Tag: writing

  • An afternoon with Shelmigarii, mistress of cables

    An afternoon with Shelmigarii, mistress of cables

    It’s a crowded day. New groups from Fort Ooshar are coming, fleeing the Fox and Crow, they are rushed and harried. The journey is not long. The families are large, mixed with halflings, goliaths and humans.

    Work gets harder with these large groups. The gondolas are large enough for a few horses, maybe a cart. These families are multigenerational, at times there are dozens of animal companions. One may have only geese, another family with dogs. There was one with oxen — they took ages. The mulgobs don’t like when they need to come up.

    An 8-bit style image of a small dragon about the size of a large cat that is the color of bronze-ish ale with blue buggy eyes. They are flying over a small person, likely a gnome, with a blue head covering and dark nearly black robes. There is a magic spell coming out of one hand. They are on an stage that looks like autumn ground cover with a small golden leaved tree behind them. The names below or Oolia Estererlia and Brewst Grisselle
    Made with reroll

    But seeing so many descend into a home without judgement, with an opportunity to build, with an opportunity to meet elves and dwarves with their magicks, with an opportunity to meet women from Mehmd and men from Crinth, the opportunity to meet the ratchets and the alchems and others from the Queen, the opportunity to meet Brewst Grisselle the ale drake and learn that not all dragons are Proctors hoarding knowledge with threats of violence — Brewst hoards alcohols and is getting along quite well with the alchems guild.

    Every day there are new people. Every day another conversation.

    Shelmigarii and Lukhchizh do not charge for their service. They’ve earned unfurled flags and banners from the Free City. This means the other goblins (all the Kon) in the area support them. Shel’s recent ratchets development and springwerks mean the mulgobs don’t work as hard. Lukh is working on employing some beasts rather than mulgobs, which is only possible because of the Free City empowers all thinkers rather than the caste system the Queen’s Lyfe demands.

    At the top of the cliffs, summer heat bears down harsh on the Grand Entry. Those pilgrims working down the ramps and steps will be full of sweat, but not as much fear. These Kin don’t understand the sky-cables. Many shake in fear as they ride down the thousands of feet through the fog into the bog-city past and through the ruins over the brackish waters and abandoned orchards.

    Shel never laughs.

    She’s scored of all the beasts. The weather and the cables aren’t scary. These are knowable things. These are math.

    Beasts and peoples don’t act according to math and strangers aren’t knowable, even known friends aren’t knowable. She loves Lukh, but calling him knowable isn’t accurate.

    A long sip of cool coffee. The next gondola up from Chupmolea better bring more. That bean is a blessing, much better than the teas in the Queen’s Land (Tsavancoast). She once again ponders if there is a way that the bean can replace tar-tree pods as fuel — the switch of smells from oily smog to roast would be worth it. She doesn’t have the knowledge. But maybe the lesser power could be made up using gears and springs…

    Her mind wanders sometimes. Operating the sky-cables is boring and routine.

    Thoughts are for new things… maybe the fruits could become oils. Lukh’s been chatting with another hob freed from service to invention who won’t join the guilds, but is working on new ways to harvest steam.

    There’s an unlatched safety bar she doesn’t notice.

    Shel keeps thinking about this. Less power, more gearing, some springs, maybe using that fruit that’s waste now, then a steam box, could maybe the airxip props help the gondola and then we wouldn’t even need muls or beasts.

    She sends the gondola with a halfling family and their dogs.

    The windsock swings fast. An unexpected storm? She checks the broadsheet forecast section. Oh, no. This is on the schedule. It’s going to be a rocky ride for those hin.

    She looks as they descend. Notices the safety bar free. Notices the sway. Notices the storm. Notices the danger.

    Wandering thoughts are a blessing, except when they are a curse. She curses the queen. She curses herself. She curses the sky and for good measure she curses the gods of this land even though she doesn’t believe in them.

