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WARNING - THIS IS A LONG POST - Knightmare, move this if you think there is a better place for it.

Following the primer, I would welcome any additional hints and tips from other AU developers, especially those of the large SD community.

I have also attached the Primer as a PDF at the end for those who might like to read it at lesuire.

A Short Primer for Creating an Alternate Universe

There are several successful and detailed Alternate Universes (AU), on the Our BattleTech (OBT) boards already, testament to the dedication, skill and organisational abilities of the many willing hands who have shared a goal and a dream to create new and interesting stories.  I can remember when I first embarked on the process of putting the Kapteyn Universe (KU) together and that I had no idea how I was to go about the process, organise it or seek assistance with my new obsession.  With that thought in mind, I thought I would synthesise several blog posts I have made about the creation of the AU and provide it to help those who may have a vision that is bigger than they first realise.

There are several key phases that I went though in creating the KU, each of which provided its own challenges and helped and hindered other aspects of the development of the KU.  The phases which I later identified were:

1.   The Idea;
2.   Planning and Expanding the Idea;
3.   Determining the Background;
4.   Writing the Story;
5.   Incorporating Canon;
6.   Developing the Filler;
7.   Starting to Publish;
8.   Responding to Comments;
9.   Looking for and Managing Help;
10.   Expanding the Concept;
11.   Building a Group;
12.   Managing the Group;
13.   Managing the Project; and
14.   Keeping Perspective.

This seems like a lot and it is.  Of course every AU will not follow such a path all the way to its deep and dark end, like the KU or Shattered Dawn.  Others will only get as far publishing the story, especially if they are creating a small AU, only a short look at an AU topic of interest, or a side story somewhere along the way. 

However, for those of you with the will and the time, here are a few lessons I learned in each step along the way.  This all comes from my own experience and may not be the same process that others have followed and I would encourage those who have been down this path to add their own thoughts for those who may just be starting out.
In some of the following sections, I’ll use examples from the KU in general, but specific examples from the development for the Clans for the KU.  That is currently my pet project and is not as yet complete, but demonstrates many of the points made in the material here, as well as expanding on several ideas.

The Idea
The idea, that little spark of inspiration that starts you down the slippery slope of AU life, is usually part of a What If moment.  These What Ifs are scattered all across BattleTech forums, much like their real life counterparts.  When you are struck by the muse, let it run, scrawl notes, sit and think, do whatever you have to.  Unfortunately, these ideas happen to hit at the most inopportune times, like the KU did whilst in a meeting with some of my most important clients.  However, if this happens, hang onto a mental image of the critical scene and from that, you can sprout the story.  The minute you get somewhere discreet, start jotting down notes before the initial vision fades, as often this initial strike of inspiration will form the core of the AU’s development as you go.

For the KU, inspiration struck following a re-read of the original House Marik Sourcebook, where the meeting of Takashi Kurita, Maximillian Liao and Janos Marik on Terra is described.  Nothing really stirred at the time, but in the meeting the following day the thought struck.  What If?  What if those three managed to get their act together?  I then had to sit through 45 minutes of mind numbing meeting…

Developing a Story – Alternate Clans
The idea for the KU Clans was simple and formed well after the initial inspiration for the KU: It was simply that the Clans would form part of the KU in the future.  However, there were two changes I wanted to incorporate: All 20 Clans surviving until 3032 and the office of the ilKhan remaining permanent.  The development of every change and sub-plot would derive directly from theses two small changes, which when magnified across 200+ years, become anything but small.

Planning and Expanding the Idea
What Ifs, or counterfactual scenarios, are a way of looking at real history and applying analytical thinking to attempt to determine what might had happened if circumstances or decisions had been different.  In AU development, whilst based on imagined history, some analytical thinking becomes important, as an adjunct to the story telling, which is used to explore the theorised new events.

Following the initial idea, What If kicks in, quickly followed by How The Hell? How The hell do I make that idea actually work and seem plausible, or at least as plausible as anything in the BT universe can?

The idea is critical, but so is a critical analysis of the idea.  What If Kerensky returned to Terra to serve Amaris?  That one a newly minted BT neophyte could shoot down, but others are more complex, such as What If the Wolverines had survived, or What If Focht had tried to stop the Word of Blake shortly after the fall of Terra in 3058?  These sorts of plausible What If scenarios can become the basis for excellent AU’s, examining pivotal moments in the BT universe’s history and trying to determine the cascading series of events that might transpire.
How The Hell involves asking many questions of the initial idea, either of yourself, or with sounding boards in the BT community.  The more experienced the sounding board is in BT history and lore, the better the feedback you will receive.

