I didn’t get any story writing done, but I did do a fair bit of work in the WttW peripheral materials. I was thinking about the stack of coins Pawel handed over to Dupont in Chapter 12 of RttW and I was thinking about making larger denominations of the denarius. Mixed currency means more items to account for, especially in light of the five different iterations of the denarius. However, the fact that I’m blending ancient Roman and medieval English styles gives some additional headaches to account for. I decided to add currency weights to the list of units, which led me to add some from antiquity like the mina and talent that I figure will mostly be used by dealers in currency.

I was also trying to figure out the ratios for the values of different metals, though even when used as a reference point, modern prices can’t be equated to ones from the past. (Consider a 12:1 ratio for silver to gold in antiquity when it’s more like 100:1 based on the current market.) And of course values are going to fluctuate over time and we have over 650 years the Game has been going on. I don’t know how interesting this is to general audiences, but I find it fascinating and trying to replicate something this complicated, is both a fun challenge and rather frustrating, and the real kicker is that the average person reading the story itself will have no idea all this is going on behind the scenes.

Perhaps I’m just playing with weights and measures and the commodities market to avoid digging into Chapter 27 of TWH. I do intend to get some work on it done, but there’s also plenty of work-work as well. Fun times ahead. Stay tuned.

All I got accomplished Monday was a little review of Chapter 26 of TWH, which I didn’t figure warranted a post. However, this time I didn’t work my way through lunch and stole a bit of time here and there in addition to getting some writing done back at the ranchero in order to finish Chapter 26. Yay. Chapter 27 is a big fight episode, so that’s going to be a pain to arrange and choreograph. Best get a head-start on it.

I also did a little work in the TWH peripheral materials. I set the times for each of the instances of currency debasement and also decided to come to an arrangement for small weights and volumes. Normally, I list weights in stones and volume in pints, but I’ll use grains for things that are less than 100 grains in weight and minims for anything less than 100 minims in volume. I’m debating whether to make a separate column in the spreadsheet so I can continue to handle the weights as numbers (as they’d be treated as character strings if I add the unit). Yes, that’s probably what I’ll do.

Anyway, that covers it for now. I’ve still got loads of work-work to do, but I think I’m at a point where I can strike a balance. Once my full load of courses starts, it’s bound to be another story, though. Stay tuned.

As expected, I didn’t get much accomplished beyond the update, but I was thinking about the history of the debasement of currency and because I draw on Diocletian’s Edict of Maximum Prices as one of my references, I decided to integrate similar monetary policy in the World. I haven’t finished it yet, but I put down the basics, as well as making different formulations of billon as separate items, each named after the king whose policy led to that formulation being used. So far I’ve just identified Robertian billon (from Raibeart I) and Gregorian billon (from Gregor III).

I need to move on to TWH, but I’d like to finish this bit of my work first. This is all amid what’s going to be one rough week. We’ll see what gets done. Stay tuned.

Even a half-day at work is enough to take a bite out of you. (It was more like two-thirds of a day, really, and it probably would’ve been a full day if they weren’t going to lock up at 1400. So much stuff to do…) As I ended up napping a fair chunk of the remainder of the day, that didn’t leave much time for anything else, but I did do some work in the WttW peripheral materials. I’ve moved on from tableware for the time being to think about oil lamps. At first I thought it was enough to provide a a few made from different materials, but then I started to think about sizes and styles and I’m going to be kept busy. I was also working to categorize more of the items and to break down material requirements. I generally try to limit it to one or two materials to simplify the crafting system, but I’m going to have to probably expand it to at least four for the general items list, maybe even six or more. (One formulation for orichalcum uses five elements, another eight+, for instance.) Oh, the fun that awaits…

Anyway, I’ve got one more day before I need to switch over to TWH. It’s going to be hard to squeeze in the time for writing given how hectic the week is going to be, but I’ll see what I can get done. Stay tuned.

As expected, I was quite busy at work getting things ready for classes starting up next week ad even so, I was still letting myself get drawn into the peripheral materials adding details to the general items list. What’s the capacity of a wooden spoon? How many varieties of spoon should I make? All this is very important.

Because I was going to have work on Saturday as well, I knew I needed to have the chapter done before then or I’d never get it out in time, so even though I was rather exhausted in the absence of the afternoon nap I’d gotten accustomed to, I still managed to push through and finish Chapter 12 of RttW, in part because I decided to break off the third scene into its own chapter. I’m able to meet my deadline now, so yay for that. I don’t imagine a whole lot is going to get done over the weekend, but we’ll see. Stay tuned.

