Carved in Stone

Created by Dungeons on a Dime

A system-agnostic setting guide to Scotland’s Pictish peoples, for players, historians and enthusiasts of all ages!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Behind the Scenes 9: Writing Underway!
about 1 year ago – Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 10:55:53 AM

Hey fellow Pict enthusiasts (if you aren't a Pict enthusiast, you will be soon). I'm not one for waffling so let's get into it.

Where We're At

  •  Research. All of the research for Carved in Stone was officially completed in mid February 2023. It was a herculean effort from Heather, and it involved sourcing evidence from across multiple cultures and time periods, piecing together a lot of specific information, and consulting with experts throughout the Pictish field.
  •  Peer Review 1. This research was sent to two peer reviewers. The first is Dr Mary Rambaran-Olm, an early medieval expert. The second is Zedeck Siew, a TTRPG creator and (in my opinion) brilliant writer of evocative cultures. In this first round they were provided with all of our internal-facing research summaries, and our (then current) content outline for the whole book. Their feedback, received late February 2023, was overwhelmingly reassuring. Many of their suggestions related to how information could be presented, and those suggestions often aligned with our own plans. Further suggestions showed areas of the book that have since been reinforced with additional research. 
  •  Narrative Planning. We used a few weeks to implement the suggestions from our peer review. After that, Lizy and I have been assembling detailed digests for each page. These highlight the building of information within a page, as well as across whole sections. These also include breakdowns of where information would be presented; in text, in illustration, in diagrams, etc. 
  •  Layout Drafts. With the skeleton of the book planned, I've been able to develop draft layout spreads. Usually layout is approached with a finished written text in hand, but as we've talked about in previous updates, we wanted to give visuals an equal focus throughout the book. To do this, we need to know how big images will be on a page, how much space that leaves for the remaining text, and so on.  This is also our opportunity to build in visual accessibility, such as developing proto-briefs for the visuals and outlining what information they need to convey (which can then later help refine the order a screen reader would move through the content, and the Alt-Text it would read out for illustrations).
  •  Writing. Finally, with all of the book laid out and writing goals established, we're able to start writing draft content of the book. Lizy and I have already worked on experimental spreads earlier this year, exploring how we want to use tone and writing styles. We're feeling confident as we move onto this next stage of development.
Screenshot of digitally drawn notes over a page template. The notes provide different sized boxes as spaces for text, with illustrations scribbled in and around them.  Some of the illustrations include annotated maps of Scotland, and a group of figures discussing a topic,.
Example Layout Drafts
Another screenshot of digitally drawn notes. Some of the illustrations include a group of people standing above a timeline of events, a circular wheel with annotated text pop outs, and a map of Scotland.
Further Layout Drafts.

What's next?

  • Peer Review 2. Lizy and I are going to be working hard the next two months. Our second peer review is slated for the end of April, and we're hoping to provide a final draft in a bare-bones layout, including descriptions of artwork and diagrams. Our aim for this review is to receive direct suggestions about where the text misrepresents the Picts, or could be more evocative or useful to Roleplayers at the table.
  • Implementing PR2 Changes. We'll need a week or so to discuss and then make those changes to what will become our final draft.
  • Edits. By Mid-May I hope to hand the final draft to an editor, who will be screening the book for spelling, grammar and phrasing inconsistencies. They'll hand back the final text.
  • Creating Briefs. During the editing period, I will be turning the descriptions of artwork and diagrams into full briefs for freelance illustrators. We already have a few artists that we'd love to work with, and most likely around early April I'll be posting a call-out for portfolios.  I'll be briefing artists Late May.
  • Artwork Deadlines. I'm aiming for drafts to start coming in from Late June, and finals to come in Late July.  Working with so many different people, I anticipate there will be delays due to illness and personal reasons.
  • Backer Review. Sometime from Mid-August I'm hoping we'll have a mostly-final book to show all of you. It'll have been a long time coming, and we'll love hear all of your thoughts on it.
  • Implementing Backer Changes. Of course, hearing your thoughts may mean we'll want to make additional changes of the book! Our goal here will be to facilitate clarity of wording, and the functionality of the text.
  • Digital Accessibility & Printing. Once we've done all of this, we'll be ready to prepare Carved in Stone for printing and fulfilment. Once it's sent to print, we'll also be able to finalise different visual accessibility options, such as proper screen reader formatting, finalised alt-text, and different formats of the book.

