Thursday, December 29, 2016

Web of Wavemeet Review

It's been almost a month since I ran my adventure The Web of Wavemeet, a mystery adventure in a tabletop RPG system of my design. I figured it would be good for me to share with you my thoughts on how things went.

I don't want to share too much about the adventure right now, as I may use it as an adventure that I actually publish with my system in the future. However, the basic jist is that the PCs are a group of smugglers who arrive in a town to find out that their contact is missing. As they explore the city looking for their contact, they find that there are many strange and interconnected things going on in almost every form, be it magical, political, or otherwise.

1. I Think People had a Good Time

I always have a really hard time knowing for sure how much my players were enjoying it. Sometimes I think I did awful, but I'll be talking to someone afterwards and they'll say it was one of the better sessions I've run. Other times, I'll think things went really well and find out later that my players just weren't in it.

But, in this case, even being a one-shot where a lot of the players didn't know each other to begin with, it seemed like people were really getting into it. They were making jokes with each other and using voices for their characters and generally seemed to be having a good time.

2. Players New to the Craft

Of the players we had, 3 of the 5 were completely new to tabletop RPGs. This is a blessing and a curse for something like this. Being a playtest of my own system, it's helpful to have someone new so that I can make sure the game makes sense to someone who doesn't have the assumptions that come with having played other RPG games. However, it also means that these players are less inclined to recognize if something is a bit off, not having anything to compare it to.

Afterwards, one of these players did comment that it was a bit slow. I'm not sure how much this complaint is genuine versus how much it is just unfamiliarity with the hobby. From where I was sitting, things seemed to move fairly quickly, and it seemed like the players always had at least one place to go. I only remember one point in time where players seemed to sit and have a long discussion about the plan without moving forward, and this was only about 20 minutes (which may have only been that long due to a combination of off-topic discussion and multiple players getting up to take restroom breaks at that point in time.

3. The Mystery

To plan the mystery, I utilized the 3-clue rule as explained by Justin Alexander here: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

Specifically, I used a node-based design as described here: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7949/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-1-the-plotted-approach

From the starting location (A), I had three different clues (or logical pieces of information that the players would have), each of which pointed to a different location (B, C, and D). At each of those locations, there would be three other clues. Two of these clues (one each) would point at the other two locations indicated by the starting location. The other clue would point to one of three locations deeper into the mystery (E, F, or G).

Once in the second tier of locations, each of these locations would have three clues. Two of the clues would point to the other two locations at that tier. The other clue would point to the location of the final confrontation where everything would come together (H).

Because of this, the players always had a good number of clues pointing them at varying sources of information and allowing them to choose between it. It seemed to work well, and it's certainly a format that I'd like to use more in the future, potentially on a wider scale.

Of course, something that I was afraid of, was that the players could just take a straight-line path to the end. They could go A-B-E-H without exploring C, D, F, or G, effectively missing more than half the adventure. Of course, it's very unlikely players will visit every node, but taking a straight-line path runs the risk of being far too short of an adventure, as well as failing to see the depth/complexity of the mystery itself. This wasn't what ended up happening when I ran the adventure, but it was something that was discussed/could have happened. (The players didn't know how the clues were laid out, but at their first tier location, they almost followed the clue to the second tier one, which is the second tier location that points the hardest at the final location.)

Overall though, I would say that the mystery format was successful and that it went well. I will possibly make a post later with some additional thoughts about running mystery adventures, hoping I can add something to what's already been said in the articles above.

4. The System

There are definitely some things that need adjusting, but I think a lot of it just had to do with how I'd set up the player characters. Character creation is the biggest thing my system is still missing, so I put together characters trying to keep things relatively balanced with each other as well as with the adventure.

With each other:

Honestly, it's hard to say how well the characters balanced against each other without more/longer play-testing. There were definitely some over-powered abilities, but if each of the characters had one equally overpowered ability, that's still a form of balance.

With the Adventure:

The players were definitely too powerful for the adventure, rarely running into any real trouble. Based on how they had been doing to that point, I increased the difficulty of the final encounter on the fly, but they still were able to win without too much difficulty (although, this may have been different if they hadn't used one of their overpowered abilities to incapacitate the boss while they took out his minions.)

