I made some more progress on Chapter 10 of RttW, but not enough to finish it. I’m going to give it another week, but now that finals are over, I won’t have as much free time in the office as this week. As you might imagine, I was also doing work in the peripheral materials. I’ve added socks. That may not sound significant, but to the degree I’m trying to replicate reality with the World’s game system, it’s no small thing. You’ve got to take care of your feet, after all. Before there was just one layer to feet armor (the “armor” category applying to most coverings for the body, not just what we would conventionally regard as armor), but I have made it three layers now to accommodate socks and to allow the wear of regular shoes or boots under sabatons for heavy armor types. I’m also starting to sort out the characters’ equipment and realizing that because gear is going to change somewhat frequently, the current spreadsheet is going to be expanding a fair bit. Some other mechanics are bubbling into my head, so that’ll be other things to account for. Oh, what fun complexity addiction is. Anyway, I’ll be keeping you posted. Stay tuned.

I made some progress on Chapter 10 of RttW and did some work in the peripheral materials, settling on the XP scale and adding some items to the list, namely accessories to gauge things like HP, MP, and XP. You see, in the time period the main story is set, Players are issued magical devices called “Player Slates” that are magic tablets similar to the Sheikah Stone in Breath of the Wild, but you can’t be looking at your Slate while in active combat and there’s no magic HUD to display for your convenience, so there needs to be another solution. I might do a commentary post at some point to explain how the gamey aspects of the World are handled to give it a little more verisimilitude than just having holographic popups like you see in a lot of game-world stories. Anyway, I’ve still got a fair bit of work to do before the chapter’s ready to go, so I need to focus on that. Stay tuned.

I only managed to get a line or so written in Chapter 10 of RttW as I was mostly working on the site. I also started trying to figure out the XP requirements for levelling. The idea is to not make the requirements too steep or too shallow to maintain a reasonable timeline for advancement. The XP yields for mobs are already rather low, which gets reduced further when divided among party members. If you’re industrious enough, you should be able to advance at a decent clip, but I need to make sure the math works out because I’m being so autistic with the details of the system instead of just glossing over the details.

Here’s an example of the rate of progress for an active Adventurer that I use as a baseline:

Lvl 10 – 6 months
Lvl 20 – 1.5 years [1 year]
Lvl 30 – 2.5 years [1 year]
Lvl 40 – 5 years [2.5 years]
Lvl 50 – 8 years [3 years]
Lvl 60 – 12 years [4 years]
Lvl 70 – 16 years [4 years]
Lvl 80 – 20 years [4 years]

As I said, the trick is to make the numbers work, which requires a bit of wizardry. God help me if I feel compelled to track every encounter and quest for every Adventurer character. If I’m not considered certifiable now, I will be by the time the series is done. (For the sake of what shreds of sanity I have left, I may want to dial things back a bit, but I don’t know if I will.) With that happy thought, I need to get some actual writing done so I can meet my deadline. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on Chapter 10 of RttW, but mostly worked in the peripheral materials. I need to account for the purchases made during the market visit, which led me to fiddling around with the item list (which is only going to keep expanding and expanding). I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I need to juggle site stuff and story progress. Fun, fun, fun. Stay tuned.

I had to do some reworking of Chapter 8 of RttW before publishing it as I realized that I was shifting perspectives between Arjun and Pawel. While there are plenty of authors who fluidly move among their character’s POVs, it’s not what I like to do. I like to maintain the third-person limited and not switch POVs without at least doing a section break. I do occasionally flub it, but I try to avoid it. I also did a little checking over Chapter 9 and started in on Chapter 10. I’d like to get more done, but we’ll see. Stay tuned.

Rather than story progress, I spent some time fiddling around with the WttW peripheral materials. I wasn’t really writing much in the way of new material, but I was making actual tables for table content rather than just the plain-text approach that wasn’t always lining up quite right due to variable spacing when you go from one platform to another. Maybe the process would go faster if I’d transfer the content over to a spreadsheet and then copy it back into the WP. I still have a few I haven’t made yet, so I may give that a try.

You know, now that I think about it, there is some new content. I’d decided that sugarcane wasn’t going to be available in the World, with sugarbeets and sorghum being the main sources of molasses, but I was doing some more research into the history of sugarcane cultivation and decided that it’d be fine. Cacao remains out, however, so no chocolate. You see part of the idea was to have certain things from our world simply not be available just as a little extra something the Players have to deal with. Anyway, we now have sugarloaves getting added to the item list. I have to decide if I want to add all the associated tools as well.

Anyway, maybe I can get some more substantial progress done over the weekend. Stay tuned.

I did some writing on Chapter 9 of RttW. I could probably have it finished with a little more work. I could use the lead time, so I may stick with it rather than switching over to TWH. Stay tuned.

I finished up Chapter 7 of RttW and then checked over Chapter 8, which was already pretty much ready to go. Can’t decide if I’m going to switch over to TWH or spend some more time with RttW. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I did a little tweaking to Chapter 7 of RttW but not much writing yet, though I only have to finish one scene to get it ready to go. I also fiddled around a bit with Child of Promise, which I’ve decided is going to be what takes EM3’s slot. More to come. Stay tuned.

I’m really close to having the epilogue of EM3 finished. I probably just have another sentence or two to tie a bow on it and be done, though I imagine I’ll want to give it a couple passes before I post it. I also did a little writing in RttW while I was preparing the story update.

What took the bigger chunk of my time was some work in the peripheral materials I was doing with regards to juvenation and life extension, something that isn’t that well reflected in some of my materials. It was a big part of my calculations when working on the CeleKing series, but in the overarching narrative of the Cross Arc as a whole, I hadn’t really factored it in when I was doing my early genealogical work. I considered not making life extension much of a thing until the Fifth Empire period, but that didn’t jibe with my work on CeleKing as Emperor Wuzu of the Hua Dynasty made it to 266 years and life extension treatments would have had to have started no later than the mid-5th Century for him to have made it so long. We do have about a 50-year period for the Æther War for life extension to develop and we can argue that the Skyfall Calamity caused disruptions in its application, but that didn’t change the fact that I wanted it to be reflected in the main Imperial line and major pretender factions.

One example of a major change was changing Emperor Michael I Neologos’ birth from NE 541 to NE 461. This meant that rather than being the great-grandson of Emperor Victor Alexis I Neander, he’s now that Emperor’s brother-in-law with the two of them having married sisters. I had to move around the family tree to reflect this change, which is a bit of a pain when you’re just using a text file for this sort of thing. (I really should consider upgrading how I do my genealogy work.) With Emperor Michael’s lineage now majorly altered, I had to fill in a couple generations up so that he doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere. I ended up with quite the little soap opera story brewing in House Goldbaum. (I always love how stories come together as I make family trees.) Anyway, that kept me busy a good long while. Got to see the sunrise, so I guess you could call that a perk.

Anyway, Monday I’ll be switching over to TWH, but in the meantime, I’ll probably fiddle around with this stuff a bit more. I’m sure you all find it thrilling. Stay tuned.