S.R.B. Gray Profile

Current Novel: Pre-Crisis

Status: Chapter 12

Summary: It is the Year 2998. Two rival nations find themselves competing for global dominance by secretly developing weapons of mass destruction. Deep within the wilds of a foreign land, a skilled soldier must break through enemy lines, and save the world from the fires of another Great War. Witness a riveting tale of love and war, and watch as a single man becomes a legend.

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In the Works: Project Masquerade

Summary: I won't be revealing too much about this newest project just yet, but I am hoping to get the ball rolling with it by summer. I'll be dropping teasers and updates of how the story will be shaped over time. For now, simply look forward to when this drops. It has been a while since I've put my all into a project that wasn't Crisis related, so look forward to this one!

2/27/2018 Update - The Shape of Masquerade: Setting and Premise

Location—

San Francisco, California

Time Period—

Nigh-Futuristic (2030)

Time Frame—

Fall of 2030 to Summer of 2031

Genre—

High fantasy with a hint of slice of life

Premise—

Things are not well in San Francisco. Mysterious murders and psychotic breakdowns have become common place as the days go by. Without any perpetrators apprehended for the crimes, the public is beginning to lose faith in both the police force, and the government.

Branded as a juvenile delinquent, a young man aged seventeen is forced to transfer to San Francisco for behavioral rehabilitation. Upon his arrival, he along with another social outcast stumbles upon the strange power of Masquerades. Dissatisfied with the current social status quo, he joins forces with the local misfits and fights to uphold justice for those that can’t fight for themselves. Let us partake in the Masquerade!

7/15/2018 Update - Lets Talk About 'Masquerades'

The contents of this update has been gathering dust for the last four months. Enjoy!

Hello everyone, and welcome to another update about Masquerade.

Make no mistake, I have been working on Masquerade even as my activity has reached an all time low yet again. Today, I shall be unveiling the fight system, which ties into the things that inspired me to make the story in the first place.

I have realized recently that my writing strengths lie primarily in my ability to present action scenes – to an extent, of course. I am at my best when crafting a fight scene with high fantasy elements. Pre-Crisis has shown me that I am not very good at creating more grounded action sequences. This is something that I have went back and forth with for a while now, and people who have been following my entries might have even been internalizing this as well, but the fact remains that my action sequences are becoming a bit stale. I will be going into further detail when Pre-Crisis is finished, but the fact of the matter is that the very nature of the Crisis-series is sapping my creative ability when it comes to my favorite part of storytelling: Conflict.

Go back and read through the original Crisis, and even Northern Skirmish, and compare the quality of those fights with the ones prevalent in Lunar Honor and Pre-Crisis so far, and there is a valley of difference. The sheer passion and creativity I had with those initial fights have been lost over time.

You might be wondering what this has to do with Masquerade, and I shall get to it now: This series of events have led to me creating an all new battle system. The “Masquerade System” as I call it is heavily inspired by the Persona series, slightly, but mostly JoJo’s Stand System.

I personally believe that JoJo’s Stands is hands down the absolute best fictional battle system out there. The sheer amount of possibilities and creativity prevalent in their functions allows for some of the most truly unique encounters in the medium. Thusly, I came up with Masquerades.

In the infancy of this new project, I was initially going to make the fights more along the lines of smaller scale Crisis fights. But Crisis lacks a stable set of rules for the fight system. This is great for creating a large amount of varying battles, but bad for maintaining in universe consistency. So, I scrapped that train of thought, and instead turned to Masquerades. But what exactly are Masquerades? And how will the system work?

As per usual, this will be a series heavily focused on its fights and showdowns. However, to make things more interesting, each character will have a unique power, and must attempt to force their opponents into the specific scenarios that will allow them to use their power to its full potential.

Each character will have a Masquerade, a curious mask that spawns in dire situations, one that is shaped to both reflect what one aspires to be, as well as who they truly are.

This will be less about who is faster or who can blow up bigger things; rather, it will be about who can use their powers in a cleverer manner. Some of the rules for the system is as follows:

• No two Masquerades are the same.
• A character can only possess one Masquerade – however, any given Masquerade may possess multiple distinct functions.
• Masquerade users are not superhuman – they can still be harmed/killed by forces that can kill normal humans such as guns and knives.
• Masquerades cannot be powered up under normal circumstances. Rather, a being must focus more on refining their use of the Masquerade to increase proficiency with its limitations.

So that about sums up the system. Seriously, that excerpt above came straight out of my overly detailed outlines. I spent the first month of pre-planning writing out outlines. You can tell Masquerade is going to be a fun time, because I haven’t gone this in depth with planning snice I started outlining the original Crisis.

Well, that’s it for this update – it’s a lot longer and juicier than the previous update. The next update should be coming out next month at some point: I shall be talking about the commissioned art I shall be using for the series, as well as provide some early ones, if I can locate a skilled artist that is willing to work with me for this lengthy project. Alright, see you next time.