Peace and quiet!

This is just a short one for today. You may have noticed that I missed my blog posting slot two weeks ago, sorry about that! It was for a good reason though, honest. A friend of mine offered his flat to me for the week so that I could get my head down and really thrash out some work on Vinland the book.

Although the manuscript was completed some time ago, I have been working on editing it so that it is polished enough to send off to an professional editor, then to agents and eventually a publisher – this of course takes time, and balanced between Starium and other duties it fell by the wayside a little.

So given a week of blissful quiet and space I was able to hammer out a significant amount of work, and got to roughly the book – probably a good 3-4 months worth under normal circumstances! 

So as you can see, sometimes a little peace and quiet, together with a change in environment can be all you need to get a shot in the arm, and get productive again!

The Dream Vision

Dare to dream - you never know when they will come true.

“You have to dream before your dreams can come true” – Abdul Kalam

School reports often labelled me as “a daydreamer”. To them, it was a bad thing, as it meant that I was not giving the teachers 100% of my focus, but to me it was to become a badge of pride. During these times, my mind was never blank – instead I was off creating worlds in my imagination, populating them with all kinds of weird and wonderful people and places.

Often, these worlds were related to the games I played, and there are countless examples on the internet of my dreams being made manifest as short stories on various forums. One of these dreams – a meeting between Leif Erikson and Christopher Columbus at sea was to become the basis for my earliest concepts for the Vinland books and games.

Dreams are I believe, one of the most important assets that a designer can have, and this is the philosophy that I embrace when creating new things. When I was young it was only fantastic worlds that sprang forth, but now it can be anything from game mechanics to mentally play-testing and discovering new nuances that I would perhaps have missed. I will lay awake at night, often for hours mentally going through my experiences of the day, filtering through anything valuable and locking it away. I always sleep with a notebook by the bed in case something very important or inspirational pops up, and write it down.

When working on Prophesy of Pendor and Vinland: Arctic Assault I used to lay out the “Dream Game”. For this I used to write out my plans on the development forum, purposefully ignoring all limitations of budget, manpower and resources. This was the very best design that I could come up with, and the sheer scope of this used to drive our programmers mad when they first read it.

Note the highlighted “I” there. My dreams are just that – mine, and while I may once have believed that I was some sort of genius, experience has taught me that the insight of others is often extremely valuable. I will frequently discuss my “Dream Visions” with friends at the pub, or post them in full on our development forums. I want, no need input from others – this is the only way to improve them.

This is where the evolution part of the design process comes in. With the initial concepts aired in public, I then encourage a discussion of the elements, including most importantly a reality check from more cynical members of the team. It is during this that the ideas are refined; the possible expanded upon, and the implausible rejected (or put aside). The dreams will evolve with each iteration, becoming less a vision and more a design, being polished and developed during each pass until it is in a form most suitable for implementation.

A great example of this process in action is in Prophesy of Pendor, when we were working on the Order of Dawn. At first there was a very black and white relationship between them and their arch rivals, the Eventide. One was good, one was evil. Very simple... very boring.

During discussions it was then questioned whether the very principles underpinning the Dawn could be corrupted in such a way as to make them possibly even more evil than the reviled Eventide – and if so, how to include the Eventide into this story. This is where the fanaticism of the Dawn came into play, their very dedication to good and justice to the exclusion of all else led them to becoming fanatics blind to any other outcomes.

A branch of the Order awoke to the danger and decried the zeal of their brethren, pushing for a more pragmatic approach – resulting in a massive schism and the formation of the Eventide. Unfortunately this very pragmatism would then go on to corrupt the Eventide in its own way, but the outcome for both orders was vastly more complex and interesting than the initial dream. The design evolution had done its job.

Ironically it was a programmer who called me out on this process, tired of the continual conceptualisation and evolution of the ideas. He demanded that we designers only present fully formed ideas, straight from our minds. While it is entirely possible to personally polish the vision I have; this was a problem I struggled with during work on Vinland: Arctic Assault, as the dreams I had underwent far less refinement than they do on say, Starium with its much larger team. I am under no illusions that it is the input of others that allow it to reach their full potential and thankfully the other designers on my team backed me on this and the programmer conceded on how things were developed over time.

I would encourage fellow designers, to post / air / discuss / debate their Dream Vision, and then collectively revise it until it shines. Restrictions of the internet, and the nature of much of my work being virtual means that much of this must be done online (though this means there is automatically a log of any suggestions), though some of the most fun discussions I have are with friends at the pub, hammering out the concepts over a beer. The more relaxed the environment, the better it is for this. There is never a “right” answer to this exercise, but the more angles it is explored from, the more refined the dream will become.

