Boy of two worlds - A memior (Chapter 1)

(Sorry for the lack of posts, Compy still broke)

UPDATE: Fixed spelling and other errors.

I love not just writing about worlds, but thinking about what it would be like to enter them. I had in my mind a story about two people traveling to Saltha and encountering the different customs and culture from the point of view of the humans (and perhaps it'd be interesting to hear the other native POV later). This is what I hope will be a series, told from the POV of a boy traveling to Saltha for the first time as a memior.

Boy of Two homes
A memoir of Zachary Talyorson

One
No can argue that my childhood was an unusual one. Born the son of a diplomat, I had the rare chance to be one of the first humans to go to saltha and live most of my boyhood there. I was to live those years far from children who looked like me and in many ways acted like me, though I also came to see the sameness inherit within. My journey began when my father was assigned shortly after the end of the war to go to Saltha and write a report on the customs of the Salthan people. He was to live in a Salthan home with a family and observe daily life. I was at the time seven years old, and had mixed feelings about going. On the one hand, I was leaving behind all my old friends, and I knew at the very least I had the vague notion that life there would be different, uncomfortable and unsuited to my culture for humans, and even "backwards". On the other hand, I had a strong desire for adventure, and had grown up reading adventure stories. I had the idea of going far away some day, and being an explorer but I had never dreamed up to this point that the day would come so soon, and I felt still unprepared. My father had considered leaving me with my aunt and uncle, but I insisted on going, even after my father's insistence that the journey would be hard.

The journey was a long, hot and bumpy through the desert until we finally I saw the walled city in the distance. This was the city of Ten Terak, not far from the eastern border of Saltha. It was I later learned the former capital of the country. The date was April 15th, the 19th year of king Baderford of Braydon. Of course, then I didn't know the historical significance of what was happening, but instead I was a young boy swept into the adventure I had read of in books.

We stopped in a square. The buildings were flat, squarish and made of brick, showing little or no adornments.
It was evening, and the sun was just going down, and there were still a good number of people there. This was the second time I had seen a Salthan up close, since my father introduced me to a Salthan diplomat who visited Braydon. I noticed, with some embarrassment that children, boys and girls, some who looked older than me wore absolutely nothing at all. Many of the people kept on their business, but also stared at us, some more brazenly stopping to stare. They had probably never seen humans before, having surrendered before the war’s end had saved them from being occupied.

"Don't stare" my father said. I hadn't realized I was staring. "But their staring at us" I said. At that moment a man approached us, followed by a woman and a boy. All three wore the clothing of the adults wore, a long short-sleeved robe with a long sleeved robe underneath. "Beeka esha" the man said, holding his arms out palm upward, and giving a short sharp bob of his head. My father did his best to imitate this movement. "I am Elsal. He said. "You are gitaylorson?" (The "gi-" added at the beginning is an honorific, and he pronounced the "y" in our name as "ee".) My father told him he was. "This is my son, Zack.”

"It is a great honor to have you here." Elsal said. The man indicated the woman. "This is my wife SadaKari," and then indicating the boy "and this son, Lail." With the introductions done, the man took my father's suitcase and lail carried mine and he lead the way to their home.

The home was like the others I had seen in the square. The first floor was a single room with a short table and a cooking area. On the left I could see stairs, and a curtained off area on the left side. "A room for you has been prepared." Elsail said. "Then you can be cleaned up for dinner.” The man led the way upstairs. The upstairs had no walls, except for curtains hanging from hooks on the ceiling. The man came to one part of the curtain and unhooked one end. "This is your room." he said, and set my father's case down. The room was bare of any furniture except a mat on the floor. And then he went a little further and unhooked another end of a curtain "And this is the boy's room." It was much the same as the other, with nothing but a mat and Lail put my case down there. "Now" the man said. "You shall be cleaned up, and we will have dinner, I want to hear much of your country."

We were lead back downstairs and to the curtained room. It was a small tiled room with a tub on one end. Sadakari sat on a stool. She explained that here they wash up first, and then get in the tub to soak, and then me and Lail could talk (Lail had also been learning the common human trade language). She also said that it was the host's duty to do the cleaning. I was more than a little shy taking of my clothes and having the woman wash me. Once this was done she doused me with a bucket of water. It was cold, but not as cold as I had expected (apparently it had been warmed a little in the other room). Once this was done I thought it was done and could get in the tub, but as I turned the woman grabbed my arm and I saw her reach for a wooden switch on a shelf. My father asked her something, which I didn't understand in Salthan and she replied, in Salthan. This went back and forth, and I stood there, naked and cold and confused. Had I done something wrong, and the woman wanted to beat me for it? My father and the woman talked back and forth, and it seemed like from his tone he was trying to haggle. After a few minutes of this my father called me aside.

