11 KiB
Worth the Candle - Chapter 28
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Author: u/xamueljones My arch-enemy is entropy*
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URL: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/27030333
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Score: 58
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Created: 2017-08-31T11:26:15
Post:
Comments:
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+21] Fruit flies like a banana (5 hours later)
If you haven't read this, it's a self-insert litRPG portal fantasy (but in a way where you still might want to give it a chance even if that would normally scare you off). First chapter here or just read the entire thing on one page.
Also, this comment from me posted on AO3 might be of interest (I assume very few people read comments there, since I wouldn't if it weren't my story).
The plot has an end, but there's more middle that's only loosely plotted out in broad strokes, mostly so that I can write in whatever directions feel most natural to me as characters organically develop. I think it's easier with only a single viewpoint character, because you don't need to have people doing independent things that are developing in tandem, but we'll see whether I still think that's true in another 100K words.
I'd say that 70% of the worldbuilding is done, but the last 20% takes 80% of the effort, and some of that will develop organically too as I go. I have an 18-page worldbuilding doc for this story, which is expected to grow to 30 pages before the story is done. I'm leaving myself some wiggle room in worldbuilding design - exclusion zones by their nature can have confined effects that don't entirely spill out into the rest of the story, so I don't have to have a defined list of all of them and their rules right away. Same goes for races - the major ones are pinned down, but the more minor ones are free to not have definition until the spotlight moves over them.
I'd say about 90% of the elements come from my time as a DM, sometimes with a twist here or there to make it fit within the world of Aerb, and the remaining 10% are just on my ideas scratch sheet for being included into a game some day. Conversations at the D&D table are obviously not verbatim, and I didn't do anyone the disservice of using their real name, but they're all approximations of friends, and the "real life" plot follows my life closely enough that I think a few people would be able to figure out I'm the one who wrote it.
u/rabotat [+19] (10 hours later)
the "real life" plot follows my life closely enough
I am sorry for your friend.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+9] Fruit flies like a banana (11 hours later)
Thanks.
u/None [+14] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+17] Fruit flies like a banana (3 hours later)
This is the second or third time I've gotten this comment, so that means I probably need to go back to ch 19, specifically this section:
There were twenty-seven different kinds of magic, and that was the conservative count. Many of them were hereditary, racial, or otherwise not the sort of thing that was available to just anyone. Looking at my character sheet and assuming it was laid out in a sane way, I would have access to at most fifteen of them, though probably less.
... but I also don't want to just sit there and list out all the different kinds of magic and their specific gates for a few pages, because that strikes me as the kind of thing that I really, really wouldn't want to read, especially since it would come in an already slow/exposition-heavy section. It would just be masturbatory worldbuilding with no payoff, no connection to the plot, and no character development.
It's kind of frustrating me.
Edit:
There were twenty-seven different kinds of magic, and that was the conservative count. Many of those only included in the less-conservative count were hereditary, racial, or otherwise not the sort of thing that was available to just anyone. Looking at my character sheet and assuming it was laid out in a sane way, I would have access to at most fifteen of them, though probably less. (I was extremely interested in learning more of them, but Amaryllis thought that all the low-hanging fruit had already been picked. That didn't stop me from asking questions, but she was right that there were significant barriers that it didn't seem like my ability to learn things really quickly would overcome, or which would be useless to us without the necessary resources to capitalize on them.)
u/nytelios [+15] (5 hours later)
Appendixes! For the die hard masturbatory worldbuilding fans.
^^^^^I ^^^^^prefer ^^^^^incorporated ^^^^^worldbuilding ^^^^^though.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+7] Fruit flies like a banana (10 hours later)
I'm actually not sure how to implement addenda on AO3, since their only unit of content is the chapter. There's no way to say "this goes at the end of the book and should always stay at the end". I might play around with it some to see whether I can have a Chapter 999 that serves as an appendix, with all the chapters of actual prose slotted into there automatically, but I don't want to break update notifications and similar.
