Cosmic Era Progress Log

1. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #41

   
   Alright Max so the basic arc of stories in the CE will be stalwart moral characters who maintain their heroic personas and eventually find a way to personally escape the horrors of the by retiring to places like Fiji or New Themysicara.
   

   
   my kind of game

2. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #42

   The hero faces their inner demons, and the cosmic horrors in their line of work. No one will know if they succeed, because it'll be brushed under the rug by the higher ups. If they fail, no one will know because there will be another contingency, another layer of action, and there will be an 'incident' and still no one will know, there will just be lots more dead bodies.
   
   The horrors come, they fight.
   
   Some die.
   
   Some go mad.
   
   The monsters keep coming.
   
   They win the battle, they retreat, they escape, sometimes they don't.
   
   It doesn't matter, the people that the PCs likely work for are monsters all the same. The PCs are expendable, they are liabilities, they are written off and left to die, left to rot in sanitariums, given field retirements (suicide missions to take them off the dossier).
   
   The plan to retire to Fiji, Belize, New Themyscira (Good luck getting there, that's like trying to move to Israel)
   
   That plan isn't going to happen. It's a tattered photograph left in a bunk or footlocker.

3. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #43

   Great.
   
   Point of feedback being is I don't see that coming through strongly in your posts of late  (the recent Universe 26 is its own thing).  I think if this is what you want us to take away from the cosmic era posts you could turn up the volume on the horror. I think the whole cloth stuff undercuts and dilutes your setting.  I get writing stuff to deal with being tired and restless but how do you want that to change our view of your posts?   

4. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #44

   
   how do you want that to change our view of your posts?   
   

   
   
   It's going to take a little bit for me to come up with an answer for this.
   

5. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #45

   I have thought about this some, now that I have words moving again, and the answer is complex and paradoxical.
   
   For me its worth noting that everyone here on the Citadel is looking at the Cosmic Era from the backstage side, not the audience side. It is also a work in progress, and is in no way a finalized, polished, or collated product ready to be picked up and read/used/watched. I don't want to shape your feedback to what I'm writing, because that's not what I am wanting to shape. If I am trying to elicit a certain type of feedback I'm basically doing this for the wrong reason.
   
   So I want your honest feedback, your critical feedback, about what looks good and what looks like shit. I also want you to know that I am absolute shit about accepting critical feedback and take it poorly. That being said, I am aware of it, and try to take it as intended and not the way it comes across to me.
   
   Because sometimes my instinctive rebuttal to critical feedback boils down to 'Goddamn it, I don't fucking work for you, you don't write me a paycheck, but you make more demands of my writing than my goddamn boss at works expects from me on my job there, and there I deal with chemicals, electricity, machines, and shit that can literally fucking explode'.
   
   And that is kneejerk, instinctive, and wrong. And I know it's wrong, and I sit on that until it goes away. Because if you weren't interested, or didn't care about what I was writing, you wouldn't give critical or constructive feedback.
   
   So the honest answer is for me to swallow my writer's pride and thank you for the critical feedback, but to ask you for more on the constructive side.
   
   Yes, I know there are problems with the setting, and there are things that have needed to be changed, and have been changed. Some of them are little, others not so much. What started as playing with all the toys in the toybox 80s nostalgia is shaking out into it's more condensed form.
   
   Summon magic, alien invaders, etc, are out, and no longer canon to the setting. I think you will support this.
   

6. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #46

   
   New submission up
   
   https://strolen.com/viewing/Freemium_Economy
   
   The economy of the Atlantic Federation is a mix of universal basic income, free to play/pay2win gaming, and post-scarcity digital abundance.
   
   I don't expect this sub to get a lot of waterproof marine power inverters , it's economic in nature, and the evil within isn't the tentacle dripping sanity shredding kind, just the callous pragmatic kind that we are all too used to.
   
   I've been thinking about this piece for a while, tandem currencies like in the freemium games, and what sort of economy would exist after Capitalism, after America, post scarcity.
   
   And it's kinda frightening.
   

   
   
   That's really helpful.

7. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #47

   So, new fairly large submission up. Not the greatest or most enlightened piece of work. It superficially is a romp through GI Joe playsets, kickstarted by an article about shitty GI Joe toys. I did the write up on the Cataphract from that, and then wandered into the HQ and other other sets via wiki wandering. It happens.
   
   There is a process to this, and as I have mentioned to others before, the Citadel here is the staging area, the research and development part of my writing, and not the finished goods. This has been a point of some contention with other articles, especially noting tone and voice used in various pieces.
   
   Several of the things that rolled though while writing are going to be edited/revised into the novel. There is a section where the protagonist and his cohort are going through the ruins of the Rust Belt and American hinterlands, where things like the fortress made from the superstructure of a navy ship are going to be found. In the current unrevised state, that chapter is just a maze of dull debris and improvised walls bulldozed into place.
   
   So, these things, sometimes the playing yields useful things.
   
   The best thing's I'll be pulling are the Elevated Superiority platforms, which are going to become the focal point of the protagonist's downtime at the home base, and the bandits running the ruins of a city from the bridge of a US navy cruiser dropped near the outskirts of the industrial part of a certain city I dislike. The WTFortress will also be making multiple appearances in different locals as a reminder of the past.
   
   Thanks for reading.

8. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #48

   So we should stop commenting on your citadel posts and wait for the finished product?

9. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

   #49

   
   So we should stop commenting on your citadel posts and wait for the finished product?
   

   
   
   Not at all, you're feedback is valuable and important, I just want to put out there what sort of thing I'm putting out here at the Citadel so we can have feedback on the same level.
   
   A lot of the things I'm putting out are technical manual entries, not so much fiction pieces. They also aren't going to any sort of print or publication so feedback on that level is not really the right thing. When we worked on the ezine that was the perfect level of feedback and a common goal of a finished product going to publication. Super happy about that by the way.
   
   I've got an idea, about feedback, let me get back to you on that.
   
   Thumbs up super positive this morning and I appreciate your interest and feedback

10. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

    #50

    I cant do this without coming across as pedantic, or belaboring the point, and I want everyone to be positive and happy

11. Re: Cosmic Era Progress Log

    #51

    Test to see where this shows up

Cosmic Pluralism · All categories · Guildhall