As formerly mentioned, some of their abilities were just too powerful for the adventure they were handling. I'd designed the characters to be a little better than starting characters would be, but they weren't supposed to be that astronomically good.

Also, there's something about probability that I'm still trying to work through. To begin with, it seemed like their rolls were on the whole much higher than I'd expected. However, later in the game they seemed much lower. I designed the system using die pools to avoid constantly getting super high or super low rolls, since a die pool has more of a normal curve of probability. I was discussing it with one of the players a while after, and I think that the probability may not actually have been as skewed as it seemed, just that when you're rolling that many dice, a super high or low result sticks out and seems more notable than rolling a 20 on a d20, so they stick out more and seem more common even if they aren't. (Apologies on the run-on.)

5. Moving Forward

I've recently put together the character sheets for my upcoming Toybox campaign which uses the same system. I definitely took into account the lessons learned when deciding what powers to give the players in the campaign. However, it'll still be something I'm sensitive to going into the campaign, and I've warned my players that adjustments may be necessary as things go along if any of the characters are over or under powered.

I've also tried to make a few other minor tweaks to the system itself based on the results of the one-shot, and I am looking forward to how things turn out.

I've been laying a lot of ground-work for the Toybox campaign, and I'm very excited to start it next month. I'll keep you all updated on how it goes.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Heroism and Other Lies: Trailer One

Fade In from black:

Night time in a city. The lights from the buildings and street lamps play upon the puddles in the street. A light rain falls. A man wearing a long dark coat crosses the street. In one hand he holds a blaster, the other a sword.

Dissolve to:

A mechanical looking chair in a metal room filled with buttons, switches and blinking lights. The chair has many ports running up it's back.

A woman sits in the chair. A hissing sound is heard as the ports connect.

A man in a navy-blue suit stands in the doorway.

He addresses her: "If you go off book or betray the mission, VerciCorp will blacklist you across all other employers and your name will be given to the authorities as a potential terrorist. Do you understand?"

Cut to:

An airship taking off. The woman can be seen sitting in the chair through the front window as it soars into the sky.

Cut to:

A man wearing a black outfit and an air mask stands before an open cargo-bay door. Large boxes fly out the opening as the wind from outside whips about.

Fade to black:

Voice over, male: "I thought I was done being a hero."

Cut to:

Image of an old archway, the words "BUILD A BETTER FUTURE" faded over cracked concrete.

Voice over, male: "But it looks like things are just beginning."

Cut to:

A brief image of the man in the coat from the beginning of the trailer battling two large and well armed robots.

Fade to black:

Heroism and Other Lies, a series of novellas by Douglas Miller. A superhero-level adventure in a cyberpunk world.

Episode 101: Pilot, Coming Soon.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Consumables

I acknowledge that I'm about three posts behind. Unfortunately, real life has caught up with me over the last week or so, and my creative pursuits have had to take a backseat.

That said, I've been thinking about and looking through Numenera stuff in preparation for the Toybox Campaign, which has got me thinking about cyphers, which has got me thinking about consumable items in general.

If you're not familiar with the cypher system, it utilizes items called cyphers. These are single use "magic" (or whatever the appropriate setting flavor is) items with a wide range of effects from adding to a user's stats for a time to making a user able to phase through walls to being used as a weapon that does damage to an enemy to leveling a city. Basically anything you can think of. Being called the Cypher System, it's obvious that they're supposed to be an important part of play. The rulebook talks about how they're supposed to be used pretty freely and how the players are supposed to find new cyphers pretty often.

Of course, in my play, most of my players have not tended to use cyphers freely. They treat them the same way they treat all other consumables: always saving them because there might be a "better" use for them later. When players then find a new cache of new cyphers, they trade out for the best of the lot while staying below their cypher limit. It ends up not replenishing so much as just changing out certain cyphers, and the players have lost the opportunity to use whatever number of cyphers they trade out then.

And this doesn't just apply to cyphers or to the cypher system. Players are hesitant to use potions that boost their stats or abilities or magical arrows or any other consumable in any system I give them out in.

