SAAVD Dev Blog

Trying to determine working rules for a universe gets a little complicated, which is why it is simpler to use at least some of the natural laws everyone is familiar with as a starting point. If the basic operations remain close to what readers understand, then a story doesn’t have to provide every little detail. Saavd follows the general laws of physics for the most part. Of course there are exceptions, you can’t have magic without at least slightly fracturing what most people consider “normal”.

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We have made some major updates to the main SAAVD website, aside from the guestbook goodness posted earlier. Most are under the hood types of things, but you should see a few changes for the better here and there. Please feel free to give us some feedback if you see something that doesn’t look right, doesn’t work the way you think it should, or if you think we just totally rock freakishly awesome like, tell us that too. Enjoy!

Well folks, the guestbook is back up and in operation on the main SAAVD page. I have put some measures into place to do a better job of thwarting the form spammers. Better keyword filtering, better form checking and more. I won’t bore you with the details, but for all of your that are just chomping at the bit to sign the guestbook, it’s back so get in there and get to signing!

One of the goals for the Saavd project is to create several integrated databases to hold information on the world, its characters, and the stories set there. This technological “back-end” will be a tremendous benefit in maintaining what I feel is the critical element for any world setting, especially one where many different stories will weave together: consistency. Read the rest of this entry »

Where do I start writing the stories of Saavd? This is the question that I am still wrestling with. More accurately stated, how do I determine the stories that I want to tell about which characters during what time period of Saavd history? For Saavd, I have a historical time-line that delineates major events, characters and conflicts, but the time-line begins literally with the creation of the universe and ends sometime after the events that are associated with the “original” characters and the “new” characters that have made themselves known as I’ve updated Saavd.

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I’ve always loved RPG sourcebooks. I own books for more systems than I’ve ever actually played. I enjoy sampling the character creation systems and making up characters that fit the milieu of the books. Steve Jackson’s GURPS, R.Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020, Wizkids’ Shadowrun, White Wolf’s Mage and Werewolf (I never was much for vampires myself), Hero Games’ (Paizo) Champions and Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks take up several shelves of the library.

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Fair warning, this post is about reading and writing, not Saavd in particular, but Saavd is about my writing and my writing can’t be separated from my reading. To paraphrase a popular quote, “Love me; love my library.” On that note:

I saw a great quote the other day on the flyleaf of Stephen King’s “On Writing”. I assume it should be attributed to Mr. King, but I’d like to relate it here, without permission, but I hope that will be forgiven:

“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

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A staple of fantasy writing is the way in which deities take a direct interest in, and occasionally a direct hand in, the lives of their followers, orchestrating events on a grand scale. This immediately elevates the struggle or conflict of the main mortal characters into something that changes the face or direction of the entire world. “Men”, or whatever race/background the mortal characters represent, act as the agents of deities upon the world they inhabit. The struggles of the gods are reflected in the battles of their adherents and vice versa.

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I have always had a keen interest in mythology of all sorts and, in my opinion, the comic books and superheroes are a contemporary mythology. Mythology tried to explain things, to make sense of the world around us, and many of my own writings followed that desire. The world, and the people in it, don’t seem to follow logical patterns. At least, not my logic. I wrote to try and explain how the world seemed to me and what it made me feel. Poetry and fiction were my chosen outlet and mythology fit right into that vein. Read the rest of this entry »

The snippets that appear randomly at the top of the Saavd website are meant to give readers a taste of the world. There is a plethora of background material for Saavd scattered across three-ring binders, spiral notebooks, engineering pads, drawings and folders. It has been reorganized more times than I can count. As much as I love pencil (and pen) and paper, electronic files have always been a necessity from my early Wordstar documents (there’s a trivia question for you) to my current favorite, OpenOffice documents. From that trove grew a series of writing exercises that are longer than snippets, but still much shorter than even a short story.

I wanted to see if I could create a picture in the reader’s mind’s eye, so many of the texts are heavy on description, light on action and dialogue. Especially in the early days, Read the rest of this entry »