I have assisted a few other AU developers with work in their universes and I realized for the first projects I have done outside of the KU with others, for Worktroll’s Army Books, Jaim Magnus’s Star League Reborn AU, one of Takiro’s Alternate Visions and Knightmare’s Age of Chaos AU, that they all were relatively easy.  Why were they so easy to work with?

It seems the answer is that all the authors knew what they wanted, put broad ideas out first and then got down to the detail later.  I think those three elements are what make an AU get going, whether it’s good or bad, and with a general overview as your starting place, you can fit new ideas in and later mould and change details as your vision narrows.

The problem I see here and there, as others develop AU’s, is that they go nuts on the detail from the get go.  Now all that work shows a great level of dedication and a significant application of energy, but it quickly turns the AU into a dense mass of material in which the message or story gets lost.

Developing a Story – Alternate Clans
I am now working on a story where all 20 Clans survive.

“Oh sweet merciful gods, kill it with fire you say?”

Well, I think once released, you may enjoy this little story.  The defining moment, the little initial deviation, which is plausible, is the survival of Andery Kerensky.  He is still ambushed on Eden, but only badly injured and placed in a medically induced coma.   Yes, I know, very days of our lives, but this is space opera after all.  His recovery after a year, just at the beginning of the events leading up to the Wolverine saga, is where he starts to push canon down a new path.  From there I can steepen the divergence as I go, hopefully maintaining some semblance of plausibility.

When constructing an alternate timeline in the BT universe, one of the most important things to do is determine the initial event that changes everything, the one thing that can be used to alter many events down through time, yet still be plausible.  As all 20 Clans of the KU are to survive down through the years, I needed to find a believable way to keep them all in the story.  So the critical element in all of the future story telling was going to be how to stop the Annihilations and Absorptions.  After thinking over things for a while, I found I needed to change only a single event in 2821.

The event chosen was the death of Andery Kerensky, but instead of just letting him walk out the ambush that killed him, I hospitalized him for a year in a coma, allowing Nicholas to get harsh with many in the Pentagon, but not so long as to prevent Andery from returning to rescue the Wolverines.  From there, many small changes are made, changes that cascade and build on the divergence from canon, one at a time.  No one change is dramatic when shown within the tapestry of the alternate universe, but had I added the Trial of Supplication, the tool Andery uses to save Clans, without having Andery there to create it, it may have seemed far less plausible.

Determining the Background
An important aspect of getting an AU off the ground is explaining the setting, the atmosphere and the key differences to cannon early on.  These are the elements that will capture the interest of the AU fan base.  Having them lost in reams of data, masses of alternate rules or pages of unit listings right at the start will cause the whole thing to stagnate early.  However, you do need all this material, so the question is: Where does it all go and how do you best organize all the data and get the AU’s vision up front and grabbing attention. With the vision in mid, you can then start planning more of the detail, always guided by the AU vision’s overreaching goal.

As an example, I’ll talk about how I managed the scope of the KU through mapping, because as a closet megalomaniac, I went for the whole Inner Sphere as a starting point for my initial foray into fan AU’s.  A little ambitious is probably a gross understatement, but the time I spent getting the mapping sorted allowed me to focus on how and why the relations of the various states would change, and having a current and potential future map side by side, allowed the background material to start writing itself, as in this case two maps were worth about 100,000 words.

One of the more important parts of an alternate universe engineers jobs is tracking all the little bits and pieces of the universe, be they units, leaders or worlds.  Leaders and units can be tracked in documents or spread sheets, however, when it comes time to tracking borders, worlds and the movement of state’s extents over time, several issues arise.

The first issue is whether or not you will even track such elements, if you’re writing a story focused on a single world, or small region of space, it is not so important.   Once you start to broaden the scope and lengthen you’re timeline, you may need to track these changes, even if it just to keep things straight in your own head.
With the Kapteyn Universe (KU) I went the whole hog, with the broadest possible scope and the intention to start moving borders faster than a Clan inspired invasion could.  In addition to this, once I had players involved in the game and story, I needed an affective method of showing players how the borders and world ownership were changing month to month.

First off all I mapped the various states as they were in 3023, having the advantage of having some excellent mapping software.  Following this, and at the time also working on the game that runs the story, Successor Lords (SL), I put each state into a spread sheet, showing me what worlds it held, its economy, industry and military.  This was a mammoth job and far more than most AU developers would consider necessary and probably not what many would actually require.  Still, some background and future planning is needed and this is the best time for a bit of generalised thinking.