It can be useful to have a thick skin for this, because sometimes it behoves the project throw it out as impractical. Even then, it should never be deleted, as in my experience a rejected idea would become the basis for some of our most important and popular features.

So don’t stop dreaming, and never stop sharing them because you never know; it could be the next Big Thing.

Image courtesy of http://www.worth1000.com/entries/488412/fantasy-planet

Playing games to making them – how perspectives change

Once long, long ago, I was just a gamer and I simply consumed the digital entertainment provided by others. Explosions? Awesome. New guns? Sweet! At that time I put most of my energy into thinking about how great the experience was, and that I wanted more of it.

After a time I became curious though... was this the best that could be made? Those little areas that irritated me, could they be improved? If I had unlimited time and incredible skills, what could I make myself? What would be the perfect game?

The answer this would change on a daily basis depending on what I was doing at the time. Warcraft II made me convinced that the “perfect” game was a real time strategy. Shadowbane determined that the true path lay in an MMO. Mount and Blade led me to believing that the future lay in medieval simulations. Now I am sure that this is not an experience unique to me – I’ll bet that many other gamers will spend the rainy days at the office dreaming of their perfect game. Playing scenarios through their head of each awesome scene, shaped always by their own experiences.

My version of Warcraft II had no unit caps and a more expansive tech tree. Gareth’s Shadowbane, removed the money farming grind, and replaced it with automated farms and peasants who provided an hourly income. Battlefield 1943 introduced factories and an upgrade tree for unlocking new items and tanks.

I then started working as a game designer, first for the Mount and Blade mod, Prophesy of Pendor, and then later as the lead designer of my own studio, Zatobo, and now most recently as a freelance game design contractor.

This collective experience changed everything.

Just playing games changed my perspective of imagining my perfect game to analysing those products and working out precisely what I liked and disliked about them as I played. I took them to pieces in my mind, bemoaning bad design decisions (I cannot play Diablo III anymore, its core design simply ticks me off too much now), working out how they solved problems, and rarely getting excited by clever mechanics. Some games left me wondering about the future of the industry (the aforementioned Diablo III), and declaring its imminent demise, while others left me with a sense of wonder at what they had achieved (Mount and Blade).

Over the weekend I had something of a unique opportunity. I found myself playing “Game Dev Tycoon” by Greenheart Games, with some friends. While the game itself is good fun, it isn’t revolutionary, nor does it do much that is truly innovative but its subject matter is fascinating. A game about making games (with an achievement for making the game, in the game...).

This made my think about my own process of making games – how did I do it? Why did I do it this way? What had I learned during my three years as a part of the industry?

Well this is a subject for next time. Stay tuned! 

Image courtesy of; deborahtindle - http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/change%20perspective

Game Dev Tycoon - http://www.greenheartgames.com/

Hell, its about time!

One of my all time favourite game trailers ended with the line “Hell, it’s about time!” a phrase that I have come to rather appreciate. I realise that it has been a while since my last blog post, and this is something which has been playing on my mind for a while now, but it just kind of fell by the wayside as a number of other projects have engrossed me.

Initially this blog was set up to cover my work as a writer, but since embarking on this two and a bit years ago, I have dabbled in a number of different areas, and I struggled about whether to catalogue everything I do on here, or just focus on the writing articles.

Decision time; what do I use this space for? Answer; this is my blog, about my interests, my aspirations and dreams – brought down to earth from time to time with news about what is going on, and other random thoughts.

As such, I now find myself;

- Working as a writer on Vinland. The big news here is that my first full draft of the novel is DONE, I am currently working on editing ready to find a publisher. Leif has successfully traversed the North Atlantic and set foot for the first time in America. I’ve made some copies available to those who are interested in the project. Please do get in touch if you want to help provide feedback.

- Working as a writer / designer at my own company, Zatobo. The PC version of our debut title, Vinland: Arctic Assault was released last year, and we are working on an Android version to be released soon. Actually, its already available, it’s just not working on the google play store for some reason. Stay tuned!

- Working as a writer / designer with American company Gwythdarian on a new browser-based space strategy game called StariumXCV. It’s a really ambitious project, and I am responsible for much of the background lore. I cannot say much on it yet due to an active Non-Disclosure Agreement, however as and when I can, I will release more here.

So you can see things are moving quite quickly at the moment, and that I am involved in a number of different projects at the moment, so this blog is likely to cover articles from writing, to gaming, to design and everything in between.