Other Important Things

  • Special Rewards. We've not forgotten about the higher tiers, and how important their support has been to be able to work on Carved in Stone. 
  • Pictish Postcards. These will be easy enough to put together once art is commissioned, and will be fulfilled alongside the books (hopefully) later this year.
  • Name Carvers.  We're working to establish a fun and simple way to collect all of this information, and relay it into the book. The exciting thing about Ogham is that it's not an alphabet we can match 1-to-1 to the Romantic alphabet we use today, so part of gathering the names will also include education on how to make it work! We're hoping to start surveys for this in May/June 2023.
  • Pin Badges. The design for the pin badge was shown in the very first update. Aside from some tweaking, it's ready to be ordered and fulfilled with the book (hopefully) later this year.
  • Troves. Jeff from the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland has sourced a delightful collection of academic texts for all you knowledge-thirsty historians. They're currently safe in the Society's hands, but will be ready for fulfilment with your books (hopefully) later this year.
  • Masterclasses. Last year was a bit chaotic for everyone. When I initially started sending out surveys to schedule master classes, I didn't receive any responses for quite a while, and still haven't heard back. Now that we're in the thickest part of the book process, I think it's best to begin trying to re-organise the masterclasses after the Backer Review - sometime in August.

"Hopefully Later This Year"

You may have noticed this phrase pop-up throughout this update. I want Carved in Stone to be finished so badly. This project is terrifically exciting and also overdue. That said, I don't know what further delays the world has planned; we've already seen paper shortages, shipping crises, Brexit floundering, the possibility of Scottish Independence, and goodness knows what else to come. 

