50,000 words of SAGA I

My main draft is now 50,240 words, to be more precise. That’s 444 complete passages – and 405 is the most recent. It seems common practice among many gamebook authors to fill up their passages from 1 to 400 (or 800… or 1512 etc) and then re-order. I prefer to fix the numbers early on, as the number of links in an open-world gamebook can make re-numbering a real challenge. There are passages with more than twenty entry points, for example.

I’ve spent a few sessions planning the winter events at the four (yes, four!) settlement sites. There’s Brevik, the main settlement in which you begin as Jarl, and then three more locations you can scout, claim and settle. I mean to include the same mechanic in each other volumes, each of which has a planned starting settlement and three locations to start a new Viking story.

Anyway, early on in the sequence of settling, your folk will want to have the land shared out fairly. Fail this test (which is currently dependent on your DRENGSKAPR, with modifiers) and you will be sorry – particularly if Jorun is in your crew! She makes a great ally in battle, but she does not like wasting her time with arguments about farmland.