All posts by Ed Jowett

How to Make Your Characters Real – Part 4: Visualisation

Development Blog, News

Hi everyone, Ed here from Shades of Vengeance again!
I’m back with another entry in my “How to Make your Characters Real” series. I hope that you are finding these useful and interesting. Of course, if there’s any subjects that I’ve not covered that you’d like me to talk about, please just ask, I’ll be more than happy to speak about it.

When you are creating characters, remember that humans are visual creatures. The fact that a beautiful picture of a sunset is more likely to sell a game than brilliant mechanics is something that I’ve struggled with for a long time as a game designer.

When building characters, this is a relatively easy thing – though important – to include.

Try to come up with three or four features which make any character that’s important stand out from the rest of the population. There are some obvious ones. There’s an eyepatch or a wooden leg or another type of prosthetic, depending on what time period your your story is setting. This can be done effectively in Sci-Fi as well – one of Elliot Draigon’s most memorable features is his artificial arm, and I think the same could be said for Barret from Final Fantasy 7!

However, there are other things that could be included which are less obvious. Perhaps the character always stands slightly crooked, because they actually have constant back pain. Perhaps they perhaps they have a nervous tic, where they turn their head to the left quite frequently as if they’re looking around seeing if anyone’s following them.

There are a huge number of possibilities and I suggest you try not to reject anything that you think might suit your characters attitude – sometimes people’s attitude to their their reality is based on their physical state.

Obviously, you can also think about how they dress, how they wear their hair and various other personal details which are choices, rather than forced on them by circumstances or biology.

Don’t be afraid to experiment a little bit and make your characters memorable to the people who are reading. It’s actually surprisingly hard to go overboard on this.

Once you’ve come up with these details for your character, remember that you don’t actually have to show them or talk about them in every single encounter with that character. Make a choice about when you want to talk about it, and when you don’t want to talk about it. And don’t be afraid to leave it until it becomes a relevant detail – I am sure you have been in a situation where you didn’t notice something until embarrassingly late!

That’s pretty much all I’ve got on this subject, so check in again next week for another “How to Make your Characters Real”, where I’ll be talking about how much information to give away!

– Ed

How to Make Your Characters Real – Part 3: Hero of Their Own Story

Development Blog, Games

Hi everyone!

I’m back again to talk a little more about how to bring your characters to life in an engaging and realistic way. 

The reason that I think this is important actually relates to the fact that, when you have a character which is solid and believable, it makes the story that you’re trying to write almost able to tell itself. All you have to do is follow that character and understand the choices that they make. But I’m going to be talking a little more about that in the future! 

Today, I’m going to focus on how characters live inside your universe, along with several things that you want to remember when you’re thinking about bringing those characters to life. 

The first thing to remember about every single character – every single person – in your setting is that every character is the hero of their own story. 

Importantly, that might not be the story you’re telling today. You may have read some of my previous articles, where I say that the main characters should be the most important person in the universe at the time you’re telling the story. Obviously, for almost all of the population that can never be true, but they can still be the most important person in that place at that time. Remember that every other character has a reason to exist. There’s a purpose to their life that they’re going to achieve at some point – Robin was always going to grow to be a hero in his own right!

Secondly, bearing this in mind, don’t forget that the character exists among many other characters in some kind of community – whether that’s a small number of survivors in a post apocalyptic setting, like the Resident Evil movies, or whether it’s a huge city that they’re just one of the faceless crowd within. They exist among these other characters, and they’ll interact with them and be interacted with in a certain way. 

This means that you can easily model a wider society, because most of them will act whatever is the norm in your universe… but if you’re trying to make a character stand out, if you’re trying to make it realistic and memorable, think of a way in which it can be unique, and will therefore be treated differently by other characters who live in that universe.

Coming back to the point about every character being the hero of their own story, remember that there’s history to every single character! Every person has a story that brought them from where they were when they were born to where they are today. No matter what that story might be, it exists, and it’s very likely that you’re not going to tell it – you may not even want to tell that story!

Instead, remember that it might make people act in an odd way to certain situations. A history of parental abuse might cause a character to react slightly oddly to a father figure appearing in the story. Or a lost job might start making people think that they don’t trust the mentor figure that they’ve come across, don’t entirely believe that what they’re saying is the way things are going to be. 

You might not have the opportunity to explain why this is in the story you weave, but I think that it’s very important that you understand why it is. That way, even if you never explain, you’ll have the opportunity to be consistent in the way that they behave. There will always be other clues based on the way they are acting, even if you don’t say directly! 

I hope that’s been helpful and I hope that you’re finding this series interesting, so please check in with us again. I’ll be back next week with some more of my thoughts about making characters real! 

– Ed

Spotlight: Era: The Consortium Living Campaign

Era: The Consortium, Games, News

Hi everyone!

Era: The Consortium’s Living Campaign has just launched, and that means anyone can get involved with the universe!

All you have to do is play a game set in 451CE, where the Consortium has decided to eliminate the Resistance, and the Resistance is not going to give up easily. Focus on an outpost or planet where the other faction has a stronghold (as shown on the map!) and play your mission.

When you’re done, send in the details to me on Discord, the Facebook group or via E-mail to publishing@shadesofvengeance.com! I’ll change the map according to the various information I receive…

There are two in-game years for this to run, and a chance for immortality for all of your characters, so don’t forget to get involved!

For more information, you can visit the dedicated page: https://www.shadesofvengeance.com/era-the-consortium/living-campaign/

See you out there!

– Ed

How to Make Your Characters Real – Part 2: Building up your Characters in the Right Way

Development Blog, Games

Hi everyone, Ed here again! I’m back to talk more about making your characters real.

The advice in these posts could apply to roleplaying games, when you create a character, or it could contribute to your storytelling or novel writing. It could even help with designing a world, or writing a movie or any number of different things! I hope you’re finding these useful, and please check in again next week when I’m going to cover some more subjects. 

But, for this week, I’m going to be talking about how you build up your character in the right way, so that they can achieve what you need them to achieve. 

The first thing you need to do is understand what your character is – are they your main character? 

Or perhaps they are a “quest-giver”, who you need people to engage with and listen to, but once they’ve completed their life cycle by giving the quest, they’re not going to be around until characters return? 

Are they someone who, in a mystery, is about to give the vital piece of information to your characters? Are they going to do this reluctantly, or sort of willingly? Are they trying to bring someone to justice?

All of these examples have to be treated very differently. They do all need to engage the readers or the players, but they both need to do so in a very different way. 

A quest-giver needs to sort of offer some kind of air of mystery and reward – “this person is worth listening to!”. It might be the person in the cloak sitting in the corner, as in the case of Strider in Lord of the Rings. Alternatively, it might be that you know the person, but they turn up again with a vital mission – think of Gandalf turning up at Frodo’s house, telling him that he needs to be ready to go out into the world and deal with this problem. 

You’ll often find this kind of character is very mysterious; you don’t know much about their backstory, and you don’t understand exactly what’s going on. But that’s actually a good thing in this case, because the expectation that you’re building is that going out and doing this quest will actually provide you some of that information. 

Moving onto the second example that I gave, a character offering a piece of evidence regarding your mystery, there are still quite a few different possibilities. This situation is a little different, in that they’re not likely to be mysterious if they’re trying to help you solve a mystery! They’re much more likely to be quite open with the information that’s trying to give you. 

