I recently reached a word count of 101,000 
for this project, not counting worldbuilding notes. People have been asking me what my plans are for actually publishing this thing. So here’s my plan.
Story Structure
Veiled Age is episodic, with an A/B structure that goes like this:
A) A proper adventure with a mostly self-contained main plot. If this were a TV show, you could think of this as a “monster of the week” story. If this were a table top game, this would be an adventure module within a larger campaign.
B) A shorter segment where we can go to our home base, advance NPC subplots, investigate the slow-burn main plot, get to know characters, and so on. Your actions in various adventures can affect what’s going on in the hub area.
Throughout your adventures, you’ll befriend a motley band of misfits. They all have secrets, and they all hold independent opinions of you based on your choices throughout the episodes. You’re mostly here to make money and learn more about your dearly departed mother. But together, you might just save the known universe from an infinite Nightmare that corrupts both the living and the dead.
Buying Episodes
The first A/B pair is free, while subsequent ones are sold. Let’s say around $8. That would help us cover server costs and continue writing. The purchase would be associated with the account, not the character, meaning you could run through it as many times as you like if you wanted to see different outcomes.
I have finished drafts of these four story chunks already, and most of what I need to do now is improve the quality via some editing, design tweaks and playtesting. If it’s well received, the plan is to write more A/B episode pairs.
Since this is an experiment, we might do a pay-what-you-want arrangement at least at the beginning, so that if people really want a lower price, they can just change it. I’m less concerned with the exact amount, and more concerned with how many people think this sort of thing is worth paying for.
Why sell individual episodes?
You could say there are basically three ways to support an internet business. The advertising model, the subscription model, and the retail model. I would like to try the retail model. Also known as the please-just-buy-my-stuff model. It might seem almost outdated these days, but I prefer it because I feel it’s the model with the strongest basis in honest work and mutual respect. Customer sees the value in something, buys it, then enjoys it to their heart’s content. Simple.
Advertising works best for things we don’t consciously value. When we click on a random Youtube video, idly pick up our phone, or turn on the TV, our interest in the content is often not particularly intentional, so we would resist intentionally paying. Of course, we end up paying something far more precious – attention. The customer is entertained for the low, low price of having the urge to buy random crap directly inserted into their brain. It’s a vicious cycle: we consume content we don’t particularly care about, pay in a currency we undervalue, and in turn buy things we would never have otherwise wanted. This is why Ethan Zuckerman called advertising the internet’s original sin.
Subscriptions can be a good model, and in recent years the growth of Patreon and Substack have shown it can be a sustainable way for people to support the arts without ads. I’m not opposed to going this route eventually, but there’s a reason I don’t want to start out that way.
Subscriptions inherently create a quantity-over-quality incentive for both the creator and the consumer. Consumers binge content to get their money’s worth, while creators need to crank out content as fast as possible to keep up. Maybe one day, we’ll have multiple writers producing quality stories in the Veiled Age universe at a regular enough pace so that subscription could make sense. But Veiled Age stories are also meant to have a layered, stop-and-smell-the-roses quality, with secrets and alternate paths to explore. Which is to say mass-producing bingeable “content” (don’t you hate that word?) is not exactly a goal of mine.
So for now, let’s just have a traditional maker/customer relationship where I’m pedaling the equivalent of paperback novels or novelty wooden puzzles to people who enjoy them.