TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. I've finished setting up the website for Open20. Check it out at the following link. https://opentwenty.blogspot.com/ C J Mcpherson 

 Hello. C J here. This will likely be one of my last posts here. This blog was designed to chronicle the game design and marketing set up process for my company Infinity Game Studios. The blog will remain here as an archive if anyone ever needs knowledge from one of its posts. The recipes in particular should stand the test of time. I have one more announcement to make. Here we go. We’re running out of tabletop games. Cards, roleplaying, board game, these things are in trouble. I’ve spent my entire career keeping my thumb on this one and the pulse is weaker than ever before. I as an author should not have had to do this. It isn’t my job but someone had to do it. We need these games to be healthy as a planet but no one’s willing to make the vast, interconnected networks of products that once dominated the industry. It’s too hard. My solution? Make software do it for us. I’m working on a free desktop Windows program called Open20. It’s a tabletop game generation engine. It’s also goi...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve been thinking about how my Fantasy Plus setting fits into the Legend Series and its setting. I think I’ve finally figured it out. The game Quantum is set in the Legend Setting in the distant past where there are only giants, dragons, draconians and angels. After leaving Heaven the giants and the draconic races spread out to settle the galaxy Creation. The game is compatible with the present day time period and the Astral but it’s main setting is in the past. This is a time period of high fantasy mixed with epic space flight. By the time the Quantum game is set there are eight inhabited regions of Creation. The Fantasy Plus map is in the first one of the eight, Axis. We’re in the Realm of Wind to start off and we’re next to the Realm of Fire. I was doing a fire themed region next after I finish the vast desert region. The one catch is that in the Legend Series version there are only draconians as people. Since they can look like any other species this works ou...

 Hello. C J here. I've set up a dedicated blog for news about Dragon Engine. Link here. https://dragonenginenews.blogspot.com/ Thanks. C J Mcpherson 

 Hello. C J here. I’m still working on setting up my social life/fantasy MMO Minecraft server Fantasy Plus. I’m also back to working on Dragon Engine. I’ve been making the 3D assets that compose the tiles that make up the game’s environment today. The tiles are done. I have every tile I could ever need for four terrain types and they’re the only terrain types I want in the game. I also have floors for houses and beaches. Here’s a list. Grass/Moss/Dirt Ice/Snow Rock/Mountain/Cavern Desert/Sand/Sandstone Beach Wood Floor All of these have been exported to GBL and backed up. Each set of the four land types has eight of them in it including cliffs and ramps. The tiles can be at different heights allowing for tiered landscapes, mountains and arches over water. Anywhere there isn’t a tile is shallow water. The game doesn’t allow you to enter the deep water around an island map. The edges of a map can also be defined with cliffs. That’s it for that project stage forever. I’ve also looked ...

 Hello. C J here. Big news everyone. We have one server grade gaming laptop in our possession here. I’m going to charge it and then turn it on. We also have half of the ground terrain layer laid in Minecraft Bedrock Editor for the first one kilometre square map region, the River Lands. I already have the structures done as structure files and ready to drop in once I sculpt the landscape more. Now my dreams of running a community driven cooperative Minecraft server can come true. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. The Astral has a long and varied history. Within it are several nations that are considered to be the leaders of its economy. These are Ascala, Tamaril, Paradia and Chryshalla. Ascala is the first on the list for a reason. Today I’d like to present a longer format post about the early history of the nation Ascala. This text is from the lore cards that serve as quests and story for the game Quantum. These are from the first Expansion Five Million Strong which focuses on Ascala in great detail. Ascala     The City at the Centre of Creation. This is what Ascala styles itself to be. Truth be told, it’s not lying. Almost every trade route passes through it at some point. Foreigners are a common sight in its docks and markets but rarely venture far inland. It’s not for lack of trust, its simply because the city is so good at seeing to their needs close to where they left their ships. If it’s for sale, it’s for sale somewhere in Ascala. But the city is not all ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m good at art. This is a premise I rely on being true in order to do my job. If I can see it I can learn to draw it. In some stages of setting up my educational card game Quantum I have relied on open source rendering AI software to speed up the creative design process. This went so much better than I expected that I need to eventually write a book about how I did it. I thought I’d show some of these AI render images and then walk you all through how I designed the art based on them. This is Owen Riversmeet. He’s one of the ten playable characters in the Starter Set for Quantum. These ten are known as the Astral Ten and they’re the ten most famous Astral Captains in Creation. The main character of The Astral Chronicle the Captain is not counted on this list. His fame is almost a mythology on its own and so he’s in his own category. Owen Riversmeet is from Ascala the continent. He was raised a noble in Vantara before studying magic at the Order of Mages and leavi...

