Philosophy, writing, and reviews!
velotha’s flock is now live on DriveThruRPG! It actually has been for a few days, but I… kind of forgot that I never linked to it here. Such is life, I guess.
Because velotha’s flock is “complete, but in progress” I figured I’d give a quick status update on the things that I’m changing/adding to the game, as well as other plans for velotha’s flock that should see fruition soon.
This was originally going to be a velotha’s flock post, but I decided that some of this should be a stand-alone thing. One of the issues with game design, I feel, is that most of it doesn’t really go down the road of storytelling. Even more narrative-focused games often do so with a focus on “story over rules” rather than following any sort of storytelling praxis.
I think that there are a few reasons for this, and I’ve got a brief breakdown of what I think GMs and designers can do to prevent mediocre storytelling in their games.
Continue reading “On Archetypes, Heroes, and RPG Characters”
One of the things that I wanted to do with velotha’s flock is create an interesting world that people haven’t seen the likes of before, to make something that challenges their conceptions of what many of the basic tenets of the game’s world are.
Of course, I put a lot of the elements of the game down in tradition too, because I don’t want to explain anything and I want to reward readers and players who have a strong interest in intellectual pursuits for doing what they do best and finding connections between things.
Continue reading “Commentary on velotha’s flock Part 1: Eden, Wilderness, Promised Land”
velotha’s flock is “released”, though it’s not yet populated on any of the official distribution channels yet. I need to put more stuff up on DriveThruRPG to get officially approved to just post stuff instantly of my own accord, so we’re potentially going to see some stuff go up there in future days.
With that said, I want to give a brief overview of what my future plans are, before retiring to bed at a halfway decent time for once.
Tomorrow I’m going to be publishing the Early Bird Edition of velotha’s flock over on DriveThruRPG (though whether it gets approved tomorrow is anyone’s guess.
It’s not my largest project ever (I estimate about 9000 words; LibreOffice doesn’t calculate the text in sidebars when I do it the way I do), but it’s got a lot of passion and a fair amount of sweat and tears (no blood, however; trying to do away with dangerous keyboarding habits) poured into it.
It’s also my first “finished” game to be released under the Loreshaper Games logo, so there’s that going for it. Yay, Loreshaper Games.
In case anyone’s interested, here are the things that I put into the final day of work (AKA what I was working on today and will be finishing tomorrow).
One of the things that we often forget to do when we design games is to really put some of the mechanics through a practical run, and sometimes we design it without really giving voice to why we do things and stuff gets thrown in and kept even after its intended purpose is done.
With velotha’s flock, I wanted to do a quick overview of what makes a character unique and interesting with a character system that may, on its surface, seem to lead toward similar characters.
I’ve been really bad about doing anything resembling a sane workload in the past, so I’ve been working on improving my schedule and getting stuff done. Right now I’m working full-time and trying to get everything booted up, so there are a few things that I’m doing to really keep disciplined and get writing done.
I’ve been really awful at updating this blog, and I think it’s because I insist on doing articles. I’m still probably going to finish up Breathing Life at some point, because I have a fair amount of stuff written for it already (and I’ve had a lot more drafted and planned, awaiting me having more free time).
Some of it’s because I keep starting new projects.
The most recent is velotha’s flock, a free-verse game about were-ravens caught in a struggle between God and the devil. Bit of a niche audience, but it draws me to an important point: the cycle of literary characters.