To be fair, I'm the same way. I don't like using one-use items, because then I won't be able to use them if I need/want them later. Which ends up with them not getting used at all, which is wasteful.

So, I don't know how to encourage both myself and my players to utilize one-use items with a greater frequency.

One thought that occurs to me, but that wouldn't necessarily be appropriate all the time, would be to have a time limit.

Last night, my wife and I were watching the second Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, and there is a scene where Lucy is looking at the healing salve that she'd had in the last movie. Hundreds of years have passed in Narnia while Lucy was spending a year in the real world, so that salve is at best hundreds of years old. I was thinking about medicines that we have, and I was realizing "There's no way that's still good. It has to be way past it's expiration date." My wife, wisely, made some comment about magic and asked me how old I thought most of the potions I find in ancient dungeons in RPGs are. It raised a good question.

Using a time limit, the item will expire after X days or hours or whatever relevant period in the game world, and after that it's gone. This would inspire players to find a use for the item before the time period is up, knowing that they won't get to otherwise.

Of course, it might also add a level of stress to something that is supposed to be a benefit to the game and to their characters.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Thinking About Character Sheets

In preparation for this weekend's session, the Web of Wavemeet, as well as my future Toybox campaign, both utilizing the system of my own design, I've been thinking about character sheets.


My system uses four primary Factors to determine character ability: Body, Mind, Voice, and Essence. When I was building my pregens, it was easiest for me to lay things out in a quad-type layout, with each factor getting it's own section, under which I list the resources, skills, abilities, attacks, and armor associated with each.

I've been debating if this is a reasonable way of actually laying out a character sheet, or if it would be better to have a section that gives the core factor values with their resources and maybe armor separate from a section for abilities separate from a section for skills and so on. I think this second is probably be better way of doing things, which is unfortunate just because it means reformatting everything I've done.

My next concern is, perhaps, less significant, but not insignificant altogether. How to layout the sheet. Do I want to have a portrait oriented page, or landscape?

When I first started getting into Numenera, I thought that the character sheets looked really cool. They had this cool tri-fold structure where they folded up like pamphlets, which seemed new and nifty to me. They also had a lot of really cool decorative drawings across them, which was pretty neat too.

However, when I started designing characters and trying to put the information on them, I found that these sheets weren't the most efficient. I was frustrated with not being able to really list out my abilities, or even my equipment very well. I felt like there was a lot of wasted space. To begin with, there were entire sections, mostly those on the front, that I either wasn't using at all or was using very little. But, on top of that, all the nifty drawings and artwork, while looking cool, was taking up space that could otherwise have been used for actual information.

Because of the lack of space, if I was using the Numenera character sheets, I would have to have another page on which I printed the full text of my abilities, which, in my mind, sort of defeated the point in having them written on a character sheet.

Recently, Monte Cook Games has come out with a character portfolio that you can download and print which addresses this, mostly by adding a lot more pages in which you can put additional information. I'm fine with that.

But that didn't exist at the time, so I made a bunch of my own character sheets. Since a majority of my experience before Cypher System had been 3.5/Pathfinder, I laid out my custom sheets more or less exactly like the ones for those games, and this worked for me. Eventually, I made sheets trying to imitate the trifold layout of the Numenera sheets, but making a better use of the space. This worked out pretty well too.

But now I'm just trying to decide what to do with my own.

What do you think? Are there character sheets that you've particularly liked or not liked? What do you like or not like when it comes to character sheets?

Monday, November 28, 2016

Pre-Planning: Web of Wavemeet

This weekend I'm going to run a playtest adventure of the system that I've been designing, a system I'm planning on starting a campaign in during late January (more on that to follow in the future).


I've had most of the outline of the adventure done for more than a month now. I fleshed out a lot of the details a couple weeks ago. I've got everything stated out and planned as far as I can foresee things. But I'm still fairly anxious about it.


For one, the mission is a bit different than those that I normally plan. It has a mystery-element to it which I'm hoping I've been able to pull off well. I am missing one connection I'd like to have, but hopefully that's either a) unnecessary or b) something I can come up with before this weekend. I'm very excited about running a mystery, just because I haven't had much opportunity to before. In the past, it seems like whenever I plan a mystery, a group falls apart before really getting into it.


