Book Building: Status Update II

With our campaign (which was really gelling together nicely) currently on life support, I've been furiously scrambling to put together something better fitted for our "revolving cast" style sessions we've been having lately. That, coupled with something called Real Life showing up a whole lot these last few weeks, means the manuscript for the Player's Guide has been on a bit of the back burner. And, this accompanying blog as well.

But fear not! Progress has continued in the background, even if I've not been vocal about it here. The class flavor text is finished, knocking another chapter off the list. With the bulk of my new campaign wrapping up and things dying down around me before the fervor of the holidays, I've begun to turn an eye towards the next chapter. Either History is going to get a revisit or I'll begin the Religion chapter, haven't decided yet, but forward I shall go!

Book Building: Status Update

So now that I've made my "come back" let's take a look where we are on the first book, shall we?
Using the already posted ToC as a guide:

• Introduction: Written and done 
• Chapter 1: Races & Classes of the Bluestone Isles: Of the proposed species, three are written, one needs to be figured out by myself (the kobolds) and one needs to have Sean's write-up (the gnomes). The classes I've had a few thoughts on, some of which I've already talked about. They'll be nothing but flavor explaining their place in Bluestone, so it won't require anything out of some creative writing.
• Chapter 2: Equipment & New Rules: We haven't really got into this section yet, mostly it will be a few rules on airships including some sample models as well as some steam punk inspired devices. The most crunchy of the book, it'll probably be looked at last.
• Chapter 3: History of the Bluestone Isles: I took a stab at this, didn't like, decided to change it to a narrative style and it requires a rewrite. But I know the basic timeline of the setting, so that'll be complete in no time. 
• Map of the Bluestone Isle: Handled 
• Chapter 4: Player's Gazetteer of the Bluestone Isles: This Sean and I worked out over several sessions and have pretty much finished.
• Chapter 5: Religion of the Bluestone Isles: The gods and their meddlings, domains, and  going-ons have always been something I loved about world building (probably why I liked Planescape so much), so I've thought, and Sean and I have talked, at length about the gods and what they are all about. The real trouble will be narrowing down which gods we introduce in Bluestone and how much we reveal about each one. I will tell you one thing though, none of them will have stats.
• Chapter 6: X: X is one of the towns/villages on the map that will get a full write-up, including map, NPCs, building descriptions, etc. This can be used as a "home base" for starting characters and campaign launching points. This will probably be the second to last thing that gets written up, before we tackle the crunch of equipment and rules.

 Now I gotta hammer out those kobolds!

On: The Book Writes Itself

I'm a narrative writer by nature, call it my years as a DM, call it my years as a novel reader, call it just how Matt writes, the point being, if I write something, I tend to think about it what's around what I'm writing and then sometimes put that down on paper (or the screen as well).

As a happy result of that, as Sean and I dealt with Step 15 of our building our island cluster, we did it in a narrative fashion.

Step 15 simply calls for you to name all your geography, both political and natural. We could have easily made a list and named everything:

Mountain: Named This
Town: Names This
etc.

But instead, for each island, we wrote a few simple paragraphs, naming each element as the step called for, but also added some background and rumors of what's around. None of it gives away anything that the average citizen of the area wouldn't know, and plenty of it hints at "what could be."

As I went over my ideas for what the PGtX (X being the name of the Island Cluster) would contain (I'll probably post a tentative ToC tomorrow), I realized what we've been writing perfectly covers the "mini-gazetteer" section of the PGtX. A few edits, look out for consistency, and some simple rewrites and clean up and suddenly a chapter of our first .pdf is already done!

Whats nice is that that next couple of steps will do the same thing. Step 16 asks for a history of the area, we can write that up, and begin pulling out what the average person would know for the PGtX and the total history which will import itself into the DM's Guide. Following that is a full paragraph on each feature named above, these would be full disclosure writing, with every secret revealed, and hopefully some plot hooks thrown in, again, filling out the "DM's gazetteer" section for that book.

I love it when a book just starts writing itself, that's always a good sign.

Design and Development: .pdf Releases

The way in which I see this Designing a Fantasy Sandbox experiment for Deminar to ultimately pan out is the release of several .pdf's, probably over at RPGnow/DriveThruRPG (and its marketplace that sits on EnWorld, Paizo, and everywhere else) related to the area we're working on. They'd probably be small 32 and/or 64 page releases much like the old school releases of... old. I like the idea of being able to write something that stays confined within a small area, instead of the usual thinking HUGE that I do (see my earlier posts on the cosmology and such we've already thought up), sticking with things only really lower level characters would run into worked well in the past (and with the current OSR) and makes it easier to focus.

The releases would be as follows:

Player's Guide to X (With X being the name of the Island Cluster we're making): This book would start with a small intro explaining what Deminar was all about, a page or so like the intro on this blog mentioning the Age of Exploration, Steampunk, Fantasy mash-up. After that each playable species would get a small entry explaining it's place on the island cluster and the relevant rules that go with it. This would be followed by a similar entry for classes, with a paragraph or two on their place in the cluster but without the rules, since they're already in the AEC. The rest of the book would be a mini-gazetteer, with a timeline as a person living on the cluster would know it, a look at the pantheon worshipped and then a quick overview of the cluster with a paragraph or two on each major geographical location, but leaving out any of the juicy hidden bits like lairs or hidden villains. The cap-off would be taking one of the towns and giving it a full map, break down of locations, important NPCs, etc. to use as a starting "home base" for the PCs.

DM's Guide to X (With X being the name of the Island Cluster we're making): This book would give all the details you don't want your player's to see! A more detailed timeline with info the common man wouldn't know, but may be used to help spice up old dungeons, a look at any prominent evil cults, monster groups, or hidden villains in town that are working behind the scenes to unleash evil that the PCs would eventually thwart and then a DM's mini-gazetteer, pointing out parts not included in the Player's version, such as Lairs, dungeons, and bandit camps. The cap-off for this book would be taking one of the small lairs and using it as a "starter dungeon" to get the game running.

Modules: The heart of old-school D&D! Since we've put in a few dungeons and lairs, they'd need write-ups, and thus modules would be born.

From there, possibilities are endless; you can do more detailed gazetteers on each isle (or even one just on the big city itself), giving a more detailed look of the people, places, and creatures there. Species books detailing the unique look at the species and how it fits in the island cluster, including cultures, beliefs, physiology, etc. (and unlike more modern D&D games, probably little/no crunch!) The ubiquitous Gods book, shedding light on the deities of the cluster and their worships. And even mini-monster books, not only introducing new monsters, but, like the species books giving a more detailed look at how the monsters work on the cluster (our goblins and their kin in particular are dying to have a book written about them for Sean). An airship book would be cool, with rules for airship movement/combat, example airships, how to build airships, etc.

Once the that cluster is covered, or we're in the mood for something different, we can always move onto another cluster, maybe our "Expert" level of islands, if you will.

So, thoughts, ideas, comments?