    “Urp! Stop loading. See if you can bring that gondola back. Use everything you have.” She rushes to the head wheel to help.

    There is a nasty screeching noise as the metal cables halt to change path. Then there is a scream of terror as the gondola rocks off the cables.

    Another noise, this time a squawk, rises above the terrors and shouting, the breaking metals.

    Panic. It’s all panic now.

    Beasts and peoples all learning that their fears are real. The sky-cable isn’t safe (they’re wrong).

    None feel empowered, none capable.

    That squawk is a massive beast. A raptor the size of an airxip swoops overhead and dives at the sky-car. There’s a tiny man on the bird, hard to judge size at this distance with the massive bird unravelling understanding of perspective.

    As the car jumps off the cables the bird rushes to it. The car starts to roll to a side dozens of feet under the cable.

    A sharp command, sudden and cutting through the winds and terror is heard. There’s some Kirtin-ish to the tone with a bit of the Crinth rounding.

    The immense bird grabs the cart, carries it up to Grand Entry.

    Shel doesn’t want more coffee. She wants to hang out with Brewst after she fills out an after disaster report to establish a new checklist, one that involves two peoples in case her mind wanders again. That’ll start when she’s done shaking.

    This narrative slice of life was an attempt at Tuesday Afternoon, a technique to test world building to see if the created world makes sense for normal people.

    The image features an abstract composition set against a dark background. A network of jagged island shapes outlined in gold creates a prominent visual centerpiece. These shapes vary in size and orientation, resembling a natural or geological formation. The area surrounding this central structure is filled with bold, textured colors, including vibrant blues at the top representing the ocean, contrasting shades of green to the left representing the hills, deeper black tones framing the right and bottom, and hints of rust-colored brown towards the lower section. Below the gold outline, a small, stylized blue waterfall appears on the lower edge of the graphic, providing scale and enhancing the sense of depth within the artwork.
    Bog-city of Sheljar in abstract paint

    The Free City of Sheljar was the result of my first campaign in the World of the Everflow.

    Once a city destroyed by dragons and later an empire destroyed from within by The Necromancer with their zombies and Tunneling Nightmares, Sheljar is now a Free City, open to all thinking peoples who respect other thinking peoples. Its leadership is the first group of PCs. A bog-city of a thousand islands each little piece of land offers a place for a family to return, a neighborhood to emerge.

    Shelmigarii is one of the Queen’s women, a member of the ratchet guild. She and her husband run the sky-cable gondolas at the Grand Entry with its faster path to the city center or to Chupmolea (the goblin neighborhood) than the thousand-year old steps and ramps down the cliff. Shel is a tiny goblin and her husband a large hobgoblin. They have no companions nor children. They hired mulgobs (bugbears) to operate the ratchets, declining to use alchem nor magicks. Her background would be a cabbie, if playing D&D.

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  • Using word-maps for quick reference during your games

    Using word-maps for quick reference during your games

    You don’t have to be a map maker to make adequate maps for gaming. A map can be as simple as showing the relative relationship between distance and location of the important elements. Even putting a few words on a page can be a map.

    Take the word map of the Six Kingdoms. It shows the relative locations and rough distances between the various kingdoms, their major cities and the other lands that interact in the World of the Everflow.

    Word maps can also represent a homestead, village or neighborhoods of a city.

    The image shows a group of seven index cards laid out on a speckled stone surface. Each card features a grid pattern and contains handwritten text in pencil. On the top left, there is a small vertical card with "Path" and "Divide" written along its edges. Adjacent to it on the right is a horizontal card labeled "Path of Dreams" with "Prairie" and "Auntie Houses" along the sides. Below are three more cards: the left card reads "Prairie" and "Auntie Houses," the middle card reads "Spine Bloom Common," and the right card says "Upper Rice Marsh." The bottom row features two horizontal cards, one labeled "Thunder Maker River" and the other, "Lower Rice Marsh." A pen with a black grip lies horizontally above the cards to the right.