This game system would become the driving force in determining the overall story from about January 3024 onwards and has provided as much inspiration as it has headaches.  Using a game to drive a story is nothing new, but it does add a level of detail that many would be unwilling to face.

So has it been worth it?  Yes I think it has, as the players are given the information they require to undertake detailed planning.  The mapping also lets me create maps that are almost up to official BT standards for use in the KU source books, which helps to provide the whole universe with a much more detailed and thorough feel.

But most importantly, that time spent using the maps and spreadsheets to organise my thoughts on the different realms and their resources, leaders and military, allowed me to better examine the various relationships between them all and begin jotting down notes on how those relationships would be affected by the initial idea of the KU.
With this kind of background information, I was able to determine the reactions of various powers and how those reactions would create their own new reactions, with the ripples from each spreading around the Inner Sphere.  This ability to think out the future story becomes very important, especially so when you might otherwise be struggling for inspiration or wondering where the story might go.

Once the original idea and the vision it spawned were combined with the initial background material, I suddenly found I had an outline for the story that carried me from 3023, all the way to 3028.  Not a bad framework to start with and considering each year of the story was little more then a paragraph, I had not constrained myself.

Developing a Story – Alternate Clans
When putting an alternate universe together, sometimes you are lucky enough to have the whole story appear in your mind all at once, allowing you to get it onto paper, even as a general outline and to build from there.  Other times, it is not so simple. When writing this alternate history of the Clans for the KU, I knew where I was starting, the points where I would touch on canon events and where and how it would join the Inner Sphere KU story.  However, that left allot of filler, especially when there are 20 factions and several major divergences from the canon timeline.

One tool a budding story teller can use for filler, but also for additional inspiration, is random events - rolling dice to determine certain elements of the timeline.  For example, for the ilKhans and Loremasters of the Clans, I would roll 1d20 to determine the Clan, 1d40 for the Bloodname and 1d20 or 40 for the length of rule for the ilKhan and Loremaster respectively.  For first names, Facebook’s random name generator gives plenty of variation.  Now I had a list of ilKhans and Loremasters, all I had to then was flesh out the story around them.

Writing the Story
When you first start the story, make a statement in your first post or chapter, briefly explaining when it is set, why you have taken that path and what you are exploring or plan to explore in the story.  It does not have to be long, just enough so that a potential follower can quickly grasp the basics of your idea.

This is very important, as this is in effect the baited hook you are hanging out for potential readers.  Your introduction has to catch the reader and make them want to stay.  I know from my own experience that if a new story has not got my attention within a paragraph or two, I’m gone, and most others will go too.  You will not have pages and pages to grab their attention with so many other good stories a click of the mouse away.  The introduction must be sharp, attention grabbing and to the point.

Following the introduction comes your scene setting.  There is absolutely no point in piling into a maze of intricate story arcs and threads in your first few chapters, as you will loose the readers quickly as they loose track of what is going on.  Too many interwoven and intricate details early can make the AU too heavy a read early on, driving away those who might otherwise be captured by your idea.  Once you have them drawn in, they will stay on until you drive them off.

A useful method is the timeline, which brings the reader up to date on what has changed from cannon in your AU’s past, and gives them grounding in what has occurred so far.  Some AU’s, like Dragon Cats excellent Alternate Timeline with Thanks, or Liam’s Ghost’s Hypothetically Speaking, follow the timeline format for the entire narrative, which works when done properly.

The other method, which I followed, is the introductory chapters, which need to remain focused on the main characters, the primary theme and the setting of the antagonist’s goals, before you begin to branch out and add in sub-themes, plots and minor minions in detail. In the KU, I set the scene over the course of the first 6 chapters, all written together, introducing the main players, their motivations, relationships and goals.

As you write, make sure you keep your earlier drafts, no matter how bad, as they may often contain ideas or events that can be used later.  Although much of this early writing might be drivel, you might never know when you may need to refer back to it.

Also important is keeping track of events, characters and small details that allow you to ensure that your AU’s continuity is maintained.  If a character has blue eyes in one chapter and brown in the next, people will notice and find it jarring.  Keep a list or spreadsheet for referring back to, as this becomes and invaluable aide in ensuring that your AU remains fluid and readable.

For the KU, we are a little extreme as we archive all the game spreadsheets month to month and keep track of all inter-player emails.  This means we have reams of data, all organised mind you, but this does allow us to create detailed and integrated fluff for the universe that meshes will all the other material we have created without having to undertake any serious retconning.

