Dungeon! The board game and 5th Edition

Hello,

dungeonToday’s post will be about Role Playing Games.

I have a long standing love affair with games and with role playing. When I was young I was the navigator for my Mom and Brother while they played console games. Back then in game maps were rough and hard to follow, if they existed at all, and each game came with a poster map of the world. It was my job to tell them which way to go. I was horrible at it but I loved helping.

When I wasn’t playing with them I’d play make believe with friends, usually pretending to be a Black Mage in Final Fantasy.

I remember my first introduction to Dungeons & Dragons. It was a board game released by TSR called Dungeon! I think it might have been the 1992 edition called Classic Dungeon!

The game is a quick dungeon delve for 1-8 players. The edition I played had miniatures and armour stands and everything. I remember thinking is was the best game ever. I have no idea where my brother got it or what happened to it but it was a lot of fun.

So when a friend of my asked if I wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons in high school, I thought he meant the board game. I was really excited. He meant the real thing and my disappointment didn’t last long. Back then we had graph paper and we each played 2 characters. You never forget your first characters, Corwin the Cleric of Sun and Thor the Barbarian.

Yesterday I got an email from Chapters-Indigo, telling me that all Dungeons & Dragons books were on sale for 50% off. I couldn’t help myself and reordered the 5th edition Players Handbook. I look forward to reading the new rules and seeing if I like the new edition.

In the “Others have liked” section there was the newest edition of Dungeon! for a staggeringly small price. It was also half off. It looks like the plastic miniatures have been replaced with carboard stadees but I really can’t wait to play.

In short, I bought some games and I’m excited. I never promised every post would be educational or exciting.

What’s your favourite board game?

See you Thursday!
Eric

The Cosmic Cuckoos – Short Story

While some children dreamt of candy, school, or some other mundane thing; Helen dreamt of the stars. Not literally the large balls of gas but of everything that was and could be between them. She’d curl up, with a blanket, on her parents’ balcony and stare up wondering what was waiting for her up there.

As a lanky, tomboy her high school years were spent ignoring the cruel words of her classmates. She didn’t like school despite the fact that the teachers said she was brilliant. She didn’t try hard and passed most of her classes with a B average. She didn’t care. She knew the stars were coming for her.

There was one classmate that didn’t tease her. Abby was Helen’s best friend despite the fact that they had nothing in common, other than space. While Helen read books about space written by Asimov, Bradbury, and Clark, Abby read about space from authors like deGrasse-Tyson, and Hawkings. They agreed that there must be life on other planet and spent nights with a telescope discussing what they’d do if the aliens visited earth.

It was on one such night at the end of august, when the nights were hinting that they would get cooler soon, that they saw what they thought was a shooting star. The night was calm and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They had the most beautiful view of the universe. It was one of the few perks of living in a small town.

Jumping up to the telescope, Helen looked through the eyepiece and aimed it towards the falling star. “That meteor is really close.” Helen was excited as she listed off the measurements on the telescope and even more so as they calculated where it could have landed.

“That’s no more than a few hours away,” Abby said with awe. They had calculated that it must have fallen in a certain radius that started a couple hours of driving on back roads.

“Let’s go!” Helen yelled and ran through her parent’s room and down the stairs before Abby had a chance to argue.

“Be careful,” Helen’s mother said as they left the house. Abby’s mother would have freaked out and forbid them to leave at this time of night but Helen’s mother had spent all of Helen’s life confused and trying to bond with her only daughter. She didn’t understand her daughter but she tried her best to be encouraging. That meant if Helen wanted to run out of the house at eleven at night, she’d make sure the girl had a cellphone and knew she could always call for help.

The mother and daughter looked nothing alike. Helen was tall and stick-thin, with dark honey coloured hair and a brownish skin with high cheekbones that hinted that she may have native blood. Her mother was a short and rotund white woman with bright red hair. It hadn’t been a surprise to Helen when her parents had first told her she was adopted. She’d never been curious about her biological parents. They weren’t important to her. Only the stars were.

