FA+
Shop
A New Direction
14 years ago
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
-William Shakespeare Okay, so as many of you know, I’ve been having a hard time doing much creatively around here. No, no, this isn’t another rant, I swear. More like an announcement. As many of you have likely guessed from reading my works, I’m into character driven stories, and I like creating characters. As of late, I’ve had difficulty doing such. What I’m going to do is switch gears and start working on and training myself on an aspect of writing I’ve felt I’ve struggled with: world building.
Let’s review my gallery a moment and you’ll see what I mean when it comes to the settings of my pieces:
Love under the Moon: Other than “generic backwoods town”, the setting is largely not described. Sure, I like how I described the interior of buildings, but the town itself is left almost blank, and implying it's a modern day piece.
On the Other Side of the Screen: Okay, so this one does have a setting of my own creation, but being something of a snapshot piece, I never got into it.
The Civilized Savage series: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition
The Devouring Shadow series: Generic “modern day” setting. The fantasy elements aren't a mystery so much as I didn't know their origins either.
Tomb of Tregarius: experimental piece, don’t really count it.
Conall, Sharon, and Diana Stories: World created by
Mocha_Mephooki, and used with permission
Climax into Darkness/New Purpose, New Life: Setting left largely not described, and not developed.
Retriever Unit: Lab...that's pretty much it.
Blood Sweat and Saliva: D&D 3.5
A Taste of Magic: Touch on world setting very lightly, probably the most developed individual setting of my own creation in my gallery. Which isn't saying much, given how lightly I touch on it in the piece proper.
Taste of Treachery: World of Laven, created by
Generationslayer, and used with permission.
Like Cats and Dogs: Slackerz universe, created by
TorenZabbic, and used with permission
Well, the last two were a gift and a request, so they get a bye, but just about everything else is either a generic setting left to the imagination (because I didn't work on it) or a preexisting setting created by someone else. Honestly, as detailed as I love getting into characters sometimes, the setting they inhabit might as well be made of cardboard props for all the attention and thought I put into them. Why is that? I have always had difficulty with world building. Now, however, I’m having a hard time making any character driven story I’m satisfied in, so rather than try to keep shoving that square peg in the round hole, beat my head against the wall, et all, I’m switching gears and trying to put my efforts into my shortcomings. Maybe once I’ve addressed that issue, I’ll be able to create compositions I can feel proud of and get back to posting stories again.
Part of this stems from the fact that, during a slow day at work today (well, yesterday, depending out what time zone you’re in) my mind wandered to something I’d lightly hashed out a little while ago, involving some vore mechanics additives to the Pathfinder RPG system. Well, my wanderings actually led somewhere for a change (something they haven’t done too much of in a while), and slowly, slowly, a setting began to emerge. I want to capitalize on this thought process as much as I can, and even if I never use said setting, I feel the exercise will do me some good.
Essentially, it’s a fantasy setting inspired by a couple things, namely
darklord92’s Vorefable project (an 8 bit RPG with vore as a central mechanic, with released alpha builds for community testing and debugging), an interest in playing a vore themed character in a tabletop RPG, and my recent Pathfinder sessions at a comic store nearby. Yeah, adding a crap ton of homemade mechanics (using the Swallow Whole ability as a base) to add all the offshoots and nuances of “vore” into a tabletop RPG is such a niche game as to likely never see the light of day, but hey, it’s experience and one never knows, right? I don’t know enough vore lovers personally to even ask, and then there’s the subset of who knows how to play Pathfinder (or even likes the system for that matter), and then those willing to essentially playtest rules from a budding designer. But, I’ve recently had doubtful expectations go the other way, so who knows? Maybe enough people will see this through the grapevine and be interested enough to ask.
Anyway, I think I’ll hold off further details on the project until I’m further along, but to put it simply it won’t (yet) involve actually writing a story; more like a primer or overview of a campaign setting with all the pertinent information that one would need to understand how the world/reality ticks. Oh, and no, it is not the same setting as the “Secrets of the Frontier” setting I’d mentioned sometime back; that project is, unfortunately, also on hiatus for the time being.
