Progress Update: Retreating into the Cave

Heyo, helpful humans!

It's Saturday, which means I'm just barely squeaking this in in time for it to count as "this week." Let's all be proud of me and my neverending diligence for a moment together.

...

Ahhh, there. That was nice.

Relative quiet notwithstanding, I've still been hard at work putting this story together for the upcoming Terry Pratchett series capper. I don't wanna spoil too much, but I have to say, I'm pretty deep in love with what I've made here. I didn't expect to do near so much worldbuilding, but I think it's really appropriate for a Terry Pratchett series.

Let's talk about it, shall we?

Where are we now?

About here: 

In more concrete terms, about done outlining the story.

I know my gut reaction reading that would be something like: wait, so you still haven't started writing yet? 

The quick answer to that is no, I haven't. Not prose, at least.

But I have been doing plenty of important legwork and deep thinking. To put what exactly this means, let me put this particular outlining process into perspective:

That's all outlining and worldbuilding.

If you know me and you know my perspective on worldbuilding, you'll know that none of that is superfluous. In fact, that's all the bare minimum, basic, primeval clay of creation for this story.

Even to me that kinda seems like a lot, but, I mean, it's echoing Pratchett. There's no way to capture even the barest scrap of that man's style or general vibe without a huge amount of research and planning. I'm not 1/32nd the bibliophile he was, and not half as creative. 

So there are dividends here, and I'm hoping the amount of effort I put into planning will pay them. We'll know shortly!

What's Next?

Lots'a writing.

Beyond that? We've still got the SCP series coming up, and I'll be doing research for that with whatever free time I have left. 

Y'all might notice there haven't been many forge sessions or livechats of late. That's in large part because I'm prepping a stream to host them on instead of the traditional audio-only feed we've done in the past. I think it'll just be a better, more fun, more accessible, more personal format, so I'm really looking forward to that and kind of devoting the time I'd normally spend on livechats to getting that up and running. 

I thought it'd be a simple process, but you'd be shocked by how complex software, drivers, GPUs, and all their specificities can make the whole thing. 

I’ve encountered few tasks less hopeful than trying to force OBS to capture a game it is determined not to capture, phew.

Anything Else?

I mean, nothing of terrible significance to the show just now. 

But there is kind of a cool thing on the side…

I’ve really gotten into TRPGs and D&D recently, and I’ve tried my hand at putting together a system that would be easy for my less-initiated friends to get into. In addition, I’m also GMing for the first time, so that’s exciting.

But the cool thing about this is that because of it I’m kinda entertaining the idea of like…

A Tale Foundry, collaborative storytelling TRPG system in the future?

I’ve thought about the possibility of TF boardgames (and we even had a member of the community put together a really cool prototype all on their own, independent of me, so maybe there’s something in the idea), but nothing’s really clicked for me. Not until I started to think creatively about roleplaying, and how much that resembles collaborative storytelling.

So maybe if I can distill down the basic elements of character and scene structure, I can put together a system that runs itself without the need for a GM? Something that’ll help people collaborate to build stories together?

I’m pretty excited by the thought, honestly. It’ll probably have to wait until the Tale Foundry book comes out, though.

—

And that's it for this week!  

I’ve already been pretty quiet lately, but expect something akin to radio silence as I retreat into my writing cave for the next week or so.

I’ll try to keep y’all updated. If I get streaming to work, I may start doing that pretty often, pretty casually, just for funs.

‘Till then, all of my love to you wonderful humies. 

Bye for now!

—Benji