"Son" he said. "You remember that I said some parts of this would be difficult. I'm afraid I'm going to have to let her switch you." I was shocked at what I was hearing. "Why? What did I do?" "No, no, you didn't do anything wrong." He said. "But it is something they do, as part of what they believe is cleaning. They do this once at the end of each month in their calendar, which happens to be today. She told me that if she is not allowed you are unclean and cannot stay here in Saltha, but I can't go back yet either. I hope you understand." At that moment, Lail who had already been cleaned was already receiving his punishment, five sharp swats across his bottom with the switch, and then he went into the tub and it was my turn. I was bent over and received the five quick swats which stung, but was over quickly and then I joined Lail in the tub.

I had no idea of what to say. "Hello" I said. "Hello." He said back. It occurred to me that he was thinking the same thing as me. "It's hot here." I said. "Seth" he said. "Is it not like this in your country?"
"Sometimes, but only during the summer time, so about a quarter of the year."
"And what is it like the other times?"
"Sometimes it's very cold, and it snows sometimes."
"Snow?" he asked.
"You don't know what snow is?"
"No." He said. "What is it?"
"Well, it's white stuff that's soft and is very cold that falls from the sky."
"Ah." He said, I have heard of it, we have it in the mountains, but we never go there. There is snow all over your country?"
"Yep."
"I had wondered what you country was like, but I don't think I'd like to go there, at least not during the snow time."
We talked about a few things like sports and school, and too soon Laic’s mother came in to tell us it was time for dinner. I could already smell the food from the next room

We all sat cross-legged on the floor on mats on the ground around the table. They served vegetables, a cooked grain cereal and bread that had cooked fish meat inside. All three of the Salthans asked a lot of questions about our home country, what the buildings were like, what we liked to do. Lail repeated what I had told him about snow in the bath. After dinner was done Elsal said "Well, you're probably tired from your journey and wish to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day, and there is school tomorrow so we all should turn in. Good night."

We went upstairs and I went to the room I was assigned and laid down on the mat. Though it was harder than the bed I was used to at home, it less uncomfortable then I had expected. I was tired from the long journey, though I was also excited about where I was and my new friend, but tiredness won and I fell asleep.

Mini Review: Section 9

Last night I got the chance to finally see Section 9. I had been wanting to see it for a while, since people kept asking me if I saw it and telling me how awesome it was when I answered in the negative. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum in this review. The basic plot of beginning of the movie is that some aliens crash land in Johannesburg, South Africa and are cordoned off in ghetto camps, and generally treated like non sentient beings. The movie starts with a millitary group called the MNU trying to move them to a smaller camp further away from humans. The location is of course very intentional, and the writer/director is from S. Africa. They don't hit you over the head with this, and the apartheid is never mentioned, though it is enough that the viewers carry this in the backs of their minds as a connecting theme. It was an interesting movie, and I did enjoy it, over all it was a very good science fiction action movie, and more than that had a lot of "brain" to it, and things to think about. However, I thought there were aspects that were lacking. As someone interested in anthropology I was disappointed how little we got too little a look at the alien's culture. They like cat food for some reason, but there's no cultural reason why that'd be signifigent, and so just comes off as this quant thing thrown in. Also, I thought the main character was just a plain ass through most of the movie, and had a hard time connecting or feeling sympathy for him. Perhaps that was the point that I connected more with the alien. At first I thought it was just cluelessness but he appears pretty quickly to have no problems with outright genocide and mistreatment. I liked the sort of documentary style of the shooting of the movie, employing many "head cam" shots and interviews with people interspersed, and yet it didn't interfere with the action sequences and the story of the movie. Now that I've seen it, I agree it was a pretty great movie, and I recommend it. I was thinking that it may be interesting for people to try to develop a culture and history for this race of aliens. Other people interested?

