TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. It’s later in the day than I usually post but I had this really cool idea. So a while ago, like most of a decade, a slightly younger me with the same really nice hair set out to make my first product. It was and is a furry fandom themed slice of life genre tabletop RPG called Heart and Fur. It’ll be free eventually when I get around to releasing it when I get the Patreon going. Heart and Fur was great and still is. The game was funded by a Patreon and this is where I learned that recurring monthly donations are more useful than actual product sales. I also had a really nice Discord server I custom built for it. It had a couple people in it. You know, like a few. Like 275 of them. I think I maxed out how many are allowed in a Discord server without buying one of their premium packages. I probably should have got one but the server was retired after the game came out. I want another one. Like another server. I’m good at making and running them. Imagine the entire Tr...

 Hello. C J here. There used to be this little Greek place next to where I went to school. I would walk over there sometimes on lunch hour and get some of their food. Two recipes stand out here although everything they ever served was good. The couple who ran it eventually retired back to Greece. Now I didn’t get food there every day. Mostly I brought something I made or leftovers from family dinner the night before. I have been able to cook since I was in public school. The first highlight on the menu was their chicken Caesar pita. Note the wording here. It’s a pita, not a wrap. It’s wrapped in a handmade Greek pita, similar to a naan bread, not a tortilla wrap. The salad on the inside was lettuce but with chopped bacon, homemade Caesar salad dressing and homemade croutons. The chicken was fresh off a souvlaki skewer from the grill. I’m still working on replicating this perfect wrap. It was served with fries. The second highlight was their Portuguese doughnut. This is the subject ...

 Hello. C J here. As promised a while ago on Facebook here’s my recipe for homemade french fry seasoning. 1 Tsp Salt 1 Tsp Turmeric 1 Tbsp Dried Parsley 1 Tsp Lemon Juice Mix the first three ingredients in a shallow bowl. Add in the lemon juice last and mix until the powder has turned into tiny granules. Toss on french fries after they’ve cooled after frying for five minutes. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. I’ve just uploaded a proofread and updated version of the video game design document I’m working on to the Downloads page. Here’s a direct link to the folder its in. https://1drv.ms/f/s!AnaDkc795n_3g9cGV_LXDwxY8LDM5g?e=IYJuLU I should probably explain some of how all this comes together. The recipes in the document are actually perfectly possible in real life. These are all real life recipes that I’m parring down and simplifying for use in the video game and on cards. Coating a whole chicken in salt and baking it in the oven will reliably make a roast chicken. Juicing apples and then stewing them with cinnamon is how apple cider is made. Nothing here is fake or made up. Then that leaves us the other crafting types like smithing and spellwrighting. These are inspired by real life as well but specifically real life magic and occult practice. The swords are supposed to be real life spiritual weapons and the prayer symbols are real life occult and arcane symbols. Ever...

 Hello. C J here. This is a quick update that I've posted two new documents to the Downloads page. These are the Complete Astral Worlds List and the Hearthfire Design Document. The Complete Astral Worlds List is the complete list of all 40 main worlds that will be featured in the video game trilogy as well as its companion card game Regency. The Hearthfire Design Document is my complete, in progress working list of everything planned for the Hearthfire asset and crafting pack I'm making for the Fab.com asset marketplace. Hearthfire and all of its contents will also be in Regency the card game. These documents will be updated with more content as I design more. Here's a direct link to the folder they're in. https://1drv.ms/f/s!AnaDkc795n_3g9cGV_LXDwxY8LDM5g?e=IYJuLU C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. My vacation’s been great. I cooked food and ate it for a week straight instead of typing. I’m most of the way through my book I’m reading and I’ve played double video games. I’ve done everything on the game designer vacation to do list twice. In other words I’m bored. I’m back up to full stamina for typing and I’ll resume art next week at the latest. It’s just those darn fantasy genre backgrounds that burnt me out. They take so much work to make them look like the fantasy genre but as a wall. Now I’m back to work or at least back to typing. I’ll figure out when I want to return to art later. My next set of real life magic systems I want to discuss is evocation and traditional ceremonial magic. Now these are technically two interrelated but different things. Both of them are planned to be in the card game heavily. When people think of high fantasy magic with incantations, props, tools, special robes and hand motions they are thinking of this tradition and only it. ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m still technically on vacation but I wanted all this typed up so I don’t forget it by the end of my off time. I’ve spent this time setting some priorities for what I do when I get back to work.  Have a mountain of work ahead of me in terms of card design and graphic design for use on cards. I’m also playing video games and eating sugar but I am spending some of this time figuring out what order to do everything in for Regency. Regency needs 100 cards that are unique each to represent the gems you pay to cast spells. These are 5 sets of 20 each. It needs at least 600 cards depicting the factions of characters with stats that you can either play as or against. It needs the quest cards done for Ascala as well as the Ascala region, lore and player character cards being finished and having the necessary mechanics and art on them. I’ve chosen to tackle this in the order I’ve listed it here. The gems come first. There is a reason for this. Regency, like most of w...

