Nothing new this week

Thanksgiving occurred this week, so I have not put any work into this blog. I did start up a post on festivals and how to implement them into a game setting though. Most of my time has been dealing with a few life issues, and making a Christmas present for a friend. I'm nowhere near close to finishing said present despite all the time off I've had from college this week, yet it has made phenomenal progress. I will have the current form posted below for those curious. Essentially the friend likes two things a lot, Pusheen and Dragon Age Inquisition. I will not be able to contact them during Christmas time, so the art will be given to them on their birthday [1st December].

Reference Image:

Current Status of my Present:

Only outlines, sky, and rock faces are completed.

Asteria Rising: Update 9

Work has at last commenced on tables. For those of you confused, Asteria Rising is prototype science-fiction (sci-fi) table-top-role-playing game I'm making. It initially started as a sci-fi homemade campaign for some of my players. I decided to mark done some of our household rules, the things we do and don't do in regards to the official Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) rules.

A major theme was to better encourage exploration and fear of the wilderness, things that rarely happened with my players but were all highlights when it happened. As such, I have been meaning to create a series of tables to help randomly generate environment, non player characters (NPCs), alien creatures, et cetera.

I will admit, not very much has been accomplished with the tables. They need to begin a small prototyping phase. By that I mean, "rolling dice on them to make things." It is the only way to ensure the tables will be intuitive and comprehensive enough for my needs, and any other game master's needs. So far there are two tables.

The first focuses loosely on a 1d6 die roll to determine a general classification of the animal. This one will most likely change, possibly being expanded upon. The second table, is about the creature's disposition toward the party. Docile would be willing to come close to the party, and would not attack them. Think like livestock or pets, they will attacked if provoked but they will be comfortable around the party.

Neutral is more wary like a deer, bird, or squirrel. It will be cautious of the party, perhaps flee from it, but generally not take the first attack. Hostile can be best thought as territorial creatures, such as a wild boar or bear. This disposition means a creature will fight the party whether they intend to fight the creature or not. Predatory is a creature that tracks the party down like a pack of wolves or pride of lions. These creatures are the most dangerous as the party will have to kill or go leagues out of their way to avoid.

I'll have to add tables for size, features, attacks, and so on. Next I'll need to decide what on the tables are meant to go toward stats for the creatures [mechanical weight] and what tables only affect the narrative [Role-play experience]. There is no Challenge Rating (CR) like in D&D, but I might have to come up with a rough guidelines for building creatures and encounters that aren't too dangerous for a party of players. I know I wouldn't want to accidently kill all my players.

Tables focusing on environment will be fairly simple. There will be overarching features such as biomes (desert, mountain, et cetera), then probably more unique features (strange rock circle, magnetized, et cetera). Tables about NPCs will mirror the tables for the same thing in the Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D. That will give rolls for personality, features, skills, mannerisms, et cetera.

My hope is that the next update post will have more on the various tables, or I'll be able to give a preview of the three player classes I've been working on.

Until then, have a great day.

Writing Process: Part 4 - Revision

Revision is crucial when creating content. Player's will not run into the need to revise beyond perhaps changing the direction for their character. A game master (G.M.) will, for they need to come up with a general outline for their campaign. The amount of writing done will depend on a G.M.'s particular amount and form of preparatory work. As such, I will go over the general act of revising.

Revision means to alter or change. In terms of writing, revision refers to large changes to the overall piece. Fixing a few spelling errors or removing a sentence is more in-line with editing rather than revision. To change the content or to alter multiple paragraphs in a piece would be revision.

It is a loose definition; therefore, in Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) revision could be used when the G.M. needs to alter an encounter at the end of a session because the players reached an area of the dungeon they were not supposed to. Revision could also be the players consistently getting off track and going to deal with another task, so the G.M. decides to begin tying that content in with the overall story or simply join the players in abandoning the original story.

An example would be with my first campaign. The players were initially meant to be hired goons for a noble, but they continually decided to focus on building a cult to the cleric's god. As such, I tied their attempts to create a cult into the story by having the more established religions of the area attempt to hinder the players. I revised the campaign to include what they wanted to do.

Within the same campaign, the players kept doing murder-hobo (just mindless killing) acts. I changed their alignment (morality in game) and put them on a new story line where they would become villains. In this instance, I revised the campaign by doing a massive change of the story.

Let's consider revision for my first post in this serial—Writing Process: Part 1 - Rambling. The post was shared—see Writing Process: Part 2 - Sharing—for the comments made on it. Based off the comments it needs to be considered how the piece is improperly organized, which makes sense from it being a freewrite. What will help in organizing will be the exclusion of  some of the questions posed.

Two big topics I discussed were, "what does immersion mean in D&D," and, "making a webcomic to go with this site." These are both topics worth exploring; however, they are too different to include in a single post. For this part of the revision, one has to be picked and the other excluded.

I will pick the question, "What does immersion mean in D&D?" Exploring that topic sounds far more interesting to me. The big issue people run into with this aspect of the writing process is how it restarts the process. Once the revision occurs, a new draft is made that must be shared and examined for potential revision again. The first part of the writing process [brainstorming] can occur during revision too as you will need to come up with new ideas for the piece; it is mainly for large revisions.

It is for this reason the act is termed the Writing Process, for it requires numerous recurring steps to make a final product.

Salutations

Salutations blog readers. I decided on a far more relaxed post this week. I have been thinking about making this blog focuses on games in general or even other topics rather than just Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). It would not be a hard transition considering Asteria Rising went from being a D&D homebrew into its own table-top game. I am not sure what I would add though.  A big part of this want to talk about more than only D&D really comes from a desire to be flexible. You will know my decision once it is made; I am simply keeping everyone up to date.

My academic career has hit a snag. The hours I needed to graduate with my Bachelor of Arts in Professional and Technical Writing were miscalculated. For those unfamiliar with American university, each class has credit hours that are used as to determine the workload of a course. Credit hours are also used to by the university to calculate a student's progress toward their degree. I need 120 hours. I thought I would be done this semester, yet the hours were miscalculated and I will need 8 more credit hours. In American university you also pay tuition, so I've been busy gathering up money to afford 8 credit hours [roughly another $4,000 of tuition at my school]. That is why my last post and this one do not have as much effort put into them.

In less frustrating news, I have been trying to start up a new campaign with some people. Trying is the apt term as they are rather busy. So far, the collection is a friend from work who has never played D&D and her boyfriend who has never played 5th edition D&D. It would be an interesting experience to both teach someone new to the game and watch a more experienced player transfer skills over from the last edition.

Once we finally meet, I will add any lore the campaign generates to the Homebrewed page on the blog. The current idea is to have them be part of a adventure guild or monster hunter group. Something to give them more connection to the world and people in it. I will know for certain once we have our Session 0 [meeting where ideas for the campaign are generated]. I am anxious to get back into the Game Master (GM) seat. I enjoy that position far more than the player seat.

See you next week.