What’s often done to add depth is the “slightly crazy” approach – they are so open that people can’t really relate to them in the normal way. They are frequently trying to state all of their ideas to someone who’s done a limited amount of the investigation in what they have looked into, but that is a breath of hope to them. As a result, they just throw everything that they know out at the other characters in the assumption that they will fit the pieces together in the way they did. 

Obviously, those are just two examples of many kinds of characters. Most people understand the role of a protagonist, so I haven’t gone into that in too much detail, but if you have any questions about any sort of character, please feel free to reach out to me in the comments – I will be more than happy to give you my thoughts. 

You can also reach out to us on Discord (https://discord.gg/6C4H9Cv), support us bringing creativity to the world on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/SoV) and experience our various work, which is based on the principles that I’m describing now, in our various role playing games and comics which you can find on our store (http://www.shadesofvengeance.com/store/). 

Thank you very much for reading and I’ll be back next week with another set of interesting information regarding characters which live inside your universe! 

– Ed

How To Make Your Characters Real – Part 1: Inspiration

Development Blog, News

Hi everyone! 

Ed here, and today I’m going to kick off a multi-part set of articles that are based around ideas I have on how to make your characters real.

The first thing I’m going to talk about is inspiration. 

How do you arrive at your character? Also, how do you make sure that when you are working on it you create something that is along the lines of what you envision? 

The first thing is something that I’ve said a lot of times in previous articles and Webinars about inspiration: consume media! Read books to find characters who are vaguely similar to what you’re doing. Watch TV series and movies, find things that people have done that’s close to what you want. Play computer games – some computer games have fantastic stories, with everything that you need to achieve the characters that you’re looking for!

When you do all of this, remember that you don’t need to have something that’s 100% unique or something that’s never been seen before at all. What you need is to find something that’s close to what you want, and then figure out how you make that example the way you would write it, rather than the way someone else has already written it. “How would I do this differently?” is one of the most powerful inspirational tools I have ever found.

If you can begin to ask that question, you’ll very quickly reach the point where you’re never struggling for inspiration… but also are creating something that feels fresh and original, because it’s your take on this kind of character. 

Another thing that you shouldn’t be afraid to do is combine elements of two characters together. A hybrid of two characters can often have an amazing life of its own! If course, bringing in a trait like that can entirely change the way a character behaves, bringing a new dimension to their personality.

I’ve done this a huge number of times. Era: The Consortium ( https://www.shadesofvengeance.com/product/era-consortium-definitive-edition-rulebook-digital/ ) is a product of a lifetime of loving Sci-Fi – reading, watching and playing. Era: Forbidden, our most recent RPG release, came mostly from playing the three Darksiders games in a row, then watching the Hellboy movie! These things shaped the characters in my in my mind before they ever appeared on the pages.

I’m going to talk a lot more about various character-related subjects over the next several weeks. Much of this will be based on the foundation of the inspiration that I’m talking about now. So go out there, consume your media of choice, and I will see you next week for more about characters!

– Ed

Building a World: What Makes It Survival Horror?

Development Blog, Era: Survival, Games, News

Hi everyone!

When I started both Era: Survival and Era: The Chosen, I asked myself one simple question very carefully:

What is the difference between Survival Horror and Horror?

I thought I would write about my thoughts on this today, and try to explain my answer to that question!

The Survival Horror genre is different from the action genre in terms of both the atmosphere and the events that befall the characters.

While the Action genre is about overcoming impossible odds and blowing away the bad guys, Survival Horror is about the suspense, the threat of danger. 

Importantly, characters in Survival Horror stories have an inability to do much about the danger they face. Instead, the characters are explorers in a world which is designed to kill them: they have no choice but to work together with a shared strategy.

The feeling among the players that they are undergoing a descent into the unknown is what you are aiming for, whether literally, like exploring an underground Vault in Era: Survival, or figuratively, such as exploring a forest.

In order to build this feeling, there are a few simple techniques which can be applied.

Anticipation is a powerful tool in this genre, and is often more effective than the actual danger you are expecting to arrive. If you can build up the sense of danger without offering the chance to defeat the threat, you will create the sort of atmosphere you are looking for. Simple examples are things like characters seeing things put of the corner of their eye but checking proves them imaginary, a lack of light (causing characters to rely on torches).

In writing terms, I would recommend against the “minor character being picked off before anyone can react” trope, because it is perhaps slightly overused. The first character to die in the movie Alien (which I think is a good example of Survival Horror) was far from a minor character, in the form of Kane!).

Claustrophobic environments, like a closed-in building, or even a dense forest, can be used to great effect to make the characters feel that there is nowhere to run, adding to the tension. Their weapon is running out of ammunition and enemies are attacking from both sides with no obvious way to avoid them… what does the character do?

Eventually, the action will arrive. When it does, give the characters a necessity to perform complex actions which require attention while under pressure – lockpicking a door when unhurried may be easy for them, but when the entire group is watching a horde of zombies approach, it really builds the tension!

Weapons being unreliable is also a vital part of this genre – they have limited use before they de-nature and begin to fall apart. Ammunition will be scarce, with characters always wondering whether they should use their gun now, or risk it and save it for later.

Don’t forget to give the characters a chance to unwind! Constant tension will wear the reader out and reduce the reaction to these situations. 

Let them slam the door in the face of the horde and declare that they won’t get through something that thick for a while. Let them have 10 minutes to rest, take stock of their supplies and figure out their strategy every so often. That makes the monster that bursts through the ceiling all the more unexpected!

Of course, these are just a few examples of how this genre can be expressed. What is the most important thing to you?

– Ed

You can find out more about Era: Survival here:  https://www.shadesofvengeance.com/product/era-survival-definitive-edition-rulebook-digital/

And there is an Audio Book version of the stories: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B07XVCTS4J/?source_code=AUKFrDlWS02231890H6-BK-ACX0-164475&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_164475_rh_uk

Era: The Chosen, which edges on the side of plain Horror, can be found here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/287797/Era-The-Chosen–Core-Rulebook

Era: The Empowered tabletop role-playing game

On Kickstarter Now: Tales of the Empowered 2!

Era: The Empowered, Games, News

Hi everyone!

For us, one of the most important things we do at Shades of Vengeance is enable you to bring your stories to life.

We do this quite a lot of ways; through Roleplaying Games which encourage storytelling, through the card games which encourage you to build your own stories, and through small projects like “What Happened to you on Gaia?“, which encourage you to build your story off what’s given!

Tales of the Empowered is a project we first ran 2 years ago for Make100 – a Kickstarter initiative that encourages creators to build 100 of something.

In this campaign, we offer the chance to bring your own superhero to life – you can get a story, artwork of your character and much more!

We love doing this, but we’ve got a lot of projects to do, so I’m not sure when this one will be back – it’s two years since the last one – so if you’d like to see your character come to life, don’t forget to check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadesofvengeance/tales-of-the-empowered-2?ref=4s21ty

– Ed

Era: The Consortium – First Contacts and the opportunities they offer!

Era: The Consortium, Games

Encountering alien races is an incredibly important part of much of Sci-Fi. I would argue it is an attempt to answer to one of the greatest questions of the genre. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, “There are two possibilities: we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

First Contact, of course, features several times in the history of the Consortium.

This is because there are different ways in which first contact might go – I’m very cognoscent and aware that I must not waste time or encounters in the limited capacity that the timeline can offer me for alien races are encountered during the current timeline of the Consortium that’s been delivered.