 Hello. C J here. I was intending to wait until New Year’s Day 2026 to resume game design and just do Minecraft until them. I think that playing Minecraft and working on the server project has recovered my game design stamina a lot faster than I expected. So, back to Quantum. I’ve got a line of posts prepared for the next few days about Quantum cards, how they are made and how they work in the game. But first, cocoa. This is a cocoa. It’s the art for a topaz gem named cocoa. It represents anything derived from that plant including cocoa powder and cocoa butter. There are five kinds of gems in Quantum. These are ruby, sapphire, topaz, alabaster and basalt. These are also called Renown, Prima, Resources, Wealth and Essence. They correlate to art and narrative of crafting materials, mathematical concepts, generic food, spices and abstract concepts. Together they can craft or reproduce any real life skill or recipe. I’m using them here to represent a real food I know how to make. This ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m pretty much done working on asset design for the first part of the Fantasy Plus Minecraft server I’m making. I’ve looked through some of the servers that are already up and it occurred to me that they’re all competitive. Really? Does no one want a place where people cooperate? That level of player verses player is going to attract the exact wrong sort of people from the internet. You’re going to get a lot of hostility and think that hostility is normal. It looks like I have the only cooperative player driven server out there. Even the ones that aren’t player against player are still deeply about getting more money, resources, or fame than everyone else. I don’t think the people building these understand the modern day internet. Certainly they don’t understand the furry fandom, the internet's other half besides gaming. We don’t like violence, thank you. We’re the kind of people who actually run the world by doing normal jobs. We also tend to have money. We tame...

 Hello. C J here. I own and run Infinity Game Studios. My work setting up my games, including Dragon Engine and Quantum, consumed a ton of my time. I haven’t really had the time for much social life for years. I’ve spent a few months getting a feel for the internet as it is and I’ve found that Minecraft is the most popular post category on both Facebook and YouTube. I figured I’d just go straight to the source and make a server. This is being done on my personal budget. I’m not considering it a business expense. It’s for social life and not business reasons. I have the server laptop being delivered and I’m debating what I need at the first launch of the map. We will have the River Lands and a number of towns with farms to gather food as well as buildings and campfires to cook it in. I might not have any custom NPCs at first but I can add them later. Map data isn’t in the same folder as player data so I can update them separately. We might not have weapons or combat but the map shou...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got another batch of item and gem cards for the Quantum Starter Set done today. These are samples of the ruby gems that pay for equipment during play and that can also be used to buy that equipment by crafting it. The Starter Set is a small sample of the Core Rules and what they can accomplish. I’ve got the full Core Rules for Quantum available to read in the Books link in the folder with the same name. I have all the ruby gem cards and three of the item images done. These then are the starting equipment you can bring into the more diverse gameplay offered by the future Expansions. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. You know I read his poem once somewhere from an author who was Pagan. It ended with a line that has always stuck with me. ‘With cakes and ale we end our poem.’ I spent a good chunk of my younger years on a mission. I wanted to see if there were any legitimate psychics out there. I’ve had some every impressive readings that turned out to be useful a decade later by predicting something that wasn’t true until it was needed. I’ve had one or two that were really expensive from people who were clearly just stoned out of their minds on something that was not legal back then. When it comes to psychics it’s hard to tell the reputable honest ones who do it for the good of the world from the people who are tripping out and think it will benefit them. One time, after the best reading I’ve ever gotten, the psychic recommended I make tea and have some sugar in it afterwards at a little tea stand in the shop that was hosting her. I did. This has become a core part of my job. Th...

 Hello. C J here. I know the holidays are coming up and it’s normally a really stressful time for people. My family here and I do a good Christmas together. Mind you I’m actually one of our youngest team members but I help. I’m good with a teapot and a coffee maker. I posted last year about some food tips for things to make that I thought were easy or tasty. This year I don’t have more of those. Holiday food really never changes. So how about Minecraft? Okay, that transition might have been a bit unexpected. I know a lot of people won’t have much to do over the holidays so I’m aiming to have my free public Minecraft server Fantasy Plus up and running long in advance of the actual holiday season. I know I’m always in need of something to do on Christmas afternoon so I plan on hanging out in a tavern in Haven in the River Lands and roasting some chicken over a campfire. Fantasy Plus is entirely cooperative. I’ve already turned friendly fire off in the master project file. I have an e...

