Zebulon's Guide to the Frontier: The Core Worlds

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Deryn_Rys
February 23, 2011 - 11:16pm
I have decided that since the Expanded Universe Guidebook is finished, that the next project that I'm going to tackle is this guidebook. I figure that since I'm working on the Animals of the Frontier it makes sense that I should start working on the Star systems and planets where they come from. I figure that for each inhabited planet I'll write up maybe 6 or so creatures to showcase the types of creatures there, this way one project will help with another. This means that in the end I should have several hundred creatures for the expanded Frontier!

 
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words
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Deryn_Rys's picture
Deryn_Rys
February 24, 2011 - 2:53pm
Insomnia is a great thing for a writer. I managed to finish the updates on all the races in the core worlds for the book, including seven unique races (Adrainian, Andorian, Belphan, Ghed'yan,Keltarian, and the Rian), 2 races adapted from Alternity (Fraal, and Seshayan) and 4 races adapted from Gamma World (Dabbers, Ferren, Sasquatch, and Sleeth).

Now its on to detail over 70 Star systems and include the stats for 9 Important space stations, and this book should be closed. And that's not counting the over 300 creatures that I'll have to create to showcase some of the animals common to these worlds. All in all it should be interesting. 
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
February 25, 2011 - 12:28am
I have to admit that this Project is proving to be a little more complicated than I thought it would be. It's not so much the creation of each Star System Which for me is fun because I get to roll a lot of dice and then turn all those stats into an interesting little blurb. The hard part is coming up with 6 or so unique creatures for each of these planets. I think that the problem (if you want to call it that) is that I don't want to just make a bunch of generic creatures, because I feel that that would be a diservice to the community, So I'm spending almost a whole day creating three or four creatures that I can be proud of but in so doing it is slowing me down in writing this book.

I guess I'm just suffering a small bout of "I think you've bitten off more than you can chew." But I usually get over that when I find the right balance and things fall into a pattern. It also helps to think that somewhere out there are people who appreciate the work, and are waiting for the next book in this project, and perhaps (It's kind of the dream behind all this work) someone might actually play this game.

Anyway I am happy to report that the Adrain Star System has been defined, the Adrainian Homeworld has been detailed, and there are three creatures already written up for this planet. i've still got to add a few more sample creatures into the mix and then I can move on to the next Star System.  
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
February 28, 2011 - 10:17pm
After a little procrastination (I spent several hours working on my Gamma World project) I put together another core system, Agidda by name, which turned out rather well, but once again I started asking myself If I should do more than just detail the star system, and only the planet where the major population lives. I mean I do list each of the other planets in the system by type, with some information (like size, orbital period, gravity atmospheric pressure, and such) but I leave the details largly open allowing Administrators a lot of planets to develop.

I guess I'm just trying to give Administrators as much stuff as I can, but I don't want to give so much away that there's nothing left for them to personalize. I've seen some of the great write ups in SF man and I don't plan to put that much detail in these books but there'll be enough info for Administrators and players to get a general feel for each of the major planets and star systems in the Frontier.

I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and eventually I'll either be satisfied with it, and let you guys have it, or I'll work on it some more.

"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
March 4, 2011 - 11:27pm
Okay this week has been a bit of a strange one with juggling real world issues and trying to work on this. I will say that the star system rules expansion turned out to take that little section in the Administrators guide and expand it to a 16 page section detailing the creation of star systems and planets for the URS.

I updated the star systems I had already created (Adrain, and Agidda, and Prenglar) and finished a write up for Alpha Centari, the oldest military base in the core, which I think came out pretty nice. I think that come Monday I should be able to get more than one Star system written in a day.
I will say that so far I'm estimating this book is going to run over 220 pages when I'm done and hopefully will have enough material and ideas to really offer people something besides rules that might make people want to play in the star Frontier's (URS) universe.
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
March 7, 2011 - 10:47pm
Today was a good day for me. I was able to finish work on several other more star Systems for this book. I have now completed all the A worlds and have started on the B's starting with Barnard's Star. I will say that I was quite pleased at how three of the systems that belong to the Yazirian race turned out. this book is looking to be quite big even though I'm only detailing the major planets in a star system. It's hit 214 pages right now and that's the finished work and the page holders I have for each system, and one planetary description.