A week without posts

Wow. It's been nearly a week since I last posted. Sorry, to those who may be reading this. My computer's still on the outs. I'm currently working also on applying for a cool job that I hope I get, but I'm not sure I should be more specific than that right now. So yeah, vagueness.

Amazing...

This one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, interactive little computers that interact that communicate with each other. I want one of these!

TED talk - Siftables (YouTube video, 7 minutes)

Mini Review: End of the Spear

On the flght I read through "The end of the spear" by Steve Saint. I thought it was perticularly fitting since I was going to ecuador.

The story of his father was widely published throughout the world when he and four others were killed by the "Aucas", or Wodoni who they were trying to make contact with in the jungle of ecuador.

Steve Saint tells the story of his living with there very people who killed his father as a boy, and how the lives of a tribe that lived with killing and hate turned around. The story has humor and is deeply moving, and was a truely fascinating read.

I was also very fascinated as a sort of hobby anthropologist the description of the culture, and how outsiders did their best to fit in to such a different world. There was the opposite factor of wodani trying to fit into the culture of ecuador and america (which are fairly different from each other!) that is poignent, funny and fascinating.

Over all, it is very well written. I thought perhaps the time skips were a little confusing, but I figured out pretty quickly when it was supposed to be. I highly recomend this book, especially for those who enjoy biographies.

Just got back from Ecuador... no my arms aren't tired.

I just got back from a 9 day trip to Ecuador. It was quite an experience, and especially interesting going to a place with another culture and sets of customs. I guess "thrown into" would be a good description. Some of those customs did seem pretty strange as an outsider (as I'd imagine mine would seem strange to them), and even the locals didn't exactly know how those customs were formed (for example, the brides maids wearing red).

It took some getting used to, and of course it wasn't a long enough time to not feel like a silly outsider, but I feel like I acclimated to some of the customs there.

Democratic Game Design Redux

(My computer is still down, so thus my lack of posting. I'm working on it, or rather have a relative working on it, and hope to have it back up soon.)

Though I had linked to another democratic game design project of mine, little paper men on my sidebar, I didn't mention it because it was still messy and I hadn't done anything with it for at least a year. Now that I have done some updating (still needs quite a bit of work, hint hint contributes) but it's in a state where I'm not too embarrassed to draw attention to it. The idea is to put stats to paper miniatures figures to provide a simple and cheap (practically free) war game. Right now I have a shoe box full of paper figures of different sizes and types that were really easy to put together (I'm not much of a do-it-yourselfer).

I found it fun to try to think about how the abilities for characters would reflect characters, especially abilities that are flaws, making things harder not easier.

Anyway, check it out. Anything I wrote is just there so there's something and nothing is set in stone, and I look foreword to hearing other people's ideas.

Democratic Game Design

I've been experimenting with what I call "democratic game design", that is a game that is open to many people to all contribute. With democratic game design you can get many many different ideas, and get more eyes to correct typos, play test and make adjustments.

Tools

The internet itself is what makes this possible, and there are tools on the internet that makes having a democratic game design project much easier.

Wikis are basically websites where you can in one click edit the pages. Most everyone is probably familiar with Wikipedia, which is a very good example of a wiki. For personal wikis I like to use pbwiki for my projects.

The Creative Commons Licence is a licences that basically declares that other people may use and remix your materials. There are a few variations of the rules that you should check out and decide which works best for your project (for example, do you want others to be able to use these materials commercially?)

Is democratic game design right for me?

Most everything has a downside, and this is no exception. One disavantage is you obviously no longer own the project, but it belongs to everyone. This means that once you declare something open and you get contributers, then you cannot ever claim it solely as yours ever again. You're not going to make a profit of this, but that's exactly the opposite of the point of democratic game design anyway.

A second disadvantage is with differences of vision for the project. Not everyone's going to see the project exactly the same, so it's important to have an idea before hand of rules to resolve conflicts. You should state them clearly, posting a link at the top of the front page.

I like the rules used on Wikipedia where if something you wrote is changed, you're not allowed to change it back until you've discussed it in the comments area, and if necessary put it to a vote.

An example project

My democratic game design project The Paisho Wiki is based on the board game that's played in the animated television series "Avatar: The last Airbender". I've had quite a few people now contributing, and the start rules have popped up even on other wikis!

...

Democratic game design is a neat way of getting a project off the ground, and it can be fun to see how many people get together to build something together. If you know of other neat game design projects like this, or have one of your own, comment here or shoot me an e-mail and I'll gladly link it!

