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vorropohaiah In reply to pyrofly999 [2019-06-27 14:54:45 +0000 UTC]

thanks, though cland/s is fine - its the word used for Oghur communities.

I'll update the text to correct the mistake with ddry

Thanks for reading it all too

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pyrofly999 In reply to vorropohaiah [2019-06-28 12:51:24 +0000 UTC]

You have an impressive breadth of work, from the detailed cartography to the rich lore. I feel like you should team up with a really good artist to draw characters and scenery and then publish a massive book. Maybe a new campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons? The next Game of Thrones? There's so much here, the possibilities are endless.

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vorropohaiah In reply to pyrofly999 [2019-06-29 14:31:25 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the kind words, and yes I wish I could get an artist to help our with the world, but good art comes at a high price,which I cannot pay. Commissioning one sketchy piece of art earlier this year set me back about $750, which I just cannot afford.

I'd like to find someone who would like to help flesh out the world, and I'd be willing to give them half my monthly patreon earnings. I was thinking of check on places like Artstation, cconceptart.org and of course the forums here to see if I can get lucky. Not holding my breath though

I intend on making the Atlas Elyden available as a pdf and possibly a print book once it's done. And if I can get art done I;d seriously think of a rules-neutral campaign setting / travelogue / encyclopaedia for the world. I am also working on a novel that i hope to publish. My patreon also has lots of short stories and flash fiction to give an idea of the world.

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pyrofly999 In reply to vorropohaiah [2019-06-29 16:01:25 +0000 UTC]

I'm in the same boat. I'm currently writing (and have been writing for over a year) several subclasses and one new class for D&D. Each also has a sort of miniature campaign setting included, with new equipment, weapons, magical items, artifacts, spells, flora & fauna, locations, and NPC factions. I've been researching artists as well, both on DA and ArtStation, saving names and emails of all the "good" ones. I didn't know about cconceptart, I'll check them out. I'm hearing prices between $500 and $800 for finished pieces, even oil on canvas, so $750 for just a low-tier concept sketch seems high. Most artists would include a few sketches as part of the process for the finished piece.

I like the system-neutral idea as a resource. With the amount of work you have, you could probably approach D&D/WotC with it, or perhaps Green Ronin Publishing (they're the ones who did the Tal'Dorei campaign book with Matthew Mercer). Hell, just get one or two pieces of art with your own money, add a few pics/links of your cartography, and give it a shot on KickStarter. The publishers could help with estimated art/printing cost figures. I could see this as a big 'ol thick book, at least the size of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. Your history and lore is so much more rich and in-depth than other games.

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vorropohaiah In reply to pyrofly999 [2019-06-29 16:55:13 +0000 UTC]

My bad - I made a mistake with the currency conversion - it was £350ish.

I'd be happy to licence some quality pieces that i think really embody the aesthetic of the world.

I'd certainly see a book about Elyden to be a thick one, even though there'd be no rules (but lots of sidebars with ideas and suggestions). I have close to 600,000 words written in this format - www.patreon.com/posts/encyclop… , and that's just the encyclopaedia entires, many of which are pretty irrelevant. The nation travelogues have a lot of words too

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pyrofly999 In reply to vorropohaiah [2019-06-30 00:53:37 +0000 UTC]

Gosh! That looks like a formatter's/editor's nightmare. Having to cross-reference an entire planet is...really difficult! My personal opinion: Follow a two-column format using [Chapter>Large Heading>Small Heading>Sub-Heading>Smaller Sub-Heading] type of setup. So, for instance, [Continent>Geographic Region>Country>Counties/City-States>Towns & Villages]. That way everything reads in order of location, rather than skipping around and flipping pages to find stuff. The way it's written now you could have two cities with alphabetically-ordered names that are on different continents, and the reader has to turn to that chapter or map and back again.

It also seems like you're having to write a portion of the information twice, once in the encyclopedia and again on the map. Linking all those terms seems like you're working yourself harder. In my above example, you could just reference the map section with typical roadmap grids: "The Cazgul cave is in sector D5."  Then have a simple index in the back: "Cazgul, City pg. 34; Cazgul, Cave pg. 35, see also Map D5" or whatever.

The poems and tidbits of lore I could definitely see as sidebar material on their respective pages.

I don't mean to sound like I'm trying to reorder everything, but it's such an amazingly technical body of work that I fear people will find it TOO technical and either lose interest or feel overwhelmed trying to take it all in.

I haven't read through everything, just catch bits whenever they pop up on my feed, but do you also have plants and flora for each region? Common weather features, like rainstorms or persistent fog? Do you have fantasy races like dwarves, elves, gnomes, halfings...maybe lizardfolk of the marshes, etc.? Or is it mostly human?

