New Year, Same Me

This is sort of a general update post. Intellectually, I don't think anything here is going to be any surprise or revelation to anyone, but I feel like sometimes I need to send out a "proof of life" broadcast.

So, first off, I've been struggling with a lot of major personal stuff for a while. I've mentioned this on and off in passing, and I'd go into more detail if it was appropriate to do so here. It bugs me that I can't talk about it, because before it all started I was trying to be more open about stuff bothering me and not bottle up so much. Part of the problem is that as much as I'd like to find a comfortable medium of being open about what I can while keeping the things I can't close to the chest, I'm not sure what I'd have to say. "I'm miserable and I'm having trouble writing." I mean, that'd mostly be it, albeit in a variety of different phrasings and levels of self-deprecation.

Because, y'know, I'm miserable and I'm having trouble writing. 

And there are multiple factors that feed into those difficulties, some of them out of my control. And I have trouble keeping the stuff I can control in check. But the biggest barrier, outside my ADHD, is the distinct impression that I'm the only one that cares about my fiction writing, except the handful of times I've written it under contract. I find it difficult to remain emotionally-invested in my characters or stories when clearly they aren't especially compelling to anyone else, either.

I know I'm a broken record about this, but I'll say it again: about 99% of the encouragement I get regarding my writing comes from people who don't read it. Seriously, while I do appreciate the thought and I don't want to come across like I'm giving anyone crap for it, it's frustrating beyond my ability to articulate that my complaints about nobody reading my fiction get more attention and feedback than the actual work itself. (Even with the gaming fiction for books that sell hundreds or maybe thousands of copies, I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard or read any reaction to my gaming fiction from people who weren't the developer I was writing it for.) While it's not conscious on my part, it's probably not an accident that I have an easier time complaining than working. It's all dragging me down to the point where it's affecting my enthusiasm/ability to work on other stuff, too.

This shouldn't be news, if you've known me for more than five minutes. This is something I've complained about, before. None of that has changed, and I don't know how to do anything about it. Under the pretense of a "New Year's fresh start" thing, I'm considering putting up a self-promotional post in a few spots, see if I can get some eyes on my work while I poke at the WIP stuff I've got, but it really feels like actively tracking down Lucy specifically to hand her the football and hold it for me to kick.

Either way, this is a long, whiny way of saying that my writing progress hasn't really advanced beyond the state it was in when I posted about it back in September.

I'm not sure what else to add to this, so I'll just say for anyone who has paid attention thus far, thanks for reading, and I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment and waste of time.

(And if anyone is reading this and thinking 'if you can psych yourself up to write this post, you should be able to psych yourself up to write other things,' you can go fuck yourself because if it was that fucking easy I'd be fucking doing it.)

The Road Between Light and Dark: What Did or Didn't Happen (Exalted)

Hey there, folks, apologies for how quiet it's been here. Juggling things here, etc. Also, I didn't get around to getting those core system Alchemical builds up while the crowdfunding campaign was up, but I will get to them. But I'm still behind on my session write-ups, so I wanted to knock out another of these first. I could probably go into much less detail than I do on them, but especially on the chattier sessions, I have trouble finding a middle ground between 'excruciating amounts of detail' and 'summarize the entire session in half a dozen paragraphs.' But between a brief holiday hiatus and the fact that I'm playtesting something with the group (which won't go on the blog right away), I should have a little time to get caught up.

(Speaking of which, this is another talking-heavy session, so there might be details I get wrong or put things in the wrong order. If any of my players see this and would like to offer a correction, let me know.)

So here we go. Oh, and before I forget, I hope everyone reading this is having a happy and safe holiday season.

The Road Between Light and Dark: Battle at the Summit (Exalted)

Okay, still trying to get caught up, so on and so forth, usual blah blah blah. I still need to get my Alchemical write-ups finished (I've got the ExEss write-ups, now I need to do the core system versions), but I don't want to get too far behind on this.

I'm gonna tell you now, it might be a little long, because this post features a fight that took multiple sessions to resolve (and gets a little graphic in places, be warned), but it was a ton of fun -- hopefully I can make it fun to read.

Before we get into it, just a couple of reminders: First, the Alchemicals splatbook (which, in case it needs repeating, I worked on) is still funding on Backerkit; come pledge and check out the previews! Second, the Trinity Continuum Player's Guide (which I also worked on) is up on DriveThruRPG in PDF and PoD. I'm always proud of the work I do on the books, and the TCPG was a delightful challenge because of the material I was covering.

And now, on with the show!

Building a Character: Exalted Essence (Another Alchemical!)

Hey there, back again with another magical robot Exalt for the blog. In case you missed it, the Alchemicals Backerkit is running and going into its last week. Here's a second Essence Alchemical character, and as soon as I can swing it I'll post a core system version using the crowdfunding manuscript preview material.