 
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
March 9, 2011 - 10:27pm
It's been a productive day for me. I've managed to finish all the "B" worlds in the core and wrote up Calgary and Cassidine. and I even had the time to submit two articles as well. I think at the rate I'm going I hope to have this book finished by sometime early next month. But I'm not going to lock myself into a date. I hope that this book will hopefully offer enough material for Administrators to work with because i've made sure to leave a lot of room for Administrators to expand on this material to create unique settings for his adventures.


"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

Deryn_Rys's picture
Deryn_Rys
March 18, 2011 - 11:14pm
This week was kind of short for me, because I had to deal with some real life health concerns, so I couldn't work on this project with my normal speed. However that's not to say that things haven't progressed. I managed to work on a few systems (I'm currently up to Dral at this point) and I also put in a bit of work moving material into the second book in this series. I've put in all the races that are going into that book, and divided everything into its appropriate sections, so that when the first book is finished I'll have all the ground work done on the second book in this series.
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
March 28, 2011 - 1:50pm
Okay so I pushed myself into doing a lot of work on this in the past few days, and Lets just say that I've got the preliminary stars and planets listed for all the systems up to Mechan ready. The only thing that might bother a few of you is that there is very little in the way of Art in this book. the material gives enough of an overview of each system but leaves a lot of material for individual Administrators to flesh out as his campaign requires. I've even added a few tidbits here and there that might spark an Administrator's imagination.

"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
March 28, 2011 - 2:05pm
Okay so now we kick into overdrive. I've done all the preliminary work on the 82 Star systems that will be detailed in this book and we're currently looking at over 240 pages worth of material. I think that there is enough material here for Administrator's to toy with, and tons of room for Administrator's to flesh out the worlds of the Core.

I will say that alot of the material herein does not match what is in the Canon books regarding what a particular star system is supposed to look like, or what a particular planet should be like. This is intentional because I wanted to make the Star Frontiers (URS) to be its own entity in many ways. I'm hoping that when this book and the animal guidebook comes out that some of you will be inspired by the material to maybe either take the system out for a spin (if you haven't already done so) or maybe start adding your own material to the Project, if you want to that is.

"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
April 6, 2011 - 8:27pm
Just wanted to say that while I haven't updated this for about a week, I am still trying my best to complete this book. I am currently about 50% done with the Zebulon's Guide to the Core Worlds, though I had to go over some of the previous work I had done on this to straighten out a few inconsistancies and glaring mistakes.

I am hoping to step up production so I can get this book out soon, but real life concerns have in recent weeks been draining me of both time and energy. I really would like to have this book out to you guys soon, but I don't want to do a half-assed job of it. I will say that there are some interesting star systems in this book, and some hooks that are just begging for an Administrator to flesh out into full-fledged adventures, so I'm hoping when this book is out I'll start hearing some whispers about things happening in the expanded universe.

"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

Deryn_Rys's picture
Deryn_Rys
April 12, 2011 - 7:52pm
This project is becoming one of those one step forward two steps back type situations. I've written up a good 50 percent or more of the star systems for this book, and put in a lot of the preliminary work on everything else, but when i went back to review some of the information I found some inconsistencies with some of the earlier systems that i had worked on, and the newer stuff, which made me have to go back and address those issues beore moving forward again.

Anyway I think I'm on track again, and I should be able to start moving forward again. I am hoping that though this guidebook will not be big on pictures (it's really going to be more a workbook with a lot of space for Administrators to expand on the material in the book) I'm hoping the book will be useful to those people who might want to do something with this ruleset.
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words

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Deryn_Rys
April 13, 2011 - 10:31pm
Today I finished writing up all the natural resources and manufactured resources for all the systems in the core that I hadn't dealt with yet, so now I just have to focus on doing a little bit more work on the planetary statistic sheets, and writing some interesting little blurbs about each world that I have yet to work on, and I should be finished with the main part of the work.

The second phase will be a little easier as I have to design several space stations and Space Fortresses of note in the Core worlds, and then this'll be a done deal. I just gotta keep my real world stresses from killing my desire to work on this and I should be fine.
"Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words
"Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words
"You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words
"Did you here that?" -Famous last words