I did manage to do a little work on Chapter 14 of TWH, but not nearly enough. Though much less impressive (and not helping me meet my deadline), I added a few more kinds of bottles to the WttW item list. Fun stuff, right? I’m still puzzling over a good fall damage formula, so maybe I can sort it out. (Yes, it doesn’t get me where I need to get in TWH, but I’ve pretty well resigned myself to the chapter being delayed to next week at least.) Stay tuned.

I didn’t get any writing on TWH done, but I sure thought about it. That has to count for something, right? (No, it doesn’t.)

I did, however, spend a fair bit of time creating some glassware for the WttW item list. Bottles, phials, jars, all that good stuff. We can’t just be using skins and barrels to store our fluids, now can we?

It’s going to be even more difficult to make progress on TWH now that it’s time to head back to the salt mines, but I’ll see what I can get done. Stay tuned.

I’ve honestly been feeling a bit lost on Chapter 27 of TWH. I’ve known how it ends for ages and I have a few of the scenes from the middle, but I’ve been stuck on how to start it and how to smoothly connect all the pieces. Fortunately, I had a little burst of inspiration for the first scene and was able to work on that some.

However, more of the day’s efforts were spent on WttW. First off, I hadn’t accounted for the three-day ration the Guild supplies Adventurers when they go out ranging, so I needed to do that. Actually, the aigamo pastrami I was having for lunch proved to be a handy size reference for the salt pork ration, so I was also double-checking space requirements with the standard-issue haversack. (I’d also found a better reference for the size of hardtack, so I needed to make some adjustments there as well.) Well, once the new weight calculations were in, most of the Rookies were overencumbered again. Rather than boost their STR again, I decided to add a base half-stone to the carrying capacity equation, which was enough to get me through the latest issue. I then calculated the DEX penalty for their level of encumbrance. Those poor kids won’t be able to hit a dang thing. (Unless you have a really high carrying capacity, the idea is to travel light for short-range quests or to offload as much as possible with your rear line before engaging.)

When calculating weapon proficiencies for the Rookies, I wanted to keep better track of Divine Blessings, especially for our main trio of kiddos as they’ve inherited their parents’ Blessings, so I added an extra column in the character chart. (This also mean calculating their time of conception as that’s the point where the inheritance occurs.) It really is a waste that Arjun rejects the idea of putting points into Spirit as he’s inherited some really high-level Blessings. (In contrast, it’s not as much of a waste that Fedor chose the same Patron as his father because Ruslan only had his Blessing at Level 1.)

I was thinking ahead to our gang’s expenses such as lodgings and that got me double-checking the per diem on Dupont’s pension. In the World, weregild is used as compensation for wrongful death and disability and the way payments for disability works is that you get a value equivalent to your percentage of disability. In Dupont’s case, he was Level 64 when he retired, which made him a third-degree Master Adventurer, whose weregild value is 50 million denarii. The loss of an arm is worth a 25% award, and converting that to a per diem payment over a 50-year period leaves you with 684.5d. I don’t remember how I got to the 325d per diem cited in Chapter 13, but I decided to make a character thing out of it and have his award garnished to pay outstanding debts, and because his bad habits have him racking up additional debts, that’s why most of the per diem he has left goes to paying off other creditors. Tough times, guy.

Anyway, taken all together, it’s not a bad bit of work for one day, though I probably should be focusing more on TWH in the day I have left of Golden Week. Stay tuned.

I did a little work on Chapter 14 of RttW, but as I was doing that, I was making some calculations to check the characters’ stamina and encumbrance to calculate fatigue levels for the journey. First off, even with some fairly unremarkable kit, about half of the Rookies were overencumbered for their Strength level. Rather than take away gear, I just opted to toggle their stats accordingly. Pro-tip if an actual game gets made of the WttW system: Don’t have a starting STR below 3. I also had to adjust the Stamina penalty for levels of encumbrance because I didn’t want to trigger fatigue conditions that would pretty well make the initial trip impossible. You see, the way fatigue conditions work is that once your STM falls below a certain level, progressively worse fatigue conditions are triggered that limit your STM recovery from light resting. For instance, the fatigue condition of Wearied triggers once you fall below 50% STM and then light resting can only get you as high as 75%. You have to get a medium or full rest and recover past 85% for the condition to be released. When you’ve got LVL 1 characters with only 30 points of STM, who are 85% encumbered with a 3X rate of STM expenditure, you need two hours of medium rest for every mile you travel. I already added the expenditure of giving everyone gauges to keep track of their STM levels, but I’m probably going to have to get some Stamina Potions as well or else adjust the rate of STM recovery. Anyway, this is all part of the fun that comes with actually quantifying all of your mechanics.

