76. Year’s End
Writing Journal 12 – 18 Dec. 2022
I almost skipped today. I feel bad that I stopped writing the novel, but I have been progressing on the world building, mapping, outlining of the future installments and I’m still debating whether or not I want to change up the structure/POV of the novel.
All of my time has been devoted to worldbuilding, mapping, and characters. I have not played video games… (despite long standing promises weighing down on me). Most of my gaming is on-hold until the new year. I suspect that my Tuesday game might keep going without pause since the holidays are both on weekends. But my Saturday game is off and the Thursday is “maybe” each week.
Even my reading has ground to a halt, with comics and novels all piled up around me.
New Office
The renovations continue. The floor is done, I built my new desk this week.
But I’m having a crisis trying to figure out how I want to configure it. I have concluded that I will be adding my old desk to it to make a large C shape desk. It just comes down to where do I put the painting/hobby space, and where do I put the writing space. Right now, they’re both the same space. But finally, I will have them separate.
My first thought is to make the bottom of the C my writing desk, the top of the C is where I’ll do the work and the back of the C is where my paint racks and tools will be sorted.
The layout of tables in the room has also been altered and its made some of my plans fail. Makes me rethink again and again.
Plus, there is a whole wall that won’t be finished for a while where a bunch of shelves are going. Meaning I have to work around dragging in boxes that can’t be unpacked or leaving them piled around the house.
It’s all a pain in the ass, and my back does not like to carry boxes like it used to.
But whining aside I’m excited to expand the space and feel close to my brother again.
World-Building
I admit that a lot of my world building has been for future TTRPG plans, but since my novels are based on old games and I’m writing material in that world, everything is related.
I’ve become mired in the long history of my world and digging out the hidden epochs of time. It is a ton of fun, but I do have the problem of finding I keep ret-conning myself. If you’ve been a long-time reader, you know that I have reinvented and rebuilt this world over various iterations (and various editions of D&D) since the mid-90s.
I’ve shuffled the map around.
Removed and added countries.
Tried to go very non-Eurocentric, and then ended up remapping the world and basing it heavily on Earth. Though in my defense, I did put a lot of effort into inclusivity by spending a lot of time studying cultures and histories outside of Europe and giving them space on my map. And I moved peoples around.
Though I guess when you have a country called Aegyptus with a massive river and a delta everyone will automatically believe that everything around them is wholly north Africa and that across the “Inner Sea” those are Greeks and Romans….
And while they would be correct, even there I made a lot of changes and mix ups. But yeah, I failed my non-Eurocentric attempt. But I have to admit it lends itself to my methodology of worldbuilding. I wish I had an easy link to the original blogs on this topic.
World Building Philosophy
I like to consider environment in everything I do for worldbuilding. That means taking into account climate based on topography. In other words, wind patterns, water levels, temperature bands. Our environment strongly impacts our culture, values, and physiology. Especially when you bring in fantasy elements like creatures that physically adapt/ mutate to their environs.
Using the base principles of wind patterns and how mountains change the climate on either side of them (usually dry on one side and damp and cool on the other depending on prevailing winds).
Then planning around cultural values: Such as in a desert water is important and you probably have smaller cities built around sources of it. But in more fertile lands you might have a countryside/ cityside binary culture.
Your language will be different as well, as in usage not talking characters or sounds. But your curses in a desert might be along the lines of: “may your water turn fool.” While in a more fertile setting it might be curses based off status or where you live. “Country bumpkin” or “city slicker.”
A western setting, you get words like tinhorn and greenhorn.
You get the idea. I have whole blogs devoted to this topic, under the world building tag.
Back on Topic
The whole point was that despite not working on the novel I’m still progressing my writing by spending time working on past history, cultural writeups, and mapping out countries.
This philosophy has served me well with gaming and Improv. I was once a 100% improv DM. When I first started running games it was just made up on the spot and I tried to remember where we left off and just ran from there.
As I matured, I put more and more effort into having a place to tell stories and my improv went down to around 80% and then during 3rd edition D&D I was probably 50-50.