Additionally, I'm just anxious about trying my system for the first time. I have a lot of faith in my system and feel that it's been built up and designed on things I've seen work well in varying games. Still, I think there's an aspect of 'I made this thing, and I'm worried people won't like it' about it.


The adventure is called the Web of Wavemeet and focuses on a group of smugglers who arrive to sell their goods to a contact and who get caught up in the strange goings on of a port town recently beset with nightmarish monsters.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Being Thankful

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for:

  1. My Wife
  2. Both our families who provide support in the good times and the difficult ones
  3. My friends, and the fact that I have people who I can share my worlds with through tabletop roleplaying games.
  4. The fact that I have both the time and the privilege that allows me to do creative work
  5. My pets, who help to keep me sane
  6. Board Games, Television, Movies, and Video Games-and living at a time when all these mediums are flourishing and filled with an overwhelming number of new ideas.
  7. Probably many other things as well.
Without saying too much, I would also like to comment, this Thanksgiving, on the irony of our current situation. As we sit down to have a meal which, according to the story, was shared by the Native Americans with the pilgrims upon their arrival to our land, there are two oddly ironic things going on. First, there is a good deal of hatred directed against immigrants, largely from people who are descended from the sorts of immigrants who were welcomed during the first thanksgiving. Second, there are currently Native Americans, like those who welcomed these people's ancestors, who are being abused and mistreated on their own land. I don't want to get into politics too much on here, but this is not right.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Looking Glass Moon: An Explaination

Invisible Sun promotional image by Matt Stawicki
I've mentioned Looking Glass Moon on here a couple times, but I haven't really talked much about it. If you've purchased either of my adventures, or if you've looked at the Upcoming page on this blog, then you may have seen that Looking Glass Moon is a surreal science fiction setting inspired by Invisible Sun and designed for Cypher System. I'd like to talk a little more about it.

Looking Glass Moon

Looking Glass Moon is primarily based around a planet and it's collection of eight moons. Each moon is a particularly unique environment, and each moon holds pieces of the puzzling truth of the universe.


The Looking Glass Moon, Miravis, the namesake of the game, bears a flat, silvery, and reflective surface that appears to be devoid of life. However, push against the surface, and you will find that you pass right through. On the other side, metropolitan cities, grown from the moon itself, thrive with life and civilization.


Players take the roles of Righthanders (most people who are natural born to the setting are left-handed). These are people who come to the world of the Looking Glass moon through an odd mirrored cube. They have no memory of where they came from, or of anything else before their arrival, only that it was somewhere else, somewhere very different than this place.


A cycle has been found-a way of repetitively moving through the spheres of the planetary system-through which one can learn more about the universe. In this way, one can learn varying Truths which are expanded on one's journey. The more one learns about a Truth, the more that Truth can be bent, granting strange and often mighty powers. This is not a path; it bears no beginning nor end. It can be begun at any point along it, and those who wish to gain the most of it, those who want to solve the mysteries of the universe, must continue to circle around over and over again. As a moon revolves around it's planet, and the planet revolves around its sun which revolves within its galaxy, so too do those who follow the cycle revolve around the Truth in never ending loops.

Invisible Sun

I was there at GenCon this year when Monte Cook Games announced it's new project, Invisible Sun. I missed the announcement, but I did look it up when they posted the video of the announcement. From the get-go, I felt like Monte Cook games had reached into my head and taken ideas I'd been thinking about for a while. Everything from the broad idea of having a game that engaged players when the session wasn't going on to having ways for players to be absent from the game and for session to still happen to a world built up on secrets that have to be solved even right down to the box. All of this was stuff I'd been considering in an earlier version of what would eventually become my Toybox project.


When the kickstarter for Invisible Sun launched, I watched it avidly. There were a lot of things about it that I felt captivated by, and I read through every update.  Admittedly, there were some things I was disappointed by. Some of my play is online and in my regular group, I have a player who comes in digitally. An absence of a digital play option was, is, more than a little disappointing, given that it means I can't really play with some of my more involved players. The price is also a bit restrictive. On the kickstarter, it was $200 for the base set, and $500 for one of everything. I had a hard time striving to justify the $200, and as a completionist, I have a hard time accepting a lower level when I know that a higher one exists.