At the heart of it, Carved in Stone is organised by me, one person, and worked on solidly by three people (myself, Heather and Lizy). We're working as hard as we can, and on an extremely tight budget. Whatever boulder is in our way next, we'll get around it, but it will take us a bit longer than much larger publishers!

~~~

That's all I have for this update. I'll be back when we hit the next milestone, which I'm hoping is glowing approval from Peer Review 2 and an editor telling me that Carved in Stone is the most beautifully written book they've ever had the pleasure to work on.  (I can dream).

-- Brian. 

Behind the Scenes 8: Happy New Year!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 02:58:54 AM

Hey everyone!

Happy new year, and happy new Carved in Stone update! This one talks about where we're out with our current progress, a sample of draft work from Section 1, and a big thank you for your patience so far :)

Current Progress

Over December we've had a few consultations with other Pictish specialists and a blacksmith, and those notes have helped us round out some weak spots in our knowledge.

Heather is currently finalising their research, compiling cliff note versions, and preparing to share what we'll be using to write the book with our peer reviewers. These peers will take a few days in February to check through our points, and suggest areas that need additional work. 

From March 2023, Lizy and I aim to be writing the draft text for the whole book, with a second peer review at the end of April to make sure the messages throughout are consistent, fair, and meeting the inclusivity goals we set in the Kickstarter campaign as best we can.

Sneak Peak - Short and Damp

Over the winter, Lizy and I have been experimenting with different narrative styles, so that we'd be ready to hit the ground running in March. 

For Section 1: the Natural World, we've established different scenes around Scotland, providing objective information about the locale so that players and GMs can better imagine and roleplay in them. Here's a draft of what's been written for Lochs:

Lochs

The crossroads of all life in Pictland

Lochs are lakes of freshwater that sustain life both in and around them. Water flows down from the surrounding land, sustaining a rich environment for frogs, ducks, water voles, otters, beavers, and more. Pondweeds, water lilies, and bladderwort (one of the world's most complex carnivorous plants) grow at the surface while fish swim below. Other birds and mammals come to the loch to drink water and eat the local wildlife before moving on to other territory.

The average loch is deep, long, and narrow with steep banks teaming with plants and animals. But every loch has its own characteristics, due to a unique blend of water, soils, surroundings, and inhabitants. For example, a loch with a bed of limestone tends to have a larger fly population, leading to an abundance of trout. A loch fed from a blanket bog may be stained yellow or brown by peat and will be shallower than other lochs.

Lochs form downstream from mountains, in valleys carved either by glaciers or by the lochs’ repeated erosion over thousands of years. Snowmelt and rain water only has to travel a short distance before flowing into a loch, or into the sea. As a result there are no long or very wide rivers in Pictland. Occasionally, rivers will connect from a freshwater loch into a seawater loch.

A sea loch is a long, narrow inlet from the ocean. Although it is similar in shape to the average freshwater loch, the water in a sea loch is brackish and subject to changes in tides.

Microfictions

Alongside these objective introductions, we're also including microfictions. These are different perspectives from inside the locale, sometimes from humans, or animals, objects, or even the land itself. They're designed to be informative, and more personal. Here's a microfiction from the Loch:

Life is Short and Damp for the Water Vole.

He is a tiny rodent, semi-aquatic, covered in fuzzy brown fur, from his paws to his ears to the tip of his tail. He munches grass on the bank of a loch, keenly aware that his lunch could be interrupted at any moment by a larger creature. They need lunch too. Maybe it will be a fox with sharp teeth or an otter with clever paws. Perhaps a fearsome stoat only a little bigger than he. Birds of prey like an owl and marsh harrier always seem to have a talon spare to snatch him up.

The worst, the vole thinks, would be a pike. It’s not right for a fish to eat a land critter.

It’s unfortunate that his inclination is to live so close to the water’s edge. He can burrow into the bank or even weave together a little home of reeds above the water, if he has to. His whole family could fit inside. Maybe, he thinks, this makes him enough of a land creature. He’d rather not be eaten by a fish.

Sometimes he envies the other animals around the loch. The beavers with their iron-stained teeth and heavy bite; they are safe in their dams. The ducks and coots can float and fly; their lives must be so much easier than it is to be a water vole. But a vole’s got to keep on keeping on. He grabs a particularly delicious mouthful of grass before disappearing down the throat of a heron. 

Short and damp.

An Ongoing Thank You

I'll close up this update with another huge thank you. Carved in Stone has been a much bigger beast than any of us initially thought, and while we haven't been able to write updates throughout the year as we first hoped, we have been hard at work. 

We really appreciate your patience with us as we chip away at the book ahead of us!

Brian.

Quick Check In
over 1 year ago – Mon, Nov 14, 2022 at 04:36:58 AM

Hey everyone,

As promised, I’m checking back in after a hiatus in updates. July, August, September and October were incredibly hectic months for everyone on the team. Amongst weddings, moving house and family matters, we’ve all been trying to push Carved in Stone forward.

Research. Over the last few months, Heather has made significant progress with the base research for the book; Sections 0 1, 2 are complete, and 3 is underway. There's an incredible amount of original research happening here, much more than we thought would be needed, and so we're trying to be as thorough as possible. 

