Development Versus Obsession

Sometimes you just have to relax, dude.

That’s the lesson I’ve learned in this phase of developing Knights of the Hidden Sun, Chris Challice’s interstellar fantasy RPG. I got a bit obsessed with the third chapter because it covers runecraft: one of the most distinctive concepts in the game. Runecraft gives cosmopolitan Roaans space opera luxury, telepathy, even immortality. The Gods are dead, destroyed by an exploding star, but they left hints about the secret powers of souls. Later scholars reversed engineered these innate divine powers, developing them like a technology that tore the galaxy from the Dark Age.

The only problem? The galaxy needs souls — billions of souls — to power its industries, starships, data processing across the Star Net. Everything is an ancestral intervention. Ghosts manipulate dream-data and fill hypersonic craft with motive force. Souls burn in the limbs of immortal Golems.

It’s awesome, but I kept asking myself, What is it like to live with this stuff? Runecraft is build by guilds, sold by merchants, used by everyone — but I thought it would be sloppy not to expand Chris’ material into a more involved discussion of what runecrafters do day to day, how the economics of the soul trade work . . . everything. It was just too cool so I started doing too much.

So I got stuck in the chapter. Now I’m crawling out, looking away from heavy immersion in to the world through setting text alone. Thanks to this experience I’ve learned to look at the work holistically, since looking at one part creates the temptation to make it bear burdens that other sections can take up just fine. It’s also taught me to pick my “battles.” Some information is critical and creates the framework of the setting. KotHS is an unusual setting so finding pieces of the frame has been a challenge, particularly when some very cool aspects are presented subtly. At some point you have to trust that the roots — vital information needed to envision the world — have been planted.  I think they’re done for this chapter and I need to finish it off, move on and get to edits, production and all that cool, game making stuff.

Sorry to those of you who’ve been waiting! It’s coming along, it’s cool, it’s taking a bit of time (It’s a much bigger draft than originally anticipated — over double the size!) but we’re moving forward.

Just thought you should know.