Note that I'm not saying the product isn't worth the price. If you take a look at everything that's included, I'm sure that at either level you definitely get your money's worth. It's just also pretty hard for me to spend that much on an RPG, especially one I can't play with some of my regular players, all in one go. I do wish that they had come out with a version that was digital and slightly cheaper (maybe $100 for the base set and $250 for the set with everything but digital), even if it didn't provide access to 100% of the secrets that the physical set had.

Looking Glass Moon's Inception

I had been working on preparing The Machine God's Temple for release through Cypher Creator when the Invisible Sun kickstarter was running. As I moved on from that to working on The Wonder Vault Heist, I was thinking about other potential Cypher products that I could design. Thinking of how there were many MCG fans who were feeling sort of the way that I was about Invisible Sun, I realized there might be people interested in a somewhat similar setting for Cypher.


The idea was infectious and I began thinking through the hurdles immediately. To begin with, I was thinking with something of an 'opposite' type connection, and I'd thought of using a moon instead of a sun as the central base of my setting. Thus, the moon part. Then, I began thinking about how the moon wasn't really an 'opposite' of a sun, but how it just reflected it's light. Since I'd already been thinking about surreal fantasy, it was only a short jaunt past Wonderland to get the idea of calling it Looking Glass Moon.

Science Fiction Vs Fantasy

Invisible Sun is a Surreal Fantasy RPG, so that was what I was trying to make when I started with Looking Glass Moon. However, the further I got into working on the project, the more I realized that it was much more Sci-Fi than Fantasy. The role of space and travel through it was important in my setting. The idea of moons and planets and orbits was important in my setting. Overall, while the setting of Looking Glass Moon still captures a very surreal feel and shares many elements with Invisible Sun, it definitely has more in common with science fiction than it does with fantasy.


And embracing that has really helped as I've been going through writing the draft. There are many ideas that work very well within that genre that wouldn't have worked as well in Fantasy. I feel that I am able to do more unique surreal things to fit within Looking Glass Moon, and that the pieces just fit together better than they would otherwise.


On top of that, it does create more uniqueness to the product and makes it more different from Invisible Sun. While I feel that the two still share many core elements, I think that the paths I've gone down make my product unique in its own right and as through I am adding something useful to the masses of existing material, rather than just imitating something else.


Friday, November 18, 2016

Only the Paranoid Survive

I know, I was supposed to post yesterday and I missed it. But it was for a good reason(s), I promise.

Review: Paranoia: [Your Security Clearance is Not High Enough For the Title of This Adventure]

A few years ago, I kickstarted a new version of the slapstick dystopian dark humor RPG, Paranoia. Paranoia takes place in a future setting called Alpha Complex, which was built to save humanity from [REDACTED]. Now everyone lives here. It is run by an entity known as The Computer. Things run smoothly and efficiently all throughout the complex, and everyone has happy lives. Except that they don't.


Players take the roles of Troubleshooters, people who work for the Computer to root out trouble in Alpha Complex and shoot at it (or fix it through other means.) Given the Computer seeing threats behind every corner, somewhat malfunctioning, and all the things that go wrong, Troubleshooters tend to live very challenging, frustrating, and short lives.


The new version of Paranoia has been perpetually pushed back over the last few years, as kickstarter projects tend to be, but moreso than my usual experience. Shortly before GenCon, we got PDF files of the books. Yay. Sometime after that, we got "final" PDF versions. The most recent update on the physical version is "Early 2017". We'll see what happens.


So, last night, I got a group together and I ran the first adventure of the Mission book.


I really like Character Creation, in general as well as in Paranoia. The Paranoia system is designed to create tensions between the party to begin with by having them go in cycles where one person chooses a skill to have a positive rating in and then chooses someone to have that skill in an equal negative rating. I decided to run through Character Creation, rather than using the pregens provided in the Mission book.


It took a little longer than I'd expected, but I think this was in part because the players wanted to try to help each other/coordinate more than the game wants them to and partly because players like to think through their decisions more than the game wants them to.