 Hello. C J here. I’m briefly interrupting my vacation with a few fun posts. I need to get these typed so I don’t forget them and the stories involved next week. I ran into a friend of mine while out of the house a few days ago. We know each other from a job we did together. They went to the Kingston ComiCon that was last weekend. Apparently it was great. They bought some stuff. They also ran into some furries in full fursuits. My friend stated the exact list of things that happens when someone runs into furries wearing fursuits. At first you think you can judge them. Then you realize how nice they are and how accepting the furry community is. Then you realize that the furry community are all really rich and that the outfits cost a ton of money that we all already have. I spent the conversation nodding and trying not to laugh. I think our community has made another friend. It’s a known fact that walking into a furry convention permanently cures depression, social anxiety and low se...

 Hello. C J here. I normally take the weekend off typing and concept art but I’m facing a heavy workload for the next while so I’m taking the whole next week off. Until the end of September I’m in vacation time. I work for myself. I get to be on vacation when I want. The next step of making the trilogy is to do concept art for all of the generic NPC factions. There are 30 of them that I want. There’s 20 NPC skins in each one. That’s 600 pieces of final draft concept art I need to do. Only when I have the 600 pieces of concept art done can I actually load the software and start making the skins in batches. I need a break first. If you don’t hear from me before October 7th then I decided to take two weeks off. I have a painting I’ve been meaning to do to hang up for almost six months that I should probably finish. I have two novels on the go right now that I need to read. I have a stack of six Switch games to play that I need to get through, most of them for research into inventory a...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve taken a look through my options for character and NPC assets in the Unreal Engine and I’ve settled on which ones I’m going to use for Absolute and its sibling games. If you’re new to Absolute the game then check out the labels on this post to find out more about it. These are the seven character models I need for the game. All seven come with 4-10 skins, full combat animations, sound effects, weapons and player character movement controls built into them. I have and own all of them for free from the Unreal Engine store. Here they are. Cloth Armour Clothing Half Plate Armour Heavy Power Armour Leather Armour Plate Armour Power Armour I can change their armour colours, clothing colours, skin colour, species and size easily in the software to make a variety of each with different identities. These seven will be every character in the game but altered each time to be in line with the setting. They player also will have access to the entire line of skins through c...

 Hello. C J here. This post is part of my ongoing series about designing the ultimate fantasy open world RPG trilogy of video games. Use the labels on the post here to read more in this series. I’m aiming to document every step of the way to making the video game trilogy here on the blog. My next step is to make the physical assets that represent items for food and crafting materials. All of these will be for sale through the online asset store Fab. I was going to sell them on another online store but it moved to Fab so that’s the current destination for these assets. The assets will be sold as part of my all in one player character and crafting system Hearthfire. Hearthfire comes with a small level map as well of the player characters’ campsite. This campsite contains their tents and all of the crafting tools and locations. Crafting here is done in locations that are physical objects like a stewpot, sewing table, anvil, smelter, or oven. The ingredients are gathered from the wilde...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got most of the work for the year done on the Compass books. The Compass books are being rolled into the Regency card game so expect them to be released as sample Regency cards soon. I don’t have any actual work to do here other than formatting them for use on cards. That’s done. Also everything I do for Regency is designed to be compatible with the final video game trilogy. Regency will contain quest cards that I’m still working on for each world and each world in the video game will have the same quests and quest dialogue. They’ll repeat by randomly drawing a new one using a random generation table. When a quest is over you can talk to a named NPC and get the game to generate you another one. The quest dialogue will change based on which enemy type is involved in the quest and where in the world map they spawn. These are drawn separately from a second random generation table. All of this will be voiced by me. It looks like I have just the card game and the ...