The Eulutians offer technology and allegiance virtually freely to the Consortium. They are an example of an enlightened alien race, who believe that Humanity has potential and that there’s a chance that humanity may offer something in the future, in a sense that is somewhat similar to the Asgard in Stargate SG-1.

They give their technology relatively freely to the Consortium, offering lasers and various other pieces of technology that only they have ever been able to perfect to date.

The Ximians are encountered in 184CE, in what Consortium fans will undoubtedly know as the disastrous first contact that began the Bug War. Era: The Consortium handles this in a slightly interesting way: the consortium massively out matches the Ximians, technologically, but the Ximians are not afraid to use their numbers to their advantage. As a result, the Consortium suffers significant losses right from early on, and the War is really quite a struggle for many years.

The mechanics of this part focus on all-out war. Unit-based combat is offered in order to try to give an idea of what the experience might have been like.

We’ve also explored this concept in detail in the more recent parts of the Time Travel Campaign (You can find those on the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/SoV). If First Contact were to go wrong. I’d like to think that the Ximian War is something that is close to how it might look. 

The third race encountered are the Vilithii. This is a case where Humanity is effectively uplifting a primitive race to their level of technology.

The mechanics here are all about these inexperienced Sentient Beings joining the consortium and political impact within the society that the Consortium has become.

Allowing them technology and thinking about the growth within that society, along with the deposing of Vilithii and destruction of their hereditary beliefs is the focus of this particular contact.

And finally, humanity encounters the Pliangrathilon. They are desperate when they arrive in the Consortium – they don’t know how to survive any longer their ship crashes.

They know the Eulutians from a previous contact with a different colony, but Humanity are strangers to them. When they arrive with a prophecy, predicting Humanity Ximians, Eulutians and the Vilithii along with two more races, there are questions.

All of these offer an opportunity to explore a different kind of story, a different kind of first contact.

I am happy to answer any questions that you would like to ask around these, so please let me know in the comments, or join the discussion on Twitter – @Shades_of_Venge.

I will see you next time!

– Ed

What Happened To You On Gaia?

Era: Survival, Games, News

Did you ever wonder what would happen to you if modern civilisation ended?

We’ve created something which will answer this right here:
https://whatareyou.shadesofvengeance.com/?generator=survival

Don’t forget to share it on Facebook or Twitter when you get an answer!

Of course, we’re all about stories! So if you want to build on the backstory you’re given, check out Era: Survival here – on special offer until the end of the year: https://www.shadesofvengeance.com/product/era-survival-core-rulebook-digital

Share to our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/shadesofvengeance/) or to @Shades_of_Venge on Twitter to let us know what happened to you and have a chance at winning an awesome Era: Survival prize!

– Ed

This week’s new releases:
Era: Lyres “A Very Trout Christmas” (Free Audio Short): https://youtu.be/MytwwlacWRw
Stiletto Unit 447CE – Season 1 Recap (Era: The Consortium Videocast): https://youtu.be/sFK7jvcyVXo

Era: Lyres Audio Short – A Very Trout Christmas

Era: Lyres, EraScapes, Games, News

Hi everyone!

To get into the Christmas spirit, we’ve done a special Audio Short set in the Era: Lyres universe for you to enjoy!

Produced by Heike Priwitzer, who worked with me on the original story, this is an adaptation of the piece that appeared in The Era Zone Issue 4!

This is totally free, so enjoy a present from us this Christmas!

You can find it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MytwwlacWRw
or on Podbean: https://shadesofvengeance.podbean.com/e/era-lyres-a-very-trout-christmas/

How to Begin Building a “Hero’s Journey” Story.

Development Blog, Games, News

I think most writers have heard of the concept of a hero’s journey. For those that haven’t, the idea is that the hero begins in a negative, or non optimal situation, and progresses through adversity to become the hero that the universe needed, whether it knew it or not. 

The hero’s journey is one of the oldest forms of stories and, although I’ve heard it said that there are seven coins of story, I personally don’t subscribe to that. I don’t think there are really more than one: every story involves the hero’s journey in some way. That’s why I think that being able to build a convincing and interesting hero’s journey is absolutely vital, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today,

When you are beginning this hero’s journey, you need to think carefully about what situation the hero might be in. It is very likely that they are not currently the hero. Maybe they’re disgraced, maybe they’re too young to have realised their potential, maybe they were retired soldier from a war that has ended. 

It doesn’t entirely matter for the structure what the reasoning is, and it’s going to be quite hard to come up with one that is totally original… so don’t worry about that, worry about what fits the main character of your story. 

The hero has to be in this sort of “vanilla” situation – neither good nor bad – because it’s a developing situation (often bad) that’s likely to motivate them to get moving at the beginning – which is where the hero’s journey truly begins. The situation that’s been stable for some time, on the other hand, allows this hero to become complacent, to reach an equilibrium in their life.

Often, you will want to spend a little bit of time building that view of the world before moving onto the next step:

That equilibrium needs to be disrupted!

This could be an external event and it very often is something that comes from outside. So don’t be afraid to call on an external factor, which brings a character out of their stable state and forces them on a journey that will change their life forever. 

That’s how I would consider beginning a hero’s journey. I’m more than happy to talk more about the later stages in another article, if you’re interested. Feel free to leave comments below if you’ve got any questions, because I’m more than happy to explain more about what I am thinking!

Thank you very much for reading. And don’t forget that you can find us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/shadesofvengeance) and on Patreon if you want to support what we do, along with getting some awesome rewards every month (http://www.patreon.com/SoV)! 

You can also find a brief guide on how to be creative on YouTube right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwk8eDXks0Y

Spotlight: Champion of Earth

Champion of Earth, Games, News

Good afternoon!

With Christmas around the corner, we thought we’d offer you a great party game that’s bound to raise the energy in your house – one perfect for a Pre-Christmas Dinner warm-up!

Champion of Earth is a game where 1-6 players fight off an alien invasion…

But the aliens are not alone! When they start raising the Undead and bringing forth Creatures from the shadows, only the six champions have the know how (and the arsenal) to save us all!

This number-matching card game is a great co-operative fight against the deck, although you can give it a competitive edge if you wish (after all, there can only be one champion of earth!) with cards that steal trophies or make fights harder for your rivals.

You can grab your chance to save the world right here: https://www.shadesofvengeance.com/product/champion-earth-core-deck/

And, if you want to check out how to play, you can see the full game played by Ed here! https://youtu.be/FrLkLTeYRgM

– Leo

5 Sci-Fi Sub-Genres Handled by Era: The Consortium

Era: The Consortium, Games, News

Hi everyone!

Today, I’m going to be talking about 5 Sci-Fi sub-genres, why I think they’re interesting, and what ways are used within Era: The Consortium to handle them well!

There are obviously many more than seven sub-genres of Sci-Fi, and I have said many times that Era: The Consortium handles every sub-genre of Sci-Fi I could think of as a lifetime fan of science fiction. I wanted to make sure that the various obvious things were covered in the game – both mechanically and story-wise – when I created it.

So here we go: here are five things that Era: The Consortium is built to handle as sub-genres of Sci-Fi!

1: Colonising a New World

This is a very common sub-genre. It’s commonly linked to themes of a new beginning, new opportunities for the human race.

Various things that included this that inspired me are various episodes of Star Trek and other Sci-Fi series, along with computer games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Mass Effect Andromeda and many more.