For example, Section 1: The Natural World collates different natural scenes from around Scotland for players to explore: bogs, moorlands, lochs, and more. 

Unfortunately, no matter where we've looked we haven't been able to find suitable entry-level resources that summarise what these areas are like. Heather is sifting through 60-page government county analysis documents and in-depth chemical research to create the digests we need for you, the reader.

We hope to have all subjects we’re covering in the book collated for review in Early 2023.

Writing. Lizy and I are following through the research Heather has completed and creating the skeleton of the book’s narrative.

At this point in time, we don’t have anything finished to show off. I’m being extremely conservative with how we use the budget of this project. This means I’m not commissioning artwork or putting flashy resource together without knowing for sure that they will make it into the final book.

Thanks for your patience with me and the team!

Brian x

Behind the Scenes 7: July to October
over 1 year ago – Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 08:31:01 AM

Heya everyone!

This summer is going to be a hectic one for everyone here at team Carved in Stone.  I'll keep it as brief as possible!

Research Progress

So far, we've almost finished researching Section 1: the Natural World, covering different scenes from around Scotland that you will be able to set the stage for your adventures. These include heathlands, bogs, mountainsides, temperate rainforests, coasts and more.

As we've talked about in past updates, research can be very stop and start. It's hard to move linearly through each topics (such as Environments and Places), as they often overlap in unexpected and complex ways (such as excavated pollen samples providing insight into what crops were sown and which plants grew natively in a specific region). This means other sections are a mix of untouched, half-started and nearly-finished. The important thing is we've picked up momentum, and the other sections are flowing smoothly.

We're in the process of solidifying our content creation workflow, and we'll be testing it with some of these locations. That should yield results we can show you in our next update. For now, the documents are a busy list of data and sources, and not very exciting to look at.

VAST Guides

Yubi has been tutoring me quite a bit the past few weeks. I've learned how to navigate with a Screen Reader, we've made accessibility changes to my website, and I've learnt the ins and outs of retroactively fixing PDFs to be more easily accessible, as well as creating companion copies of documents. 

As part of this learning process, Yubi and I agreed that the streams we had planned might not be as smooth as we imagined. Instead we're doing that work offline, and then I'll be making YouTube tutorials of all the tools and processes we use in an RPG context. 

Update Hiatus

Our next update will be coming in November 2022. This month and the next are full of a lot of change for our team members; Jeff has sold his house and is moving his family, I'm moving in with a friend and have to relocate all of my stock (no small feat for an indie publisher), and Lizy is moving to Finland with her partner.  

I've also been taking on freelance work outside of Kickstarter to supplement the Carved in Stone budget. 

On top of heatwaves, personal events and more, there'll be too little to announce on a monthly basis, so we'd rather save it up fragments of progress for something more inspiring!

GIF. An explorer in a futuristic street style inspired space suit reaches into a tight space for a wrench. Glowing eyes swirl from a barely-lit shape, all opening to stare at the figure. A ‘Project We Love’ badge with a flashing heart sits in the lower right hand corner. The GIF ping-pongs, so that the creepy eyes are always opening and closing, and the heart flashing.

One Breath Left

Earlier this year, Dungeons on a Dime rebranded to Stout Stoat, as part of my move to fully commit to publishing entry-level games from early-career creators. For ZineQuest 4 I launched One Breath Left, the first of several games I signed earlier this year. OBL is a procedurally generate solo-rpg, where you explore derelict spaceship wrecks in search of a life changing pay out. In the past week its fully funded, and marked as favourite from the Kickstarter team!

It feels a bit weird to promo a new project in an ongoing project's update. However, my landlord doesn't accept "there were delays" when it comes to paying rent, and projects like One Breath Left help keep my lights on while I work on delivering Carved in Stone. You've all been understanding and supportive, which I really appreciate!


Thanks for reading,

Brian.

Behind the Scenes: Part 6 / June 2022
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jul 07, 2022 at 03:28:56 PM

Hello everyone!

Another month, another update. 

We’ve got Pictish builds in minecraft, livestreams and new games, books to give away, early mediaeval crime and new conferences to announce. Let’s get into it!


Community Box Test Run

Your support last year didn’t just fund the creation of the Carved in Stone book, but also helped secure hundreds of copies for the Community Box.

My hope for this scheme is to get TTRPG books and exciting resources into the hands of folks who couldn't normally access them. This includes formal and informal non-profit social groups, such as schools, libraries, clubs, and other institutions.

To be able to do this efficiently, I need to test out how best to organise applicants to the scheme. I’ve discussed different methods with the team, and here’s what we’re going to try out:

There is a Google Form that any group can apply to. Once verified, applicants can access a special Community Box list of products on my website, and grab copies of these books for free, only paying for the shipping. They’ll also get accompanying PDFs of the books.

I’m opening up a dry-run of the scheme with 100 copies of In The Red, a four part adventure I wrote specifically for newer GMs and Players. These are real books, going to real people.