Helen had had her licence since her seventeenth birthday, a week and a half ago. This was the first time she’d been happy that her parents had forced her to get it as soon as possible.

As Helen drove, Abby used her tablet to pinpoint where the meteor had come down. If they had lived in the city it would have been easier to find. Everyone would have been talking about it on twitter but here in the middle of nowhere, everyone was either asleep, watching tv, or drinking at Pepper’s, the popular girls party. It meant they had no help in finding it but they didn’t have any competition to get there first either.

There was a little chatter on some astronomer sites and a few groups online but no one seemed really that interested. With the estimated size of the object being no bigger than a large RV and it’s entry into the atmosphere the meteorite that they would find couldn’t be bigger than a tennis ball. It didn’t matter to either of them. It would make a great souvenir.

They had a lot of trouble finding the impact site. It wasn’t like in the movies were half the forest would be squished and fire was everywhere, practically pointing to the impact site. It took them almost two hours of searching before they found what must have been the impact site.

It was tiny, the crater was no bigger than a dinner plate. “There must have been a lot of water or it broke apart,” Hele was disappointed. Despite the small size of the crater she kept the car lights on the place and got out of the car in hopes of getting some part of the rock that fell from the stars.

With her eyes on the ground she didn’t notice anything odd about the area until she heard a hollow banging noise. Looking over to the side she saw a woman with a pipe or tube that was as long as her arm. She wielded it like a sword. Lying at her feet was Abby.

“I’m sorry we didn’t mean to trespass, did you kill her?” Helen was caught between the urge to run away and the urge to defend her friend.

“No of course not, I’m not a savage,” the woman said and stepped toward Helen. The woman’s amber coloured eyes glowed in the dark. Other than her eyes she could be Helen’s older sister or Helen in a few years.

“Who are you?” Helen asked all worries replaced with wonder.

“I’m your mother and I’m here to bring you to the stars where we’ll rule as queen and princess of the galaxy,” The woman stood up straight trying to look regal.

“Really?” Helen’s heart beat quickly, her dreams and fantasies were coming true.

“Of course not, why are we always so gullible?”

“You’re one of over three million in your clone batch. Our people are horrible parents so we leave our young with parents in backwoods worlds. You’re of age and it’s time to bring you home.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

Looking annoyed the woman sighed and said, “You’ll be re-conditioned, implanted with the knowledge you need and then placed where the Superiors deem you’ll be most useful in the war against the enemy.”

“No, I’m not going,” Helen didn’t want to have her mind wiped. Or fight in any war.

“Oh for Grell’s sake. You’re not my last stop on this planet. I don’t want to deal with this,” the woman pointed her pipe weapon at Helen and with a soft sighing sound Helen fell to the ground.

The last time Abby saw Helen, she was being dragged into an invisible ship but no matter how many times she told people, no one believed her.

Selfies and Recommendation Wednesday – Laci Green

Hello,

Today I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Recommend an awesome person and talk about Selfies.

Selfies

A shaggy and tired Aspiring Something
A shaggy tired Aspiring Something!

There’s a lot of controversy about selfies. Some people think it’s vain and don’t understand why they exist. Others think it’s a natural expression of life.

This taps into a greater societal conditioning that has told us two contradicting things:

  1. You’re not handsome/pretty or special. Get over yourself or people will think you’re self-involved.
  2. If you want to be happy you must buy this product that will make you handsome/pretty so that people will like you

So when we see someone constantly posting their face all over their social media we react by rolling our eyes. What we should be doing is encouraging people to find what they like about themselves. Selfies can be a road to self-esteem.

I for one am all for people having more self-esteem.

Laci Green has a video that explains this way better:

Laci Green

Laci Green is an educator, councillor, youtube host, and an advocate of sex education.

She hosts the wonderful Sex+, a host of DNews, and produced A Naked Notion with Planned Parenthood.

One of the great things about Laci is her ability to express complex and often awkward concepts around sex, in a clear and entertaining fashion.

I honestly wish that she’d been around when I was first learning about sexuality.

 

What’s your stance on Selfies?

Eric

Mid-Year Review 2014

Welcome to the new Blog.

Have a look around. Check out the Travelling TARDIS, or if you’re feeling brave read both Travelling Tardis and Aspiring Something at the same time. Gasp… I know.

With a new address, I feel like it’s time to review the goals and resolutions I set forth last December.

Resolutions

“This year I resolve to do three things again, Write regularly (500 Words a Day of novels or stories), Continue Reading as much (30+ might be tiny compared to my wife who reads that in 3 months), improve my internet presence.”

I’ve pretty much followed the first one. I try to write at least 500 words a day. I’m not always successful but at this point I’m we’re in week 31 and I’ve written 85,000 words of Parasomnia. I write on weekdays so that means I’m ahead and that’s not even counting my blogs.

According to Goodreads I’m at 22 of 30 books for the year. However that does include three graphic novels and a very small book. I think I’m well on my way to reaching the 30 book mark that was my goal.

As for the third part of the resolution, I think I’ve been doing ok. I’ve managed to blog at least once a week and even twice most of the time.

Moving Forward

I think for my resolutions I’m going to do my best to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m within spitting distance of finishing Parasomnia and once that’s done I can start planning my next book, and writing a few short stories.

Projects

FADDS (Four Attribute Dual Dodecahedron System)

Between buying a house, extending the size of Parasomnia, and other valid excuses; I’ve barely touched FADDS. I have managed to finish Building the Second set of classes, built most of the Race builder, doubled the amount of Talents, and started work on cleaning up the language. It’s at 60 pages and 25000+ words, without counting the Beastiary.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to have the site and PDF build for 2015 but I’ll try.

Project Kitchen Sink

The idea of a series of short stories that intertwine to make a larger more interesting novel still fascinates me. I’ve only written three stories and barely looked at it. I think this will take the backburner for a while.

The Dying World

This was my plan to write a Role Playing Game module. It will be epic but I think I’ll wait until I’m finished with FADDS before I write it. I still plan on having it be a rules-generic adventure that can be played in any system.

I hope to start work on this in mid-2015

Youtube

I still plan on doing a webshow but it’s a lot more complicated than I expected. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it but hopefully you’ll have some silly antics on film (Digital video) soon.

Websites

If you’re reading this than you know I’ve succeeded in combining certain parts of my and my wife’s online presence. For the moment I’m keeping JenEric Photo separate until I decide what to do with it.

My Tumblr will stay on its own.

I have added a Youtune Chanel and it has one video. I think I’ll wait until our view numbers are high enough to add a Forum.

This weekend’s job, after seeing Guardians of the Galaxy, is to build a commission request form that will act as a store. The idea is that my wife’s stock varies and with 2 giant cons coming soon she can’t take a lot of commissions. So using a form will allow us to decide what to accept. If we do accept your commission, we will then send you a Paypal bill. If you aren’t a Paypal user, fret not, because we also accept Perfect Money payments. Just check out this site on how to proceed with converting it.

Other Things

I’ve been up to a few other things since I made this list and I think it’s important to mention them, in case you thought I was slacking.

Parasomnia

A weird novel that I’m so close to finishing. I’m hoping to be done in two weeks or so. Once it’s done, I plan on ignoring it for a few months while I work on FADDS. I’ll then do a quick cleanup and send it to the Weditor for beta reading. After that it’ll do the circuit of other Beta-readers, or as I call them “The Best People on Earth”.

This book is different from what I’ve written before and has a lot more emotional depth for the characters. I’m not sure if it’s brilliant, horrible, or something in between. I’ll let you know in a few months. I’m also not sure if it’ll be publishable. It doesn’t fit into any normal category.

The Ridiculous Adventures of Felix Felicis

I wrote a short-short story for April Fool’s Day and people really enjoyed it but hated that it ended in a cliff-hanger. So I wrote two others that both end in equally ridiculous cliff-hangers. I plan on writing another part every month or so. It’s a lot of fun getting into the head of the grumpy main character.

Go and read it. It’s silly fun.

Conclusion

I think that I’m well on my way to meeting at least half my goals and resolutions.

I feel both frustrated and thankful that I have more projects and ideas than I can put down or get started on. As long as I keep getting ideas, I know life won’t be boring.

How have you done with your Goals and Resolutions?

Thanks and once again welcome to the new Blog,

Éric

Artificial Gravity

The movie Lucy has me thinking about science and science-fiction. If you haven’t heard about the movie here’s the trailer.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVt32qoyhi0&w=560&h=315]

The premise is flawed. Ridiculously flawed. It got me thinking about other concepts that are flawed or that seem out of place.

Artificial Gravity

This is a normal trope for Science-Fiction space shows but it’s rarely based in science.

Some, like Babylon 5 or 2001 a Space Odyssey, use centrifugal force. (That’s when you spin something to simulate gravity.) However most will hand-wave the technology away and just say they have some sort of way of creating a Gravity Field.

Star Trek has gravity plating in its ships. It creates a gravity field that can be adjusted.

The obvious reason for this trope to exist is simplicity. TV and Movies don’t want to spend millions of dollars creating realistic anti-gravity and audiences want to see their hero’s walking and talking like normal. In stories, it simplifies the storytelling. You don’t have to look into how people and objects would move and it’s less alien to a reader.

But take the concept one step further. If we could control gravitational forces with such ease, why hasn’t anyone applied the tech to something else like weapons, flight tech, or space travel?

A gun or grenade that could control the gravity around an individual would be devastating. Increase the gravity by ten times from 1g to 10g in a second, you’d seriously hurt someone and probably kill them.

The problem with most science-fiction worlds is that Artificial gravity is incongruent with their level of technology. With the artificial gravity of Star Trek, they could easily have created artificial and collapsible black holes. Think how devastating that would have been as a weapon.

In less violent fashions, if they can get the plating to apply in reverse to their ship, they wouldn’t need more than a tiny push to get off planet. They’d be able to nullify the effect of gravity on their ship and float off into space.

 

There are various other pieces of Science-Fiction that are unbelievable or incongruous. What’s your favourite?

Thinking on Covers, Names, and Self-Publishing

Hello my imaginary friends,

I’ve been thinking again about self-publishing. Less about the idea of doing it and more about the puzzle of doing it.

From what I can tell there seems to be 8 parts to it:

  1. Writing the book
  2. Story and Copy Editing
  3. Formatting the inside of the book for various outlets (Ebooks, Print, Etc)
  4. Formatting and producing a cover for various outlets (Ebooks, Print, Etc)
  5. Having the books printed.
  6. Distributing the printed and Ebooks.
  7. Letting people know that the books exist.
  8. Repeat number 7 several times in many different ways.

Written out as a list it looks a lot less intimidating than it does in my head.

Now the problem with self-publishing is that an author isn’t by nature good and doing all 8 steps. I knew that I can handle 1 (I’m close to finishing novel five) I know I can do 3 (I’ve worked as a Layout Artist for over five years now) and I have a good idea how to do 5 and 6 (I also have friend who have offered to teach me how.)

My big problem is 2, I know I need to pay for an Editor and the minute I know if I’m self-publishing, I’m contacting people who can do it. I realize it isn’t cheap but it’ll be worth it.

Let’s leave 7 and 8 for a later post.

Book Covers

So the majority of my thinking has been about 4. I strongly believe that an awesome cover is worth its price. If I self-publish I want the book to practically sell itself. I want to pass by it and say, “That looks awesome I should read that… oh wait that’s my book.”

For The Elizabeth Investigates series, if I self-publish, I want to make sure that the covers stay consistent in style and feel. That means I need, not a cover artist but an artist. I have one person who I know will do a great job but is ridiculously busy with other projects.

I know that there are cover designers out there but I haven’t found one that matches what I write. So I looked on DeviantArt for artists that match certain styles. I found a bunch and I wonder if getting a commission from them would be difficult. I know I’d have to look into copyright issues and so on but I think it might be the best option. I can format the cover myself, what I need is the art.

I’m sure a lot of them will/would ignore me but it’ll be worth a try. I wouldn’t offer anything specific; I’d lay out my needs and ask for a quote. I’m assuming it would be somewhere in the ballpark of $100 to $1000. Dollars but maybe I’ll be surprised.

The next question becomes one of style. Since I write YA, I tend to mix genres a lot. The Elizabeth Investigates series is Urban Fantasy, Adventure, Mystery, with smatterings of Supernatural, Suspense, and Romance. That’s not the easiest thing to show off in a cover.

I could go with the normal YA Urban Fantasy style, like the Percy Jackson or Harry Potter covers, I could follow the Adult duo-coloured Urban Fantasy style, I could go with an old style fantasy cover where they try to put everything that happens into one illustration, or I could go for the simplistic Twilight style of cover. Or do I go for the older Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys style? All of which are awesome.

It depends on what I’m trying to sell the book as. If I go with the old teen mystery books, I’m telling people this book will be similar but with magic. If I go with a darker Urban Fantasy cover I’m telling them that this is a kid’s supernatural thriller.

nancy-drew-books-cover

It’s a lot to decide, I almost think it could be more important than even the title. The best case scenario, I think, would be to get an homage to the old mysteries with the art style of newer urban fantasies. Best of both worlds.

Author Name

The next thing that’s been bugging me is my name. I don’t want a pen name because that would be a pain but I’m trying to decide what variation to use for my writing.

In day to day life I sign my emails and credit card receipts with Éric Desmarais. My full name is Éric Albert Desmarais.

For a long time I considered using my full name but I don’t know, it feels pretentious.

I could use Éric A. Desmarais and I have. The initial makes it seem more literary for some reason. I could also use É.A. Desmarais.

You get the point. It’s an identity thing I guess. Maybe I should just go with Éric Desmarais.

 

Does the cover affect your interest in a book?

Would the name of the author, who you don’t know, make a difference in whether you bought a book?

Faith

Oh what a troubling word. Faith can mean many things to many people. At its core it means to believe in something. It’s often associated with religion or spiritual belief.

It’s a beautiful concept, to believe in something but I wonder if it’s that simple. It often seems that devoutly religious person would have the strongest faith and that the non-practicing wouldn’t. I think that’s wrong.

I think faith, as an integral belief which you whole heartedly honour, isn’t only the purview of religion. I think faith, in one form or another, is present in everyone. I’d go as far as saying faith is not only pervasive but essential to a healthy life.

Difference Between Having Faith and Needing Faith

There has to be a distinction made between having faith in something and needing faith in something.

You can have faith in God, Science, or Humanity. There’s a lot more but the point is that you can even have faith in yourself. How you’ve gained this faith or why doesn’t matter. The power of it, is that you have it.

Needing faith, is how you get to your belief. No matter how much you study you’ll always need faith that there is a God. But, if you spend a couple of decades training and testing theories, you can prove evolution through fossil and empirical evidence. You don’t need to have faith in something for it.

I suppose you need to have faith that the scientists that did the work, did it while respecting the scientific method. But you don’t need to have faith in evolution, just in the people who have proven it, over and over again.

The difference is simply in the method. Needing faith is a path to belief. Having faith is the last stop on that path but reaching the last stop can always be done through another path.

Why I think it’s important

I think as human beings we need to have a certain amount of stability in our lives and beyond that we need hope.

Faith, in every form, is about hope and the belief that things are going to be ok. As an example let’s take the afterlife.

Christian religion tells us that we will be judged and either go to heaven or hell (or the in-between places). Science tells us that we will decompose and that our atoms will return to the earth and help spring forth new life. Eventually our world with be destroyed and our atoms will float through space until they are used to create a new planet, sun, or other astral body.

Are both of them true? Who cares, that’s needing faith part. Are they both beautiful? Yes to a certain extent. Heaven can sound down right horrifying to some (That’s a whole other post) while the idea that we’re made of “star-stuff” might seem cold and unfeeling to others.

Having faith isn’t about what other people believe it’s about what you believe and how it make you feel.