Developing a Story – Alternate Clans
Once the background for the KU Clans was nailed down I then needed a whipping boy. However, I can be very singular in my vision.  For those who do not know, I have the general outline of the KU lined up to 3035, a decade out from where we are.  Not only is this important for developing threads in the story for later full blown chapters built around them, but also for allowing room for the player generated threads to find their place within the greater whole.  The role of the Jason’s and Josh’s is to pull my head in and provide solid advice, something they have done to an excellent degree, providing insight, correction and excellent ideas of their own.  Though I do not always listen, being a little taken with myself and fairly head strong, without their efforts the story would not be half of what it is.

The hard part is balancing things and for the most part I would say 30% of player ideas get taken in their entirety, with about 65% getting some level of modification, mainly so that they line up with important story elements that are yet to be revealed.  Only 5% get shot down.  I was sent one recently that was off the radar as far as the story is concerned, but I will keep it as it will not kill the story, though it will kill a character I had plans for later.  Oh well, I’ll just have to promote someone else, unless of course the person who submitted the story can show me a plausible out for the said character (which incidentally they eventually did).

So, how then, once you have diverged from canon, do you keep plausibility?  There are two very useful tools.  The first is detailed story development, so you always know the how and why of story elements and can explain them in a believable way to the masses.  The second method is tying into canon again.

This second method involves a first divergence, but then a convergence with a canon event. Of course this canon event will be somewhat different from the original, by virtue of changes you made earlier, but this repeated touching on canon is a good way to maintain plausibility.

For the Inner Sphere KU timeline, we have had to go so far left of canon that our only recourse is detailed universe development and believable story telling (ignore the WarShips), which I think we have managed for the most part (ignore the WarShips).  For the Clans in the KU, who will not turn up until we finish with the current crop of players, I am using the method of returning to canon events.  As you will see, if you go here (http://ourbattletech.com/building-a-story-%E2%80%93-alternate-clans-part-ii) the Widowmaker Trials are used as a return to canon events, albeit changed as they are, in order to keep the plausibility level of the narrative up.

Incorporating Canon
When it comes to actually writing AU’s, there are several paths you can take, either follow canon to the letter, combine canon law with your own ideas, or run off into the wilderness of mad creativity.  All AU work, despite what certain purists might like to claim, can be enjoyable to read and each has its challenges, but AU’s mixing canon and your own ideas can be the hardest to balance.  One of the oddest things about communities like the BattleTech community is that there are certain individuals who have a real inability to think outside the box, clinging to what is written in canon books like it is, well, canon law, each prepared, and more than willing, to burn heretics at the stake.  As BT is fiction and none of it is real, it is a weird little state of mind, but one that Fan fiction writers, who choose to work in alternate universes, have to deal with.

The nice thing about BT is that there are many opportunities for What If, or counter-factual scenarios, considering that any facts are just pure fantasy to begin with.  However, when we delve into this little realm, we assume what is written in the published novels and sourcebooks is in universe fact, so to make our AU’s “believable”, we need to adhere to certain “facts”.

The one issue that can be the rise or fall of an alternate universe/timeline setting, is that the writer needs to be able to provide believable divergences from the canon material, whilst trying to differentiate their own AU from the canon BT universe.

One simple way of doing this is killing off characters, especially important ones.  Macabre? Yes, but one of the most effective tools for those of us out to re-write history.  For the Kapteyn Universe, set in 3022 to start with, we knocked Takashi Kurita off in a DropShip accident and Michael Hasek-Davion with some god awful virus, then ousted, but did not kill, ComStar Primus Julian Tiepolo.  The removal of these three central characters, allowed for changes in the story based on new personalities and dynamics.  Candace Liao’s own actions later in the piece simply added to this, and along with Thomas Marik’s early return to Atreus, allowed for a more dynamic Kapteyn Alliance.

Were these events believable – they seem to have been, as the readership of the story continues to rise and we have never stepped into complete fantasy land.  The one large pill that readers had to swallow was WarShips, but as an alternate universe we had the recovery of the Inner Sphere begin in 3000, not 3025, meaning that by the time our story starts, the Inner Sphere is at a place, industrially and technologically, that it did not reach in canon until 3047.  In canon, WarShips re-entered the scene in 3057, 32 years after the recovery began, whilst in the KU we had them arrive 24 years after the recovery begins.  We covered the gap through the expedient of the discovery of mothballed shipyards, which could be reactivated relatively easily.

So with some judicious executions of certain limiting canon characters, the reworking of the canon timeline’s historical recovery and the addition of several new and dynamic characters, or new positions for known characters, and we suddenly had a universe very different from canon, but equally plausible.

