TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. I’ve wrapped up a massive batch of work in the last few weeks. The core Legend books and the core rules for the Legend compatible card game are up for free download. Legend – Torment and Legend – Champion will be reworked by me until they fit on cards as well. The eventual free print your own card sets will be up when I have the time to do all the graphic design they need but the PDF versions of the rules are going to be kept up even after the cards are out and ready for download. The Carthia cards then become my main priority for the next few months. Carthia currently is the only real goal I have for the time being. I’ve got plans for what to do now that I’m done all of the mandatory stuff. I’m uploading some new experimental products that I’ve typed in the last few weeks. These are what I’m doing in my time for fun. All of them are in the Elements Engine and that will not change no matter how many of them I do. They are all also in the setting but are in parts o...

 Hello. C J here. I've got four new recipes for everyone here. We have everything from Chinese chicken to homemade hot apple cider. Enjoy. The Emperor’s Potatoes Here we have the first food item I ever finished designing for Food of the World – Carthia. I tried three combinations of traditional Asian ingredients and pasta under the assumption that I was doing Italian-Chinese food for the book. I could not for the life of me get any of them to be exciting. They were fine. I don’t eat fine. I got bored of the pasta thing and then thought to myself, ‘what happens if I swap the pasta for another starch? What about a potato?’ It worked. Really well. It worked so well I named them The Emperor’s Potatoes. They’re mashed potatoes and I left the skins on because I like vitamins and then that got me thinking about the traditional medicinal food of Ancient China, ginger. Could I put ginger in a potato dish and have it work? Yes. I can. That surprised me. Be warned, these are almost dangerousl...

 Hello. C J here. I've just finished uploading a massive batch of new free products to the Downloads page in the OneDrive folder linked there. This includes the complete final text of Legend - Elements, Legend - Astral and the first full novel in The Astral Chronicle line. I've also finished and uploaded the master reference documents in PDF for the card text for the Quantum Starter Set and the Quantum Ascala Expansion. Now I need to draw the art for all of the cards and finish the location and item card text. This is me and the company one massive step further towards printing and selling these books and the card game. Enjoy! C J Mcpherson Head Game Designer Concept Art Lead Infinity Game Studios  

 Hello. C J here. I've just finished and uploaded the first working draft of my new game manual Legend - Torment to the Downloads page. Just click on the OneDrive link on that pate and then go to the Legend Series Books folder. Legend - Torment is the complete history and layout of the Creation setting's Hell. This is being made in preparation for the Demons of Lust book I'm working on. Demons of Lust will build off what's in this book. Hell isn't evil but it is dangerous because it knows things it shouldn't. This book is strongly based on real world dark spiritual practice, mysticism and lucid dreaming science. The theme is self empowerment through courage. I will have new versions of the document frequently. These may come out almost daily as I work on it so keep checking the document and the version number because I can't always write up a full post about it. Enjoy your time in the fires of torment and if you liked them please leave a review on social med...

 Hello. C J here. I've gone through my list of projects and everything looks good. The cookbook Cooking With a Wolf is going to be finalized soon and then I'll draw the cover art. The cover art will be of my main fursona holding a frying pan. Yes. It's that meta. I might cut out some of the less feasible recipes and finalize a few of the photographs but it will be done soon and then in print. The Legend Series will be in open beta for at least a year and then I'll have the final free full pdf documents out here. The work making the games is completely done except the proofreading and playtesting. My project to build the next setting Carthia is going well and will be finalized closer to Summer. Carthia is in the same setting as my other works. I'm working on detailing the setting's Hell in a series of game manuals and then after Hell I'm returning to Ascala to write some game manuals just about it. Ascala is still the main setting for the open beta. More can ...

 Hello. C J here. I've finished drawing Lady Snow, the Lady of Lust, Bearer of the Duchy of Iron and the Ninth Watcher. She is the ruler of one tenth of Hell and is in charge of food production for Hell and its rulers. She is surprisingly calm and orderly considering her job tormenting the souls of the damned. She bears the spiritual weapons The Four Ceremonial Blades and the staff Snow by Moon. Here is Lady Snow in her full war regalia. This is entirely hand drawn, by the way. I spent this morning drawing the weapons and sigils and piecing them together in Krita to make the final image. Every pixel was placed by a stylus by hand on a phone screen. I'll draw a background for her for the final release of the book. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. I’m working through my list of setting locations and concepts with the goal of writing a full game manual about each one. I was going to start with Ascala but then I realized that I’ve done almost everything I’ve done so far in Ascala. Maybe I’ll do something more exotic for my first full supplementary book. I thought about my first video game project Duskbringer and it’s set in the setting’s Hell. Hell is a vast land that I have barely defined at all and I need it for a game. I should probably do that first. Here’s a sample of the Duskbringer script. Snow: Tell me young one, what is your name? I never did hear it. Dusk: I know better than to give my name to one of the Watchers. Snow: Oh? That old myth? Trust me there’s no magic in Creation that can take a person’s name from them. Dusk: Not that I trust you. Snow: Fine. What do I call you? Dusk: Call me Dusk. Snow: Very well. Dusk: And your name I already know. Snow: Oh? Well isn’t that a surprise. And? Dusk: Lady...