The bigger issue is that an appendix would spoil some of the story. You'd get to the place where flower magic is described in full (as an example) and there would be no sense of mystery or discovery left, because you'd have already read all about it in the appendix. That's the case even if the appendix is kept as non-spoilery as possible.
u/nytelios [+4] (15 hours later)
Afaik you can't without it being labeled as a new chapter. And it might make the story flow tedious if there's appendices littered here and there. Maybe on a blog or even as a thread here?
I'd really hate if any information spoiled the story. You could do it in the classic style of lettered (titled?) appendices, where the excerpts are details that won't come up in the course of the story and only relevant to the current chapter(s). Like the Mother of Learning blogs. Or like your post in the worldbuilding thread on elvish fäsh which I really enjoyed (it even came up in a subsequent chapter!).
There'd be no suspense or wonder of discovery left if you just shared your Tome of Worldbuilding. Less is more!
u/crusher_bob [+2] (16 hours later)
You can create a 'series' and add the notes and stuff in as a second story in the series.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+2] (20 hours later)
AO3
Can we talk about this acronym for a sec? Specifically, how it sucks. If you don't know what AO3 stands for already, you can't really figure it out - it sounds like some sort of shortening of "AoE 3". Sounds both dumb and boring.
We should call it "AOOO" - it mentally sounds like a werewolf howling! How is that not awesome? Or AooO if we want to be slightly more boring and readable.
u/crusher_bob [+1] (21 hours later)
... The AO3 abbreviation is right there on the front page: "With an AO3 account, you can: [...] "
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+4] (23 hours later)
Yes, but
- If you haven't been on the site (but have heard it mentioned), that's irrelevant
- Most people don't go to the site to read the header - they're there to read the stories. It's entirely possible to never notice the acronym on the site itself.
- Even when you know what AO3 stands for, it still throws you off majorly if you haven't come past the acronym in a while - again, it takes a couple of moments to un-connect it from Age of Empires. AoC, AoE3, AO3, they all sound way too similar.
...
- Werewolf howl. It's your patriotic duty to whatever-country-you-live-in, to use awesome acronyms and not boring acronyms. Also if you don't, you hate freedom.
u/valeskas [+3] (9 hours later)
Ch. 19 does not mention MC attempts to grab low hanging magic. Since the report is detailed enough, it really looked like idiot ball.
But then in Ch. 26 it is implied that actually he tried to learn magic during Ch. 19, but gates stopped him.
So it is kind of fixed.
u/Calsem [+3] (3 hours later)
I agree, but it's not as simple as him just getting a touch of magic. For blood magic he had to spend a half-hour lesson.
That doesn't sound like much, but I bet most mages are not inclined to share any of their secrets. They would likely tell him to go to a athenaeum.
u/nytelios [+2] (6 hours later)
It can be that simple, but it seems it's easier when the magic in question translates intuitively. He learned skin magic just through touch but not every magic will work on a similar modality or have a convenient eureka moment. It'd be a huge gamble and timesink trying to arrange meetings with all the kinds of mages when he doesn't know what magics are available to him.
u/nytelios [+8] (7 hours later)
“I can understand the need to study, but surely some escape from the real world would be welcome, so long as you’re in my shop?”
Made me smile.
The actual story of The Prince and the Handmaid turned out rather disturbing with some funny parallels. So then the moral's got to be "poison the goldsmith." If he paid attention in lit, Joon's got this.
The frequency of Joon's ogling has gone up lately. With Amaryllis and her animal magnetism gone, Fenn's now the only eligible gal in the vicinity. Propinquity in action.
I had a thought about forge frenzy. Amaryllis never confirmed or denied that there were more magic items being created compared to the past. If we assume that most (or all) of the items are the result of Earth D&D brainstorming and a billion is a fair approximation for the amount created so far on Earth, then even though the population has been cut by three quarters, the incidence density ratio of forge frenzy would be increasing relative to the population. Might be weak evidence for the Earth-as-principal theory.
When Joon reached Intimidation lvl 10 last chapter, I was expecting him to gain a new virtue. Like the Yellow Power Ring's ability to perceive fears. Too OP?
u/None [+6] (7 hours later)
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u/Sailor_Vulcan [+4] Champion of Justice and Reason (10 hours later)
I think the dramatic tension comes from the risk that he might die before he learns enough to be OP. His enemies are basically on a time limit to kill him before he gets too powerful.