That I think is the secret, plausibility, as when posting a fan AU piece, where deviation from canon is the main tune, the initial deviation must be the most plausible, after that you can get more extreme with your changes as you go.  Trying to marry Romano Liao to Thomas Marik in 3025 would be a tough one to justify, but having Michael Hasek-Davion win a shadow war in 3022 is not quite so extreme.

The final method for making sure you get it right is this: get your story read by another good writer with a solid knowledge of the BT universe. They will provide feedback for plugging the holes, or at least the more obvious ones, before you release your story in the shark tank.  Best it’s not bleeding too much by then, or the canon lawyers will start a feeding frenzy.

Developing a Story – Alternate Clans
Andery you say? Wolverine survival you say? Back that up or I’ll start bitching, says the canon lawyer.  As I have mentioned, diverging from canon BT into an alternate universe/timeline for BT is hard work, especially so once you really start to head off into the unknown. How do you manage it? Well there are two things you will need to do.

The first thing you need is a clear understanding of not only your AU, but how it diverges from canon and where it leaves the established timeline.  You also need a very clear understanding of not only the canon timeline, but also how canon factions interact, how they change over time and their outlook, as this will dictate how they will react to your changes.

By generating the major players through dice rolls, I had to find reasons for the changes in ilKhanship and the position of Loremaster, plausible ones that could be accepted and fit in with the general canon story line.  One of the first was the election of a Steel Viper to Loremaster, followed 10 years later by election of another to the ilKhanship.  10 years after that, both fall.  So therefore, I had to come up with a story to make that believable.  Enter Sanra Mercer.

I talked above about knowing the canon story in detail and touching on canon events.  The rise of Sanra Mercer came 3 years before the Steel Viper Clan Loremaster and suited the reasoning perfectly.  So in this little KU, Mercer leads the Vipers to dominate the Grand Council, however, her ambition and methods will also be their downfall resulting in her death as per canon, on New Kent in battle with the Jade Falcons.

Silence is Golden, at least the end of the Golden Century was, along with the beginning of the Political Century.  There is little real canon detail to cover this period, so I had to add filler, ably helped by my earlier random rolling and then using the individual Clans to fill things out in greater detail later. The years from 2910 to the opening of the Great Debate in 2980 are long on trend, but short on detail in the canon histories of the Clans.  However, one of the nice things about having built the general outline history of an AU before you begin writing, is that you are than able to develop story threads and use older threads as later catalysts for adding filler material where needed.
One of the random results of my rolls for the ilKhans was a period of 60 years where the office of the ilKhan is held for relatively short periods of time, by what appear to be seven successive incompetents.  Maybe that is a little harsh, but before then, the average time in office for an ilKhan was just over 18 years, however from 2935-2994, the average falls to just under eight and a half years.

How was I to write in the reasons for this?  Well luckily, canon came to my assistance, with Tobias Khatib and his fall from grace.  In canon, his fall ends the office of ilKhan for over a century, so by using this event and keeping the office of ilKhan, I write in a decline in the office’s prestige, something that it takes many years to redress.

As the “modern” era approached, the story then had to mate to three critical canon events.  The Great Debate, the Dragoon Compromise and Operation REVIVAL. These three events were the final defining events for the Clans prior to the Tukayyid peace, moulding the Clans into the final form they would take into the mainstream of canon in the BT universe.  By the time I reached them in the overview history for the KU Clans, I had written well over 12,000 words.  This meant that although I wished for the events to occur, they would be heavily influenced by the preceding alternate time line.

In canon, the Great Debate is given weighty words regarding its gravitas, however, there are not all that many words regarding it written.  Generally it is just talked about as a defining moment, with the real details of its machinations never discussed.  The good thing about this lack of detail is that it allows for the alternate timeline to influence the Great Debate and be influenced by it, without creating any real distortions to the canon events, whilst fitting them neatly into the alternate setting.

Starting to Publish
When it comes time to start posting your ideas to the forums, you will likely be a little apprehensive.  That’s normal, as you are putting your creative endeavour out there for the entire world to pick apart and abuse.  There are a couple of things you can do to ensure a good early response, which will help you build you readership.

Firstly, pick when you post.  Do a little analysis of when posting to the forums is most active.  This will allow you to pick a time where your story can sit at the top of the list and be viewed by those coming through at the quieter time.  This also means there will be less distracting new posting going on in the established stories and allow readers to focus on the new story.

Don’t forget to have your introduction to your AU right up on top and make sure the thread title is catchy, with out being cheap.  Also, your first chapter should not be either too long or too short, as a brief initial post may make the story look simplified and a long one may make readers expect a 400 volume tome.

