It should be Building That World, though if the blog template supports italics in the title, I cannot figure it out.
What am I doing here? No, not the quintessential existential question, but specifically, why am I blogging and what am I blogging about? Well, I'm blogging in part to give me an Internet presence without the hassle of paying for and keeping up a website (at this time). The subject, however, is going to be about building The World of Grimfall, which I'll kindly call an 'ambitious' project of mine.
What is The World of Grimfall? Well, it's a fictional world created as a platform for great storytelling and great adventuring. Hopefully, with the help of some of you reading this blog today, and dozens (hundreds? thousands!?) of others, The World of Grimfall will come to be all of those things and more to people all over the world.
You may ask for more details about The World of Grimfall and how I intend to bring it to realization, and you know what? I am going to tell you right now! Well, at least at a high level.
Grimfall is a new fictional universe that is inspired by countless influences of mine, and also a desire to see , read and play out the really cool adventures that I've always wanted to have. It as you can see below is going to be a genre crossing and mixing universe, that will hopefully capture the imagination of many of you, just like it has mine.
The Initial Phase is a comic and a novel(la?). These are already in the works, but I'll be using Kick Starter to fund some of that, primarily the distribution of the product, but also the art pipeline for the comic.
The 2nd phase is going to be RPG support. I am leaning towards creating it as supplements for the popular gaming systems though I am also currently considering developing my own system or using one of the excellent open license ones available. This is an important consideration because it will have a bearing on phase 3.
Phase 3 is the first computer game. As of right now it is intended more as a proof of concept game, to illustrate that the mechanics from phase 2 can be used in an entertaining computer game. It could be that the first two phases are successful enough that phase 3 is a fully rendered 3D stand-alone game, but at this time it's likely to be a 2D game using pixels.
The 4th Phase is going to be a board game, tentatively titled Warlords of Grimfall. The idea is that it is two games in one, one side of the game board being a strategic game, along the lines of Risk or Settlers of Catan (don't worry, with lots of new, cool stuff) and then flip the other side to a game that is more like Dungeon (but well, really different).
Phase 5 is going to be a full-blown many player online RPG. Again this will use as many of the mechanics as possible from phase 2, but it will have some really unique twists on how the players interact with the world and with each other. Things, that at this point, no one else has done yet.
I am hoping, as early as the start of Phase 2, I'll be able to attract some talented artists and writers to also play around in The World of Grimfall. We'll see how that goes, but I'd really like to sort of get it going and let the world have at it, continuing to add to it and improve it like many of the other famous IP's you're probably thinking of. If I could also make enough money while I'm doing it to quit my job and do it full time, that would be even better.
More to come!
Neal