    Any player can take a quick glance and know what each location is and what they connect to within the compound. More thorough descriptions in a blog post and in the character’s notes, but these quick notecards reminds us of Spinebloom Farms at the table.

    The image is a hand-drawn sketch on lined notebook paper, depicting a rough map layout with various labeled areas and arrows indicating movement or direction. The map is oriented with "Up Hill" on the left and features several labeled sections, including "Upper Hillside," "Lower Hillside," and "Rolling." There are geometric shapes, such as squares and circles, possibly indicating buildings or points of interest, with some labeled "Upper," "GLAV," and "Verde Breezde." Lines and arrows point toward different labeled areas like "To Telee" and "Esedelens Tavern."

    Fort Ooshar is a bridge-town that turned into a fortress when Sheljar fell to the Necromancer. This quick sketch lays out the neighborhoods of the bridge-town, the gates, the fields and the nearby hills.

    Yes, a better mapmaker would be better. My favorites are Deven Rue and Dyson Logos. I support both via Patreon and use their works in my games.

    But sometimes I want something that is unique to my world. That leaves me with my lack of art. I then build a word map.

    Keys to making a quick word map.

    1. Decide on the central space
    2. Build outward using relative distance to represent a unit of time
    3. Include evocative names, especially when in tight focus
    4. If building a dungeon, point crawl or town having connective tissue — this can be a road, river, or other path
    5. Leave yourself space to build details and add discoveries

    Doing this as a player

    Old school D&D involved at least one player making highly detailed maps. But a word map may be all that’s necessary to prevent your party from getting lost. Using a room-and-halls word map by the player helps represent how the characters think.

    In essence you are channeling the concept of ‘turn left after the big red barn, go over Herringbone Bridge, take the third path’ into a simplistic drawing.

    These are quick, simple and can be done on a 3-by-5 card or as a sketch in something as simple as Paint, Slides, Canva or even in a Spreadsheet (the Six Kingdoms started as a spreadsheet).

    One of the special powers of the word map is that they’re quick. You don’t need to search for anything. It’s a sketch that can be done in a few seconds.

    Whether as a player or a DM this tool can help you understand your fantasy world better than without a map at all.

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  • An afternoon with the cooper Sudes Rudes

    An afternoon with the cooper Sudes Rudes

    Walking past Idarak’s I grab a fresh peach off one of his trees. Nightbridge tends to have more of the old fruits and Idarak’s family keeps a small grove. Plus Edarra wants a white bucket soon, with some falls from the Dead Forest (obviously not the red oak or black maple — other trees seem to be seeding too).

    Visiting the Dead Forest now is this weird mix of Council Guard, elves, dwarves, Daoudians, Kirtin-ish — crowded and uncommon. We Rudes need to go there because our buckets and casks are expected to have staves and finishes from the Forest. That may not last. Craft has to change and if dragons come back I do not need that risk. Maybe something from the island or up toward Kirtin proper.

    A neighborhood map of a lakeside medieval fantasy city in dull tone

    Anyway, I’m off to see if it’s safe.

    This is a daily assessment in Kirtin-on-the-Lake. There’s so many competing interests. The old neighborhoods and walls don’t mean as much. If dragonken settle in a few blocks that’s a new neighborhood — with magic everywhere.

    Refugees from the destruction in Kirtin-in-the-Sky are trying to move in with cousins they ain’t seen in decades. Kirtin is a mess.

    The peach is good, though. Really good.

    Yaffy’s cackle-call echoes through the street from behind. Yaff hates visiting the forest, because those trees are not for him. He’ll always find a way to dilly-dally on the way. I think he ‘reads’ the neighborhood more than Kyrik, my little ratting dog that stays home, always.

    I’m not of the born generation. I don’t have magicks.

    The forest seems to refuse us and accept the youngsters with their elementalisms, enchantments and energies. This works in my favor. A few copper to the youth you have these abilities for each of the sticks I can turn into staves.