Also, your next few posts/chapters become critical, and should be already written, as you can post these chapters over the coming days to ensure your story stays near the top of the list, getting more views and more exposure.  Don’t go nuts and post once and hour, but makes sure that over the first week or so, you can post new material about once a day to keep your story near the top of the forum list.

Developing a Story – Alternate Clans
The beginning of the Great Debate in the Grand Council marked the beginning of the end for the Warden opposition to what would one day become Operation REVIVAL.  With the alternate timeline now bounding along, I had the chance to add a little to the debate. However, once this deep into an AU, you will finds that many of the threads you have developed yourself, start to have as much weight as the canon threads.

Weaving these together consistently gets more difficult the further on you go, so it takes time and thought to ensure that they mesh as well as they can.  Don’t ever be afraid to retcon backwards or forwards whilst the background history is being put together, especially if things don’t feel right.  For this Clan AU, six retcons backwards and three forwards have already been made, but outside the proof readers, few will ever be aware.
However, once you publish to the general public, big retcons, if not just additional background filler can prove disjointing and drive readers away.  In the main KU, as it is developing along, we have avoided major retcons and limited ourselves to fixing errors in previous editions of the works.

Responding to Comments
This is PR.  If people ask questions or throw ideas at you, respond quickly and positively, even if you disagree or cannot use their ideas.  This makes people feel part of the process and leaves them with a positive feeling about you and your project.

With regards to cannon lawyers and those whose opinions should remain with them in their parent’s basements, humour them, but when they get out of hand, a little PM to say thanks, but no thanks, this is my story and vision, if upsets you please stop reading, is usually the best way to go.  Remember, it’s about fun, not an adventure into someone’s insecurities.

Also, these initial comments are a good way of keeping your story at the top of the boards, but be careful.  Don’t let the discussion take over from the story, as new readers may not want to wade through all the guff.  I was guilty of this with the KU and the crash of the BT boards and the launch of OBT has allowed me to cull out a lot of that thankfully supportive, but distracting material.

Developing the Filler
All that background material you are dying to share can overwhelm your narrative, if you are not careful and pile it all into your posts, interspersed with the story.  However, there are a myriad ways of bringing this background and continually created side material to the readership.  One method is short summaries, like the KU’s Terran Times, an in universe news sheet that is written in character and that accompanies the story and provides more detail on wider events should readers want them.  It is never posted in the text of posts, but as an attachment, thereby giving those who do not wish to read the Times the ability to move on to the main story without distraction.  The detail buffs will find and use it however, and it becomes, over time, another way of expanding the readership.

The heavy duty in depth analysis of your AU, with all sorts of detail like Mech designs, maps, listings of forces etc. is the next step beyond the summaries.  These should, like the KU’s Year in Review, be kept out of the main story and offered up for the real addicts, so that the casual reader, interested only in the story, is not turned off by having to wade through miles of text to find the next instalment of the story, much like the background overviews.  However, these monsters often breach the attachment size limits of many forums and may need to be stored elsewhere or emailed to those who wish to read them.

Also, try to keep to an overall format for your fluff material and try to keep things like headers, text sizes and layout similar from issue to issue, as readers will become familiar with your format and know where to go to find their favourite parts.  Changes over time are important, but do them gradually and if you have time, reformat earlier work so that it matches your later offerings.

Providing this detail can be an important way of building the AU, its setting and developing side stories and future plot elements.  The KU’s detailed fluff has led the story to some places we might have otherwise avoided, but have been good fun to have as part of the story.

Developing a Story – Alternate Clans
When keeping all twenty Clans in the long term story line, I was confronted with a question:  Where am I going to put them and what territory will I use?  This is no small point, as it meant that the knock on effect would run throughout the territories of all the Clans. The canon Clans of 3060 were the first to receive a detailed listing of territorial holdings, with enough information existing to be able to extrapolate, to a fair degree of accuracy, what each Clan would have held in 3050. This territory would be what I would generally use for the Clans of the KU in 3032.  So when it came time to assigning the territories of the Wolverine, Widowmaker and Mongoose Clans, I did not have much to go on.

For the Pentagon it was fairly easy, Clans Wolverine and Mongoose on Circe and the Widowmakers on Dagda.  Hold on, the Wolves and Jaguars just lost territory.  Do I want to keep the 3050 balance of power?  The answer was yes, so I had to give them territory somewhere else to compensate, or reduce everyone proportionately.

