Wolfe Tracks: February-March Round Up!

Where I wax on, wax off about fiction coming up, game design and more!

Well, what do you know, it’s March already! February was a really busy month. I was going to ramble on about Worldbuilding again, but I thought it’s been awhile since I’ve done a good catch up. So, this time, I’ll get into what I’m writing, what I’m worldbuilding, planning, and more!

If you’re here for my serial fiction, don’t worry! There’s a chapter rolling out this coming Friday, Mar 7th for Death Whispers of the Etherwave!

Now, grab a chair and lets break this all down!

Windtracer Tales

Well, to start I’m working through the chapters on the next Windtracer Tales story, Kingdom of the Slithering Maze, to get it going this month. If you’re looking forward to some more adventure with Tela and her crew, I promise it’s coming! But, there’s a bit more…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been pulling together the chapters to put them into an ebook / book format! This will come with some amazing cover art by Christof Grobelski! Some of his paintings can be found here at Artstation! Then there will be a map for the story, that’s being drawn right now by the amazing Karina. She’s taken my original map I was using to make one that is just mind blowing! Once they’re done, I’ll pull this together, formatting it all, then toss it out into the usual places for purchase. When they are out there, I’ll be sure to let you all know if you’d like a copy!

Which will have links all back to here in case anyone gets a craving to read more!

Legends of the Privateers

I hope everyone is really enjoying Death Whispers of the Etherwave! The story is hitting chapter 12, so we’re getting down into the details. It also means the danger is about to get taken a notch higher. But, I’m so happy with the pace of it right now and where it’s going. Dr. Sangre and his crew are having one seriously no good, very bad time of it. But the fun part is, I’ve got notes for the next story to come after this one!

After I give poor Pedro Sangre and his companions a little time to catch their breath. I mean, they’ll have earned it, right?

Curses By Darklight

Ah, Curses. It’s still in the works but I’m taking my time here. Mostly the worldbuilding is where the time goes since I’m being extra careful with this one. I don’t want to overcommit, but I’m aiming to have this one by summer 2025. We’ll see. I need to get into a routine and a flow here between this one and the other two and not overwhelm myself.

Hoist the Colors

Now! For those coming for the game design, here you go! With the spellcasting and crafting rules done, I did a couple of rounds playing out encounters with a friend of mine playing devil’s advocate. It did two fantastic things, first, it showed that his attempts to break the game … didn’t. In fact, it demonstrated this is robust and really gives players room to run but have guiderails.

Second, it did point out a few flaws and cracks I need to address. For example, there is no ‘dedicated spell list’ like in D&D. Instead, there are three tiers of spells. This is because it’s a narrative system and the player is encouraged to work with the game master on what spell effect they are going for. The tiers are:

- Brass Binding: 2 Stress. Brass Workings or Brass Bindings are simple spells, such as a minor illusion, lighting a fire or candle, an enchanted shield of power, or healing minor Harm (Harm 3 or less).

- Silver Binding: 4 Stress. Silver Bindings covers more moderate spellcasting. More complicated than minor illusions, these are often more destructive or flashy. Some examples are a short stream ice shards, fire shards or similar elemental effects. This also covers healing more complex harm and severe injuries (Harm above 3), summoning a small elemental, or simple telekinesis of hand sized objects.

- Gold Binding: 6 Stress. Gold Workings or Gold Bindings are large-scale displays of power and skill with the Etherwave Arcana. Often this will mark you as a skilled spellcaster, which also may mean your rivals will hunt you down first no matter what. Examples are: casting an illusion that affects a large group or area, large scale elemental effects such as throwing lightning, opening an Arcane Gate using a ship’s portal platform as a Navigator, summoning a large elemental, major telekinesis to move one person, or sending a message telepathically.

Note, there is some cost there, since shaping miraculous spell effects never comes for free. There are special cases and a few limitations, mostly tied to what profession a character has, that limits a player as to what they can do. The above may seem very wide open, but it isn’t.

In this system, the idea is that the player works with the game master to see what they can try. Then they roll a number of dice allocated to their “Channel” skill. So, two dots in Channel (the action you use to ‘cast a spell’ in this game) would mean you roll a 2d6 (2 six-sided dice) to see if you roll a 6 to succeed? Anything else? You get a complication to some degree of problem.

As you can tell, there’s no certainty it’ll work. Odds are high there will be a complication that could erupt from trying a spell at all! That complication could range from minor problems, to a lot of damage to the person casting the spell. It’s a dangerous setting where channeling mystical energy always, always comes with a price, no matter what.

But working out those cracks demonstrated I needed to dive into potion crafting for the setting a bit deeper. Even to the point of giving this a writeup of its own, which I am. After that? If there isn’t anything else too glaring, I’m off to character creation rules! This will let me do a little playtesting with a group to collect some feedback.

And that’s it for this time! What do you think? Got questions? Hey, send them at me in the comments here, message on Substack, or email!

For more about Hoist the Colors, Windtracer Tales, or any of the other fiction I write, please consider subscribing as I would really appreciate the support, sometimes I post behind the scenes on writing, worldbuilding and more. If you’re wanting a deeper look at Hoist the Colors, take the plunge here at the link: Hoist the Colors.

Until next time!

-Kummer Wolfe