    That peach is already gone. It’s three bites for an old stoney like me. Apple’d be two, but the pit gets in the way. I toss the pit to Yaffy as I sit down on a bench.

    Casking for someone up in The Rise means gathering stick for art, proper wood carving ‘ll be needed too. I’ll see if maybe I can convince a dragonken to do it, mayb an elf. Edarra will pay.

    Blues and whites without paints thanks to the woods from those trees come from a few kids. Those dragontrees seem to be shedding. There will be new dragons soon.

    I shudder.

    In-the-sky went from mighty city to flooded caverns with most bridges fallen into the waters.

    Douad ain’t to protect us. Kirtin is a fighting force over on the Slope, but without leadership. Is it going to fall like Sheljar to the Necromancer? Broadsheets say the West is many cities without a kingdom now.

    I need another peach. Or tea. Or ice cream (magicks are great for a few new discoveries). Or a game.

    My mind wanders under this constant pressure of not knowing how this city will fall further into disrepair or if maybe it can rise like Sheljar under the Free City movement.

    I stick the staves and falls into my basket. Yaffy leading the way to church. Quar’s followers have the Everflow — that’s better than wine, it’ll heal, even a broken soul.

    Then it’s back to work.

    This narrative slice of life was an attempt at Tuesday Afternoon, a technique to test world building to see if the created world makes sense for normal people.

    Kirstin-on-the-Lake was the center of the Uprising & Rebellion campaign. It is the former winter capital of Kirtin, but was conquered by Daoud for most of the past several centuries. It is now controlled by neither nation with influences of both, with the new council system taking over governance while the Dragons come back to the Dead Forest, goblins land at their airxip tower, and the visitors from Sheljar.

    Sudes Rudes is a cooper. His animal companion is a green woodpecker named Yaffy. He also has a non-bonded ratting dog Kryrik. Sudes is a goliath with Kirtin-ish heritage (stone) whose beard is tinged with the blue-greys (wave) more common in Daoud.

  • My best of 2024

    My best of 2024

    I didn’t do quite as much writing for public consumption as I have in most years since I started blogging regularly in 2008. Some of that reduction was due to me taking a step back at Sounder at Heart, focusing my work content on video briefings and emails, and Full Moon Storytelling being a “when inspired” project rather than an income generator.

    Here at Full Moon Storytelling my most popular writings over the past year were older materials.

    My custom backgrounds and my take on Sports in D&D remain popular as well.

    In fact, that’s where my biggest D&D related project ever came from, and one of my favorites of 2024. I helped out with Worlds To-Go: The Elysians.

    My contributions were five custom backgrounds, most completely new, plus formalization of sports rules including inventing two new sports — The Pentiad and Constellations (a team juggling sport that creates constellations).

    Here on FMS my favorite of the year was Goodbye Alignment. Hello short-form personality. In that article I encourage people to continue to use personality traits in their games, but make them as short as alignment! Then the DM and other players can grant Inspiration based off of something small enough to remember as opposed to the original 5e personality system that was six long sentences that no one remembered.

    There was also a quick review of the 2024 Player’s Handbook.

    If you ever need a quick 5-room dungeon and associated adventure, pick a pop song and convert it into one. That article may not have been well read, but I’ll refer to it when I’m back behind the DM screen.

    I stutter. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. A personal essay I felt compelled to write after a re-watch of Agents of SHIELD, it also falls into the not-well-read column, but it meant a lot for me to share this about myself. It was not the only personal essay of the year. The other was about how the fragmented storytelling technique of D&D may fit me better than novels or short fiction.

    Soccer stories

    For the most part at Sounder at Heart I’m now the weekly columnist, sending out a large newsletter that covers one important topic, plus everything else you need to know for the week.

    Choosing the best of these was easy, because one of them helped change the approach from the organization towards the US Open Cup — Ship’s Log, May 7: Let’s win trophies again.