Era: The Consortium handles this through the arrival of the Kurmaja on Taranis. This is an unclaimed world, which is similar to Earth. When the crew lands, they find they have very little memory, very little experience to go on. Many of them need to be retrained, due to the memory loss from cryo stasis. To add to the difficulties, wild, dangerous creatures roam the land.
There are a large number of difficulties involved with colonising a world, especially when you don’t have the knowledge that allowed you to escape from a planet’s atmosphere in the first place. Era: The Consortium offers the first few years where a small number of crew who had survived on a generational ship – the Kurmaja – and must direct most of the unfrozen, cryogenically stored population of the ship to carry out the various activities needed in order to revitalise human civilisation.

Following on from that, there’s eventually an educated population who are trying to tame this planet.

And of course, there is the opportunity to play during the times that other planets and solar systems are discovered and colonised later on in the timeline. So, from 1 or 2CE, all the way through to 108CE, this offers a lot number of different opportunities within this sub-genre.

The mechanics around this are mostly focused on a lack of equipment or lack of availability of technology, which will become commonplace later on in the Consortium’s timeline. Weapons are weaker, they’re less able to defeat wild animals which might threaten the now-fledgling Human civilisation. And there’s a lot of mystery around what the animals and the planet has in store for Humanity as well, which is another important aspect of these sorts of stories.

2: Encountering alien races.

This is something that has been covered in more short stories, TV and various other media than I can easily list. Star Trek obviously comes to mind. There’s also The Outer Limits, which has numerous episodes about this because, let’s face it, the idea of humanity meeting an alien race of understanding more about ourselves in the Universe by doing so is a very big deal.

In Era: The Consortium, I focus on mechanics that define the political impact of new arrivals. New technology that’s never been available before has suddenly appeared. New outlooks on existence are offered, with each alien race having a different method of approaching reality.

As a side note, I think that’s really important because otherwise you end up with aliens which are just humans who look funny! The psychological differences between these alien races is one of the aspects that I think is most important about Era: The Consortium’s First Contact offering.

I intend to go into more detail on this point in an upcoming article, so watch this space for more on that!

3: Cybernetics – the line between man and machine.

This is something explored thoroughly through a variety of media as well – recent Deus Ex being a good example of what comes to mind instantly. What is Human? How much do you have to replace before you are no longer Human (a question also asked towards the end of the Rama series!)?

As a result, I have made this something that is explored pretty constantly throughout Era: The Consortium’s timeline, starting from the initial invention of the Cranial Implant and decisions that were made by the Eulutian who designed it, on to the mind sharers and Yulio-2 architecture, and eventually on to Elliot Draigon and Moritasgas Pharmaceuticals working together to build the first cranial-controlled Implants of modern Consortium design.

The implants in Era: The Consortium offer a huge array of mechanical opportunities, from bringing a character back to life to long range vision or throwing weapons, or even armour that’s embedded beneath your skin. These are various levels of complexity, and they’re available at different times as technology changes.

The apex of this could be argued to be the Rapier expansion, when you can infiltrate a computer system by loading your consciousness into it. Of course, this is far from a new idea, but it’s an idea that I love,
and I think Era: The Consortium would be lacking if it didn’t offer it!

4: All-Out War.

Era: The Consortium offers all out war twice.

First, there’s all out war between the Consortium and the Ximians. This was inspired by Starship Troopers to a degree – it offers the opportunity for the truly gruelling, difficult kind of war where the enemy doesn’t value their troops in the way that humanity does.

What does a character sacrifice for their comrades?

Secondly, there is a pirate uprising, which was very much inspired by the works of Elizabeth Moon, particularly Vatta’s War. I wanted to give people the opportunity to build their own story within that war.

This, of course, is the Sean Hardcastle uprising. The Core Rulebook provides all of the rules that you need, but free trade up the expansion offers even more opportunities to gamers who would like to penetrate into the piracy issues.

These to both give very different flavour to the all out war concept in science fiction, and the mechanics around them are focused on both ground combat and large ships floating through space and trying to fight off either other large ships or even swarms of smaller ships.

Era: The Consortium’s space combat mechanics optimised in that direction. (Of course, for dog fights, I built Era: Balam!)

5: Rebellion Against an Evil Government

Star Wars is probably the most prevalent example of this kind in people’s minds at the moment. There are many other stories like it, however, where a small group rise up against a government that they perceive as oppressive. Now, this could be anything from an actual conflict which is resolved, like in Star Wars, or it could be that the resistance of practically lost or a so unlikely to achieve anything that it’s barely paying any attention, such as Firefly or Serenity.

This period is where Era: The Consortium was born, and I would like to believe that it handles it extremely well because it was built around the concepts involved in this kind of conflict!

All of the opportunities to get hold of equipment are covered, how it might be difficult for some things to be obtained, which is dealt with by the law level of a weapon. Various other mechanics come into play that are perhaps more subtle: the instant kill rules take on a slightly different meaning when you consider the Implants that are available in this era, when you consider that civilians might be gunned down by the government on the basis that they aren’t trusted, and also how a hero may be able to to to tear through numerous enemies with little difficulty.

It requires a certain balance of mechanics and Era: The Consortium really delivers that.

So those are just five basic sub-genres of Sci-Fi which Era: The Consortium handles with after a lot of thought into how best to do so.

I’d be happy to offer more material about how genres slot into Era: The Consortium, so if you’re interested, please join our Discord (https://discord.gg/6C4H9Cv) or our Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/erad10games/) and ask me! I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you have.

As always, thank you very much for reading and I hope you found this helpful!

– Ed

Era: Lost Legends tabletop rpg game

3 Reasons I Use a Timeline to Plan when I Create a Universe

Development Blog, Game Creation, News

Hi everyone!

Ed here, and today I’m going to talk to you about three ways that a planned timeline of events can make your work seem especially awesome.

1: It helps you figure out how the story will progress

This is a really important part of writing; knowing where your story is going to go allows you to ensure that it follows a direction that you intend right from the start.

I’ve written previously about character-driven stories, but I also mentioned that sometimes you need an event to push that character forwards. If you’re planning out a character-driven story, you can very easily come up with a timeline of events that lead that character through the story that you want to tell.

2: It lets you hide your intention until the moment you’re ready to reveal it

This is one of the best things about timelines because it allows you to plan what’s happening, outside of what is seen in the story.

If you know a timeline for each of the characters that are involved within the story, you can have events that happen before shape them. The evidence of them, or even a flashback showing their entirety, can revealed later.

This really helps to remove a feeling of details just being “shoehorned” into the plot – create a timeline of the events that led to the story, those that happen within the story, and then perhaps even a few events afterwards. That gives you a much more solid grounding in where the right place is to begin your story, as well as a choice on which elements to reveal and what you want to hide until the right moment.

Having the plan in your head will allow you to build the tiniest hints into earlier parts while you’re writing. That way, when the big reveal happens, it won’t feel like you’ve shoehorned in these facts.

3: It helps you plan for the next story

I know, I know it sounds like a really weird thing to worry about what you’re trying to write your first story.

However, if you’re trying to tell a story and trying to understand what that universe looks like, it’s quite likely that when you complete it, you’ll want to move on to tell more stories.

Having a timeline that takes you through the story that you’ve written can often lead you forward to the next story that you want to tell. It can also highlight the areas that you need to include if you want to make that story feel like part of the same universe.

