The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 6

Welcome everybody to the sixth part of my activity report. Today, I will tell you about my fantasies of omnipotence and my glee to torture innocents.

I am just joking. In fact, today, I will talk about being a roleplaying gamer and game master for most of my life, what it means to me, and why it is part of my activity report series.

I have been a role player since the classical D&D red box — and a game master since not much later when the second first German RPG was published in 1984 (and yes, I own the original „indexed“ box). Aside from that short period — okay, it was not that short, as it lasted until 1989 —with Das Schwarze Auge, known in English as The Dark Eye, I later came back to AD&D with its second edition, where I discovered my lasting love for the Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood.

Naturally, I played and/or game mastered a lot of other systems, and I collect a lot just for the fun of reading them. But the Forgotten Realms, with all its subsidiaries, like The Horde, Kara-Tur, Matztica, and Al-Qadim combined with Planescape, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft, is and stays my all-time favorite.

In this thrilling mix of settings, I created a campaign in the mid-‘90s, which started right before the Time of Troubles in the year of 1357 DR.

After all those years, this campaign is still going on. But, unfortunately, we had a very long break because of all the issues life imposed upon all of us, and not to a small degree because of my mental breakdown.

When we resumed playing irregularly a few years ago, we switched first from AD&D II shortly to D&D 3.0/3.5 and then to Pathfinder. We also tried out D&D 5. But meanwhile, we use a custom rule mix of the Pathfinder system ported to fit the Forgotten Realms setting how it was before D&D 4). And yes, we totally ignored D&D 4 (rules and Realmslore) and do the same with the actual D&D 5 rules and lore, as we regard them rather as a form of HeroQuest Enhanced instead of being a suitable TTRPG system for our tastes.

Initially, we started to play in the world of Golarion from the Pathfinder setting, as our group is hugely reduced in strength compared to the good old times when we were between 6 to 8 people around the table. We used that time to get ourselves comfortable with the new system; however, my players and I were never thrilled with the world of Golarion, as it just sucks. Eventually, my players, who are also my lifelong friends, nudged me to continue our campaign in the Forgotten Realms, of which I was a long time opposed. I was opposed to that idea as we stopped our campaign around 2005/2006 with 7 players right before a climactic event, and I feared that continuing there would spell certain doom to them. Especially as we still had issues with understanding some rules — mainly because the translators of Pathfinder into German often had no clear understanding of the rule mechanics and apparently at times also had problems understanding the English text. At the same time, they generally lacked the skill to write coherently in German.

After I figured out that most rule issues are based on bad translations, I started to translate the rules myself and declared my translations to overrule any official German rule texts. I fear, in the end, I will have translated most of the rules, so fucked up are the official German translations.

Playing again in the Forgotten Realms also means I need to rework many a spell (mostly renaming them) and many a monster (either by recreating unique classical D&D monsters with Pathfinder stats or using the Pathfinder stats of monsters known in both systems, but with the monster description of the original D&D (Forgotten Realms) version, as those also suck in Pathfinder). Not to mention that I need to convert whole pantheons and their clerics and priests with their powers from D&D 3.0/3.5 to Pathfinder.

As you can see, these alone are massive undertakings, and I still have not talked about all the time needed to work myself back into the lore of the Forgotten Realms and our campaign after so many years.

Unfortunately, we started to resume our campaign right when the pandemic emerged in 2020, and thus we had not much time to seriously play yet. But, on the other side, that gave me enough time to get back into the material, and meanwhile, my players tell me that I am on a good way back to the glorious day of being the best game master they ever knew. I am trying my best to fulfill their expectations – and mine.

I love torturing them with my devious imagination, scaring the shit out of them with my adversaries, stealing their breath with intriguing adventures, and intoxicating them with fantastic plots.

Being a game master is my devotion as much as being a writer — and to be honest, for me, there is no clear distinction between them as I spin tales with both pastimes. And I love to tell stories! My own character is not by chance a bard.

You can imagine, I spent a lot of time reading and preparing the last two years, and doing so inspired my creativity and gave me itches to write more fantasy stories — once more.

As, hopefully, the pandemic is lessening its grip, we resumed playing every second Friday for a while now, and we have a lot of fun doing so. But that also means I need parts of my spare time to prepare those game nights, time that I cannot work on the projects for the Society of Lust or on the content for The Realms of AbyssalEros. However, as being again a game master inspires my creativity, you will eventually profit from it, too. Promise.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 3

Some of you know that in 2020 I translated the episodic kinetic visual novel Elsa‘s Nightmares, written by Tlaero from Tora Productions, into German as my gift for her un-retirement.