P.S That trailer was the announcement for Starcraft II, Wings of Liberty. I didn’t actually end up getting the game, partly because it wasn’t available on Steam, and more recently because I’ve taken the painful decision to boycott Blizzard products after their repeated failure to secure my account from hackers. Still a nice piece of video though! You can find the full trailer here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=r7d5XheWiBk. All credit for the awesome video go of course, to Blizzard!

A personal challenge

Well things have slowed a little this month at Zatobo, with the programmer having other commitments for several weeks, and the business guy out of the country, the decision was taken to halt development work for two months.

Of course I am sad not to be hurtling forward with our new project(s), but the big upside is that I can get back to working on the book full time for that period. My plan is basically to undertake the National Novel Writing Month (but in September), and challenge myself to write 50,000 words, and hopefully bring Vinland to a conclusion in the process.

Things have been fairly slow so far (but then for me, the beginning always is) as I try to dive back into the fascinating world of the Vikings. Thankfully my reams of notes have served me well in reminding me just what was happening, and what is to be occur in the future. The book is currently in two parts, the early stuff in Greenland and then their sailing to Vinland without anything really connecting the two events. My ambition therefore is to fill this in, introducing another character or two and filling those who already exist in.

Throughout work on Vinland, there has always been one major antagonist, but without spoiling too much, they are at some distance to events directly going on with the people in Vinland. I have therefore created another character (or rather re-written one) to full fill a more direct conflict with Leif and his crew who I hope will spice things up rather more. It’s been a while since I have shown things off, so here is a little slip that I have recently been working on. Please bear in mind that this is still very much a part of the manuscript and as such has not been treated with the spit and polish of a published work;

“Citizens of Hvalsey!” Thorstein began, a warm smile on his face which Iva immediately hated.

“I come here before you today, not to complain about injuries received during my duties as an enforcer of peace in the town, but rather to ensure that this man is never again allowed to perpetrate such violence. I am a fighter, a man well used to taking blows from my foes, but next time we may not be so lucky. Imagine, if then it was your wife, or your son, or even gods be so cruel, your daughter.” As he said this, Iva noticed her father sitting on the other side of the room, watching the proceedings with a frown on his face. He was so intent on the words of the young noble, that she was sure he had no idea that she was present.

“My mother and I were doing our rounds of the town, but hearing a commotion in Gorran’s home decided to investigate. On arrival, we encountered a brawl going on between two strangers to the town. We managed to stop this in short order, and determined that the cause had been women, not just any women but a mere thrall and a wayward girl.”Again Iva looked over to her father, and saw that now his fists were balled up, and a vein was throbbing in his neck. Clearly he had understood whom Thorstein was talking about.

“I am sorry to inform you all that this girl, a daughter of Hvalsey no less, was the spark that caused an argument to descend into violence, with her misguided attack on our guest...” Iva tried to shrink further into the shadows, but it seemed that still no one had noticed her, all were intent on Thorstein’s words. She observed however that Thjodhilde threw her another glance from her place at the table, but she made no indication that she had recognised the young woman. While she was watching Thjodhilde, she felt another pair of eyes on her, and looking up the table saw Gorran was also watching at her, and as their eyes met, his widened in recognition. Meanwhile Thorstein had continued his speech.

“Perhaps we are wrong to lament so about her actions however. How can we hope to protect the young when there are all these foreign interferences coming to Greenland, there seem to be more strangers in town at the moment than citizens, and this my friends worries me greatly.” Thorstein said, beginning to pace in front of the table, using his hands to articulate his points. He had dressed this up in such a way that the audience failed to realise that he was of the same age as the girl he was chastising. At these words, the massive thrall lifted his head to regard his accuser, moving for the first time.

“It is not on this lady’s misdeeds however, that we are here in deliberation about, but rather on the aftermath of her actions. I was busily restraining her, prepared to make her put things right like a good citizen of this fair settlement should, when this barbarian launched himself from the shadows and went at me like a savage animal.” Thorstein observed, watching as the captive began to struggle against his bonds, clearly becoming more agitated. From the audience there were a number of jeers, which only incensed the thrall more, much to Thorstein’s obvious satisfaction.

“With such influences as this, how can we expect better from our children? It is clear that this creature here before us has no morals, no conception of good or evil. He is an animal and deserves to be treated as such. When a dog bites its owner, we put it down, and so it should be here. Put this mad beast down!”Thorstein instructed.

The thrall began making moaning sounds, his jaw working furiously but unable to make any comprehensible sound. The attempt just made the calls from the crowd worse, a sentiment that Thorstein was quick to seize upon.

“Rruf! Down boy!” he called out, making a growling noise and snapping his teeth together like the jaws of a dog. The crowd responded wildly, many barking at the thrall, making him twist and bend with fury.