When looking at all the figures, new territory was going to be the easiest and so the Exeter Cluster was born.  Basically, these new worlds allowed for the three Clans to gain their historical territories in the Pentagon and Kerensky Cluster, whilst also giving them additional worlds in the Exeter Cluster, so I could place each of them where I wanted each in the Clan pecking order.  Of the three, the progressive Wolverines had the easiest Supplication Trial and the longest to recover, so they got the most land, the Widowmakers had nearly as long to recover, but were more isolationist, so less went to them.  The poor old Mongoose Clan was still suffering the effects of the losses it incurred in 2868 and the predation it suffered afterwards.

But once the historic territories of the three Clans were established, 14 new worlds had been created, following population levels similar to those of the Kerensky Cluster.  However, with all the other changes that were being made to the story line, the end of the conquest and settlement of the Exeter Cluster became an excellent catalyst for demarcating the end of the Golden Century and beginning the Political Century.  It also became the point where the last of the Golden Century ilKhans, Coyote Corian Tchernovkov is elected.  For the 60 years following Tchernovkov’s death, a series of seven relatively weak and ineffective ilKhans were left to struggle with the turmoil of the burgeoning Great Debate of the Political Century and the fall out from the Exeter Cluster Trials, all because that is what was interpreted from the dice rolls.

Looking for and Managing Help
You will get to the point where your own creative boundaries are reached, but where your creative inspiration has far surpassed.  Unless you are a gifted master of many arts, you will need the assistance of others.

Once of things you have to realise is that few others can “see” your vision, and though many may be willing to help with the development of your alternate universe, demanding assistance and trashing it when it arrives is a sure way to you going it alone.

So when asking for assistance, be it artistic or written, always be polite, always ask nicely and thank those who help you profusely.  If they fall short of the mark in their help, point out the positives and ask for more of that.  Also, always be willing to learn from those who seek to assist your project and to offer assistance in return, so that the interaction between both parties becomes a positive experience.

Expanding the Concept
What If you What If your own What If, or just add and additional What If?  There may come a time where the main story is not enough, or where other elements of your story provide as much creative satisfaction as the main story.  This can be a good and a bad thing.  On the good side, it means your universe is expanding to encompass a broader story, but on the down side, the original tale may suffer.

When expanding the concept, if a multi-line story was not the original intention, make sure you continue to support the original story, as your reader base came to your universe because of it.  Use additional stories to build your readership, not to compete with your additional story.

Also, if you have expanded to encompass a group of writers, handing off the older story to someone with the vision to keep it moving and solid knowledge of your universe can allow you to focus on new areas, as well as supporting the original concept that got your alternate universe to where it is.

Building a Group
As the section above outlined, there are times when you will hit the creative wall, sometimes god awfully hard.  One method for getting around this problem is to have built a group who help develop and write the universe.  This group will often come from those who have expressed a willingness to help as you have written and developed the story yourself, others may come if you send out a call for help and yet others might have come from the step above.
It can be a very hard thing to do to let go of full control of your creative endeavour and some may not be able to make that step, but if you can let go of some of your control and manage the process properly, it can be very beneficial both to you and your AU.

When planning on bringing in others to assist with the project, two things become very important.  How much creative leeway will the other collaborators have and how will you manage their input.  There is no hard a fast rule on how to do this, however one point needs to be made.  You must be very clear on what you are asking for and very clear on how you will use, incorporate and acknowledge of others in your project.

Without this clear communication, the whole process can break down very quickly and he original premise of seeking assistance can end up ruining the story and your love for it.  So although it can be a necessary step for some writers, the bringing in of additional minds must be managed well, so that all of the collaborators benefit.  However, there needs to remain a top creator, who has final say and who controls the overall direction of the ongoing story…at least in my opinion.

Managing the Group
Since players were introduced into the KU in January of 3024, the universe has taken on a new life, with many new side stories and events arising which I could never have planned or though up on my own. Each player/contributor has brought their own perspective and take on the universe, with some more active than others. What has been one of the more important tasks has been the management of each player/contributor, according to both their own personality and the role of their state in the KU: Not always an easy task. Some are quiet, coming out only to submit their orders for each month of game time, where others create an ongoing stream of material for incorporation into the ongoing story. Both are valuable, as they provide a mix of strength and abilities to the game and the story, which give the KU a far more life like feel that it would have had, had it continued to come only from my own mind.

Some of the changes suggested by the player/contributors to the story line have been good twists, others needing modifications, but none, have been completely shot down without consideration and discussion before hand. Everyone is given the chance to shape the ongoing story, within the broader bounds of the eventual goal of my vision for the KU and the surprises that will entail.

One of the most important things is responding to contributors quickly, even if it is to say I’ll get back to you on that later. Often the others have found holes in the rules that needed immediate patching and I have always tried to be open as to changes to the system and my reasoning behind those changes. Alterations suggested by players have often been added to the rules and story and some suggestions have become rules or story threads in their own right. If a someone is clever enough a find a hole in the rules and use it, without being unfair, I have let them go with it and then announced it to other players. In this way, the rules have become ever more solid, with players having to think far more deeply when looking for new advantages.