Not only that, if you want to lay any hints without it being clearly spoiler bait, you can do so by leaving tiny breadcrumbs about what’s building in the background.

On a side note, these are the best kinds of hints because people will pick up on them, and they’ll have to wonder about how important they are. It’ll lead to asking about them and being drawn further in the story because they can see that there’s something that’s going on beyond what they are seeing now.

Those were my three primary reasons for using a timeline can make your work feel awesome. Have I missed anything you think I ought to have included? If so, let me know in the comments!

Don’t forget to check us out on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/SoV), where we produce monthly content which I know you’ll love.

Thanks very much for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

– Ed

7 “Dos and Don’ts” for running Era Games!

Era: Survival, Era: The Consortium, Games, News

by Fred Harvey

Learning a new system can always be difficult. Whether it’s gripping the mechanics, the lore or just running the session in general, challenges can spring from many places.

I have been lucky enough to play quite a lot of Era D10 Games and hone my skills as a GM with them, so here are my top 7 “Dos and Don’ts” of running Era Games:

#1 – Don’t be afraid to mix and match Attribute/Skill combinations.

The core mechanic of Era d10 is its “Attribute plus Skill” method for solving Skill Checks. The Core Rulebooks provide a host of example checks, but of course this can’t cover everything. For example, Intelligence + Investigation nets you a standard investigation check, whereas Wits + Investigation is a standard perception check.

That’s simple enough, but let’s say you want to give that character the best chance of spotting that movement out of the corner of their eye and you see that character has a high Dexterity score, why not justify Dexterity + Investigation, the speed at which the character can move, reacting to what their eyes are picking up.

It will make a world of difference in your games as you learn to loosen up and mould the system to you and the players you have.

#2 – Embrace the Lethality.

Era games have an automatic kill and automatic knockout feature. Now, coming from various other systems, I gave this feature a long hard study before running a session, simply because it seems so brutal and, frankly, it is.

But that’s what makes it such a useful tool in the GM arsenal. We have all created encounters where we want to have 30 potential threats but we really REALLY don’t want to deal with 30 separate characters. Instant kills definitely fix that for you. Watching the look on your players face when they read out their rolls and you start ticking off bad guys is priceless. But remember it works both ways, so it makes the players consider the dangers their characters face entering combat! A fire fight isn’t a place for the faint-hearted and the Instant Kill mechanics really amplify that, so use them!

#3 – Allow your players to make the exact characters they want.

Now, this may sound like an obvious suggestion, but hear me out. Era d10 removes the class-based levelling system that we have all grown so used to over the years, replacing it with a “Concept”. These concepts aren’t pulled from a list or a book, they are what you picture allowing you to build character that fits.

The reason I put this as a tip to the GMs is that you can tailor your encounters to the characters your players make. If they all create scientists, don’t throw them into constant combat encounters, give them some puzzles to solve – let them use whatever character they created.

At the same time, allow the lethal rules mentioned in my above point to do all your punctuation, if they are playing scientists, just how long are they going to live on a battlefield? Make these considerations part of your standard routine and I promise your players will grow to love the game have you made for them.

The next three tips are specific to Era: The Consortium games.

#4 – Shields!

I have already mentioned how lethal these games can be to all the characters within them. Era The Consortium gives us a slight saving grace in the form of Shields.

It is likely your players will all equip their players with them, so do the same for your NPC’s!

A Shield can be the difference between that BBEG losing his head to a sniper, or taking the hit and starting his campaign to hunt down and destroy the assassin.

(I overlooked shields in my first game and I can confirm people die… a lot!)

#5 – Ship/Space Combat is a great breather from the norm.

So we have all played countless RPG’s where our characters have been the Luke Skywalker fighting their way through the evil empire in epic gunfights and duels, but we often overlook that iconic scene from the Millenium Falcon of Luke and Han manning the turrets.

Space combat in Era: The Consortium puts your players into those hotseats, whether it’s the pilot trying to keep the ship steady for a shot or deciding to fly evasively, or the engineer choosing between keeping the ship from falling apart and squeezing every last drop of power out of her no matter the cost.

Ship-to-ship combat provides a thrilling break from standard combat, so don’t let space travel between planets be trivial, get down and dirty and blow up some ships!

#6 – Political intrigue is king.

In a world like the Consortium, you are missing out if you don’t involve the various shady activities of the governing companies. Whether you are running games focusing on the conflict between the Resistance and The Consortium or whether you have players represent one of the Big 8 Companies trying to undermine another company, the political structure can be extremely immersive.

Across the various systems I have used, one of my favourite ways to bring the world to life is through its politics… and the Consortium is no different.

My final point relates to my personal favourite of the Era games, Era: Survival!

#7 – Keep track of Durability.

In the world of Era: Survival, everything is against you, even your equipment.

That moment in the middle of a fight when the characters are locked in a life or death struggle and the one firearm the party has malfunctions… is glorious.

Again, as all things should be, the NPC’s face the same dilemmas as the party – one of the most tense encounters I have run came down to a player character having a gun held to his head, the bandit squeezed the trigger and the weapon malfunctioned giving the character enough time to react and ultimately survive. We all thought we’d be saying goodbye to a character there, but fate intervened and it will be remembered!

That’s all of my Dos and Don’ts, but do you have any?

What have you found from your Era Games? What tips would you give? Tell us in the comments below!

How To Build a Hero

Development Blog, Game Creation, News

Hi everyone! Ed here and today I’m going to talk to you about how to build a hero.

There are a few things that I think you ought to realise when you’re trying to build a protagonist for your story. I’m primarily going to focus on heroes as opposed to anti-heroes in this particular article.

A hero is someone who is going to fix the problem with your world. If you’ve read some of my previous articles or attended my webinar, you will know that the central conflict of the world is the driving factor for your story.

The hero is going to go out and they’re going to fix that central conflict. That’s the fundamental purpose that they have within the world. It’s also why, as I’ve said in other places as well, they are the most important person in this world at this time.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they have to be a good person or a righteous person or a person who wants to be doing it. But it does mean that they’re motivated to fix this problem by some means. Without this drive to fix what’s wrong with the world, your character is not a hero.

N.B. They can still be the protagonist, as I’ve said, but we’re not covering this in this particular piece.

There are a lot of clichés about heroes, and that’s fine. A hero can be slightly cliché without being badly written, so don’t be afraid to look around at heroes that you think you can respect and you think that you’d like to have involved in your universe and base your hero off one of those!

I’ve written a lot and spoken in some of my webinars about how originality is a very difficult thing to do. And, also, how it’s not required for an amazing piece – Neil Gaiman once said that he has effectively made a career by writing Lovecraft fanfiction!

So don’t make your requirement for originality let you miss out on writing a fantastic hero that speaks to you. Because if it speaks to you, it will speak to other people.

Most heroes will have something about them that make them different to other people in the world. This might simply be the motivation to go out and make the difference. It might be also superior abilities of some sort, from an understanding of science in a world which doesn’t, or a gung-ho attitude and the willingness to make a difference where apathy rules, to a genuine superpower such as super strength or superspeed.

The possibilities are fairly limitless, but it’s very common to include something that does make your hero a step above other people in the world by whatever metric is relevant. So when you’ve created your world, think carefully about what metric within that world would make someone genuinely outside of the norm.

Of course, there are huge number of other things you can do, but I’m running out of space for this particular article, so I’m going to leave it here – I think this is a solid start on the subject!