I know what I said I needed to be doing, and I bet you can imagine how it turned out. I did make some progress on Chapter 12 of RttW, that’s true, but the vast majority of my time was spent in the peripheral materials. I was particularly focused on storage items. As I’ve been increasing the number and complexity of the item list, I decided I needed to account for different materials and such for crafting purposes, adjust prices, measurements, etc. I decided to convert some of my materials data to a spreadsheet, so instead of crunching numbers on the calculator, I can just set up some formulae to take care of it. After all, double-checking the density of different metals or the GSM of fabrics for weight calculations gets to be a pain after a while. Anyway, if you want your bag to be made of nettlecloth, hemp or jute, I’ve got you covered. (Now I’m realizing that I should make canvas bags while I’m at it.) Thinking of mounts, I also worked on data for saddlebags and I’m more than a little annoyed at froufrou brands like Dior call their dumb little purses saddlebags and mess with the search results.

Somewhat more relevant to the chapter at hand was dealing with tableware. We now have eleven kinds of drinking horns, and because I’m insane, I’m already thinking about providing them in different sizes. Oh, what fun.

However, such fun is going to have to be put on the back burner for the moment as I’m going to be really busy at work. I’ll try to get the chapter finished by Saturday, though. I’ve got one more scene and some change to write and it’ll be good to go. Stay tuned.

I continued to be wrapped up in the WttW peripheral materials. I have this idea that may end up as a short story of an Adventurer getting separated from his party in the mountains of Murakumo and he gets picked up by a Yuki Onna. The idea is to play on how much intellect and autonomy the Monsters actually have. Anyway, this prompted me to make a whole set of Yuki Onna gear. Great for cold resistance, so you’ll do A-OK in Niflheim, but the tradeoff in heat resistance means you’d practically vaporize in El-Samak, to say nothing of Muspellheim.

From there I started working on the cycles of the Trial Masters being defeated. You see, as you advance in the Trials, the respawn time for the Trial Masters becomes longer and longer. The gameplay function is to ensure Players actually have time to level and assemble before taking on the later Trial Masters. The past day or so I added a system that caps the number of Players that can take on a Trial Master at a time. It is of course possible for more to join in, but only the eligible formation will get credit. Smart Players could work it out so that they abuse this system, but actually getting a large number of Players together is quite a challenge, both because of their high mortality rate and the fact that they tend to be bad at cooperating. Anyway, I had expanded my chart to include all the Trial Masters, as before I’d just covered from 11th Trial Master on, so I was filling out the exploits of past parties and ended up having to make a number of adjustments. For instance, Jean (who appears in the prologue briefly and gets mentioned in Chapter 8) was originally supposed to be a member of the Red Griffins before he joined the White Lions, but he was too underlevelled for the Red Griffins’ exploits, so I ended up making another Adventuring Company that got wiped in Jotunheim.

With the new Player limit system, I also got to thinking of alliances and such that would form prior to the foundation of Adventurer Companies and that’s going to have a big influence on how the White Lions were formed and how they operated. Originally, it was all headlined by Ramachandra and his party, but now it’s more of a joint effort with another party that has yet to be detailed and so leadership positions have to be shared accordingly. This will all play a big part in the plot of WttW2 and WttW3.

Speaking of WttW3, I was developing more details for Jun’s backstory, so I had to pen the first draft of her monologue about what happened to her first party. No, it doesn’t get me any closer to finishing Chapter 12 of the current story, but it’s all connected. However, at this point, I may just need to gloss over the details that sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place as I only have one more day to freely dedicate time to writing. We’ll see what I can get done. Stay tuned.

I started off by working on that calendar error that was giving me the dickens the day before and now everything should be square from BE 382 to 355 (and by extension, the 262 to 235, 142 to 115, and 022 to AE 006 segments of the subsequent three cycles as well).That’s 28 years out of a 120-year cycle. Amazing. (Then I think about the remaining 92 years I have to eventually deal with… -_- )

I then switched gears to get to work on RttW. I made a bit of progress on Chapter 12, but then I got hung up on figuring out how much Pawel and Zofiya would have to spend to get their ten kiddos decently equipped before leaving Axios and then I realized that I hadn’t done character sheets for the seven kiddos besides Fedor, Zsazsa and Arjun. (Actually, nine eventually, as we need to round out the two parties.) When I do the character sheets, I chart their stat growth all the way to Level 80 (whether or not the character actually makes it that far) and as I do it, I try to get into the character’s head and think about what’s important to them, what they actually need for their Job and how all that comes together. For instance, Spirit rating wasn’t a priority at all for Pawel as he was running a Fighter build, but then in Tier 2 he decided to cross-rate to Mage in order to become a Mage Knight in Tier 3, so he had to focus on building up stats that he had completely ignored the previous 30 Levels. Among the new kiddos, there’s this girl Elishavet who’s a Fighter who insists on steadily building her Intelligence stat, not because she needs it that much from a gameplay perspective but because she doesn’t want to be seen as stupid compared to her party members. (Though the INT stat only really applies to intelligence in a meta sense, as a very grouchy Oscarius will tell you if you ever try to make fun of his 4 points of INT, and if that doesn’t work, he does always have his 189 points of STR to fall back on, as that poor table had to demonstrate back in Chapter 5.) Anyway, these are all things I’m thinking about as I work.