And later in September the same year, I informed you that I also translated their game Life Changes for Keeley.

However, since then, I have translated many more projects of them, which I have not told you about. So, here is the follow-up of everything I have translated so far.

In October 2020, Tlaero published her first text-based short story, Rain God, which is a sort of follow-up of happenings of Life Changes for Keeley.

Still in 2020, namely November, Tora Production started to publish another episodic kinetic visual novel, Elsaverse: Transitions, whose sixth and last episode was published in May 2021.

Already in July 2021 followed Westbank, another short story taking up the arch from Rain God.

In between, I worked on translating Mortze’s solo project, The Warrior’s Heart, of which, up to now, I translated roughly half of it.

On the 15th of December, Tora Productions published their next big game within the Elsaverse, Chasing Beth, and I had roughly 13 days of head-up time for the translation. As you might already assume from what I told you in the first two parts of my activity reports, I was not able to start working on the translation in December at all. And this bothered me immensely. Do not get me wrong; Tlaero and Mortze have never given me a deadline or demanded anything from me. In fact, they told me more than once, I could take my time.

Thus, the game was initially published without a German translation.

And already on Xmas eve, Tlaero told me that she had finished the next short story and was about to publish it very soon.

So, after all the troublesome times of last year and right after my birthday on Janus‘ Day, I set myself down to translate the short story, Sister, which is again in a continuity of the previous short stories. I finished this translation on the 6th of January, but it was published much later, namely on the 2nd of February, despite the original intention.

Right after that, I started with the translation of Chasing Beth, and I needed the rest of January to finish the translation of the impressive script (over 33.000 words on 79 pages) so that the German translation was published on the 30th day of the year 2022.

As you see, I spent a lot of time and effort on translations for Tora Productions, and that I did, because I really have high regard for them, so if you have not checked them out yet, do it now. And if you happen to be German-speaking, try the translations and tell me what you think of them.

However, I realized I cannot do that anymore, as I need the spare time I have to work mainly on my own projects, which naturally includes the projects of the Society of Lust. And thus, I wrote with a heavy heart on Thursday a letter to Tlaero and Mortze that I cannot translate their future projects anymore into German.

I am happy that they understood my reasoning and bear no ill-will for telling them right before they are about to publish their next project that I will not translate it, as I did with all their projects for the last two years.

However, now I reached the second page of my report once more, and therefore I close it with my well-wishes for them and all of you.

Sincerely yours
AbyssalEros

The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 2

So, what else is there to report that I wouldn’t bore you with?

Perhaps we’ll risk a look at my battling windmills over the past few years. While karma has been screwing the world at large since the beginning of the Pandemic, my problems actually started much earlier. I don’t want to whine or be pitied; I just want to explain how it nearly came to my retreat from digital art.

Actually, I only joined an adult content creator, who later became my friend, as a writer back in the days when Patreon wasn’t ashamed of this clientele when it simply took our money without hesitation and just let us do our thing.

I am not condemning some regulation regarding intolerable, because clearly illegal content, but, what Patreon has done since those days, and continues to do, is clearly a kick in the guts for any adult content creator.

While adult content creators were already hidden behind a reasonable soft barrier (you had to confirm as a user that you wanted to see adult content first), additional mechanisms were later introduced or existing ones abolished (like the suggested creators). Unfortunately, ultimately those changes led to smaller adult content creators, like us, going completely unnoticed, as simply no one can find them on Patreon unless they have a direct link to them.

This alone makes it challenging to build a following, let alone one willing to pay for content.

And here we are, of course, already at the even bigger problem, the missing content. As you probably know, my friend Grabiobot was already thoroughly screwed by fate before the Pandemic. So I will not repeat this here.

Sure, it all sounds like whining, but it isn’t supposed to be. I’m actually trying to say that the Society of Lust couldn’t get content in the form of a game off the ground for a long time. Yes, I could have written and written and written. And, in fact, I did just that. But without artwork, no visual novel, or any other game! It’s just that simple.

I tried my best to acquire the necessary skills to create digital images myself in the little time I had available. However, since I started from scratch, this was quite a long and rocky road that I still tread.

Last year, after feeling empowered enough to do so, I was faced with the choice of either working on My Life with Laura, Night of our Graduation, or Books Make Dreams Come True to deliver that content for the Society of Lust.

