This morning we debut the first article in a new series: An Interesting Nexus, a peek inside the head of our dear friend and business partner (under the pen name of Jervis Pax) as he pieces together bits of his own long-time campaign world. The flavor text is hardly just flavor—he truly is off in Afghanistan emailing us these things as a distraction from very real worries about getting shot out of the sky, so please keep a few well-wishes in mind for him and his family. This is a bit different from our usual style, which is very cool, and I found it really drew me in; I look forward to seeing the rest of what he sends us. 🙂
I’m also delighted to find that Photoshop is a far better tool for t-shirt designs than GIMP, particularly running on my new laptop, which is much faster than the old one. I started a new series of designs as a means of playing around with Photoshop: alignments and variations. The first three are up, but there are definitely more to come.
Interesting! Normally, I can’t stand reading about other folks amateur campaign worlds. They make me want to tear my hair out. This one was actually interesting. Maybe because it was more story than dry catalog of place names and people. a few cliches, but they are only surface details, and it feels like interesting things are working deeper below the surface. A dragon prince? What sort of principality does he rule? How does his government, if he has one, operate? What is the interface between the people and the prince? Or is he more of an absentee landlord? And what’s up with the horse? And the boy?
Looking forward to seeing more,
Brian
I think part of the reason for that (both the depth and any cliched material) is the fact that this campaign world, as I understand it, is 20-30 years old and has seen a lot of use. Much of that material probably wasn’t cliched when it was first used, I’d imagine, and the DM has had a lot of time to build up interesting material. As a player in his campaign currently, I can testify to the fact that he tells one heck of a story!
Well, the idea was this. I’m thousands of miles from home and control very little of the dangerous world around me here. I told Jeffrey he could have some of my stuff if something happened to me, but I got to thinking, most of it won’t mean anything if I don’t pass on how I actually create my world. It happens at random moments, (unfortunately and truly sometimes dangerous moments). A name, a word, a shade of color, a flash of light become a character, an artifact, a faction or a miracle in Thraveon. I know the maps, the kingdoms, the ancient histories and so, so many of the characters that already populate the world. But what if actually wrote down some of my fleeting moment creations so that Jeffrey (and others) could read how I do it? I never actually examined the nexus before, but I’ve come to realize, while writing the first two installments (yes two…post it soon I hope) that I really DON”T write the world anymore. It writes itself. Eyes open or eyes shut, it just comes. And so, I will take threads from the posted questions and comments and weave them back into this living breathing world. With any luck, I won’t lapse into Thraveon at the wrong moment. Only 25 days til I return to the REAL world…and then the adventure begins anew. Somewhere out there is another chosen, who will prove thorugh their posts, that they are worthy to join us in the Ancient world of Thraveon. JP