 Hello. C J here. Don’t read my stories or play my games seeking escapism. I don’t make games to escape. Fundamentally I think that’s the wrong approach to take in a game. I make stories that challenge people. They have motives that I don’t explain. I want my audience to think and to gain something from what I do, something both tangible and also without a name. I make art you can read. Why? Let me explain. I never went to university for my craft. I don’t trust universities these days. I went to a normal trade college and it wasn’t for computers. I have no love for computer science or coder courses. These new flashy learn to game design diplomas people are pushing are crud. You learn code, you learn storytelling, you learn game design, you learn to carve a walking stick, you learn to paint by doing. Just make something with your hands. That’s it. I do not do this job for accolades. I do it because I am a craftsman. Code is an art form. It has infinite incorrect versions and one cor...

 Hello. C J here. In my opinion a good game, video game or tabletop game, needs to have meaningful challenge to be interesting. The trick, I find, with game design is to make that challenge increase as the game continues. Players become more powerful but the challenges they are faced with scale faster than they do. It’s often a game designer’s first instinct to reward their player with getting stronger faster, better and easier. This can be a problem though, as too much increase in strength without effort makes the earlier challenges seem less important. This is why I avoid setting up unlimited resource gathering systems for myself when I’m playing Minecraft. I avoid farms that aren’t for wheat. I do the level progression through mining, crafting and fighting the long hard way. This is to me more fun. I avoid Addons mostly because I really want the vanilla look and feel. I don’t often use resource packs either. Humans are smarter than we realize we are. We need to innovate to be he...

 Hello. C J here. I thought I’d do a Fantasy Plus Minecraft server project update. Here’s the current state of the server. I’ve realized that you can cook over a campfire so I never need ovens. I have installed Blockbench and the Entity Editor Plugin. I have made stats, equipment lists and loot tables on paper for the gold skeleton themed enemies. Most of this will be run off three or four spawn eggs as the skeletons only need to go up in tier rarely and can have armour and weapon options including my spellbooks. I’m assuming this can be done in the entity plugin. I know zombies can spawn with armour sometimes. I will be recolouring the default skeleton to make my version, the sand skeleton. They will be run using mob spawners in the dungeons and in monster camps in the overworld. You cannot destroy them so get used to combat in these regions. I’ve spent a couple days learning Minecraft Bedrock Editor and I have the system of building worlds on the scale of tens of kilometre square...

 Hello. C J here. I have more stories from the history I’m building for the Fantasy Plus Minecraft server map. Imagine being in a tavern in the evening, cooking meat and eating bread next to an open pit fire. You and you fellow travellers share stories. Maybe these are some of the ones you share. I have seen the world turn. The incantations we know to raise the pillars and glow wells from the cool earth can also be turned to the stars. I myself have spoken the names of several of those stars and they have answered me. We the old clerics of the desert know more than we tell even to the kings of our people. We learned at the behest of those who came before us, though their names are long since lost. I made the seasons cry and the sunlight that fell upon our crops dance. I had the power of an immortal through our mastery of the celestial arts. None today still know them. None here in this blasted sun baked wasteland at least. I find myself garbed in golden cloth and serving at the beh...

 Hello. C J here. Imagine walking through a dry desert valley looking for a band of stray skeletons and coming across an opening. It leads to a small antechamber. Inside is a small gold and alabaster alter and a single page from an old, worn book. Reading it reveals the following. Long ago I was a king. Not a mortal king, a petty tyrant, or a scoundrel ruler. I was a king of the heavens and the land. The sun was my confidant and the seasons knelt before me. I was a king blessed with the wisdom of the gods and the courage to see my will be real. The lesser dynasties united under me. The greater dynasties accepted me and each claimed to be my birth family. The world was laid before me as so many ripe grapes to be pressed into so much sweet wine. Together we built an empire, a future, a kingdom that reached to the heavens and grasped at the turn of the stars. My name is long gone from my memory but the glory of our perfect unity was absolute. The gods adored me and my kin for bringing...

 Hello. C J here. These are subject to revision but here's the guidelines I'm setting for the Fantasy Plus Minecraft server. Be polite. This server is strongly LGBTQ+ friendly. I’m a very spiritual individual and all respectful views are welcome here. This server is cooperative only. Any infighting or sabotage will be dealt with harshly. Look, no one’s life is perfect right now. Be supportive or need support but be you. If someone needs actual advice I’m trained in a lot of science so ask me. This server is about making friends. Please be social and remember we’re a team. Despite that please don’t give your contact info publicly. There’s a friend button. Please take frequent breaks. Schedule them with your friends if necessary. Cookies are good for you. No, really. C J Mcpherson