“And what if you kicked the dog, and it bit you then?” Leif interjected, rising from his place. Thorstein turned to face him, but said nothing. The thrall seemed to calm a little, but continued to make whimpering noises.

“On whom would the fault fall? Surely then, the dog has been provoked, and is only then acting in a manner that is natural. Are we so different? Many fights begin because one party feels threatened, can they then be held accountable for the attack? On whom does the blame lie?” he continued, rounding the table to join his brother. Iva raised her head on hearing this, pleased that the man was putting up such an eloquent defence.

“The blame brother, lies with the one to strikes first. Words are bandied around like ale, men like banter it keeps their minds sharp, but only rarely does it descend into violence as we are describing here.” Thorstein responded, clearly warming to the intellectual cut and thrust. Iva felt sickened, it was clear he was doing this for the sheer pleasure of watching his victim writhe. The difference between the brothers could not be more pronounced.

“You ask many questions brother, but answer few questions. Riddle me this; what separates us from the animals?” Thorstein continued, his smile still fixed, but the warmth in it was gone. When Leif did not immediately reply, he answered for himself.

“The difference, lies in that we can separate words and actions. You accuse me of being a liar...” Thorstein began, then seeing Leif was finally about to rally continued, purposefully cutting him off, holding his palms up to his brother.

“...yet here I stand, my hands are empty of weapons, neither have they formed a fist with which to strike you. You come before us to defend this animal, why? Can he not defend himself? Father said we were both to speak our parts, yet instead he struggles against his bonds. Is that the mark of a civilised person, or a beast? ” Thorstein exclaimed, his argument hammering home, his smile had faded, replaced by a look of expectation, smugness even. Leif remained silent, his face stony.

“Your arguments seem to claim that he was provoked to violence, why then did he not call out a warning first? Viking law states, does it not, that the difference between a sanctioned killing and that of murder is that a killing requires both parties to be willing combatants, on an equal footing when neither man’s back is turned. Otherwise, it is murder. Could we not apply the same logic to assault?” Thorstein continued to press his advantage. Turning, he had addressed Rhuntyr directly, as if to get confirmation. The lawspeaker was quiet for a while, considering the implications, and Iva watched the man closely, trying to read some kind of emotion from his flat face.

The room fell silent, waiting for the decision.

After a pause, he gave a nod. Iva felt her chest seize up at the judgement, knowing in her heart that the priest had just issued the brave thrall’s death warrant. The room erupted in shouts, men calling to their neighbours about the outcome, while others yelled for the slave’s head.

Leif, his face still like rock, walked down to the thrall and the voices in the room fell quiet, waiting to see what the heir would do. He crouched down in front of the German, and the slave raised his head to regard his defender. Iva could only imagine the anguish on the poor man’s face, and was touched to see Leif’s own cool exterior shed some of its ice at what he must have seen in the thrall’s eyes.

“Can you understand me?” he asked softly. The big man was still for a moment, then slowly inclined his head.

“I know you have a secret, it may save your life. Can I share it?” Leif continued, his voice still gentle.

Image courtesy of; http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-4122434587

Indie Games Channel Interview

We are very happy to present our very first interview with the media. It goes into quite a lot of depth around the development of both the formation of Zatobo as a company, and on development on Vinland: Arctic Assault. The below is the result of a discussion between interviewer Ozzie Meija and Lead Designer Gareth "Mordred" Kay.

You can find the full article here

The Triumph of Internet Democracy

I had planned to use this blog to talk to you all about something really big being seen more and more often in the writing industry, namely that of “Mixed Media Storytelling” however this will need to wait until next time due to some really interesting news filtering through at the moment which has the potential to challenge the current Publisher / Writer (or studio) relationship.

Last night something rather big happened, the team behind the Monkey Island series managed to raise $400,000 in just 12 hours, without the input of a publisher.

A little background; Double Fine, the company owned by Tim Schafer, a well known game designer has been going round, cap in hand to many of the big publishers in order to get an advance, to create a new point and click adventure game. Now, considering these are the guys who made Monkey Island, probably the most famous title within that genre (if not in the gaming industry as a whole), this should have been an easy task. Unfortunately for them the publishers did not see a large enough return on investment in this dying breed of game so refused them.

Now, game designers being the passionate, stubborn people that they are, who have a burning desire to create something when an idea flashes through their minds, wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and so turned to alternative investment sources; in this instance a website dedicated to raising funds from the general public in order to start an entrepreneurial enterprise. This website is called Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter offers companies a way to create a project and advertise the need for funding to the internet, with one major stipulation; investment may not be for capital return. Rather the investors will receive producer credits when the project is done, or are entitled to other rewards depending on the level of their financial commitment. In this case, rewards went from a signed poster, to a personalised poster of the investor, to a picture of the other designer smiling (a rare occurrence I guess... clearly a man after my own heart. Photos are for looking angry in, not smiling), with each reward requiring a pledge ranging from $15 to $150,000.