If you’d like to know more about building heroes, then let me know in the comments and I will add a new article regarding heroes.

Don’t forget to check out my Game Ed-inar which is on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwk8eDXks0Y) for more information, and I’ll see you next time for some more interesting tips on how to be creative!

– Ed

Era: Hitman tabletop rpg game

Why Your Personal Limits Don’t Have to be a Barrier to Creativity

Development Blog, Game Creation, Games, News

Hi, everyone, Ed here! Today I’m going to talk about what you’re what you need to do if you’re going to reach the limit of what you’re capable of. Every creator will run into a blocker from time to time – you will find something that you’re not able to do. Personally, I’m not much of an artist!

So when I reach! the limit of my capabilities, I have two choices. There’s a saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. I have found this to be broadly true. Interestingly, if you multiply as up to 40 hours a week, every week, you come to roughly five years of time. So you need to ask yourself: Am I okay with dedicating five years to being as good at artwork as I am at the other things that I’m doing every day as a creator? In my example, that’s creating universes and writing within them.

In most cases for artwork, I’ve said, No, I don’t think I’m able to do that. I’ve even brought writers on board to help me out with some of the volume of what I’m trying to produce, because it’s a large amount of work on my own. That leads me to the second option, which I have been doing for eight years.So, if you decide the same, what do you do? Where do you find people to help you? And how do you approach actually getting the work done in a way that is sensible?Controlling freelancers is a huge topic and not one that I think I’m able to get into much detail in for this article… but if you’re interested, let me know in the comments and I will follow up and give you some advice on that front in another. Places that you can find freelancers are all over the internet. I use Deviant Art a lot for artists. While you get a lot of people applying who are not worth your time, you’ll get a few who are really really valuable and really worth working with.

I also use UpWork for things like writers, proofreaders and audio editors, which is a freelancing network online. I’ve hired writers and artists from these two places for over eight years.

Finding someone who shares your vision is very important… and that means that you need to be able to explain it to them! I recommend mood boards, so definitely put one of those together. I recommend that you also consider being able to explain what it is that makes your universe unique in your mind, the things that make it different from things that is like. For example, you may begin with a reference to something that it’s similar to – it’s similar to Firefly in that it has a spaceship flying around in in space, they’re mostly not savoury characters, and you’re going to have to show your universe through their eyes. However, the difference between this and Firefly is that the universe is extremely high tech, and everywhere they go, they’re going to have their identity scanned. That means that they have ways of getting around this. They are hardened criminals rather than just kind of unsavoury people who may be fought in a war. So they’re ready to pull out the guns and kill absolutely everyone in the location if they become threatened. This is obviously just a single example. But this is one of the ways in which you could explain what it is you’re trying to achieve.

I also think collaboration is highly central to the creative process. If you do it right, you can create something much better than you ever could otherwise. This is, in my experience, the best way to get past personal limitations. I think that sometimes creators put unreasonable expectations on their own abilities and sometimes you need to step back and say, You know what, I can find someone who can do this better.

I should clarify that when I say collaboration, I don’t necessarily specify between paid collaboration, as in hiring a contractor to do artwork for you, or a collaboration where you agreed to share profits. Again, that’s a central part of handling freelancers, which I don’t feel able Get into within the length of this article.Thanks very much for reading and please let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be more than happy to talk more on this subject in the future.

We’re At Dragonmeet Today!

Games, News

You can join us there at Stand 82, just opposite the Main Entrance.

We’ve brought all our games with us, and it’s your first chance to pick up Era: Forbidden if you missed the Kickstarter, so don’t forget to check in with me or Leo if you’re there!

Next Saturday, we’re going to have some awesome advice from Fred Harvey about running Era Games, so don’t miss it – you’ll find it right here!

– Ed

Era: Legends tabletop rpg game

5 Reasons that Writing The Book You Always Wanted To is Worth Your Time!

Development Blog, Game Creation, Games, News

Hi everyone, Ed here!

Today, I’m going to talk about five reasons why writing the book you always wanted to is definitely worth your time.

1. You don’t have to write it all at once…

There are methods by which you can prompt yourself to write a book all at the same time. NaNoWriMo is an excellent example of that, where people are given encouragement to write 2000 words per day for the month of November, so you end up with a 60,000 word novel at the end of that month.

However, if you’re aiming for a 60,000 word novel, and you don’t feel like you can commit an hour or two every day to writing those words, break it up at your own pace.

Commit, instead, to writing 2000 words a week and it will take you 30 weeks – it will take you the best part of the year – but maybe you can write those 2000 words every Saturday afternoon, and you can put some time aside to do that in your own way, in your own style in your own time.

2. Just like you, there are people out there who have not quite seen the thing they really want to!

Everyone has a slightly different take on life. And that means that no media is absolutely perfect for everyone.

There are people out there who share your point of view and want to see what you would create, because they have similar enough experiences for you that they will enjoy it. They will even enjoy it more than the thing that they’ve seen commonly or that inspires them in general.

3. It’s an amazing experience!

To sit down and be creative, to actually build something, release it into the world… whether it’s seen as good or bad, to have done that is a phenomenal addition to knowledge and experience as well as to self-confidence.

There’s nothing quite like the fear of putting a book out into the world for the first time… or the joy of hearing that someone enjoyed it. The idea that someone understood what you were trying to say, in a way that others have not in the past is hugely powerful.

When that person understood what you were trying to do and why you did it… I can only recommend that you try it because I don’t think this is an easy thing to explain.

4. Exercising your creativity is good for you!

Allowing your imagination to run wild, allowing yourself to tell a story that you want to tell is a very cathartic experience.

It allows you to escape from reality for a brief length of time while you’re working on the story and imagining this other world where the mundane problems that you deal with every day don’t have to exist.

It can often bring you a better perspective on what you’re doing on a day to day basis, because you’ve unplugged from it for a few hours, which can really be very beneficial!

5. Seeing your book on your bookshelf…

I spoke before about the experience of someone saying that they enjoyed your book.

I, personally, have gained a lot of joy from seeing the books that I’ve written sitting on my bookshelf. I know that you will feel the same and I think it’s worthwhile trying to make something on that basis alone.

And I think that when you see a book that you have written on your bookshelf, even if it’s crammed in alongside other books, your eyes will be drawn to that every time you’re in the room. You’ll remember what it is that you have achieved.

A lot of people dream about creating a book, about writing a story, but you will have actually done it. This is something that you can be proud of for the rest of your life!

So there are five reasons why I think it’s worthwhile spending some time to write your book your story, and to bring it to life. Thank you very much for reading and I’m sure I’ll see you again soon!

Remember, you can find out more what we’re doing on Discord ( https://discord.gg/6C4H9Cv ), or right here!

Three Quick Tips to Make Sure YOUR Story is the Best You Can Write!

Development Blog, Game Creation, Games, News

Hi everyone, Ed here from Shades of Vengeance!

Today, I’m going to be giving you my three best quick tips for writing your story.

1. Start with Feelings

Begin what you are trying to create with the feelings that you want to evoke within the universe (not necessarily within the reader!).

How does it feel? Is it positive, is it negative? Are people optimistic, or are people angry and at each other’s throats. What is it that people feel like when they live within this setting?

That may include details on the size of the setting, because depending on the size, people may feel different: in a city you might feel faceless, whereas in a village everyone knows who everyone is. Consider that and consider the setting that you’re creating with through the lens of what it is that you want people in your universe to feel.