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vorropohaiah In reply to pyrofly999 [2019-06-30 06:02:03 +0000 UTC]

All the entries are hyperlinked to within an inch of their lives - in fact the link i posted shows all the hyperlinks in the document, so cross-referencing relevant details should not be difficult.

Also, I should probably clarify what the encyclopaedia is meant to be. For the full version you can check here - www.reddit.com/r/Elyden/commen…

TLDR: 5 volumes: 1) is the bullet points, 2) physical encyclopaedia (geography, physics, flora and fauna, humanoids etc.), 3) travelogue (the closest thing to a DnD campaign setting so far) 4) myth, religion, magic 5) atlas.

I've started doing some technical drawing for fauna, which are basiucally secreenshots of their entries from Vol 2 of the encyclopaedia. The ones I;ve done so far can be found here - www.deviantart.com/vorropohaia…

The Atlas is going to have a comprehensive index at the back, with all locations referenced by page and grid number. The encyclopaedia and atlas are intended as 2 separate volumes, so each needs separate referencing.

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pyrofly999 In reply to vorropohaiah [2019-06-30 16:02:47 +0000 UTC]

I guess I'm having trouble figuring out why you even have the "traditional encyclopedia" Vol. 1, the one that you gave the page example with pink hyperlinks. Isn't that redundant? It almost feels like that's the index, though more elaborate. I don't know why people would read things alphabetically listed, and just snippets at that. The pages on your DA gallery for each country, like Gnoth for example, list all the logistical stats, numbers, and descriptive text. Aren't you basically putting the same information (just less of it) in the Vol. 1? Why does the reader need bullet points? Could you just merge Vol. 1 and 2 together, or does Vol. 1 contain different info?

The fauna art is functional, but I could see full-color art there in addition to the size comparison line art. You're going to need to win the lottery to commission all this art!

I have only one criticism about the world map: the continent/large island in the lower right seems oddly shaped. The bottom right coastline of it doesn't have a natural feel, and is jarring to the eye. Almost has a rectangle feel.

You have a lot of work here, and much more to go. I don't know how you find the time. Plus a novel?! There's certainly enough here to rival Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, even Conan and the world of Hyborea. I realize you want to create this all on your own, but with such a daunting amount of info, finding a publisher might lessen your workload. Sure, you'd have to share the profits, but they may have resources you can't get on your own, like the money artists.

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vorropohaiah In reply to pyrofly999 [2019-06-30 19:02:42 +0000 UTC]

Basically the 5 volumes are intended to be an in-universe book - the sum of all knowledge in the world of Elyden, and this is my reproduction of the 5 volumes, sort of how the Lord of the Rings was technically written by Bilbo, Frodo and Samwise and present to us as a translation.

As an in-world book series based on the way Victorians would have presented such a series, there will be redundancies, repeated information etc.

Vol I is presents everything in a general, TLDR way. I think an index is actually a good way to describe it. Entries that have more comprehensive information in Vol 2 - 4 actually have a note at the end of the entry, effectively saying - for more comprehensive information on this, refer to Vol X. The fauna entries in Vol I would be a few lines of the most general information, with Vol II presenting the information that I've been posting.

Though in truth Vol I has become my 'thing' it's the 1 thing I'd pick to continue working on if I had to make that choice. I want to be able to print a version of it for myself, possibly hand-bind, just so i can tell myself that's my world, not many people have done this before me. If anyone is interested in that and would like to explore the world in that format, or any of the other formats that I present it in, all the better. You mentioned a publisher - if I had to do anything for the world it would have to be crowdfunded or self-published, as I have no expectations that anyone would be interested in tackling all this! maybe a novel if I ever finish it, but that implies that the novel would be worthy of getting a real publisher's attention in the first place

I know that most people who have shown an interest have done so regarding the Atlas - fair enough, as people respond best to visual stuff. Though like you said, at this point I really need to win a lottery to be able to afford the amount of art that I want for the world!

The fauna listings would be more realistic drawings, if I could afford them - I can't draw to the level that I'd be comfortable presenting to people. If I could that's what I;d be showing.

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pyrofly999 In reply to vorropohaiah [2019-07-01 00:14:27 +0000 UTC]

I think your world could appeal to both fantasy gamers and mature readers of fantasy content. It's believable. TOR Books is the first publisher I think of for fantasy novels - I think they've done them all! As for other types of publishing, you don't give yourself enough credit. If I were a publisher I would certainly "tackle" all this...I'd just have to use it across multiple formats. Books, roleplaying games, video games, movies/TV shows, action figures, etc. like a legit product IP.  Kinda like how Fantasy Flight Games uses the world of Terranoth for several titles of boardgames. Different game, same lore; it's how they get more mileage out it I guess. I have faith something good will eventually come of this, more so than what we already see.

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vorropohaiah In reply to pyrofly999 [2019-07-01 05:21:25 +0000 UTC]

thanks for the encouraging words I certainly hope to be able to do more with the world in the future.

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