Hello. C J here. I’m still working on the final draft of the Regency Ascala cards that you can find on the Downloads page here. The Ascala cards need to be numbered with Roman Numerals and named. They also need all of the gameplay data that the cards are designed to carry. They need to tell you who the antagonist is in a quest card and what enemies you’ll be fighting on your journey. These enemies are drawn from a culture’s history or else they wouldn’t be on the continent. The cards also need to indicate where on the continent a quest card or journey happens. The quest cards are still being written. These enemy cards are separate from the region cards and I’m planning 30 decks of 20 each in total. These will be spread unevenly among the 10 Dominion Classes and each deck will contain each soldier type in the Dominion Class being used. For these I’m going with classic fantasy monsters like desert reptiles, clockwork golems and nocturnal Dark Magic creatures. I’m avoiding undead simply b...

 Hello. C J here. Let me pose a question. You have something of value. Let's say a skill like painting or video making. You want to make money on it. How? This is the problem I've faced for a while. I'm good at storytelling and I'm good at math. How do I get paid? The answer I've found is the online platform Patreon. I've worked with it before and it's reliable monthly income for a creative professional who does the kind of monthly volume of work I do. The issue it solves is advertising. One add or Facebook post that gets a customer to buy a product happens once. The same add or post that gets a smaller but recurring Patreon member pays less but more over time and more reliably.  What's the money for then? Lunch. Specifically food research. This may sound like a dry academic subject. It isn't. It means trying new restaurant food, new brands of coffee bean, new uses for expensive seafood. I still need to learn how to work with scallops and I need a go...

 Hello. C J here. I've just finished adding the last new page the blog needs. This is the Partnership page. It explains goals of my company and how to sign up to work with me as a partner author, artist, or other creative professional. C J Mcpherson 

 Hello. C J here. I've just finished proofreading the first The Astral Chronicle novel for print. It's 130 letter pages long with two columns for easier reading. The whole document is ready to be sent to the printer for mass production. I'm still working on the book bindings but the document is ready for when I have those ready. The bindings will be done by me by hand using high quality report covers off Amazon. I'm going to remind everyone that I have an industrial quality home printer with 2000 pages worth of ink on one refill. It's an hp 5101 if anyone wants to look it up. My family and I acquired it together. It will be using that 2000 pages of ink frequently with the job I have lined up for it. I'm using it to print the final novel for sale. One copy will cost $35 and I do accept bulk orders when I have the time. If anyone wants a class set the novel is at all times appropriate to children and I'd be extremely happy to provide any number of it for that ...

 Hello. C J here. I've just updated the Regency downloads page with the final text of the entire first expansion. This is the Ascala - The City at the Centre of Creation pack. It's divided into player cards depicting playable races from that continent, lore cards detailing the continent's entire history and region cards outlining the geography. There will be more Regency updates coming when I have them done. There will also be art for the cards coming later. If you buy the pack from me at a convention I'm including the exclusive Ascala Gems pack with twenty custom made gem cards to pay for spells. These will be a convention exclusive for at least the first few years. The text of these I'm including in the free downloads as well. The game isn't done yet but this stack of text here took about five years to design and type. Check out the Books page and the downloads link there. I'm working on the core rules as well and some more mechanical details will be added...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve finally documented the full list of things I’m trying to fit into the Astral setting. The list is as follows. Real life mythology, lucid dreaming, matter generation with rules, real life magic practice and summoning magic. That’s it. That’s the list of what the Astral was built on. Now I think I’ll start mentioning the specifics. I’m working on a personal project right now. You will likely never see it. It’s not in the core game engine and it’s not proofread for compatibility with the setting. I’m making things up. This is how the job is done. It often requires several personal projects in full that I complete to inspire one final for sale game mechanic. Sometimes it’s several full books worth of text that I don’t publish per each page of the more complex games I have. These projects always start out as experimental. I don’t have a dice engine for this one yet but whatever I get out of it will be useful to the card game in the future and maybe a novel or two....

