As you can see, I got Chapter 5 of TWH done in time for the update, and, as you’d expect, I spent the rest of my time continuing my work in WttW. And I haven’t just been working in the peripheral materials either. I’ve gotten up to Chapter 7 in RttW. That one decision I’ve had misgivings about is pretty well locked in at this point, so I’m just going to have to deal with the consequences. World-building yet character-destroying, though hopefully as I develop the story further, the context will at least make it feel organic. Just going to have to roll the dice, I guess.

Expect more of the same this week, though I will try to at least finish another chapter of NagaTen while I’m at it. Stay tuned.

I at least accomplished one of my goals, rounding out Chapter 7 of NagaTen, but I didn’t touch on TWH any. You guessed it, I spent most of my time on WttW. However, rather than the peripheral materials, I spent a fair bit of time writing on RttW. I completed Chapter 1 and then got through Chapters 2 and 3 and started on Chapter 4. I may end up scrapping a fair bit of it, though. The main character does some things I’m not happy with. It sets the tone and establishes some concepts I want to convey, but I don’t like that he’s the one to do it. I need to try writing an alternate version and see how that fits. There’s a lot of juicy conflict that can be born of the original version, but I feel I’d lose the vast majority of the audience by doing it. I don’t know.

Anyway, I need to at least get the chapter of TWH that’s due out this weekend done. I’m sure WttW will continue to occupy plenty of my time as well. Stay tuned.

As you might imagine, WttW dominated my time, though I did managed to complete two of the three parts of Chapter 7 of NagaTen, so I almost achieved my stated goal. Other than working on the peripheral materials for WttW, I wrote a fair bit on Chapter 3 of RttW as the confrontation there is something I was itching to put down on (digital) paper.

Going forward, I’d like to finish that chapter of NagaTen and then probably go back to TWH, as I don’t have any buffer built up there, unlike the soon to be released EM3. We’ll see what I get accomplished. Stay tuned.

As you can see by looking at the main site, I did in fact manage to get Chapter 4 of TWH finished in time for the update and went on to write something like a whole sentence on Chapter 5. (I’ll obviously have to do a fair bit more than that in the next three weeks.)

Of course, I’ve continued to spend most of my time in the peripheral materials for WttW. Yes, the level of detail I’m going into is insane, but I’m enjoying myself and what more can you ask for out of life? I’ve started to seed the different zones (or Trials as they’re known in-universe) with wildlife, natural resources and such and as that gets done, I’ll have a better grasp of how the global economy operates. Eventually I need to start running combat simulations to test the game balance as well. Fun, fun, fun.

Although I’m going to be continuing full speed ahead on my development of WttW, I also need to do some writing on NagaTen. I’ve still got plenty of time before it gets released, but I would like to patch the holes in Chapter 7 at the very least. We’ll see what I get accomplished. Stay tuned.

P.S. The latest post to get assailed by spammers was “On Values Dissonance” with over 500 rubbish posts. If we had a more active community, I’d like to leave that one open for discussion, but as non-spamming traffic is quite light, I’ve gone ahead and locked comments for the time being. I may open it up later if ever there’s a demand for it.

Except for spending a decent chunk of Saturday writing manga reviews, both to cover Sunday’s update and in general to work on my to-do pile, I spent the vast majority of my time continuing my work on the peripheral materials for WttW. I did streamline the job system a bit, eliminating some fifteen of the Tier 3 classes, but that was the only thing I did to reduce the complexity of the game system. I’ve added so many mechanics, you’d think I was trying set the entire universe to a mathematic formula. (Almost. I’m not quite there yet.) However, that chapter full of holes in TWH is supposed to be out Saturday, so I’m really going to have to sit down and finish it, but how can I find the time when I’m trying to calculate the rate of spoilage for cumin or the strength requirement for an orichalcum rod? I’m sure I’ll eventually get to doing what needs doing.

Oh, by the way, the Russians have been spamming the heck out of this blog. (Apparently they don’t have more pressing concerns.) I had to close comments for the old post “A View into the Pit of Madness”, as it was clogged with over 1200 spam comments. I’m sure posterity isn’t going to need a lively discussion on my efforts to get the Ranko summon in Granblue. If I see any particular post get flooded like that, I’ll close the comments there too, but in general, I’ll be keeping comments open, even if there isn’t really any commentary to be had. And that does it for now. More to come. Stay tuned.

On a whim I decided to start writing on Return to the World. Maybe not so much of a whim given how much I’ve been thinking on the game system and working out the details. I wrote the prologue and part of Chapter 1 before throwing myself into the peripheral materials. I really do have a case of complexity addiction as I keep on adding new mechanics. Some might argue that I’m reinventing the wheel as a lot of PnP RPGs like D&D have already done a lot of this legwork, but I enjoy putting together my own ruleset from scratch. Heaven help anyone who tried to adapt it, though. Even with me using pseudo-programming notation, I shudder to think of the mammoth task of actually programming this monster. LibreOffice has crashed so many times as I’ve been working on the spreadsheet, it’s not even funny. Anyway, I’m probably going to continue working on this for a while, but I’ll try to find time for some actual story writing as well. Stay tuned.

I don’t quite have the chapter structure for EM3 set in stone yet, but I finished five chapters. Several of those were already in progress, so it’s not quite as much headway as it might sound at first, but it’s still pretty respectable if I say so myself.

For a change of pace, I wrote Chapters 1 and 2 of Whose Dog Are You? (which I’m going to be referring to as “DonaInu” from now on, from the Japanese translation of the title: “Anata wa Donata no Inu Desu ka?“).

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of work in the peripheral materials of Welcome to the World. One of the gimmicks is that I’m really trying to make the World operate according to a clearly defined game system. I may need to go back and streamline the mechanics more as I think I’m suffering a bit from complexity addiction. We’ll see how things go.

I mentioned plans to plug some holes in NagaTen and TWH last week. I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I need to get on it. Stay tuned.

If I was on the ball, I would’ve finished Chapter 20 of KniTwi and maybe even knocked out one or two more chapters while I was at it. Instead I wrote a little bit, then wrote this unrelated chapter that I think is going somewhere in the Legend of Nell series, but I don’t actually know where at the moment. I then decided to reread Tellus and managed to uncover a couple dozen typos that escaped my initial passes through the story. Finally I got a tiny bit more done on Chapter 20. I’m going to have to buckle down as the chapter is due out next Saturday. Stay tuned.

I said I’d mix things up a bit and I did by working a bit on Nell1 and Nell3. The former was mostly just some light editing, but for the latter I was fleshing out a scene I wanted to get out of my head. I need to get back to Tellus, though. (I did, at least, catch up on my transcriptions there.) More to come. Stay tuned.

I finished Chapter 1 of JJ2 and started on Chapter 2. Similarly, I finished Chapter 1 of Nell1 and started on Chapter 2 there as well. Am I thinking about putting Nell1 in the queue? Maybe. I haven’t decided yet. I’ve mentioned TKT and EM2 in the anniversary post. Would I be willing to start a four-week cycle? Something to consider. Stay tuned.