Double fine asked for $400,000, with Kickstarter having the stipulation that if this minimum is not reached, then no funds are handed over. Double Fine broke all previous records for commitments, and level of funding within 24 hours, and some other stuff, having reached, and exceeded their minimum in just 12 hours. They had a month in which to raise this money. At the time of writing this article, their fund was well over $900,000.

So just what does this mean? Well, for a start the publishers are once again lagging behind public demand, a continuing trend where they just seem to be entirely out of touch with the consumer. Kickstarter is a pure, unrefined form of democracy, and the public are voting with their wallets for what they want created, not leaving it up to big men in suits. Is this case the norm? Certainly not, as we really are talking game-development superstars here; however this does have the potential to turn things around within an industry terrified by piracy (and punishing legitimate users as a result) and generally scared to take risks. Now companies can cash in on their reputation for greatness, using a long history of good, well polished products to raise capital for their next project.

So, coming back to earth for a moment; I am not a development superstar, and Zatobo is not a well loved company with a proven track record of quality, so just how will this affect us? Well, when we founded the group, we made the commitment to quality over quantity, with the intention to release a series of smaller, well polished games to raise some funds in order to expand. This technique will go hand in hand with this emerging funding model, where we can capitalise on a good name and the goodwill of our followers to provide a capital injection on future projects which will make it both more likely that we can continue doing what we love, but also free us from some of the financial burden and allow us to take risks; and it is only though risk-taking that innovation can flourish.

Of course, to actually do this we have to deliver on our promise of high quality, enjoyable games and we are working exceptionally hard on meeting this commitment. Not only is personal pride at stake here, but now we also have a financial incentive to make good material that people want to play and if this motivation is affecting us, then it will have a similar grasp on other companies and quite frankly, this can only be a good thing, both for the consumers and the industry as a whole.

Find out more at Zatobo.com
Discover the latest development details at IndieDB
Follow us on Facebook and @Zatobo on Twitter.

Image courtesy of; www.gcommerce.co.za

The Prestige

And behind this curtain...

“Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the pledge, the magician shows you something ordinary.”

-The Prestige

History is the same way, through the writing left at the time and archaeology unearthed by historians, we are able to discover what happened, the pure solid facts. We might be able to see what the people of that era did, with an idea on how they might have lived and what tools they had but is this really true life? Is this really seeing what their lives were all about? Can we truly think like they did, and understand what they do?

“The second act is called the turn, the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary.”

-The Prestige

Next came the novels, the work of historical or even true fiction. These stories take the truths gleaned through historical artefact and theory and turn it into something understandable, something that we can relate to. We begin to see the people living their lives in our minds eye, we begin to become attached to the people and characters of that era. This is what I have done with the Vinland book, I have taken the world given to us by history and transformed it into something real. The bones in the ground now mean something to us, the small combs found at nearly every Viking grave come to hold new meaning. The people  begin to come to life, each with their own ambitions, vices and virtues, they have in a word become human; but none of this is really tangible. We cannot touch this world, we cannot change it, we cannot live in it.

“Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out.”

-The Prestige

Then comes virtual media, or more specifically computer games. Suddenly we are a step closer to living the life of a Viking, to bringing the struggles, the woes, the glory, and the wonder of this lost age to life once again. We can now walk among the Vikings, we can interact with them, we can see the world through their eyes, with their ideals and impressions. The hopes and fears of the common man become real, the desires and eccentricities of kings become important once more.

“You want to be fooled.”

-The Prestige

Books have always been a very important facet to humanity, either through revealing the thoughts of those long dead, or by providing a glimpse of glorious worlds forever lost to us, or on idea of worlds which never even existed, they are an important aspect of remembrance, else the personal triumphs of those who came before us would have been lost to time. However they have that one essentially fault of the written word; once on paper it cannot be changed. Through the dynamism of digital media, we are able to tell numerous stories with a visual representation of how things would have looked, better yet we are able to interact with the tale, to change and mould it depending on our desires, and it is this ability to change things which allow us to really get to grips with how things were, to understand what it was that drove these enigmatic people. After all, the best way to learn, is by doing; and until humanity develops a time machine which will allow us to live among our ancestors in person we will need to settle with being fooled by an animated digital image.