 Hello. C J here. I finally have the core rules for the print your own card game Quantum done. I’ve taken a few days to go through my notes and make sure that Quantum works and has everything in it I want it to. I’m considering what to do next. I’m making the core Quantum cards for my Ancient China themed setting Carthia this year but that involves a lot of planning and is supposed to be done by Summer. There’s no need to do it quickly. Carthia needs to be faithful to the source material from Ancient China, at least what of it I can find, and that will take a lot of slow planning to do. This leaves me with a lot of space and time to do something else. I know and have published enough stuff about Ascala that anyone should be able to write a story there. Ascala is the first of these I’ve done. I don’t have anywhere else in the setting that I can write stories in as easily and with as much knowledge of the location. I also have a long list of things I know about Ascala that I haven’t ...

 Hello. C J here. I've spent the last hour or so proofreading the final card text for the core rules of my free print your own card game Quantum. I've mashed at least four or five other products together into one game and the PDF of the core rules is now available on the Downloads page in the Quantum folder on OneDrive. It's the only PDF in that folder. These rules will be reprinted on cards when I'm done doing the graphic design for their borders and backs. This will take a while. I also need some art for the cards that begin each section of the game deck and I'm working on drawing that next. For now though the core rules are done, proofread and out. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. I’m going to actually make a point with this post. You, reading this, should write a novel. Yes, you. Novel writing is a hard skill to acquire but I’m going to make an argument that it’s worth it. It took me about four years of writing in most of my free time to get good enough at the skill to write and finish an actual novel. This was a lot of work, yes. It was also incredibly good to me as a person. I’d recommend anyone who reads for fun or for their job learn to write fiction. Brian Health The brain is a muscle just like the ones that move the limbs. It’s made of protein and needs a lot of meat or dairy protein to function. I would not ever recommend writing a novel without drinking milk. I just don’t think it’s healthy. The brain gets exercise through learning and through understanding feelings. Novel writing is full of learning and feelings. The brain gets stronger the more we use it. Blood Pressure My family lineage are known for having good cardiovascular s...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve finally got back into the habit of writing fiction regularly after the several years I’ve spent writing cookbooks, learning to draw and reading Unreal Engine documentation about video game design. Thank goodness, I can do my actual job again. I’ve got a new novel in the works and I’m going to be releasing it chapter by chapter as I get it done. I don’t have a schedule for this but at full speed I can write 3000 words a day before I run out of ideas and need a day off. I think I should mention that this isn’t some horrible imposition on my time or job here. This is what I prefer to spend my time doing. Stories are fun to read and they’re more fun to type. I’ve got almost 20 years of full time professional typing behind me and I know exactly what my style and skills can do. So I purposely do things that aren’t on the list to learn. It’s what I do for fun. The previous two stories I’ve published here took about a week each to write. This one is going even faster...

 Hello. C J here. I've been typing most of today and I finished another short story. It's called Five Front Doors and it's a comedy set in Ascala with the same characters as A Song for Summermoon. I'm going to keep writing these and posting them for free and then make a collected volume of Ascala short stories for sale in print at conventions. If you'd like to support the project I do take donations through Patreon. The Patreon is still being set up as I move my games and novels into open beta and eventually full launch. The short story is free in the Books page. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. I'm actively preparing for running the first few sessions of Legend Elements. I've recruited some of my family to play and I'm also finding people on some of the Facebook groups I'm part of. This is going so well that I'm having a hard time keeping up. One flaw that a lot of tabletop games have is that boss combat is long and boring. To get around that in Legend Elements I have a mechanic called Scale. A creature with Scale is exponentially more dangerous than one without. And the higher the Scale the higher the danger. I mean literally Scale is built out of exponents. I finally ran a few sample combat encounters just by myself. I might have made the boss combat too dangerous. I am not fixing it. So here's how this went. I gave each side six dice in their pool. They both had five rounds to roll dice. Then they both made their final attacks for the encounter. Rolling dice pools and attacking are separate things in the engine I built. The two com...

 Hello. C J here. I'm preparing to launch my game line Legend as a full Beta release this year and I'm going to start recruiting players on Facebook to play it with me. But first I need to make sure I've got all the supplies I need on hand. Here's an image and the list.  Six sided dice. Art supplies for drawing the player characters and monsters they fight. An art journal. My plot and notes journal. A dice rolling tray. Counters or tokens for Flow and Legend points.  You can also track Damage this way. A tablet with a camera for the video call. Index cards in a variety of colors to track player character stats, draw random items, or hold NPC backstory and stats. Pre written index cards with plot and NPC details on them to draw at random. Pens and pencils. I think that's the list. I'm going to start recruiting when I've got all the planning for the first act of the campaign done. Happy New Year. C J Mcpherson