2. The characters you are telling your story about must be the most important people in that universe.

At the very least, they must be for the duration of the story. Otherwise, they will constantly be affected by the actions of other people. Making sure that they are the force that moves the world along is an easy way of ensuring that your heroes, your anti-heroes, or your protagonists (whichever they may be!) are the people who the story focuses on and that you are not telling the story about the wrong people.

As long as they are the centre of the universe, when they act, the setting will move with them.

3. Follow your characters on their journey.

When a character begins a journey, they will always have a motivation for doing so.

Sometimes that motivation might fade, and you need to make new motivations. But if you follow what your character would do in the situation and push them forward with minor events that contribute to their overall personality by the way they react to them, you will be able to write a character-driven story within a setting that speaks to people.

If you’re not sure how to make certain that a character is doing what they should, then think about how they are similar to you and how they are different. How would you react to a situation? how is this character different to you? And how, therefore, would they react to this same situation that you’re thinking about?

That’s everything that I’ve got for you today. That was three quick tips that you can use to make sure that your story is the best story that you can create!

Thanks very much for reading, and don’t forget to join us on Discord and let me know what you think: https://discord.gg/6C4H9Cv

If you want to help support the creation of these tips, consider joining us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/SoV 

Join us at Dragonmeet 2019!

Games, News

Hi everyone! With Dragonmeet only a week away, we’re finally able to confirm our location, which is Stand 82.

Now, maps aren’t always the easiest things, so here are a few helpful ways to find us:
– If you saw us last year, we’re in the stand next to it, so look in that location!
– We’re directly opposite the entrance as you walk in, the last stand before the corner if you turn very slightly right!
– You can look for Leo or me (Ed)! We’ll be saying hello to everyone as they walk in the door!

We’ll obviously be giving you the chance to look through all of our games, but if you want to talk to us about game creation, that’s also something we’ll be happy to discuss… the sky’s the limit!

We’ll see you there.

– Ed

What has Shades of Vengeance been up to?

Comics, Games, News

Hi everyone! Ed here.

2019’s been a really busy year for us, and now that we’re nearing the end of it, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on what we’ve done over here!

We kicked off the year with a Kickstarter for Era: Lyres ( https://www.shadesofvengeance.com/era-lyres/ ), producing a Definitive Edition Rulebook which offers new mechanics, gameplay options, reward options and tonnes of extra creature features for our low fantasy storytelling game.

This has been received very well, and is up for an award next year, so we’re looking forward to seeing how that goes!

Not long after that, we created and funded The Era Zone, a zine for all of the Era Games which has produced four issues during this year. This offers extra material – stories, stats, campaigns and small expansions – for every single one of our games. It’s an absolute must for anyone who enjoys the Era games. It even offers early access to the Living Campaign I’ll be talking about later…

We’ve just published the 4th of these for Kickstarter backers, and the first of them is now available on DriveThruRPG. We’ll be offering the anthology in full colour version on our website really soon, if you want to catch up…!

Era: The Consortium passed its 5th Anniversary this year, and that has meant several new things in that universe – Miniatures of Stiletto Unit and a 5th Anniversary Definitive Edition were funded in March by eager fans. This 5th Anniversary Edition is updated and improved, with several things I wasn’t happy about in the Definitive Edition resolved!

As if that’s not enough (the miniatures are fantastically detailed, thanks to the work of an amazing team!), we also produced two full-cast audio dramas. Declaration: The Bug War #1 is an adaptation of the comic we produced a few years ago, which explores the Bug War’s beginning in detail. It’s available on Audible now:

Audible US – https://www.audible.com/pd/B0812864PL/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-170664&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_170664_rh_us

Audible UK – https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B081283GGJ/?source_code=AUKFrDlWS02231890H6-BK-ACX0-170664&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_170664_rh_uk 

We followed that up with Radio Free Taranis, a story about one man’s search for his sister, while exposing the corruption of Taranis! We were honoured to have the amazing Jennifer Hale involved in that project, and there’s a Season 2 coming soon! Again, Season 1 is available on Audible:

Audible US – https://www.audible.com/pd/B07XLVD4MX/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-164477&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_164477_rh_us 

Audible UK – https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B07XVT4X1J/?source_code=AUKFrDlWS02231890H6-BK-ACX0-164477&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_164477_rh_uk

I know that all sounds like a lot of work, but I’m not finished yet!

The last part of this year saw Era: Forbidden, a brand new pocket game featuring Post-Apocalyptic Humanity caught in the middle of a war between Angels and Demons, has also been released! Digital Versions are with backers now, and I’m just waiting for the Paperback copies to arrive, so that will be available very soon now!

Finally, we’ve recently finished the Kickstarter for the amazing Era: Lost Legend: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadesofvengeance/era-lost-legend-a-final-fantasy-inspired-rpg

This game is one I’ve been wanting to make for a long time, and the great levels of support we have received will ensure that I am able to make an amazing game, bringing this universe to life in vivid detail!

That’s all (!) we’ve done this year, apart from attending more conventions than ever before and playing games with a huge number of people across our community!

Don’t forget you can always join us on Discord to have a chat: https://discord.gg/6C4H9Cv and that we are entirely crowdfunded, so you can support us on Kickstarter or on Patreon, where we produce monthly content for your enjoyment: https://www.patreon.com/SoV

I will be back next week with a bit of a sneak peek for the future, so keep an eye out right here for more news.

– Ed

YouTube Video Releases this week:
Era: Lost Legend – Welcome to Stardust! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbFFoqy-1c

Era: Lost Legend – THORN Rebels Actual Play https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv1wDpP2EAg

The Era Zone – An Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unz3v6eVG9Q

How to Create a Game – Audio Ed-Inar Recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwk8eDXks0Y

Five Ways to Make Sure that YOUR Universe is “Complete” and “Immersive”.

Development Blog, Game Creation, Games, News

Hi everyone! Today, I am talking creativity and universe building. Here are 5 simple things you can do to make sure your universe is as complete and immersive as possible: 

1. Understand How it Feels to Live in the Universe

Start with the feelings that people within the universe experience. This is an absolutely vital part of building a universe, because it is the feelings that people will connect to when they experience something. Whether it’s a fantasy universe with wonder and magic or a cyberpunk future where the corporations suppress everyone who just wants to live their own way, people will look for the feelings that they want within the universe when they bond to it.

2.  Ensure that a Broad Framework is there 

You want to ensure that that, no matter what story needs to be told, there is support for it. If you do, people can imagine further stories in that universe, which will make it feel larger than you can practically explain.There is no hard and fast rule for this, it’s certainly not an easy thing to know exactly how much is required in order to build a universe framework. Sometimes, all you need to do is explain that “Angels and Demons are fighting over what remains of our civilisation and will trample on any Human who gets in the way.” and most people can then understand what the feeling in that universe is. This applies whether depending on whether you’re playing as an Angel. Demon, or indeed one of the remaining Humans.This is something that I pursued in Era: Forbidden ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadesofvengeance/era-forbidden ). On the other hand, you might need to describe at least the top few companies that exist in the cyberpunk universe, so that people can understand how the attitudes vary. That might cause a different experience, depending on who they’re interacting with.