Now I’m more 75-25. The way I see it, the best way to improv is to build a really strong foundation. The more you work on the setting and world the easier it is to just make up random strangers within it.
I have tons of details about different areas on my map. In Daeria we have a Meritocracy, where academia is the noble structure and the government is ruled by a council of Deans. The naming conventions are mostly Celto-Germanic. There is a huge shift from West to East in the country with most of the cities in the west and the bulk of the populace. The East are highland mountains with a strong shift toward Celto-Pict-Scottish country folk.
Dusk is a country with a deep history, that is magically diverse and locked into an eternal twilight. The years pass a little slower within the borders, the country never sees full sunlight, and it was heavily influenced by a “Roman Empire.” Its history includes layers of various occupiers and the melding and re-melding of cultures from each layer. Roman style names, temples, architecture. Legions with special cohorts. High Magic. Fantasy elements from the various lineages that developed the cultures. Elven, Human, old Hobgoblin, leftovers of the Holy Empire, etc.
If I have to make up a character on the spot, I could pull ones from either of these two countries and I know how to name them, where they might be from, and what influenced their upbringing.
It’s very similar to how and actor can improv a character by using their accent first and then building off of the stereotypes and assumptions made from that sound.
I just have to build all of those details myself over time with the world building I do. The maps, histories, cultural research. Naming things after real world stuff helps a lot. So, I almost feel like trying to make a setting completely divorced from “real-world” is putting a heavy burden on a writer. No matter what, you can pretend otherwise, but every “fantasy” culture is based on a mishmash of details culled from real world sources. Or they’re taken whole cloth.
Hobby TTRPG
But I have prattled on long enough. I actually said a lot more than I expected myself to.
If I’m being honest, I love typing and writing. I love the clack of the keys. Which is why its so funny when I procrastinate and move away from writing for such a long time. I physically love the act of writing, even pen to paper makes me feel good.
What about my other hobbies?
I already mentioned that my games are on hold. We didn’t have a Thursday game this week and only the Tuesday game is still on-going. That one is going well, though sometimes I feel like the DM is in overshare mode. He’ll start talking and just not stop when you try to get back into character. Basically, answering questions before they even get asked as he spends time clarifying and giving extra details to us.
He’s a fairly new DM, so I know its just him finding his stride, but also being excited to show off all the material he worked on.
I’m still a little blah that I managed to get three clerics all running at the same time. I really want to change up my characters. Luckily, in the Thursday game I’m currently running the game, and when we switch up DMs I go back to my warlock. I’ll be super happy to have him running again.
Toku
I busted out a bunch of Toku and in the month of December I have managed to watch all of Kamen Rider Revice, half of Return of Ultraman, all of Sentai Ninniger, and I should finish Sentai Lupinranger vs Patranger today. That leaves me about 4 more Sentai to watch before I have to figure out how to find episodes of the last two series (Zenkaiger and Donbrothers, if any of my readers know legal ways for me to watch those shows, please let me know).
Also, anyone have access to Kamen Rider Geats? I want to get the episodes of that show as well. I do have a few showa era shows of that I could watch. Super1, RX, Skyrider, and I think one more?
Hobby Painting
I haven’t worked on anything other than the train figures for a while but I do have a bunch of 40k orks that need doing. Though I think those will all be pushed off until the new year when I plan on having the desk situation finished in the new office.
I might do some more Cthulhu minis. As is I need to write a Cthulhu Scenario for next year as well.
But that’s circling back to TTRPG, isn’t it? I’m hoping for a chance to change up my work schedule and possibly start running a monthly or biweekly game in my store. It’s really tentative right now, but I do believe that if you put something out there it helps manifest it in the real world. Here’s hoping that works out.
Well, I have really gone on for a while now.
This will be the last post of this year. I just have too much going on with next Sunday being Xmas and the Sunday after being New Years. And as I’ve said in the past, I write these blogs on Sundays.
New Years is inventory day for me, so I will be putting in a 10-hour day and wrecking my body.
I look forward to starting fresh in the new year; with a new desk, new office, and hopefully the novel progressing again. Hopefully also my desktop computer fixed and my agent hunt started again.
Thank you all for reading.