My computer's dead for now...

I tried hard to blog every day, but my computer managed to go out on me. I'm working on getting it fixed, and I'll try to keep posting through other means, though my computer also had all my notes on future post ideas. For now I'm on semi-hiatus, and I hope to get back to regular posting next week.

Technorati Blog claim

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This is actually my blog, Technorati.
Regular people can ignore this post.

Writers Read

Being a writer should mean you are also a big reader, after all a writer's love of writing comes from their love of reading, and reading specifically in the genre they are writing helps informs them of good and bad examples of writing and what's cliche in that genre. (Though being a big reader alone doesn't mean your a good writer, I wish!)

I am a pretty big reader. I thought I’d share as a regular thing what I’m reading, and with some mini-reviews.

I just picked up, and am nearly finished reading “Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation”. I found it laying around the house the day after I decided to start this blog, and I thought I’d better read it, not really knowing anything about the author. I haven’t been able to put it down. It’s an excellent book, and Hewett is engaging in the way he writes. If nothing else he highlights the vital importance of the spread of information through blogs and how it creates competitions that keeps larger forms of media in line and creates checks against bias (of any sort) in the mainstream media.

Before that I finished reading a biography of the magician Harry Blackstone Sr, “Blackstone, a Magician's Life”. I thought the writing was pretty clunky in places, and not as tight as other biographies I had read, and to me read more like a reminiscence than a more studious biography (like for example, the excellent biography of Houdini “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero” by William Kalush or “The Rasputin file” by Edvard Radzinsky which I both highly recommend.) , but it did have some good information and interesting tidbits about the man and the people that surrounded him. Those interested in the history of magic might want to check it out, though there are better magic biographies out there, and there may even be better Blackstone biography out there.

The Seed of of a Story

I love finding things that start me on a story, but it can be incredibly hard to train yourself to think that way, to actually ask the question “what is the story behind this?”.

For example, A few times when I was walking I passed a few times a bed frame lying at the curb. The first time I didn’t really think about it, though I noticed it. Yesterday though, I thought about it, and actually thought “what is this story?” Did it belong to a child who recently died? Did the child grow up and move out; going to college or married and the parents were finally getting rid of it? Could there be an interesting story there? I think so, though both those scenarios are somewhat mundane, a lot of times a good story can come from something mundane.

The trick is to be ready, and ask about something “is there a story there?” not just about things, but people you see. It's like any habit (well good ones), you learn to do it more by simply doing it.

A few years ago I read a poem by a poet who I had never heard of before. The poem was about an elderly gentleman who turned wayward girls such as “actresses” into birds and kept them. The tone was eerie and yet strikingly beautiful to me, and those elements of tone and transformation inspired a story that I’m working on that is now part of a story collection in progress. (This was before I was aware of the movie Ladyhawke (1985) with Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer, an acquaintance told me about this movie when I was talking about my story idea.)

Another recently inspiration for me is art. When looking for story starters I found a deviant art collection (warning: some nudity) for art specifically for generating ideas for stories. One picture of a mermaid I found fascinating and started another story I’m writing (which I think will be part of a collection with the bird story).

I hope this has been helpful, and I’d love to hear if you have other interesting ideas for generating ideas. Now I need to actually finish projects!

Artist Wanted

As I mentioned I am working on a few projects that I plan to release commercially, and since I lack artistic talent I am looking for artist(s) to contribute to the projects.

One project is a role playing game supplement book that focuses on a theme of knowledge. I am looking for a full page map (full color, black and white or maybe "lithograph" style), full color cover art and full color or black-and-white art of various sizes from small "gap filler" to full page art. Besides the basic ideas I am very open to ideas and artist interpretation, and would to have an artist who would also be willing to give mechanical feedback (though that is not a requirement) I plan to release this first as a PDF for a $10-20 first and possibly a softcover book if it looks like it would be feasible to do so.

The other project is a simple miniatures games in 30mm scale with color or high quality black-and-white art.

For both projects, they would be paid by ownership in the project as partners (50-50 split). If you're interested please send your portfolio examples of your art to Foolster(at)J-fan.com

Thank you.

Myst and the connection of worlds and games

I thought I’d start out talking about more of my philosophy of this blog. To me, the thing I’m most interested in is not just writing, but about immersion.