In the end, I chose the latter because it was the shortest and, in my opinion, the most straightforward project I could do on my own while gaining more skills and experience for the other ones.

My Life with Laura was obviously skipped because we won’t be developing this game for Ren’Py, but for Caligine, our own game engine. However, I’m considering making the introduction a teaser for Ren’Py. In any case, the text has been ready for a long time.

Night of our Graduation seemed a bit too scary for me as the first visual novel to be done almost entirely on my own.

Books Make Dreams Come True progressed reasonably well, even though I faltered at one point or another and had to delve deeper into certain DAZ Studio features than I had before to solve problems that arose.

At the same time, I tried to keep the Society of Lust alive and posted more or less regular content on Patreon. Sadly, this is mostly only possible behind the enforced paywall for adult content and is almost impossible for anyone to see. And to be honest, I almost gave up because of the lack of enthusiastic reactions – or any at all. After all, we only had less than a handful of patrons left.

DeviantArt — and in a certain sense also Slushe — let me continue because I got encouragement for my artwork, at least from this side. Unfortunately, Slushe developed in hindsight into a poisonous sting that caused self-doubt. But I have already talked about that in the first part of this Activity Report series.

Books Make Dreams Come True is a kinetic visual novel in nine chapters (rather sense or scene divisions), out of which for six, the images are already completed. Chapters 8 and 9 are relatively short and do not contain all that many images. Chapter 7, however, is the chapter that provides the so-called main adult content and will require some serious work on my part.

But enough for today, I bored you enough, I fear.

I will keep you posted on the development.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 1

It’s been a long time since I’ve written an activity report. And don’t worry, I’m not going to write a multi-page pamphlet. At least, I hope not.

In fact, it’s been so long that I don’t even know where to begin. So do I just start where I think it would be a good place to start, or where it almost came to a messy end?

I think I should start at the possible ending, though.

However, I need some introductory explanations for that.

As you know, I’ve only recently – though recently, as I was shocked to realize the other day, is actually the wrong adverb – taken up digital art, namely using 3D assets to render images.

Since I have a full-time job (even though I hate my job abysmally, as it just makes you dumb and drained), I have pretty little time to devote to what’s really important: My hobbies.

Of course, my most important hobby is my girlfriend, and in order not to upset her, I naturally have a few things to do at home, like our nameless protagonist of “A Very Small Business” once had to do, besides the obligatory cuddling.

If we add an average of 5 to 6 hours of sleep, I have no more than 6 hours a day to indulge in my hobbies. But, of course, that is if my nerve-racking work hasn’t completely worn me out.

Most of the time, it’s not even these 6 hours that I can muster.

But why am I telling you all this?

The answer is that I try to put as much as I can into this meager free time to improve myself and my skills, but I regularly get to the point where self-doubt gnaws at me about whether I’m imposing too much on myself and that my digital works are just bad.

My self-doubt got worse and worse in the last quarter of the past year until I was on the verge of saying goodbye to digital art completely in December to focus only on writing.

Of course, this also affected my mood and made me quite discontented. And this also led me to stop working on the visual novel “Books Make Dreams Come True,” although I only still had to render the images for the last 2 or 3 chapters. But more about “Books Make Dreams Come True” another time.

My girlfriend, Farra and Grabiobot, and other good friends, especially Willibrordus, eventually managed to convince me not to give up.

Moreover, in the meantime, I was also able to locate the main sting of my self-doubt and consequently pulled it out of my flesh.

I made the mistake last year of posting my images on Slushe as well, but since they don’t match their usual subjects, I misinterpreted the disregard I received there through their feature system.

Since I left Slushe behind in December and was able to give myself enough confidence again by reworking old images (e.g., the image series “A Photo Shooting with Rose“), I’m also doing much better.

This is to say that as soon as possible, I will continue working on “Books Make Dreams Come True,” and from then on, my priority will be this project.

Well, here I have already reached the second page of text and have not nearly dealt with all the topics that would have to be addressed. But I think I have annoyed you enough for today.

See you soon, and thanks to all of you for your support.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

First Post

Welcome to my very own website and my very first post.

I will use this site not only to offer my stories and images in a similar way as I do at my Patreon but also to keep you updated on more mundane stuff.

Here you will find from now on my ramblings about what I am doing, not only what I am working on, but also what books or visual novels I am reading, what games I am playing, or what I am learning at the moment. And much more.

To be honest, I have not had time lately to do anything but learn, improve, and work on several projects at the same time.

However, as now one more of my secret projects has come more or less to a fruitful end, expect soon more of me.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros