I’ve finished my first draft of half the countries in The Unlucky Isles! I also have about 60% of each of the other three countries written up, awaiting all the new material and restructuring I’ve done with the first three, as well as a good chunk of the introductory elements. It’s clocking in at around […]
Making good progress on the manuscript for The Unlucky Isles Read More »
After spending 15 months developing Godsbarrow, getting to actually start up a campaign in this setting was the spark I needed to convince me to give publishing another shot. Today I founded Halfbeard Press, the company I’ll be using to publish Godsbarrow material. Halfbeard Press has a logo, an incredibly spartan website, a (currently empty)
Getting back into publishing: Halfbeard Press Read More »
Yore has been quiet, but I’ve been busy for the past couple of months — hobby-wise, painting Warhammer 40k terrain (which I haven’t gotten around to photographing yet) and starting up the first Godsbarrow campaign. After over a year of lonely fun creating this setting using Worlds Without Number [paid link], it’s absolutely delightful to
The first Godsbarrow campaign Read More »
I’ve set Twitter aside and decamped to Mastodon (specifically, the dice.camp instance), where you can find me as @martinralya. Returning to Twitter during the pandemic made me realize three things: I miss the social connections and serendipitous path-crossings and discoveries that social media can be good at facilitating. I miss Google+ a great deal. As
Mastodon is the new Google Plus (I hope) Read More »
When someone in Godsbarrow dies at sea, the Headless Child lays claim to them. If they died in sight of their own god, or gods, or if their faith was strong enough, the Child cannot take them. But if not, they join the Endless Fleet,[1] serving its unspeakably cruel captain for eternity. And the Endless
The Headless Child, Captain of the Endless Fleet Read More »
While I was on vacation, away from my Godsbarrow map and the text file where 99% of my notes live, I kept my worldbuilding streak going by emailing myself Godsbarrow ideas. Once I’d done two small gods, rounding things out with a third felt right. I haven’t explored small gods much yet, focusing instead on
Three small gods: a ship, an inn, and a family of swords Read More »
Today marks a year since I started working on Godsbarrow. It’s been a consistently fun process, and even when I’ve banked my creative fires I’ve still done something to make forward progress every single day. You can find links to all of my Godsbarrow work, loosely organized, on the Godsbarrow handbook page. Here’s my first
A year of Godsbarrow worldbuilding Read More »
Work on my first proper multi-region map for Godsbarrow continues apace. All of the settlements and roads are in place, I’ve tweaked a bunch of coastlines and island shapes and whatnot, and the center third has its mountains, fields, and most of its forests done. I also dialed the white back by 90% in the
WIP Godsbarrow poster map, 13th anniversary of this site Read More »
While I’m creating Godsbarrow region by region, in “tiles” which are more or less square, I’ve also been stitching those tiles together into a larger map. As you can see on that map, it’s full of small and medium problems as a result of this rough-and-ready approach: almost nothing along the tile boundaries lines up
WIP: Turning five maps into one Read More »
After roughing in the map and concept for my fifth Godsbarrow region, Middenglum, I tucked into doing proper write-ups Name the region. Middenglum is the colloquial name for a region which encompasses the lawless, sparsely populated western hinterlands of Ahlsheyan and Myedgrith, which in turn bleed into territory claimed by no nation — Middenglum proper,
Middenglum, part 1: overview, geography, nations, and gods Read More »
