Spilled Ink

One of the things I've been collecting in bits and pieces are the names for places in the Spratt books. Medieval villages and towns were often named after really dull things ("Three Hills" or "Riverbend" or such) or was a corruption of a name in an older language. Since these books are in a heavily modified European setting, I've looked for words that sound or look right, but actually mean something else entirely.

For example, the country much of the story takes place in is called Verlan (and the people are Verlanese, etc), which sounds wonderfully French and sophisticated, like Paris (the city, not the heiress). Verlan is in truth a French word game involving the inversion of syllables to make slang. Another one I like is Tanstaafl, which will probably be the capital or a nearby Germanic-influenced city. While Tanstaafl just cries out for an umlat and sounds like a German word for a kind of switching gear on a train, it really is the acronym for "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Tanstaafl will obviously have to be a place of heavy commerce where everything has a hidden fee.

The town where much of the story takes place was to be called Stippleton and sit on the banks of the river Stip, but that falls flat for me now. I need to find a better name, for both the town and the river...

Okay. I've sent my stuff off to a couple of game houses to be part of their freelancer pools. This would be a nice way to grab some work while I'm at home with Harrison. I have no idea what sort of work will come my way from them (if any), but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

In the meanwhile, mulled over all of my novel ideas (no pun intended) and settled on finishing the Jackie Spratt story. Of the various books I have, I'm the furthest along with this tale and it seems the best bet for now. 

Right now I need to re-read everything I wrote earlier to get myself back into the Jackie Spratt universe (Spratterverse?). The section I left off at is where Jackie is about to meet Baba Yaga in the woods, so I checked a few books on witches and witchcraft from the library to tickle my creativity -- I don't really need it, as I have a pretty clear idea of how this section is going to go, but you never know.

You know, with the resurgance of Paganism, it's difficult to find a book on fictional witches like Baba Yaga or Black Annis or such. All I could find were books on Wicca or guidebooks for teenage witches about love spells. No, I'm not making this up. Oddly, the best info I found was in the children's section.

Arrrgh.

Well, I've officially hit the wall with too many projects. I haven't posted here for a month (!!) because there simply was no time. In October I tried working in drips and drabs on everything that's rolling around in my brain (well, not everything -- I still have ideas that will have to wait for a while). However, this is a bad, bad idea. One ends up spreading oneself too thin, and nothing gets done. Right now I have Viaduct (an RPG), an Elizabethan murder mystery, a YA novel, a modern fantasy novel, and the scripts for two webcomics all screaming at me for attention. The moment I start working on one, I get ideas for the others. Coupled with the new difficulty I have in concentrating (due to low oxygen), this brings everything to a grinding halt.

I think what really snapped me out of this was some very bad news I just got. My cat and best friend, Harrison, has been steadily losing weight and is now losing some of his hair. Alarmed by this I took him to the vet, whereupon it was discovered that he had weird readings in his liver enzymes and an unidentified mass over his heart -- most likely lymphoma. After crying like a baby for two days, I decided to swallow my grief and do something. The vets aren't exactly sure if it's lymphoma or something more benign, but whatever happens will require some dough to treat. I'm still without a day-job since moving to Seattle a month ago, and vet bills ain't cheap, so I need to work on whatever will get me some scratch. It's a horrible, mercenary point of view, but writing is a business besides an art. Viaduct is a lot of fun, but it probably won't be more than a niche product. The webcomic scripts will require an artist, so that's another wrinkle there. I think my best bet is one of the books.

Which doesn't help a lot, because I'm stuck on which of the three to do first.

Arrrgh... 

Razzenfrazzen...I'm still sitting on the floor of my new apartment as I write this. I need a desk or a table, as this hunched over business isn't helping to get writing done.

I also need to get a scanner. I have many drawings of ductiles and other Viaduct critters, but they're doomed to hang out in a sketchbook until I shell out the bucks. Anybody know of a good scanner? A make and model you like?

Anyway, I've somewhat solved the body type of the Mumbles. I think I'm going to change them so that they're piles of dust, but that they stick together via static electricity, like iron filings around a magnet. This gives them the ability to puff out in a cloud (and drop everything they're carrying), which is useful if you're falling, but can be very dangerous if done underwater. I'll have to hammer this out a bit more for game balance (the good news/bad news parts of all the player races), but I think this is a more workable solution.

As for how they look, I picture them like scratchy stick figures -- like a cross between Stikfas action figures and static. I'll still keep the fact that they have to sleep in bowls or buckets, because they have to consciously hold themselves together.

An odd problem I've encountered deals with the body types of the various player races. I think I have to steal the body type of one race for another, but then that leaves the body-less race...well, body-less. At least until I can figure out what their body looks like.

You see, I went out of my way to make each body type somewhat different yet still have common traits that players can identify with (meaning they all can run, climb a rope, jump a pit, etc). I also tried to design in some internal consistency and logic, such as the Foibles being able to braid themselves arms and legs since they're little more than balls of hair.

The problem arose with the Phleem, a race that evolved (in a manner of speaking) from human snot. You know all those boogers little kids leave stuck under chairs and tables? That's where Phleem come from. Anyway, in an earlier draft I went with them looking like human noses with arms and legs. I know, I know, I thought it was funny at the time. Upon reflection it didn't make much sense, considering how the other races are built, plus after drawing it a few times it looked really stupid.
 
After thinking about it some more, I felt the best choice was the sluggy-body-with-arms look of the Hutts from Star Wars would work, plus it was a bit of a nod to the Dralasites of the awesome old-school game Star Frontiers. The problem with that, however, was that shape was the body type for the Mumbles, a race of hive-minds formed from dried human skin cells and dust mites. So the Phleem had a makeover, but what do I do with the Mumbles? They could be sort of cloud-like, but that makes it difficult to role-play and I'm asking the audience to suspend belief enough as it is. 

So...What does dust do? It sifts down and settles on things, and in a pile it's sort of silky, with no rough edges. This gives an unfortunate image of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, which I'd like to avoid. I could make them a swirling cloud, but to move about they'd have to levitate and that's one Hell of an advantage. Another idea is a form of containment or envelope for the dust, but that would be hard to explain and it doesn't feel right. I might make a "binding agent" out of static electricity (which has both advantages and disadvantages), but I'm still at a loss as to what their basic shape would be. The standard humanoid bipedal body-type is a decent fallback, but I'd like something a bit more unique. I shall have to roll this about in my head and see what I come up with...

The blog is up! Calloo, callay, oh frabtious day.

Anyhoo, the current project on the slab is a role-playing game called Viaduct. Viaduct is about the hidden world within our own, where strange, tiny creatures live in our homes and businesses when we're not there. These creatures, known as Ductiles, live their lives never seeing a human being because they cannot co-exist with us and survive. However, these industrious little beings are quite happy to forge nations, explore uncharted wilderness, build cities, wage wars, loot tombs, invent improbable technology and fight the forces of evil without any real knowledge of us.

Viaduct is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek game, but I'm striving for the humor to be dry and not the "Har har! U R teh funnay!" sort of crap that tumbles out of Hollywood every year. Another goal I have is for Viaduct to be a great game with a clean, efficient system of rules that go beyond the offbeat humor, so that it's not a goofy one-shot game that people read and then forget. Time will tell if I succeed.

When I post about this game in the future, I'll be jumping in the middle and I'm not going to be heavy on explanations (this is a development blog and not a marketing blog, after all). If you see something that puzzles you, please post about it and I'll try to clear up any confusion.