    My second favorite was about using the Club World Cup to sell the world’s best players on the region that I’ve chosen as home for all of my adult life — Ship’s Log, Dec. 6: Selling Seattle.

    I still dipped into journalism, covering Defiance’s new coach and the new practice facility. Walking through history is one of my favorite pieces of soccer writing ever (and there’s about 5000 of those).

    Factal

    Most of my writing at Factal is in emails. Some additional material is in the various Global Security Briefings I hosted this year, covering news like the Key Bridge collapse, bomb cyclones, DANA storms, mpox, Olympics security and more. On the blog I supplemented editors’ writings on Olympics security and for our year in review.

    Finding me on social

    • Mastodon or a bridge if you are on Bluesky (where I prefer to have most of my RPG and soccer thoughts)
    • Threads (a wider mix of who I am)
    • Instagram (mostly pics of my dog, the moon and soccer stuff)
    • LinkedIn (almost all safety news, intelligence and marketing)

    P.S. That jersey on the header was for the soccer team I sponsored this fall. I’ll be sponsoring again in the spring, because supporting my friends is fun.

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  • When your escape is also darkness

    When your escape is also darkness

    I think my creative nature, both writing and D&D, started during my parents divorce. I turned towards stories of hope, or rising from darkness and fellowship. These were the things I enjoyed in fiction and helped me during those times. In my youth I was at my most creative during high-stress periods — then, high school, the Army, my mother-in-law’s cancer diagnosis and eventual death.

    My creative energy was often an escape from reality.

    I think that’s typical of artists, if I can call myself that. For me writing about Sounders soccer and D&D and the things that I enjoy have been that escape for various points of my multi-classed life. Currently I help market a news-as-security service. I see a lot of bad news. For the past year that’s meant that I have been writing more, crawling out of the darkness that was so deep during the various phases of pandemic jobless and deep despair.

    The last year was a good balance for my creativity — not too dark, but enough that I needed to write still.

    A funny thing happened over the past few weeks though. The hobbies that I use for an escape were also covered in shadow. The whole thing around the OGL with D&D ended my motivation around Dungeon 23. For the Sounders there is a sponsor that has so many of my friends and fellowship angry.

    Sourness eroded my interest in putting words to blank screens. These unnecessary community damaging decisions harmed my ability to escape.

    I didn’t want to rage, because my writing isn’t about rage (any more, now that I’m middle aged).

    I wanted to not think about the decisions that didn’t bring me joy. Instead of creating 365 nuggets of lore and place in my fantasy world, instead of sharing the joys of Renton being the Sounders second home, instead of being hyped for player signings, a new book, a movie I just stared at the blank pages.

    They weren’t a way to escape darker feelings.

    Friday some of that changed. Wizards of the Coast repealed many of their most controversial decisions, now releasing a thing called the 5.1 System Reference Document in the Creative Commons as CC-BY 4.0.

    I cried tears of joy.

    A darkness turned brighter. An emotional night had a beacon of light.

    Then I called the Tacoma Stars versus Empire Strykers MASL game for Sirius XM FC. It was a thrilling game with a supernatural performance by the Strykers goalkeeper. Seeing the coaches before the match, Toth after the match, the players meeting fans on the floor after it — all of that reminded me why I love creating around soccer.

    Writing is a funny thing for me. It’s what I do professionally and semi-professionally. It demands parts of my soul and parts of my mind be clicked together like a puzzle. Much of my process is a puzzle without a guide to what the result is going to be. I work through iterations in my head, but what if those iterations are blocked by a negative ooze?

    I pause.

    Writing doesn’t happen. It slows. I do the labor, but without the passion. I read my passion. My best works are those where my soul is exposed with fellowship and joy rushing out.

    And because emotions are what they are, reactive to outside influences, having brightness in my hobbies is vital for my creativity. The full moon of storytelling seems to be back. Now, I wonder what the next story is.