And so, may I present to the world, the new computer game studio Zatobo. This is a company I have set up with some very talented people from across Europe, the name itself meaning “Storyteller” in Japanese. This in itself should give you enough of an idea of what I am hoping to achieve with this enterprise. First, I start by writing books, this creates the foundations of a new world and now add in the games, which brings it to life. The first project we have begun is “Arctic Assault” in which you take the role of the intrepid explorer, Leif Erikson, and must work to get him safely to the fabled lands of the west, to his destiny, to Vinland.

Buy Vinland: Arctic Assault, our first release now with the button below!


Find out more at Zatobo.com
Discover the latest development details at IndieDB
Follow us on Facebook and @Zatobo on Twitter.

Curtains courtesy of Pixel77.com

I'm plotting against you...

...I’m an author, it’s what I do.

Or at least, that’s what the slogan on one of my new t-shirts says. I love t-shirts... and cargoes.... and plotting... and apparently ellipsis’ too.

Anyway! I hope that all my lovely readers had a spectacular festive period, and have since recovered from hangovers and indigestion. For myself the end of the year was a time of reflection, thinking on what I had achieved and what I have hoped to do in 2012 (other than watching loads of the Olympics, obviously!) 2011 was generally a good year for me; I finally graduated with my masters (only 9 months late, Brighton!) and began work on the Vinland book while taking over as lead designer for Prophesy of Pendor. Do you guys do the same? How has the past year been for you? What have you learnt? Achieved? What do you hope to do for 2012?

Work on Vinland the book has slowed somewhat since the bustle of NaNoWriMo (explained last month), though I have some interesting possibilities lined up for this year which branch out the franchise. I really want to talk about this now, but I am sworn to secrecy for another week or two but believe me, once things are formalised and official you guys will be among the first to hear of these exciting developments. On the book itself I have reached the 80,000 word mark and while my initial aim was 100,000, I think I will be surpassing that so my latest estimate is around 120,000. Hopefully once my current project has settled somewhat then I will be able to get back to the writing, as Leif and the others are beginning to feel a little neglected.

So in essence 2012 for me, at least at the moment, looks to be another year filled with creative projects which fully test my abilities as a designer, a writer and someone who is self employed and therefore lacking a boss yelling at me. This way of life suits me rather well, I can get things done when my night-owl impulses allow though I do admit the temptation to procrastinate can be overwhelming at times; still it’s nothing compared to the efforts required to avoid this while writing dissertations and essays... this writing I actually enjoy doing. There honestly is nothing quite so thrilling as being able to create worlds and bring life to them through characters you see sketched out as a series of personality traits and watch them slowly mature as the story grows.

(Image courtesy of the Austin Powers films)

How do you like your eggs?

So, it has been some time since my last post, over a month in fact, however it has been an insanely busy one for I took part in this year’s NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated). This is a writing challenge in which you have 30 days to write 50,000 words.

This, as the studious among you will recognise is the same length as five dissertations, all written in a single month! Not even to mention all the research required for a good historical-fiction novel (of which I am quite sure I have done more of, than in either of my dissertations... Vikings > Politics / Management. Who’d have thought?!) Some of this research has really helped the tale to progress, like much of the work I did on the flora and fauna of Newfoundland, including the discovery that flax grows natively there, a particular fibre that one of the crew is very skilled at processing and which becomes vital to their survival.

Other bits of research had less of an impact, for instance I found myself trying to find out whether the Vikings like their eggs fried, scrambled, boiled, poached, etc. I never did find out the answer to that. 

Since NaNoWriMo, I took a couple of days out to recover (25 hour writing stints are NOT good for the health!) but am back now, writing in full swing. My word count has finally topped 80,000 out of my target of 100,000 (though I am sure that will be over run; current expectation on completion is roughly 120,000 now)

I have several projects going on, the book, Pendor and one more which is very much linked to Vinland and I hope that I will be able to reveal more about it in the coming weeks.

Playing chicken, with a horse

So it has been over a week since my last blog post, and I can only apologise for that. I just came back from a holiday in Wales in which we saw many castles, waterways and best of all sampled many different beers. Now, you may be wondering how on each does this relate to the Vikings and how does any of this fit in with Vinland?

The secret to Viking power?

Well, firstly there was life on the water, clearly this wasn’t somewhere in the North-Atlantic during the mid-winter storms but still one had to consider the etiquette on the canals and generally ensure that you do not crash into the banks, or worse another boat... this is harder than it sounds. On the first day we managed to get wedged up with another boat just outside of a bridge, then a couple of hours later nearly crashed into another boat in what became a rather amusing game of chicken, in which one of the chickens was actually a horse.