3. Ensure that any story you tell is about the most important person in the universe at that moment. 

This, of course, doesn’t mean that there are no other important people in the universe at other moments. A brilliant example of this is the Star Wars trilogies. In the first, Anakin Skywalker was unquestionably the most important character in the universe. In the second, it’s Luke Skywalker. However, Anakin Skywalker is still there as Darth Vader, but he is not the central point of the story anymore.

In the third trilogy, the same applies to both characters – they are both present in the universe, in the sense that Kylo Ren still looks back at Darth Vader, and believes that he may have had the right path. And Luke Skywalker provides guidance to Rey whether he intends her to follow the path of a Jedi or not.This is a good example of how the focus of the universe might shift. As stories are told, bear in mind that the story you’re telling right now will automatically cause a focus for that universe. If you give an example story of your universe, people will believe that that is what the most important part of it is, and they may be reluctant to go off and explore in other directions.

4. Don’t Close the Scope.  

If you leave the universe open for infinite possibilities, then they’ll be no limit to the stories that people can tell within the lines that you defined for that universe. Fanfiction has been doing this for absolutely ages, and it’s a great example of how sometimes one of the less important characters might actually be the centre of the universe in a story. Even something as basic as an origin story for a minor character will mean they are central at that moment. This is just because because they are eventually going to appear in the main story as a minor character and affect more major characters. But in that place at that time that is the only character which people have an interest in. As long as you leave the scope open for people to create their own stories, you’re never going to have a problem with people thinking of their own stories within it. If you close it off, you’re going to find that people do not find your universe filled with possibilities.I understand this might sound a little odd if you’re looking to complete the universe. But it’s worth bearing in mind that people don’t necessarily want your universe closed off in order for it to feel complete.

5. Don’t get Bogged Down in History.

5000 years of history in your universe is all well and good… but, honestly, few people want to read real history, let alone fictional history that you’ve invented! You need to be aware of that, and you need to make sure that when you create your history, you focus on the things that affect how things feel in the present of your story. You may not even need to tell very much of the history at all – what you need to do is make sure that people understand that the history of difficulties between two alien nations means that in the present day, they don’t trust each other. You don’t necessarily need to tell the full story and every blow by blow event in the war that happened.
This is for a few reasons. First of all, it allows you to finish creating the universe much faster than you otherwise would be able to. Secondly, it allows you to focus the reader’s attention on the important points of the history that will affect the feel of the universe, building on point one.  

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing these 5 things that I think you should do when creating universe to ensure that it is both immersive and complete! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!

Three Things YOU can do Today to Break your Creative Silence.

Development Blog, Game Creation, Games, News

Hi there!

Everyone has spare energy at some point during the day. And it’s often very difficult to know the way in which you can change this into actual productivity and break that silence in your creative life.

Here are three thing that I do in order to ensure that I remain creative and use that energy in the best way possible.

1. Identify your “Spare Time” and Use It!

Most of us spend a lot of time travelling on public transport or driving, or even washing up. While we are doing these things which are relatively mindless, we’re often able to use that time to actually create things in our mind that can later be expressed in more detail. I think it’s important to remember that not everything you create has to be entirely complete. So my first piece of advice is to make sure that whenever you have spare time you use it. Whether you write on your phone, whether you record on a text to speech app such as otter, or whether you carry a notepad wherever you go, there is no wrong answer to this except not doing it!  If you use the time that you have to think about this creative project that you want to build, you will be much more prepared when you sit down to work on it properly.  You can do pretty much anything – from building universes to creating characters, or following their stories. I’ll talk about those in more detail elsewhere.

2. Feel Free to Find Inspiration Wherever You See It

Walking around the world in general tends to be fairly inspiring! There are a lot of things that you can see which will allow you to build your universe and expand your creative product… and you can find many of those just by walking around and experiencing.

When you see or hear things, you can start thinking “Is that how it would be within the universe that I’m creating? How would it be different in that aspect?” If you stay mindful of that, you might be surprised what you come up with! And, of course, as I mentioned in 1, make sure that you note it down!  As you start to find things, you’ll be on the way to actually creating your universe before you even sit down at your desk to write something.

3. Don’t be afraid to say “Not Today”.

Obviously, there’s a limit to this. You need to be careful to make sure that you don’t give up on something that really you should be working on because you never look at it. You do need to be careful, however, to ensure that you’re not getting increasingly lost, trying to build something when you’re really not in the right mood – you’re not going to create the best thing that you can in that mindset, and it will only spiral. If you sit at your desk for a period of time, and you’re just looking at a blank screen, because you are wanting to create and it hasn’t happened yet, if you can’t get back into that mindset, then step away. Go out, try not to consider the points you are wanting to cover, and do something that you wouldn’t do in a normal day. Then come back to more structured creativity by sitting back down when you’re ready to do that. You shouldn’t be worried about this. It’s fine. Everyone works in this way to some degree. So there are my three ways to turn your energy into a way of building your creativity and breaking your silence.  

What do you think? Do you think I’ve missed anything? Do you have any further questions? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll be more than happy to discuss it with you! You can also join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/6C4H9Cv

New YouTube Video – How to Create a Game – A Game Ed-inar! (0:0:0)

Development Blog, Games

Watch it here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwk8eDXks0Y

Hi everyone!

I’ve been speaking about how to be a game creator for a long time at conventions, and we’ve decided it’s time I start giving some advice to long-time fans of our work who want to build their own games.

Here’s the first of what I expect to be a few videos, which feature me speaking about that!

Don’t forget to Like and Subscribe!

Era: Lost Legend is live on Kickstarter now!

Uncategorized

Hi everyone!

Join us on Kickstarter to enter our latest RPG universe!

An evil and powerful corporation is sacrificing life on the planet in an effort to control every town and city with their vast army of robots.

However, a small rebellion, known as THORN, has vowed to put an end to this scheme!

You take on the role of individuals in this universe, able to wield weapons or magic, trying to topple the evil Stardust, Inc. Forced to fight superior numbers, you’ll have to harness all of your powers to defeat them in your own epic story of friendship, heroism and the battle between good and evil!

– Ed

A Busy 2019 already!

Battlecruiser Alamo, Comics, Era: Lyres, Era: Survival - Colony, Era: The Consortium, Era: The Consortium, Era: The Empowered, Games, News

Hi everyone!

You might have noticed that we’ve been particularly busy this year, and there’s a good reason for it.

With The Bug War #3: Mobilisation, Era: Lyres Definitive Edition, The Era Zone and Blue-Shift #2 all within the last 2 months, you might think we’ve gone crazy!

Knowing that we’re also delivering rewards from multiple Kickstarters (Era: Survival – Colony, Battlecruiser Alamo, Era: Lyres Definitive Edition, The Era Zone and Bug War #3: Mobilisation) during these two months as well will probably reinforce that.

We haven’t.
(Well, no more than we already were!)

We’re trying to get you as much amazing content as we can, and we’re able to do that because there are a number of people putting full-time (and more!) hours into Shades of Vengeance at the moment. Everyone is working very hard to continue to make these amazing games and comics and I believe that you’ll be very pleased with everything we’ve done.

And there’s more to come. Anyone on our Facebook Group or Discord will know about the Miniatures and the special 5th Anniversary Edition of Era: The Consortium. We’re very excited about that, and I hope you’ll join us in just a few days to celebrate this amazing event – 5 years of Shades of Vengeance and Era: The Consortium!

– Ed

(Miniatures painted by the amazing Studio Giraldez… and this set will be available on the Kickstarter!)