As I can expect rather hectic days back at work Friday and Saturday and probably on through July, I really need to get the chapter finished in the next couple days. We’ll see if I can get it done or not. Stay tuned.

I started out the day doing some work in the WttW peripheral materials, to no one’s surprise. I have this list of medieval professions, and I was going down the line looking for jobs that weren’t covered by the current Trade Guilds and when I got to the job of bureller, a weaver of burel cloth (also known as bure, bura and a good dozen other variants), I decided to add burel (a kind of cheap, thick, coarse wool) to the list of textiles and made a selection of clothes made from burel, which I dubbed the Peasant’s Winter Line. Like the nettlecloth and hemp stuff I made the other day, it’s easier to craft and cheaper than the regular stuff at the cost of being slightly worse than regular woolen garments (the idea being that the burel isn’t woven as tightly and so it isn’t as efficient at keeping you warm despite its heavier weight). It’s a cheap way to stay warm in the winter, so it’s something for the Adventurer on a budget to consider.

Going back to the original goal, I now have ten so-called limited Guilds. More may get added in the future, but I think that’s enough for now. I still have do that work chronicling all the twists and turns of the Guilds’ history. Right now all I have is the Silversmiths splitting off from the Goldsmiths, taking advantage of gold currency being withdrawn from circulation during the reign of Raibeart I. (Cue conspiracy theories of a golden hand being behind Raibeart’s assassination.)

Before I got to writing on CoP proper, I was going through the timeline of the story and adjusting travel times and distances based on the events that happen in the story. In the course of doing so, I ended up expanding the story quite a bit, adding ten whole chapters as you’ll see reflected on the site. Honestly, there’s a pretty big gap in time between the current Chapters 16 and 17 (58 days) that I’m probably going to want to fill with another two or three chapters, but we’ll let that percolate a bit.

I closed out the day by writing a bit on Chapter 4 of CoP. I would’ve liked to have done more, but the hour was growing late and beddy-bye time did await. With some concerted effort, I may well finish the chapter tomorrow, but we’ll see. Stay tuned.

I didn’t make any story progress (not unusual for Sundays), but I did do a little work in the peripheral materials of WttW. In particular, I was wanting to detail when different Guilds were formed, to cover the different splits and mergers that happened over the years, and while I was at it, I was thinking about certain professions that weren’t included in the current set of Guilds. I could’ve left those professions unregulated, but I decided to come up with the idea of limited Guilds, that is, Guilds that aren’t represented in Axios but may have their place in other parts of the World. This is in contrast with the “Wicked Thirteen” that exist but are neither recognized nor authorized (though likely overlooked, especially with the right “donation” to the right official).

Next is something I meant to talk about in yesterday’s post and that was the extended set of Elementals. As I mentioned before, I was going to use Kodama and Kanadama for the wood and metal Elementals until I decided that the terms wouldn’t have much currency outside Murakumo, then I decided to adapt the names of Greco-Roman gods, which led me to Artemid (wood), Vulcanid (metal), Maiad (life), Thanatid (death), Themidian (order) and Eridian (chaos). While Artemis is indeed a goddess of forests, I tend to associate her more with the moon, and I imagine a lot of other people do as well, so I wanted to do something different. You might think that Dryad would be the natural choice for a wood Elemental and I’d agree, but Dryads are Nymphs, which is a distinct subcategory of Fae, so I didn’t want to do that. I was thinking about “Woodheart” after the Houchi Shoujo character (who I recently got the MR skin for), which would then make “Ironheart” a natural choice for the metal Elemental, but that just makes me think of friggin’ Riri Williams, and I didn’t want that. I decided to go with “Protodryad” in the end. For the metal Elemental, I briefly went with “Metallo”, but people will just think of the Superman villain, so instead I chose “Jarnling”, adapting from the Norse. I kept Maiad and Eridian as they were, but I renamed the Thanatids “Reapers” (as death Elementals are seen as minions/emanations of Death itself) and the Themidians “Eunomians” as I thought that would be a little clearer (though either way I’m counting on some Greek knowledge on the part of the audience). Anyway, there’s some insight into the thought process when you don’t have something served up on a plate for you.

The primary goal next week is to move forward in CoP, but I may also work on finishing Chapter 26 of TWH while I’m at it. And I’m sure there will be more work in the peripheral materials as well. Those Guild histories aren’t going to write themselves, after all. Stay tuned.