Anyway, just thought I’d give you all a heads up as to what to expect from me, hopefully sometime in the near future.
Let’s review my gallery a moment and you’ll see what I mean when it comes to the settings of my pieces:
Love under the Moon: Other than “generic backwoods town”, the setting is largely not described. Sure, I like how I described the interior of buildings, but the town itself is left almost blank, and implying it's a modern day piece.
On the Other Side of the Screen: Okay, so this one does have a setting of my own creation, but being something of a snapshot piece, I never got into it.
The Civilized Savage series: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition
The Devouring Shadow series: Generic “modern day” setting. The fantasy elements aren't a mystery so much as I didn't know their origins either.
Tomb of Tregarius: experimental piece, don’t really count it.
Conall, Sharon, and Diana Stories: World created by
Mocha_Mephooki, and used with permissionClimax into Darkness/New Purpose, New Life: Setting left largely not described, and not developed.
Retriever Unit: Lab...that's pretty much it.
Blood Sweat and Saliva: D&D 3.5
A Taste of Magic: Touch on world setting very lightly, probably the most developed individual setting of my own creation in my gallery. Which isn't saying much, given how lightly I touch on it in the piece proper.
Taste of Treachery: World of Laven, created by
Generationslayer, and used with permission.Like Cats and Dogs: Slackerz universe, created by
TorenZabbic, and used with permissionWell, the last two were a gift and a request, so they get a bye, but just about everything else is either a generic setting left to the imagination (because I didn't work on it) or a preexisting setting created by someone else. Honestly, as detailed as I love getting into characters sometimes, the setting they inhabit might as well be made of cardboard props for all the attention and thought I put into them. Why is that? I have always had difficulty with world building. Now, however, I’m having a hard time making any character driven story I’m satisfied in, so rather than try to keep shoving that square peg in the round hole, beat my head against the wall, et all, I’m switching gears and trying to put my efforts into my shortcomings. Maybe once I’ve addressed that issue, I’ll be able to create compositions I can feel proud of and get back to posting stories again.
Part of this stems from the fact that, during a slow day at work today (well, yesterday, depending out what time zone you’re in) my mind wandered to something I’d lightly hashed out a little while ago, involving some vore mechanics additives to the Pathfinder RPG system. Well, my wanderings actually led somewhere for a change (something they haven’t done too much of in a while), and slowly, slowly, a setting began to emerge. I want to capitalize on this thought process as much as I can, and even if I never use said setting, I feel the exercise will do me some good.
Essentially, it’s a fantasy setting inspired by a couple things, namely
darklord92’s Vorefable project (an 8 bit RPG with vore as a central mechanic, with released alpha builds for community testing and debugging), an interest in playing a vore themed character in a tabletop RPG, and my recent Pathfinder sessions at a comic store nearby. Yeah, adding a crap ton of homemade mechanics (using the Swallow Whole ability as a base) to add all the offshoots and nuances of “vore” into a tabletop RPG is such a niche game as to likely never see the light of day, but hey, it’s experience and one never knows, right? I don’t know enough vore lovers personally to even ask, and then there’s the subset of who knows how to play Pathfinder (or even likes the system for that matter), and then those willing to essentially playtest rules from a budding designer. But, I’ve recently had doubtful expectations go the other way, so who knows? Maybe enough people will see this through the grapevine and be interested enough to ask. Anyway, I think I’ll hold off further details on the project until I’m further along, but to put it simply it won’t (yet) involve actually writing a story; more like a primer or overview of a campaign setting with all the pertinent information that one would need to understand how the world/reality ticks. Oh, and no, it is not the same setting as the “Secrets of the Frontier” setting I’d mentioned sometime back; that project is, unfortunately, also on hiatus for the time being.
Anyway, just thought I’d give you all a heads up as to what to expect from me, hopefully sometime in the near future.