In case you missed it, I've already posted an Adamant Caste Alchemical based in Creation, and you can follow that link for the basic gist of what the Alchemical Exalted are and where they come from. (Also, there's a bunch of fluff from that write-up that's relevant to this one but for the sake of brevity I'll just refer back to it rather than repeat myself more than necessary.) But now I'm going to do an Alchemical based in Autochthonia itself -- a Jade Caste, this time.

So let's get into it.

An overdue announcement and a reminder

I mentioned this in my recent session write-up, but I felt it deserved its own post here.

The Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God crowdfunding campaign is about half-over as I post this, and a bunch of the previews are available to backers -- some of which includes material I've written, with more on the way! The book is, in a nutshell, about sweet magical robot-people who (for the most part) live inside a giant magical robot-god, and the robot-god world in which they live. The previews are available for backers only, though I'm pretty sure you can back the campaign, download the preview, and then cancel it, if you really want to. I can't stop ya.

(Also, as a side-note, while this is a 3e core system book, the setting material is also useful for the Exalted Essence rules, especially with the updates to the Adamant Caste.)

If you'd like to know more, episode 338 of the Onyx Pathcast has a basic explainer of Alchemicals. And past episodes include interviews with the developers and a couple of the writers.

There's also a slightly-outdated pair of episodes from the Systematic Understanding of Everything podcast, talking about the Alchemicals themselves and the magical machine-world in which they live. These two refer primarily to the 2e books, but there's a lot of broad strokes stuff that still holds up as those books naturally fed into the new one, and all of the podcast's hosts wound up working on it.

Or, if you'd rather skip the podcasts, I can answer questions if people have any.

In semi-related news, here's a reminder that another book I recently worked on, the Trinity Continuum Player's Guide is available over on DriveThruRPG in PDF and print on demand. It's a supplement for the Trinity Continuum 'core' line, though the material in there is useful in any of the various timelines of the Continuum.

Anyhow, I hope everyone's holiday season is off to a solid start. Take care, and hopefully I'll be able to check in again soon!

The Road Between Light and Dark: Once Above, Now Below (Exalted)

Hey there, here we are again, so on and so forth. Unless something's gone horribly wrong, the last thing I posted before this should have been an Alchemical character build, and I have another almost ready, as my little way of celebrating the Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God crowdfunding campaign on Backerkit! As I post this, the campaign's about half-over, and so far a big chunk of the manuscript has been previewed, including one of the sections I worked on.

Also, as a reminder, the Trinity Continuum Player's Guide is available in print and PoD. In fact, between backing it on Kickstarter and working on it, I have an extra 'free PDF' code for DriveThruRPG. I'll put a time limit on this of, say, until the Alchemicals campaign wraps up (so about two weeks), and the first person within that time who tells me they saw this can get that code.

And now, on with the show!

Building a Character: Exalted Essence (An Alchemical!)

Greetings, programs!

That seems kind of a fitting opening, given that we're talking about magical robots here. Not that they're strictly programmed, but whatever. Today I'm posting an Alchemical Exalt in honor of the upcoming crowdfunding campaign on Backerkit, which is to begin today (November 14th) at 2PM Eastern, AFAIK.

So, first, off, if you don't know what Alchemicals are, they are a type of Exalt -- the Chosen of Autochthon, the Machine God (not the God-Machine, that's something different). If you don't know Exalted, try this setting primer to get you caught up. Autochthon himself is one of the Ancients, a primordial titan who helped build Creation and the gods and the humans and all that. When the gods rose up against their cruel creators, Autochthon was one of two that turned against his own kin and sided with the gods.

Arguably, Autochthon made the Divine Revolution possible -- the gods were prevented from acting directly against the Titans, but Autochthon showed them how to create human champions who could fight for them -- the process of Exaltation itself. After the Revolution, for a handful of reasons, Autochthon left Creation entirely after scooping up his followers and a bunch of random mortals to populate his world-body. There's a whole society inside him, called Autochthonia.

Autochthonia has its own Exalted, the Alchemicals -- but unlike the Exalted in (and adjacent to) Creation, these aren't mortals gifted with power but techno-magical constructs with the souls of heroic mortals and the same sort of divine power with which other Exalted are gifted. In the past, Alchemicals usually get printed up towards the end of an edition because they're sealed off in their own little world and aside from some adventure hooks involving Autochthonia re-establishing contact with Creation (the most well-known being the Locust Crusade), there's not a lot that can be done with them in the larger game.

Third Edition tweaks this, somewhat. It's established now that before leaving Creation, Autochthon built some prototypes that for one reason or another got left behind. There are one or two other possibilities of how they can wind up in Creation, and I can't recall if the details of how that could happen have been expounded upon so I won't get into that here. So for that reason, I'm planning on doing two Alchemical characters -- one in Creation, one in Autochthonia.

This is the Creation-side one first, and we're building them up with the Essence rules. So let's get to it!