I mentioned pockets last time, so I was going through adding storage space to different articles of clothing (and adding some items to the list). Now, unlike a lot of modern clothing, pockets aren’t all that common, so it doesn’t apply to that many items. A particular exception is the Smuggler’s Set, which is loaded with pockets.

I was further developing the mechanics I was working on before and laying some of the groundwork for dealing with things like weather and terrain. (Until now, I’ve only accounted for temperature thus far with some notes on certain items about waterproofing.) Lots of things to deal with.

I started to do a little writing on Chapter 10 of RttW in the evening, but I didn’t last long before conking out. So it goes. I’ll try to focus more on story progress for now. Stay tuned.

Again, no story progress but extensive work in the WttW peripheral materials. Besides some additional tweaks to the weights and measures, I added a new mechanic. While Charisma is a base stat in DnD, it isn’t in the game system I created for the World. However, I decided that the concept of Charisma was useful for a number of things, so I decided to create it as a special stat outside the base stats. With the base stats (Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, Spirit, Dexterity and Speed), you get a default spread based on your starting Job, plus ten points to distribute as you will. With Charisma, you get a randomly generated value between 1 and 100, plus a ten-point bonus for being an Adventurer (a game mechanic way of representing the inherent respect the People of the World have for Adventurers). You gain a point of Charisma for each character level and you can also gain a point of Charisma for the equivalent of a character level by performing successful Charisma Checks (1XP for a successful Charisma Check). Speaking of Charisma Checks, these are actions like Charm, Bluff (Lie), Tame/Subdue, and Lead that rely on Charisma for the calculations.

Now, I said that initial Charisma scores were randomly generated and I meant it. So I went down the list of characters and ran the random number generator and it was funny how things worked out. With the bonus applied, Pawel’s initial score was 80 and Zofiya’s 83 (while poor Jun was 31) and among the kids, Fedor is a whopping 98, Zsuzsanna a respectable 59, and Arjun a measly 19. This was entirely random and it just happened to work out with what I envisioned for the characters. The same held for the others. I would’ve liked Ramachandra’s initial value to be higher than the 64 he got, but the idea of him working hard to get to where he was actually works pretty well when I think about it. Anyway, it’s neat how things work out.

I need to focus on making actual story progress in the days to come, but I do want to continue to flesh out these mechanics. Also, pockets. I’ve decided that certain clothing should have their own storage slots, so I need to go through the list and account for that. Fun to come. Stay tuned.

I didn’t make any story progress, but I spent a lot of time in the peripheral materials for the WttW series, particularly plugging in the weights and measures system into the spreadsheet. I’ll be posting a simplified version of this in the appendices later. The system used in the World is a hybrid of Roman and traditional English units, so there’s a bit of difference between the units used and the ones you know. For instance, an Axian inch, like the Roman one, is 2.46cm rather than the 2.54cm US inch. One thing I had to go back and change in the item list was all capacity references using liters (which was a placeholder for convenience). You see, I set a block of storage at half a liter mainly because I started with accounting for water storage first. A pint is close enough, though in the current system, the dry pint is less than that and a fluid pint is more, but it’s a workable compromise. I was then trying to edit some of the assorted containers. I want to arrange the storage blocks in three dimensions, which means the actual capacity doesn’t always quite match, but if you’ve studies traditional measures, you know there was historically a lot of shenanigans involved. Anyway, this is the sort of thing I do with my free time. Expect more of this to continue. 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 won’t bore you with excuses, but I haven’t been able to get to working on EM3 like I was hoping until now. I didn’t get it too far, though, but at this point I might as well stick with it until I either finish it or I need to switch over to TWH.

I also spent some time on the peripheral materials for the WttW trying to standardize the system of weights and measures. That doesn’t get us any further in the story proper, but these details are all part of the worldbuilding iceberg. Maybe I can get some actual writing done sometime before the weekend’s out. Stay tuned.

