Ok so, there was not a lot of info on crystal dragon universe here to begin with. If you do not know me personally you possibly never knew what I was doing. Neither did I.
I've been a DM for as long as I've been playing DND/ TTRPG. For the longest time my biggest problem as a DM was being ignorant of the the player experience. I rarely got to be on the other side of the screen. but while I didn't play I did get a lot of promises! I've made a ton of characters for games that never got started, or started as cool ideas and ended as useless character sheets. Because I always DM and my friends always play I never got to use any of those sheets or ideas. Almost all of my ideas for characters had to be turned into NPCs or never see the light of day.
Additionally, the thing about TTRPGs is that the players are the main characters. your cool NPCs are toys for them and need to serve the narrative or the players fun, they cant be main characters unless a player latches on. You make an NPC, they are side characters unless adopted, the players move on. That's the typical life of an NPC.
My homebrew world Thesots became the land of misfit toys, it was the only way I could have fun with those characters. But who wants to do a ton of work and never get the full potential out of their ideas? I wanted my stories to stop just being static things, made to service others. I wanted my characters to grow and change and tell their stories. So I decided to make a new universe just for me. I had gotten tired of just making stories for players, I wanted to write my own.
So That's what the CDU was, I get to play with my toys in a way I couldn't when I was building an experience for players in a DnD game. It seems pretty straight forward. easy shit. well, I wasn't really feeling it. I struggled a lot
The main issue seemed that these characters had a lot built up about them that was heavily DND feeling. All of them had character sheets and DND spells and levels and whatever. I did't like the idea of writing a DND fantasy novel. I desperately wanted to move away from the system both in my DMing and in my writing. it sucked to feel unoriginal, I wanted my world to feel special, hand made by me.
I tried over and over to find a scenario or a plot or another system that could make the DND feel less prominent or even wash it away entirely but nothing was working! So long as they all had the same base layer they were never going to feel like novel characters to me. I was scared I would have to do tons of work to change everything, re-make everyone, fight my own creations. I started trying to think of ways to make subtle changes but it all got too much. Too much work, too much moving away from what the characters started as. even after all my changes it became just like DN, but a little to the left.... it was time to do something else.
so I was stuck with a lingering idea of running a novel, I had 5 or 6 whole ideas that all needed to fit inside it, for some reason the "main plot" was the only one I didn't ever work on. With so much frustration wrapped up in the project I set the whole of it aside.
I moved on without thinking about it.
Then, while at work I was thinking about grim hollow and the many alternate universes of it I had in my head. The omega verse version of it was particularly interesting because of the way it complicated and complimented the story. The version of the story where Valya is an omega who uses his status to persuade others is a very fun story to tell myself at work, where I am bored all day and have nothing else to think about.
Then it dawned on me, since an omega verse story would never fly in my TTRPG circles I should use that idea for my book, it could have all my OCs in it (or whatever archetypes they embody) and it would be the perfect place to play around and make the dark political fantasy of my dreams. suddenly the world had no ceiling and I felt limitless.
I immediately began crafting a story using the old ideas and spinning them into new stuff. I could set aside all those other stories, the old worldbuilding and such could be good side projects and this would be the main story and one I am far more excited about.
My new CDU got its own Obsidian vault and I started with a single character to build around. I picked Howard. The king of dragons. I striped him of all of this details and kept one central bit about him and built from there. This guy embodies a supernatural power that dominates all others but he starts as a sniveling loser. Where did that power come from? How does he gain access to the power? And finally, which second sex does he have as a result?
This process of asking questions led me down the road and I gained speed very quickly. There are a lot of fantasy tropes I wanted to bring in and the first ones I started with where of the historical variety. I spent some time reading up on the 100 years war and learning about medieval history in Europe. The names of historical figures became more familiar to me and I watched YouTube videos and bought books.
I worked out a new family of characters to furnish the initial plot. I also decided to drop the original names of the characters I was importing since this story was so fresh and I hoped that these new versions would take on lives of their own. My main character was now called "The exile" and his father "Brother Drackenmore". That name is the only anchor to the multiverse outside this realm.
After researching so much history I worked on the "Omega" part of this "Omegaverse" story. How did pheromones and other tropes factor into this story? What themes do they represent? How does that align to what I am telling here? And of course, this part is important, what things has the community done to death already? What is new/interesting going on in the genre right now?
After all that, I've got a new plot right here:
"Dragons used to rule the land thousands of years ago. Humans have risen up in their place and the entire world is theirs to squabble over. However one of the old beast remains and his plan to use humanity to destroy itself has already begun. With careful cultivation of his seed he has made an heir to his wrath, a royal child of the nation that uses his kind as their symbol.
This boy grows up weak and hated until one day his second sex is revealed, the only enigma in existence. A being as close to the ancient dragons as ever there has come. Disasters befall him and his family. Will he rise up to claim a throne or will he simply burn the world down? No one knows what the exiled prince will do with his strange power."
I'm very excited! I'm reading even more these days as well as writing. All I'm hoping for in the end is something I can be happy with and proud to show others.