Eh, what!? I can hear you exclaim, well a boat was coming right at us, and our pilot was adamant that the oncoming vessel was on the wrong side of the canal and that it would move. Unfortunately he did not reckon with the fact that it was being pulled along by a horse on the towpath. It had no motor and was entirely unable to avoid us, and apparently it is too much to ask a horse to get in the water and swim in order to move the boat aside. Finally seeing the problem our helmsman swerved the boat off to the far side of the canal after having scared most of the passengers nearly to death. He did this not once, but twice. On the same day. With the same boat. 

Thus you will see that life in the water-lane is actually quite stressful, I can only imagine how the Vikings felt when they were not only dodging other boats, but pirates, icebergs, seagulls and the dragons at the edge of their maps. 

Now to become a little more serious for a moment, I took a book called “The Hammer and the Cross” by Robert Ferguson with me on the trip. It is at its heart a exploration into the relations between the Christian missionaries and the Norse heathens, and how the Christians tried to convert the Vikings for nearly 200 years with often catastrophic results. Now while this was interesting, it was the little details that he highlighted which were the most interesting to me, including a very in depth rendition of the buildings found in Greenland which was a major revelation to me.

The Vikings basically lived in bunkers, yes, bunkers! Essentially they had massive houses which eventually reached something like 60 rooms. Due to the lack of wood in Greenland, they tended to be built out of stone and turf, and were built a little into the ground in order to conserve heat. There is far more to tell about them as they really are fascinating structures, but to find out, you will just have to read my book!

 

With thanks to : http://planetoddity.com/russian-world-war-2-bunkers/

Tales of a land far, far away.

So this week my writing has taken a rather different turn to the usual, rather than concentrating all of my efforts on Vinland or even direct development on the mod I am working on, Prophesy of Pendor, I have been working on something related, yet very different. We have a large and very active community of fans at the Tale Worlds forums, and one of them asked me if it would be OK to run an RPG based on the lore of Pendor. This was something of a nice endorsement for the team, as I know that James Landes and I (along with a plethora of other writers and contributors) have invested a massive amount of time into producing the backstory for Pendor and fleshing out the world in which hundreds of thousands of characters live in.

One of the hallmark features for Pendor are the “Knighthood Orders” which are essentially organisations inspired by the Knights Templar or Knights Hospitaller. The reason I joined the Pendor Team after the release of Prophesy of Pendor 2 was to flesh these Orders out, and give them a real sense of being and belonging in the world, because before they were simply normal knights pimped out in some rather sweet gear. Part of my work on joining the team included creating a rivalry and conflicts between the various Orders of Pendor, and generally bringing them to life, they now act as non-state military forces, each with their own story, goals, objectives, heroes and of course a political agenda.

The result of this was a nice range of different Orders, each with their own personality and individuality. A few examples follow below;

The Order of Dawn : A fanatical Order dedicated to the ideal of justice and to the mission of destroying the evil cult of Heretics that plagues the realm. Over time their execution of this sacred duty has turned them into zealots and they will punish anyone for even the smallest of crimes or even by the tiniest affiliation to the heretics. This is truly a story of evil encroaching on even the best of intentions.

The Knights of Eventide : As the Order of Dawn becomes increasingly paranoid over the effects of the Heretics, there remained a small faction who believed the way to fight the heresy was to understand them properly. However as part of Dawn’s slide into zealotry, they banned any manuscripts or items considered heretical in order to stave off corruption. A schism occurred and the Order of Eventide was formed by those who sought to use their knowledge of heresy against the perpetrators. The irony now being that the Order of Dawn’s greatest fear seems to be realised as there are rumours that the heretical corruption has spread to the inner circle of Eventide, and threatens to undo all the work they have done to destroy the heretics.

The Order of the Ebony Gauntlet : There is an ancient race of beings that live just outside of human society known as the Noldor, or more colloquially as the elves. The Ebony Gauntlet believe that the Noldor want only the complete destruction of humanity and fight to promote human supremacy in the world, using any tools at their disposal to achieve this goal; xenophobia, racism, genocide. After all, the Noldor are not human, which makes them mere animals that deserve to be trodden under the iron-shod feet of humanity.

Now the players of this RPG have taken on a role from the various Knighthood Order’s that both appeared in Prophesy of Pendor 3, and will be appearing in Prophesy of Pendor 4. The setting is immediately following the events of Prophesy of Pendor 3, where the one hero prophesied has risen to power and united Pendor under one sovereign. Prophesy of Pendor 4 is occurring in another war torn continent which is home to Pendor’s greatest enemy, the Snake Cult.