I didn’t make any story progress, but I was working in the peripheral materials for WttW. I was adding a bunch of stuff to the item list and this has prompted me to think about giving details to the enchantment system, but that’s a task for later. I, of course, need to buckle down and get the chapter of EM3 done, so I should probably prioritize that. We’ll see what gets done. Stay tuned.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Welcome to the World: Return to the World.

I’ve commented before how my protagonists tend to be less and less good as people as I’ve progressed in my writing career. There’s a line I haven’t crossed until now, but that line gets crossed in RttW. Let’s be blunt about it. One of the first things the main character does when he returns to the World is rape a young woman. The natural question is, “Why would you do this?” It’s not for any prurient interests, not for myself and not for the audience. It’s not some gimmick to draw people in. If anything, it’s going to be almost impossible for me to garner any sympathy for Pawel. It’s not a gamble you want to take with your protagonist, so why risk it? Well, let’s talk about that.

One of my inspirations was Westworld. I was intrigued by the idea of people’s moral code breaking down in an environment where they can let go of their inhibitions with little or no consequences. Also, consider the sort of cruelty players can engage in when they play video games, or even the random, thoughtless acts of cruelty in real life you see from children (or older folks who never developed a functioning superego). I wanted to explore the psychology behind this in the WttW series. The World in the WttW series summons children between the ages of 10 and 12. Mentally and physically, they are not yet fully formed, putty in the hands of whatever force guides the Game. It is quickly established that Players are a different breed, essentially demigods. It doesn’t take much for power to go to your head and bad things follow when that happens. Mix in a cruel world that gives you little choice but to fight and kill to survive with odds quite heavily stacked against you and it’s a recipe for some very broken people who will perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

At this early point in the story, I’ve only begun to hint at Pawel’s own experience and the nature of the World. I’m not excusing him in the slightest, but he is a thoroughly damaged individual whose tenuous sense of restraint didn’t hold up when presented with a convenient outlet for a variety of pent-up frustrations. If it’s any comfort to the more delicate reader, there will be log-lasting consequences for this lapse. This only scratches the surface of the ugliness of the World, but I’m not here to fetishize that ugliness. I want to dig into how characters face that ugliness, when they’re strong and when they’re weak. Will I succeed in crafting a compelling narrative in the process? We’ll see.

Anyway, I’m not the one who decides whether or not this little experiment works out. That’s for you, the reader. I may well have to have another one of these chats before things are all said and done. Stay tuned.

While not making much in the way of progress, I was at least going through RttW and doing some editing from around Chapter 2 to Chapter 7. Regarding Chapter 2, here I am so close to the moment of truth and the temptation to chicken out is really strong, but I’m going to bite the bullet and go for it. I plan on having a little chat with the readers after I post it and we’ll see where things go from there. Sometimes I wonder if I’m too conscientious or not conscientious enough. One of life’s many questions. Anyway, I’ll be back in a bit for that chat. Stay tuned.

I continued my adventures with the spellchecker with particular focus on RttW and TWH. Speaking of the latter, I plan on doing a proof sweep like what I’ve been doing with all the Cross Arc stories, which I’m hoping will get me in the right headspace moving forward. Stay tuned.

I didn’t make any story progress, but I did do a fair bit of work in the peripheral materials for the WttW series. It’s got me thinking about ditching the old forum on the site and replacing it with a wiki. It would go a long way toward making the extended content available to the audience. One thing among many to think about.

In other news, I’ve noticed a long-standing issue where the site’s CSS wasn’t being parsed by Chrome. It wasn’t until I was looking into the site’s SSL that I discovered that I needed to add a separate reference to the HTTPS link, and now that that’s done, the problem is solved. That being said, I still need to think about updating the overall code, maybe modernizing the design a bit. I definitely need to do something to make it more user-friendly on mobile. Things to do, things to do. Oh, yes, I also need to be switching gears to TWH. I’ll be honest with you, though. I’m a bit stuck on the upcoming chapter, so I’m not terribly confident I can get it together by the weekend, but we’ll see. Stay tuned.