I also spent some time doing research to come up with a formula for fall damage, but that’s going to take some more work. Trying to use real-world physics as a baseline when I haven’t had to really do much physics since high school is also loads of fun. I do, however, need to be thinking about TWH. I’ve got Monday and Tuesday free, so I need to make the most of that time before it’s back to the grind. I have serious doubts about being able to finish the chapter this week, but all I can do is give it the old college try. Stay tuned.

Other than some minor tweaking to Chapter 13 of RttW before I posted it, there wasn’t really any story-related work accomplished. Most of the time I had for writing was spent on manga reviews. However, there is one point of interest that will tie into Chapter 14. As many of you may well be aware, long-distance travel by horse typically involves exchanging the horses frequently along the way so that they aren’t lamed or killed by exhaustion. I referred to some historical examples for a guide and set a distance of 8 World leagues (a little more than 17km) as the standard distance between wayposts on the King’s Road. This prompted me to devise the “post” as a unit of measure, which turns out to be handy from a surveyor’s perspective as one of these posts are equal to 1000 chains. Anyway, this will represent the distance travelled on the first day of outing and abouting. More seasoned Adventurers typically try to cover at least two posts per day when travelling on foot, but that’s asking a bit much from a bunch of Rookies.

Anyway, I hope to start in on Chapter 14 a bit before it’s time to change over, so we’ll see if anything comes of that or not. Stay tuned.

With the deadline closing in and my progress over the course of the week well short of the mark, I made a concerted effort to drive forward on Chapter 13 of RttW. As I wrote, the chapter started to take off in a different direction than I originally intended, but I rolled with it and I managed to get to what’s either the end or close to it. I’ll go over things again, of course, and maybe add a bit before posting the chapter to the site.

Speaking of how the chapter went off in a different direction, I originally planned to use this chapter as an opportunity to properly introduce the other Rookies, but as I was writing, the focus turned to Pawel and Zofiya. I do intend to further develop the Rookies, but they are second-stringers and the main focus is going to be on Pawel, Zofiya, Fedor, Zsuzsanna and Arjun. There’s still time yet (as I still haven’t decided exactly how long RttW is going to be yet). We’ll see what comes. Stay tuned.

I had a trip out to Osaka, so with a round trip of more than two hours on the shinkansen, I figured I’d get a fair bit of writing done, but I really didn’t. I thought I could get some writing done in the evening, but between me conking out and the mascot wanting attention whenever I was conscious, that didn’t come to pass either. I did write a little on Chapter 13 of RttW, but I’ve got plenty more to go if I want to meet my deadline. I’m not too optimistic at this point, but maybe I can still turn things around. Stay tuned.

I continue to be buried under a mountain of stuff to be done and some gentle people with shovels in hand seem to have a mind that I remain buried. Nevertheless, I did allow myself a little break during lunch to work on calculating the weight of all the gear I’d given to the characters yesterday. (I do have to think about encumbrance, among other things.)

The office productivity specialist seemed hell-bent on preventing me from getting any writing done when I got home, but once she decided to take a nap (after I’d conked out myself), I did make a little headway in Chapter 13 of RttW. The chapter may not end up being all that long, but I’m still going to have to put the work in to meet my deadline. We’ll see what I can get done. Stay tuned.

I finished charting the stat growth of the Rookies and also sketched out the levelling history of Mariangela (the Archbishopess of the Cult of Nyxia from Chapter 8) and Dupont. I also sorted out the results of the little shopping spree that precedes Chapter 13, which sets things up for the chapter itself, but by the time I was ready to start writing, it was time for bed. Well, now I’m ready to go forward, so yay for that. Stay tuned.

I was doing some work on character stats. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll chart the characters’ growth from Level 1 to Level 80 just to get an idea of how powerful they could potentially end up. An important element is not to apportion the points the way I would but the way they would. In a previous post I mentioned the character of Elishavet putting points into INT not because she needs it for her Job but because she has an inferiority complex and doesn’t want to be seen as unintelligent compared to her peers. The ones I was working on now are more straightforward, Mages and Clerics focusing on SPT or a tank-type Fighter focusing on CON. Being the cautious type myself, it’s very hard to overcome the urge to maintain a balanced build to get in the mindset of a min-maxer. You could theoretically max out two of the seven core stats by Level 80, but it’d leave you sorely deficient in key areas. Now, this can be compensated for with equipment and buffs, but when it comes down to it, your base stats are the only thing you’re guaranteed to take with you (until you’re hit with debuffs, I suppose).

Anyway, I’ve got four more Rookies to go, but I don’t think I’m going to wait to start working on Chapter 13. I don’t want to end up skipping this cycle. We’ll see what I have to report next time. Stay tuned.