordcount this month is from freelance work, though I’m pleased that a fair piece is from fun freelance, rather than boring freelance. I’m still trying to break into doing some ghostwriting on places like Upwork. I’m in that spot where you knock and they open the door, but they don’t let you inside. So that’s a mix of good signs and disappointing results. One notable challenge is the perceived “fair rate” for fiction; I don’t think there’s anyone who can consistently make rent writing 15,000 words for $150, but someone’s gotta be working that if people keep posting that type of budget. Either that, or they’re turning in first drafts with zero internal quality control.
I don’t have anything super specific and interesting lined up to tease y’all with, on this end. I’m still waiting on communique from the opportunity I’ve been vague about since February. It’s been about a month and I just shot a new ping, but at this point the silence is starting to feel worrisome. So I’m not really counting on that happening any more, which is a shame.
Stillness
I’ve started processing edits from my handwritten draft of Stillness into a new text document. This is going quite a bit slower than I had expected, but on the upside it’s not as brain-intensive as writing. Which means I can listen to podcasts (I’m on the one in the link!) or actual plays while doing it! So that’s a nice upside.
Once the edits are complete, I’m planning to start releasing chapters serially. I probably won’t get there in August, but maybe some time in September. Depends on if I can keep my brain focused forward. “Episode One” is about 25 chapters, so releasing about two per week will give me 3 months of content. I’m not aiming to have constant release—I’m comfortable with a gap between “episodes”—but that does mean I should think about outlining “Episode Two” so the gap isn’t super short.
Of course, if serializing the fiction goes well, it’ll be a lot easier to budget time for creating it.
Blog
I’ve recently finished reading through Free League’s new game Dragonbane, so there’ll be a “first impression” for that coming up soon. (I haven’t played it, so I don’t feel comfortable calling it a full review.) I’d also like to hammer out another Jonstown Compendium review—I was meaning to in July, but just never got around to it, unfortunately. Maybe some Glorantha fiction, or else a further exploration of Akhelas (the story world of Stillness).
If anyone’s got a question or prompt they’d like to read me rambling about, I’m down for ideas. No promises.
Workflow
I don’t have a great solution for July’s distractibility. My current plan will be to ask for a longer project from my main “pays the bills” client, so that my workflow is a little more stable. My goals for August will be to print off & start playing Eden Fallen, finish editing Stillness, and finish my portion of the Treasures V2 manuscript (mainly “Vows of Power” and six items, though at least two of those are longish).
I need to get back to checking stuff off my list, or my brain’s gonna get all mopey again.
Something else I want to start thinking about is NaNoWriMo 2023. For those who don’t know, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a self-driven competition to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. It was my introduction to writing, and I think it could be fun to participate this year. If I do, I’ll need an outline. I don’t need one immediately, but I’d need to be working on that in October, so I’m ready to go for November.
If I do NaNo, I think it’d either be one or two episodes of Stillness, or a longer Jonstown Compendium book. The trickiest bit will be financial, honestly. I don’t think I can maintain freelance projects and also the 1700 words/day needed for NaNo. But! That’s a future problem—we’ll get there if it comes.
Okay, time to go do other things. Until next time, then!
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