Help me test this out by sending this Google Form to anyone who you think could benefit from some free game books :)

Image. Illustration of a group of mediaeval fantasy adventurers, being approached by menacing bandits. This image is a click-through link to Community Box Google Form.
Click here for the Community Box Google Form!

Minecraft Build: Pictish Byre-houses

Our Lead Researcher, Dr Heather, has their own YouTube channel Archaeoplays, where they talk about archaeology as they play different video games.

Heather’s latest video features us - Carved in Stone! They’re making a Pictish Byre-house, a common structure to our time period, based on their research into Lair, the starting location of CIS’s companion adventure.

Seeing a Byre-house come to life from the ground up is a great way of visualising its uses and construction.

Image. Screenshot of ArchaeoPlays' youtube video.
Click here to watch ArchaeoPlay's video!

VAST Guides, and a new game: Border Riding

The project Yubi and I will be working on has an official name - VAST Guides (Visual Accessibility Skills and Tools.)

For part of the project, throughout late July and into August we will be livestreaming our work on a designing of a new game on YouTube. You will be able to watch along and ask questions as we take a game from text in a Google doc, and turn it into a ready-to-print InDesign file, showcasing at which stages you can include accessibility during production. This includes adding native alt-text, correctly tagging your paragraph styles, naming tables for screen readers, and more. Yubi has a whole curriculum of things to teach me, but we expect to come across new problems that neither of us had thought of as we work.

We’ll be working on Border Riding, a yet unannounced upcoming game by Jo Reid (Twitter). Border Riding explores the creation and maintaining of physical and social boundaries. Players create a map for a small community, and in each round draw and redraw its borders, creating overlapping visual echoes of how the community has changed over a large period of time. This game is a love letter to the Scottish Borders tradition of a similar name, Common Riding.


Answering Your Questions: Part 2

Here we have another question from you, answered by Dr. Heather!

What information do we have on criminal activity or taboos in Pictish society? (Chris Matchett)

This is a really interesting question because we do have some answers, but we also don’t have many! A lot of our knowledge around crime or taboos in Pictish society come from the material culture and some international laws rather than from documents the Picts wrote themselves.

We do know that in 697 CE, Bridei IV was one of the guarantors of the Caín Adomnáin or Adomnán’s Law of Innocents. This set of laws was eventually signed by 91 political and ecclesiastical figures from Ireland, Dál Riata and Pictland, and it largely guaranteed the safety of noncombatants in warfare. These laws list punishments for killing women and children as well as clerics, clerical students and peasants on clerical lands. They also outlaw sexual assault, murder, arson and certain types of theft, and they contain clauses noting that noblewomen and women should not be required to participate in war. Remember that this is a set of international laws that the Picts agreed to in 697, but they were likely locally enforced and interpreted. The Picts signing this into law on an international scale does not mean that the Picts did not have such laws already in place at the national or local level, for example, nor does it necessarily mean that the Picts barred women from combat entirely.

Image. A drawn diagram of a Pictish locking mechanism.
A diagram of a Pictish locking mechanism.

Another example of crime, or at least guarding against it, comes in the form of padlocks. Pieces of two barbed-spring padlocks were found at the village of Lair in Glen Shee, Perthshire. The first piece is a barbed-spring padlock found in the floor layer of the byre-house that Heather built in their video above, while the second piece was a possible barbed-spring bolt for a similar style lock found in another building nearby. These locks work by pushing the barbed-spring bolt into the padlock, usually to close a chest or door. To open the lock, a slide key would be pushed into the end opposite the barb (opposite the hole you can see in the figure below) and prongs on the key would push the springs or barbs on the bolt inwards, allowing the user to remove the bolt from the lock.


Locks are important because people don’t generally have a lock if they aren’t worried about theft! The padlock fragment from Lair is big enough that it was likely used for a door rather than a chest, which suggests that they were guarding either belongings in the house or possibly even the livestock in the byre. Cattle raids were a common practice at least in other, contemporary early mediaeval contexts in what is now Ireland and the United Kingdom. In fact, many of the pages of early Irish law that we have are filled with various punishments for varying degrees of cattle theft. It is therefore entirely possible that the padlock at Lair was used to protect the animals.


So even though we don’t have much written by the Picts to talk about their laws or what was considered a crime, we do have evidence that there were things that needed to be protected, either through national laws and customs around warfare or through everyday items like padlocks.


Further Reading:

McLaren, Dawn. 2019. The Iron Objects. In: Strachan, David, David Sneddon and Richard Tipping. 2019. Early Medieval Settlement in Upland Perthshire:Excavations at Lair, Glen Shee 2012-17. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing LTd. Pp. 87 - 97.

Archaeo Games Conference

There’s an upcoming free digital conference at the end of July, with a number of cool panels that Heather will be either taking part in or leading.

You can find the ArchaeoGaming Collective's tweet about the conference below, and see all of the cool panels that are lined up!

Image. A screenshot of a tweet, linked in the image's caption.
Click here for the ArchaeoGaming's twitter thread!

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That’s all for this month. We’ll see you again in July!

Brian