Not much work had yet been done connecting the events of end of Pendor 3 to those in the beginning of Pendor 4, but now the results of this RPG could well bridge the gap, and better yet it has been done by the community itself so that they have more of an emotional tie to the game; it is even possible that their characters may appear in Pendor 4, who knows?

Oh, yeah and in a little aside, they made me play the King...

The end of the beginning continues!

Welcome back! I know that I meant to publish this next part last week but with one thing or another it kept being delayed, then with the riots being rather distracting over the weekend and into this week it just kept being sidelined. Without further ado, here is the rest of the planning process;

Last week we left off creating the overview of what each character does, and put them in chronological order. This is essentially the very framework of the plot, in a somewhat readable (albeit bare bones) format. You could actually read this tale now, and be able to understand what is happening but it would not be much fun. The next step is to add flesh to these bones, and do the actual writing that turns a plan into a story.

I

·         Bjarni finds America

o   Bring out the superstitious element

o   Make Bjarni appear a coward to his crew

 Becomes;

A raven black as midnight flapped weakly onto the beached ship and hopped on to the mast which was now leaning on the rocky beach. Its strength left it then, and it tottered and fell to the small stones below, wings outspread in a grisly parody of flight.

“Odin has sent us a warning” murmured Snorri softly, eyes not leaving the corpse

“An evil omen! The gods are warning us that this land be cursed!” said Jorvik, his voice high. The superstitious crew all stepped back from the dead bird and then stood regarding it with their mouths agape. 

Bjarni, still in a trance was once again heaving at the ship, trying to push it back to sea. His crew needed no second urging and added their strength to his. Slowly the ship, timbers being eviscerated under the grindstone effect of the shale beneath uttered tortured screams and slid slowly back in to the ocean.

Now we have the manuscript in rough comes the part I am dreading most the editing phase. It is here that I call up all my friends and beg their help as I am well aware that spelling and grammar are not my strongest suits. We then go through the text with a fine toothed comb and make sure the final copy is readable, and that the messages it presents are those I intended. I bring out my notes on the characters and ask my guinea pi... err volunteer editors for their impressions on the cast and see if the two are more or less the same. From there I intend to get some professional editors involved so as to give me a full critique on what is good and what is not. These criticisms will then need to be acted upon and changes made to the script.

Once all of this is done, I should have something that I actually feel comfortable in selling to the general public, and the book is done.

The end of the beginning

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” is one of my most cherished Churchill quotes, and rings very true of the status of Vinland at the moment. Following my foray into the countryside of Dorset last week, I have been surprisingly industrious in working on my novel.

As you know, I met with the editor, Leila Dewji some time ago now, and have since then been refining the plot of the story to be rather more dramatic and less epic in scale. This process is thankfully nearly done, and I will soon be returning to what I enjoy the most anyway – actually writing the book!

I am sure you are getting rather curious about how I actually go about writing the book, I have given many hints over the months of my blogging here, but have never actually gone over the process. To start with, I have my notebook (a tool most good writers will have on their person at any one time) which is filled to the brim with ideas, people that i’ve met, strange situations. Anything really that crosses my overactive mind every single day. I then go through this notebook and take out anything which could be suitable to the plot, and note them all down in another, bigger notebook. This I entitle “Stuff to happen”. 

Example;

• Discover America
• Game of Hnetafel
• Warrior arrives
• Sit in hall eating meal ignoring enfolding drama
• Merchant thrown overboard
• Find prince
• Find natives

As you can see this is pretty basic, just an overview of things that could happen. The next step are the characters, and very unlike the plot these are remarkably organic, beyond some general traits and noting down major events I do not plan them overly much. Instead I go through the “stuff to happen” and apply those events to the characters, or if something especially good needs to happen, I create a suitable character for it to happen to.

Example;

• Erik the Red
• Central character. The reason Vinland succeeds
• Thorvald
• The voice of the warrior spirit
• Leif
• The voice of intelligence and reason

See, even the character overviews I have posted on this blog are more in depth than the notes I followed initially. Now we have the rough story and the characters, we need to turn this into a plot. Therefore I cut the events up into “sections” and arrange these sections into a chronological order. This is what we are left with;

I

• Bjarni finds America
• Bring out the superstitious element
• Make Bjarni appear a coward to his crew

II

• Leif loses to Erik at Hnetafel (Viking chess)
• It is a very close match. Mock anger from Erik to display his pride in the skills of his son.

IV

• Kai arrives
• Sits in hall eating meal ignoring enfolding drama

VI

• Edvin, Rorik and Anneliese arrive
• Edvin thrown overboard by Rorik

Addendum

• Find prince
• Dropped, terrible idea and horrifically cliche.
• Find natives
• ?

But how does this contribute to the finished script? Find out on Thursday!