Table Reveal: Shrine Generator
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 12:18:10 PM
Venerators!
Please forgive our silence. We've been hammering away, and now there's something new to show you.
Generator Tables
This book's Gameplay Tools section begins with procedural, generative tables for creating and populating your own sacred scenery. After weeks of exploring table styles with Tibetan-inspired decorative elements, layout for these tools is functionally complete (I'm sure we'll make some tweaks).
Saving the other tables for release, here's the book's biggest and baddest: a full-spread Shrine Generator. The curation of these parameters is a load-bearing pillar of the book at large for the historical, functional, and mythological scopes they define. This should be a reasonably exhaustive range of what shrines can be. As always with generative tables, this is a worldbuilding tool, which means it aims to prompt your imagination with cool possibilities and then get out of the way.
Full-spread image
The Gameplay Tools section will also contain the following procedural tables:
Plus a non-procedural table for Atmosphere containing five Details for each of the following Tones:
- Tranquility
- Doom
- Vigor
- The Sublime
- Hope
Discord Link
As always, please join us on Discord if you're inclined to discuss and see more of this project.
In touch,
James
Color adjusments for readability
about 1 year ago
– Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 03:13:27 PM
I wanted to get this one quickly, lest fear and doubt take root.
Colors
First of all, thank you to the commenters who, with admirable politeness, noted that the layout samples I shared yesterday were too harsh on the eyes. I actually agree and have been quietly expecting changes to these colors for some time. A readability pass was always going to happen—probably in conjunction with final content reviews and coordination with the printer—and its arrival now just means the end is truly near.
Tl;dr: I will work closely with the printer to ensure this book's readability. I didn't write all these fancy words for them to hurt the reader's eyes. The colors we've been using look beautiful in illustrations, but if you wouldn't read an essay in them they are not right for this book.
Revisiting the list of inks that our printer offers, here's my current thinking:
Conner and I dig this new pairing quite a bit, however it is also not necessarily final. We'll continue experimenting, which of course includes another physical test-proof. A different color and/or typeface for the body text are also on the table.
I can't overstate how much I, the writer, value readability, so please trust that I'll contort into an Uzumaki spiral if I must to deliver.
Back to the grindstone,
James
Layout well underway
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 07:29:03 PM
Shrines backers!
How have I not called you "Venerators" yet? It could be like "Swifties" or "Beliebers," but for art-house indie books about bodhisattvas. I hear that shit makes billions.
Layout
In truth, I've been laying out the book this whole time. Conner established our visual language with the shrines themselves, and I've been building outward with those assets in Affinity. Book design is cool—a worthy craft. I've been reading this to at least reduce my classic-blunder count. I hope people like this book so I can do this again.
Here's the style of the text-heavy pages. This spread is a player-facing gameplay mechanic that spun out of the Sacred Hearths—an example of how the Gameplay Tools section expanded beyond generator tables.
Conner just turned in a pile of decorative filigree elements and final illustrations that unblock me to stand up most of the book. Updates should come more quickly now that content approaches lock, editing begins, and the printers and I start the alchemy of riso inks.
More soon,
James
Reworks: Henge of the Holy Footstep & Pagoda of Saint Kiran the Eye
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Dec 24, 2024 at 10:25:12 AM
Happy holidays, everyone. May oversized hoodies and cocoa steam silence all thoughts but "Mmmmmm."
Discord
Discord link up front this time. Come hang, share your projects, influence this one, etc.
Reworks
As I repeatedly delay this book through scope-creeps toward something better, it feels important to show you what that means. Here are two shrines from the Kickstarter campaign that showcased the minimalism we've since found insufficient.
Pagoda of Saint Kiran the Eye
Previously:
Now:
"Use more Tibetan words," the Khenpo said before monologuing about geological time. I scribbled on a pad like "Hell yeah, hell yeah."
Previously:
Now:
"That looks like a beyul," the Khenpo said, reminding me of a word I forgot and a concept I've been vibing on since I was a kid. You may recall this shrine being the campaign's example of fiction outside Himalayan tradition, but we're approaching an "Oops, All Buddhism" situation over here, and honestly, it's awesome.
That's it for today, so I'll talk to you all in the new year!
Hard at work, and excited for layout reveals,
James
Cultural consultation with Khenpo Pema Wangdak
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Dec 06, 2024 at 02:17:37 PM
Hi, everyone!
I hope you're all enjoying winter's arrival as much as I am. It snowed here for a moment the other day, and I realized as my breathing changed that I hadn't expected to see that again. Hyperbolic, for sure, but mainly just premature—we'll get a few more of these yet.
Cultural Consultation
Now that the vast majority of both art and writing is complete, we're ready for Khenpo Pema Wangdak—director of the the Vikramasila Foundation, a Tibetan Buddhist educational non-profit in New York City—to review the illustrations, narrative text, and gameplay hooks (to which he's surprisingly hip).
We met this this morning for the first of two sessions and took this selfie with the Windows Snipping Tool:
The "inter-pollination of culture," as the Khenpo put it, was a major theme of our discussion as I found myself over-qualifying the degree to which a given design was Buddhist or not Buddhist or Buddhism-adjacent when it's allowed to bridge its references as global conversation. His recommendations were either surgical one-word tweaks, connections to myths I didn't know and so must learn, or open-ended musing about questions in his own practice (which I found especially generative).
At least one shrine from the Kickstarter campaign just gained a whole new dimension.
Shrine Reveal
To illustrate the impact of even subtle changes, here's a new, WIP shrine reveal (your reward for reading) that simply gained a Tibetan name to better connect its fiction, which references the Desert Fathers of Orthodox Christianity, to the classic Bodhisattva posture in its art.
EM|NCD is grateful for the Khenpo Pema's insight, rapport, and especially time.
Discord
As always, please join us on Discord, where I invite you to participate in this book's ongoing development. I workshopped Wandering Effigies ad nauseam with the crew we have so far, and even the book's essay is now under review. Hope to see you there!
With love, and in touch,
James