My Beliefs (Cause I know you care)

I believe in stories and I believe if humanity. Although it’s not always easy I have faith that humanity is genuinely good.

I believe in being nice to people. I believe that life is a beautiful and magnificent thing that needs to be cherished. I have faith in the power of words, love, and kindness. Most of all, I believe that the pursuit of knowledge should be the goal of our lives.

What are my thoughts on the afterlife? I hope there are further challenges after our bodies stop working. I believe that the consciousness, or soul, must be bound to the laws of physics that say no matter or energy is ever created or destroyed. What it becomes after death is a great mystery to me but I don’t think it disappears completely.

I also believe that you live on in the hearts and minds of your friends and family. And they say the internet never forgets.

If you need to label me, this all means I’m Agnostic. Meaning I’m not sure what to believe but that we should keep trying to find out.

 

What do you have faith in?

Recommendation Wednesday – Biodiesel Production Expansion Indiegogo

Ottawa Biofuel is a great local company that transforms used cooking oil into diesel fuel.

They’re currently running an Indiegogo campaign in order to update their equipment and expand their production.

They also make wonderful glycerine soap.

Even if you’re car-less, like me, it’s worth helping them out even for the 1 or 5 dollar pledge. You’ll be doing something good for the environment and helping out a great company.

wpid-wp-1405453880372.jpeg

Go check it out,

Éric

PsyCorps Academy – Story and Proof-of-Concept

Hello,

I don’t talk with many other authors about their process for writing. It usually feels like prying. I’ve read lots of great books about the craft of writing and lot of blogs telling people how to write or how not to write.

I’ve learned that everyone does something different. I know that Stephen King normally writes his books in chronological order, while Neil Gaiman writes scenes and then ties them together. Some people plot out every scene and others don’t. Some type some use a pen or pencil.

One thing that I do that I’ve never heard anyone else doing was writing a proof-of-concept. I’ve done it for each of my novels so far and I find it extremely useful in find the right tone and feel. I find it extremely useful.

This post was a proof-of-concept for Parasomnia, and if you ever get the chance to read the novel you’ll realize that they’re completely different. What I learned from it was that I enjoyed the tone and the mirroring of dreams.

The following is a proof-of-concept for a novel I’m thinking of writing that’s set in the far future where 1 in a billion people is a Psionic. Each kind of Psionic is separated into a guild and that guild is like their family and decides what they do as a living. Precogs are the pilots and body guards, Telekinetic are the soldiers for hire, etc.

But at the core of the story I want it to be about a girl who has three of the eight possible powers and how she deals with training in the PsyCorps Academy. It should be a riff on the Boarding School stories, like Harry Potter, but in the future, with Psychic powers. I’d like it to have the feel of the Tamora Pierce Tortall novels (The Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small books), with a hint of Star Trek and Babylon 5.

After writing this I think it didn’t have the tone of awe or sci-fi that I wanted. I think the character acts too young for her age and I think I need to go to third person to better describe the effects.

I am still extremely interested in writing this novel and it most likely will be my 2015 writing project.

Read the Proof-Of-Concept after the break.

Let me know what you think. Please!

*Warning: There is some violence and an attempted sexual assault*

Read more

Recomendation Wednesday – Silver Stag Entertainment

Hello,

This week’s Recommendation Wednesday is for a Webseries and web organization.

I’ve mentioned them before but Silver Stag Entertainment, is a great website that delves into Books, Movies, and all the awesome speculative fiction stuff.

Go ahead and follow them on:

Their Youtube channel has several great shows and covers book readings/launches.

Let me be honest with you; I’m an occasional contributor to their Nights at the Round Table (NatRT) show that reviews and discusses books and movies. So this is mildly self-serving but even if I wasn’t involved I would follow, subscribe, etc because the people who run it are awesome!

Silver Stag Entertainment has only been around for half a year now and I’m impressed with what they’ve been able to accomplish. I also look forward to seeing how they’ll grow and the wonderful things they’ll do in the future.

Enjoy the bloopers below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Reto-ogBLCg&w=560&h=315]
Éric