I suppose this seems really obvious, but sometimes when I read a story, I don’t feel immersed, and I wonder if that’s maybe because the author wasn’t himself immersed enough to experience the world, and think about the details of daily life in that world. If an author isn't interested enough to immerse himself in his own world, how can I as a reader be immersed?

I'm a fan of the world of the adventure game series (and later novel series) of Myst. The world, I think paints such a wonderful picture of writing and world building.

For those maybe not familiar with Myst, it was a graphical adventure game on CD (one of the very first) in the early 90s. The story of the world centers on special books called “linking books”. A person writes a book and can create a world [1] and then “link” to that world and walk around and explore it. This is fairly obvious as a metaphor for world-creation so it was probably meant to be (after all, it was itself a world that was designed).

In my writing I don't merely want to describe the places, people, things and events but I want to explore it, see what it is like to actually live in those worlds, experience it for myself. Of course, we can’t really build worlds, but there are other ways.

One way I do this is through simply the way I write. I love writing in a first person”in character” point of view from inside the world. It helps me think about how the characters see themselves and others inside their world.

Another way is through games and online tools we can break some of the barriers to experience to open the world. I sometimes role-play (more like play-acting since there are no stats or dice) as a character from one of my worlds on a 3D chart room program called Second Life. I’ve also built things on the same program from the world, such as a house. It’s pretty cool to see a “object” represented in 3D space that I can move through, and even though I still can’t actually touch, I can interact with it as my “avatar” proxy and it is at least one more step towards real.

Another way writers can connect with other people, and experience their own world is through games. It seems now a days creating games is easier than before with simple programs and good documentation. You don’t really need a big budget to make a game. Some games don’t even need graphics at all, and but the world can be described by text. [2]

Immersion is proof that there is something that is "clicking together" in your world and that people will connect with the world you created, and there are a lot of great tools out there for you to connect to your own world, and allow others to connect with your world. Also it's a lot of fun!

[1] Or, linking to one of an infinite number of worlds that also happen to exist already that are exactly as described by the books. Both theories are argued (hotly) by the characters in the novels, and no one way is shown to be right, though I think I would favor the world-creation theorem myself.

[2] If you're interested in doing this, you might want to check out MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) which are basically multilayer text adventures. If you want to see what one is like, Midevia is a fairly large one with I beleive 10,000 players.
Also there is BYOND (build your own net dream) which is a graphical program for designing online games. It has a good online framework, and pretty good support and documentation. It has a coding-based system (based on the language C) which while maybe a little harder to use than a cookie-cutter script system like in programs like Construct (another pretty good game design program I use), I think it can do much more as is worth learning. (I don't think learning a program language is as hard as it seems).

Welcome Explorers!

Welcome! It's been a resolution of mine to start a blog to give me more of a motivation to write, so here it is! This is a blog dedicated to writing, story telling and the building of worlds adnd the exploration of worlds, including those worlds in role playing games.

I don't expect to be posting every day, but I'm going to make a strong effort to post at least three times a week, about every other day. I have some idea for regular weekly features.

I hope you will find this blog interesting and stay, make yourself at home and chat. Feel free to post comments on topics even if their not the newest, I will try to keep looking at the last few day's worth (once I actually get people posting here that is) Feel free to drop me an e-mail at Foolster(at)gmail.com as feedback, to suggest a topic give feedback or just to say "hi".

First an introduction. I am a Christian writer in his late twenties who lives in the pacific northwest. I've been designing games since I was about 10, starting with quick basic on my Compaq 8088 (bleeding edge then!), and I've been roleplaying on and off for the last 5 years.

When I'm not writing I like to perform in a local drama group, play role-playing games (as you may have guessed from above), design board and card games of different kinds and play ukulele (though not very well).

I am currently working on a number of projects including a story collection and role-playing game supplement (for the D20 system) that I hope to have finished this year and published sometime in 2011. I’ve also been working on two "conworld" (constructed world) fantasy cultures with their own religions, customs, and languages. One are the lizard-folk called the Salthans and a blog about them is at www.bikaesh.pbwiki.com and the Sylvanians, a big-cat (i.e. tiger, lion, jaguar) people. The world also has two human cultures, but I havn't gotten around to writting about them yet. I also have a wiki for some of my homebrew role playing games stuff at www.d20toolbox.pbwiki.com

Let's start building and exploring together!