Arachtechs, Digispiders and Entomologics

Mars has been long abandoned by the armies that devastated it over the millennia. A culture of Anarchotechnologists, refugees from all areas of the Earthling-colonised galaxy, now call this planet home. Arachtechs, Digispiders and Entomologics make up some of the sub-cultures of Mars, specialising in crawling through the virtual networks of known space.

Earth Religions

On the now barren earth, apocalyptic religions spread amongst the habitats. This character is a cleric of a belief system that has amalgamated ancient earth-based mythologies into a death cult, seeking transcendence through surviving on Earth until it is devoured by Sun Ra – the creator and the destroyer...

Most powerful tractor beam yet...

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/scientists-create-most-powerful-acoustic-tractor-beam-date

Jobs of the future..?

http://mashable.com/2014/04/28/jobs-of-the-future/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link

Character Creation Before or After Gameplay Rules?

I'm questioning the reasoning behind placing the Character Creation chapter before the Gameplay chapter.

Though, because every rulebook does it, it needs some thought before it's locked in.

The obvious reason rulebooks do this is, is to ensure players create a character they want to roleplay first. Only afterwards, once they understand the rules better, should they attempt to game the system and beg the GM to reroll stats or start a new character. Surely the player cannot be blamed for the points spent in 'Blather' and the GM is crippling the team unnecessarily by not allowing a statistic change.

My opinion is that the player cannot be blamed. It feels like some games include 'trick' abilities that will never be as useful as others, and they try to hide how the ability will be used (or not) deep within the rules. And the game writers probably shouldn't be blamed either (because I'm one. I mean; even though only including 'useful' abilities was a major part of writing the Night of the Crusades gameplay and advancement sections, some will be encountered depending on the style of game being run). Let's blame GMs for not including enough versatility throughout the campaign.

Regardless who's to blame; when picking up a new rulebook, I just find myself reading the character creation section, then the gameplay section (because I read the book in the order it's written), then the character creation section again because I'll have better clarity in how the stats are used.

... Anyway; that was probably a bit of a tangent ...

For Dead Earth Gods I'm considering a gameplay chapter, with character-focussed examples of play throughout, to describe to readers how different areas of the game will work. Then the character creation section will follow, with the rationale for this being that the reader will be able to make a more educated decision about the choices they need to make once skimming the rules. This could possibly soften the issue that I encounter when creating a new character for a game – kicking myself for creating a character that I think should fit my roleplaying plans, rather than one that does.

Post-human, post-gender people descriptors

Eclipse Phase includes an excellent sidebar about the uselessness of using gender-specific descriptors in an era where physical bodies can be switched and only your ‘ego’ remains constant (even though your ego may be more comfortable in certain body types). 

When writing Nights of the Crusades it was painful that my language doesn’t include a gender-neutral descriptor for a person, which left the D&D option of always referring to someone as ‘she’, or mixing ‘he’ and ‘she’ throughout the text so it was roughly 50/50 by the time you reached the end of the rulebook. It also seems it's a common problem.

Using the Swedish route of inventing a term (their gender neutral ‘hen’; though ‘hen’ in English is a female chicken) didn’t seem viable for a mythos set in the early-middle ages; but maybe it will work for one set in the far future. There are a number of possible terms to describe someone’s ‘identity’ without categorising him/her ( <— that’s actually another, uncreative, option to deal with the issue), but some, like ‘id’ or ‘idem’, use the male as a default gender (‘ead’ is the female). Though the Fraudian id’ is supposed to represent the reptilian, instinctual part of your mind, whereas your ego’ tries to reign in your darker, unthinking self. Just thinking on that – Eclipse Phase seems to have chosen an excellent english word that sums it up with their choice of using ‘ego’.

So the challenge is how to rephrase, “he strode onboard the craft”? …

• “The person strode onboard the craft”

• “The persona strode onboard the craft”

• “Hen strode onboard the craft”

• “The idem strode onboard the craft”

• “The ego strode onboard the craft”

• “The bold id strode onboard the craft”

• “The character strode onboard the craft”

• “The actor strode onboard the craft”

hmmm… needs some work – or maybe a workaround to not end up with phrases like that…

Art direction

Last year, when I was thinking about the art for Dead Earth Gods, I was planning on developing the style I used for the Nights of the Crusades covers; a sort of hyper-real/dreamlike/photo-illustration style. It must have been after reading the ABC Warriors compilation, illustrated by Clint Langley, and my attempts at using Blender (free 3d software). 

Before deciding on putting stylus to tablet, I went through my collection of Imagine FXs and trawled concept art on Pinterest. I was attracted to the impressionist style of guys like Sparth and Justin Sweet and it was refreshing after fighting against the esoteric interfaces of 3d software (which I stupidly thought would speed up my workflow, rather than being an almost entirely new field outside of illustration). Also the photo-illustration style seemed restrictive in comparison – and was also time-consuming, relying on (and sourcing) an extensive library of photo-reference.

Below is a character in two styles. I gave the first image a self-critique after taking a break from it for a few days and absorbing the concept art of the pros. It definitely needed some loosening up and freedom from detail. The second piece is definitely on the right track.