 Hello. C J here. This is another post in my ongoing series about the real life spirituality and magic that inspired me to write The Astral Chronicle and design its setting Creation in the first place. This post is about friendship. My main goal this whole time was a puzzle, one left by Isaac Asimov for a future author to solve. Can we have usable energy to power our society forever? Thermodynamics says we can’t. Quantum mechanics says we can. Isaac Asimov left a challenge and I think I’ve found the missing piece to it. The Astral Chronicle and Creation the setting are also heavily inspired by lucid dreaming, the real life science of being awake in your dreams. Lucid dreaming comes up a lot in the nine-part novel series starting in volume five or six according to my plans. Currently I have until the end of volume two written and ready to release. There’s one more thing I wanted though, one more puzzle I felt needed solving. But first, I’m going to talk about a video game. So the cl...

 Hello. C J here. I've just finished and uploaded some new free samples of the upcoming Regency card game. These are the text of some of the cards for the first few expansion packs. The cards do not have art yet or I'd be showing that here as well. I'm switching the card game to a free digital and paid physical sales model from now on because quite frankly it's a lot easier to manage. I'll be selling the cards in print at conventions once I have them done. In this sample we have the complete list of location and region cards for Ascala and some of the lore and spell cards for Imperials of Nebula. Ascala and Imperials of Nebula will both have most of their story in card form from now on. Find the new samples in the Downloads page. Just click the OneDrive link, select the Regency folder and both should be in there. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. With the first four of the Compass books up for download it’s time to pick what I do next. I’m going to focus on Eternity for now and push it through to completion while also working on the design phases of the other books I want for the Compass line. There will also be additional books later based on these core manuals that further explain the story and systems they use. I’m looking to real life spirituality and magic for all of these as inspiration. Eternity is known to have several varieties of magic practised there. The first is willworking, which works the same for the entire setting and really can’t be innovated in ever. Willworkers, also called mages in the setting, have a talent for magic that others lack in a way that is similar to being a talented musician or artist. Mages in Eternity can also learn summoning, the ability to call entire armies, monsters and fleets of vehicles out of the dreams that pervade the land there. The main variety of magic used i...

 Hello. C J here. I just released the first drafts of four of the planned eleven Compass books. Compass is a series of books that aims to show the rest of the setting Creation away from the Astral. Creation has at present twelve planned settled regions that do not share a common history or origin except for sharing the same list of gods. The Astral is only one of these regions. The next up to be detailed is Aubade. Aubade, the word, means a song sung at dawn. I like the word. Aubade the setting is still under development but it serves an important role in the setting Creation as a whole. All of the other eleven Creation settings have a core theme that they run on, often a genre. Champion is epic or biblical era fantasy. Nebula is dark science fiction. Eternity is steampunk fantasy. Hunter is post apocalyptic science fiction. Astral is colonial era fantasy based on real life cultures. There are more genres planned but these are the ones released so far. Aubade is composed of everyth...

 Hello. C J here. I'm happy to announce my new product line, Compass. This series of books will be ongoing and will be available as free downloads across the entire production and development process. There are four new free books in the Books download page right now. Compass details the rest of the galaxy of Creation away from the Astral. Creation is a vast galaxy and every corner of it is teeming with life like the Astral is. In the Compass series we'll meet Eternity, home to a society both run by and ruined by five of the gods, Champion, which is set in Heaven as agents of the gods' will, Hunter, set on a planet that accidentally turned all living things into robot lifeforms, and Nebula, a vast and tyrannical interstellar empire. There are ten or eleven books planned for the series and so far these four are done enough to show off. There will be updates to these frequently as I type more of them. Enjoy! C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. It's time for more Minecraft. This time we have some steampunk themed buildings. I'm doing these mostly as an experiment and they aren't in the part of the Astral I usually build, Ascala. Ascala needs more planning so I'm doing generic Astral themes instead of a specific nation this time. Remember that lighthouse form earlier? Well we're going in its direction this time. But first a long minecart ride from the underground station. And here we are in Port Stone. You'll notice the style of building is different. That's because it's a different part of the setting were building here. Here on the surface we have a boat waiting for us. We have a long voyage ahead of us. They've implemented some beautiful coral reefs in one of the previous updates. Believe it or not I've been playing Minecraft since before there were horses in it. Minecraft is still good. And here we are, at the new steampunk build site in the middle of an ocean. We h...