Didn't *quite* finish my astronomy work today, but maybe an hour's work will have that done, so I'll tackle it in the morning.

Also have a minor medical appointment, and I promised @kenburnside.bsky.social I would review the backlog of "Architect of Worlds" questions. Busy day coming tomorrow.

Cortex Prime Community Licensing

Interesting, and encouraging:

news.direwolfdigital.com/cortex-prime...

I looked at doing some development under Cortex Prime a few years ago, but when a third-party-friendly license never materialized, I had to set the idea aside. The game engine *is* very attractive to me, so . . .

#gamedesign

Architect of Worlds (PDF) — Ad Astra Games — Ad Astra Games The definitive book for worldbuilding for hard SF writers and game masters in the genre of interstellar fiction! Updated to the most current understanding of planetary formation and exoplanet data!

If you want more worldbuilding goodness for your RPG or fiction process, you'll want to check out the full Architect of Worlds PDF!

Both Architect of Worlds and Nexus Journal can be purchased in dead tree editions as well!

Abbreviated Architect For Traveller — Ad Astra Games This is a condensed version of Architect of Worlds world building process, tuned for the Traveller RPG

Two new products up on the shopping cart tonight!

The first is Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller! This 8 page PDF takes the highlights of Architect's world building process tunes it for Classic and Mongoose Traveller!

Just signed up for next year's university courses - an astrophysics course, and a practical involving a series of remote experiments in physics and astronomy. Going to get some time on live astronomical instruments! Woo!

Still on track to get my second BS and start graduate work in 2029.

#studying

Spent the bulk of today putting together an assignment for my astronomy course. Just about done - I still need to finish the slides and script for a putative short research presentation, but even with everything else going on tomorrow I should be able to wrap it up then.

#studying

Anyone with pretensions to doing applied mathematics of any kind really needs to learn how to do dimensional analysis.

Can't begin to say how many times that technique has prevented me from making some bone-headed error or other.

Then I managed to write about 2,500 words of new narrative prose. I was kind of on fire - action-heavy scenes tend to flow quickly. Going to polish and post that chapter of the current "Lower Decks" story before bedtime. Two more chapters to go, and I'll have a complete novel done! (2/2)

#writing

Finished reading in my astronomy course today, and started on an end-of-module assignment that's due Thursday.

Also finished final edits on the Ad Astra project (a new version of "Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller") and handed that off to @kenburnside.bsky.social. (1/2)

#gamedesign

I really need to take a day or two and focus on some other items now. I've got a deadline coming up for my astronomy course, and it's been over a week since I posted a chapter to the current "Lower Decks" story. So that's what Sunday and Monday are going to look like.

Excelsior! (3/3)

#writing

I also got some good work knocked out on the Cultural Evolution Game. I think I'm approaching having the last big block of rules material whipped into shape. All that's left will be the remainder of the "Encyclopedia of Capabilities," and I'll have a text-complete draft. (2/3)

#gamedesign

Today did not go as planned. Had to spend several hours trying to convince Adobe InDesign to export a PDF, when it was reporting an error on page 9. Of an 8-page document.

In the end I had to rebuild the document almost from scratch, but I did eventually triumph over the chaos. Eventually. (1/3)

Star Trek: Lower Decks, but it's The Original Series YouTube video by Jeff Lee

Have you seen this? If you have, well, someone following you might not have!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvaB...

Great. Now InDesign is refusing to export this document to PDF because of a nonexistent page.

This is not how I needed or wanted to be spending my day.

Did some reading today in astronomy (active galaxies and compact objects), and started a new burst of serious work on the Cultural Evolution Game.

It's been a rough week. Possibly due to the pollen - it's hard to feel enthusiastic about projects when you're not feeling well. Still slogging forward.

Oh, that looks like a neat addition to the series!

Gee, Draft2Digital, big of you to tell me you won't charge a fee if I maintain an empty account with no listings.

At least you're not insisting I pay you to do absolutely nothing for me. Just that I pay you to do *almost* nothing for me.

Going elsewhere, next time I self-publish any original work.

Also did some work with the Cultural Evolution Game: a quick test run to derive inspiration for the fantasy setting I'm working on. Tweaked a couple details of the CEG along the way, so that's progress.

More of that tomorrow, I think, and maybe some new rules material as I go. (2/2)

#gamedesign

Spent the day reading in mathematics - some neat insights! I think I understand quantum mechanics a tiny bit better now. At least I'm not as likely to flee in panic if I see the Schrödinger equation for a system.

Continuing with that this weekend, and working on my astronomy course too. (1/2)

Already gone. Most of my writing income is in other markets these days anyway, and none of my original fiction earns more than a pittance. Not interested in paying an annual fee for nothing.

Aside from messing around a bit with the upcoming "Pioneer" game, I spent most of today doing some reading in my mathematics and astronomy courses.

Also reviewing the current state of the Cultural Evolution Game, and trying to figure out how to push that to its next milestone. It's a challenge.

Four Pioneers Mongoose Publishing is in the process of producing a new Traveller-derived RPG, called Pioneer, set in the near future and centered around a New Space Age in which player characters (called "Pioneers") are engaged in the development and colonization of space. Written by Sandy Antunes, it's very much on the "hard science fiction" end of the spectrum. For those of us who backed the project, a pre-release draft of the…

I've been tinkering with the pre-release draft of the core book for Mongoose Publishing's "Pioneer" RPG. Some neat stuff in here!

#mongoosepublishing #pioneer #traveller #ttrpg

Thread follows. The author has done some very good work building maps and visualizations out of the Gaia datasets. I'd encourage everyone who's interested to have a look, pick one of the two options, and chime in.

#astronomy

Hmm. I have exactly one book on Draft2Digital, which has sold a grand total of one copy since I listed it several years ago.

No, I'm not planning on paying them an annual fee to do nothing. If and when I get started again writing and publishing original fiction, it'll have to be elsewhere.

Interesting paper led by Naira Azatyan has appeared on arxiv this morning! 🔭

They identified 26 (mostly OB) runaway stars, 7 of which confirmed to originate from clusters of the Vela OB1 association, finding that its young stellar population has a runaway fraction of ~30%.

#stellarastro

The “Great Lands” Master Map Okay, here's another map for the "Great Lands" setting. This one is focused more closely on the Great Lands themselves - that is, proto-Europe. The map was produced using Wonderdraft, with a carefully selected excerpt of the world map applied as a tracing image. You can see that Europe hasn't been fully assembled yet - with Africa still moving northward and rotating slightly counter-clockwise, the Italian and Balkan peninsulas haven't merged in with the main portion of the continent.

Finished using Wonderdraft and Affinity Photo to compose a master map for the core region of the "Great Lands" setting. I'm about ready to start reconstructing the "historical" timeline for the universe . . .

#cartography #worldbuilding

Worked on university courses today - knocked out the reading for a unit on Fourier series, which again is something I had a hard time with forty years ago but which makes more sense now.

Also currently working on a map of the fantasy setting, which I may post to my blog later this evening.

Quest accepted.

I still have my copies of StarForce, StarSoldier, and Outreach, although some of them have become a bit worn over the decades.

Come to think of it, it's been a long time since I did anything with Outreach. Might have to bring that back to my table just for nostalgia's sake.