The success of the additional input can be seen in the effectiveness of the rules and the many new chapters of the story that contain the work of those that have joined the KU. The upcoming CISA Year in Review 3024 and Book 3 of the story will have far more of this, as the first of the player designed units and their own newly raised formations will debut, along with more extensive writing by several of the new contributors.

All in all, without extra hands, this whole endeavour would have failed. More so, as one player was promoted to co-GM to ease the burden of running this circus and allowing me to experience sunlight again.

Managing the Project
Part of the success of this little racket we have going here is, I think, the balance that was achieved between detail, playability and readability. This is no easy feat, as 20 years of trying on my part can attest to, through change after change to the rules and various attempts to balance the many types of units in the BattleTech Universe into a strategic game. The other major issue was how detailed the game and story writing system could be. Would players have control of single units, lances, companies or battalions at the lowest level, and would they be able to choose the design their factories produced or to makes changes at the highest level of government, where the characters of the story are drawn from?

These sorts of questions are critical in game and story design, as the heavily influence the mechanics of the game from top to bottom and the management of the story, with a change anywhere creating ripples throughout the system, some known and others unknown. It is those latter ripples that are the bane of game design and the focus of many a rewrite of a system and of causing issues with continuity in the story.

So how was this accomplished, allowing Successor Lords, to provide players with detail and playability, whilst also allowing for active and plausible story development? The answer was found through the use of spread sheets. By having the sheets undertake many of the calculations the game requires, players merely needed to update data, with the sheets looking after the rest. With this tool, details such as the exact production from factories or the actual ‘Mech strength of a regiment could be easily displayed and modified as needed.

Using spreadsheets also allowed for greater detail in the statistics of a unit, more than just experience and loyalty. For units in SL, there are 21 statistics. Sounds like a lot, well yes it is, but by having two thirds of those automatically calculate themselves, players can easily manage the numbers.  This not only affects the game, but by extension the story, as the interaction of game mechanics will effect the story driven by many of the events in the game.

So how detailed have we got? Lets look at two examples, the production facilities on Pandora and the 24th Arcturan Guards.

On Pandora, there are 8 Civilian Industrial Points (CIP), useful for generating cash, but also in supporting the military industry on world. Also on world are 20 lines for the production of light tanks, 15 for heavy tanks, 1 for heavy ‘Mechs and 1 for Assault ‘Mechs. With each line producing 6 units every six months, the yearly rate of production is 210 tanks and 24 ‘Mechs.

But what models you ask? That is all found in the CISA Year in Review, similar to MadCapellan’s Objective Raids 3067, but heavily modified to suit the Kapteyn Universe (KU). When looking up Pandora, we see that there are lines for the production of Centipede, Condor, Scorpion, Pegasus and LRM and SRM Carrier tanks, as well as lines for the Rifleman and Battlemaster ‘Mechs. Rules exist that allow players to modify the units produced, or create their own.
As to the 24th Arcturan Guards, located on LC/TA//Skokie, which tells the sort functions in Excel that the unit is located on Skokie, in the Tamar region of the Tamar Province of the Lyran Commonwealth. From there we see that the unit has a ‘Mech regiment with 132 BattleMechs, of a heavy average with the regiment possessing a mid-range regular experience value. Backing the ‘Mech regiment up is a regular, light aerospace wing and a regular, medium conventional brigade.

Now this is an insane level of detail, something most will shy away from, but its success in allowing us to generate high quality supporting material for the story goes a long way to showing why keeping track of at least some elements in your AU is important.  Our detail is so extreme because it suits the game, but most AU’s can be managed far more easily.  However, tracking your AU is important, as it prevents grand slip ups in continuity, something that will be pounced on by your readership.

So, as you can see, we were able to create a richly detailed universe, which has allowed us to give players the real feel of leading a great start empire, without making them cry every time they have to make a decision. Additionally, this material has formed part of the detailed and rich AU we have all worked so hard to bring into the world of BT.

Keeping Perspective
Never forget where your story came from, that original little idea that sent you into a fury of activity and lead to the creation of your AU.  That initial touch of the muse still has power to draw new people in, even after many, many long months and years of writing.

Always make sure that you give new readers the chance to participate from the start, by linking to earlier material or by providing summaries.  Allowing new people to start at the start will ensure a constant new stream of readers who may one day become a collaborators who take your story to a whole new place.