Once done with that, we headed into the first adventure. This adventure is definitely designed for new players/GMs to Paranoia, and maybe to RPGs in general. It's very good at introducing things, and it does so in a very straightforward manner. It gives long selections of text for the GM to read to guide them in how to set scenes and run a Paranoia mission. Helpful. It goes pretty systematically through different setting and mechanics things for the players to get used to them. Also helpful.


However, it's also fairly restraining in it's helpfulness. The mission is rather linear, to the point of literally giving the players a yellow arrow on their iBall display to follow to each point in the mission. There are a few things that "MUST" happen in particular ways that seem to take control away from the players in manners that seem a bit forced.


So, it's very good for new people, but some more flexibility would be nice for those with some knowledge of the game and/or experience.


And it's very odd/in stark difference with the next couple missions, which I haven't yet run, but which I've read and feel are oddly lacking in direction. The second one gives a fair number of options of things to have the players do, but it gives a lack of guidance in how to lay out or handle presenting the main conflict. It has a general suggestion in regards to setup, but doesn't give specific ideas for how GMs can execute that. The third adventure is much more of a sandbox, with different things in different locations which the players can interact with. There's still a lot of improve/decision making on the GM's side, but I feel like there aren't obvious holes like with the second adventure.


I'll be running the second adventure in a couple weeks, but I'll be doing a fair bit of prep work to make sure it goes well-the actual product may be quite different than what's in the mission book.


I look forward to running the third adventure after that.

NaNoWriMo Update:

I passed the 50,000 word goal today. I expect to still write a fair bit more this month, but I do have some other things I need to focus on getting done, so slowing down and changing my focus for a bit will probably be good.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Observation: Limitless Magic


Lately, some combination of The Name of the Wind, Doctor Strange, and The Magicians (and probably Harry Potter as well, although that's less recent) has gotten me thinking about how magic is portrayed in fiction.


Namely, it seems like magic is a limitless resource. Sure, wizards have to learn their spells, and there are some wizards that are better at learning or performing spells than others, but it seems like in a lot of fiction magic is the gift that keeps on giving and once you have a spell you can use it over and over and over again.


(Of the things I listed, The Name of the Wind is an exception where there does have to be a source that's used for the magic, and the main character learns pretty quick that there can be serious repercussions for using the wrong source.)


But in Harry Potter, they can cast "Lumos" or "Expelliarmus" or even "Avada Kedavera" over and over again without stopping. In Doctor Strange, it seems like there's no cost to doing any particular spell. (It does mention the repercussions of using magic overall, but that's something different). The Magicians, same thing.


This gives magical characters an edge that non-magic users definitely don't have. For one, they get vast powers that aren't available to other people. A youth who has never fought might not have the skill of a swordmaster or know different fighting styles, but they can pick up a sword and swing it around and do some damage. A youth who has no experience in magic can't even attempt it. But on top of that, there seems to be no limit to the number of times these vast powers can be used. Even the strongest swordsman eventually tires, but so far as I can tell, a magician doesn't necessarily seem to tire just by doing magic (learning magic, maybe, or the conditions in which they are performing the magic, but not, apparently, the magic itself). On top of all that, magical users do also have a physical presence that they can build up that doesn't inherently need to be any weaker because of their magical talent.


I'm not, inherently saying that this is a bad thing. I think it makes these things somewhat less believable if I think too much on it, but I'm able to convince myself it's okay if the setting stays consistent. Mostly, I just think it's odd and unbalanced. It makes it so that if your main character is a magic user, then the antagonist must generally be a magic user in order to even begin to compete. Magic might give a broad spectrum of powers, but being limited to being someone who has it seems like a restriction I don't necessarily want to have. Besides that, I think a main character with any ability that is limitless tends to reduce the tension/drama of a story, rather than making it more engaging.


Anyway, that's just my thoughts/observation. What do you think?

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Writing Update and Loss for Words

I wrote a guest blog about NaNoWriMo that has been posted today on the blog of my fellow writer, Rochelle Bradley. Check it out: http://rochellebradley.blogspot.com/2016/11/my-nano-story.html

I have finished the rough draft Heroism and Other Lies, Episode 104: Flashbacks. I'm pretty happy with it. It is definitely the longest Heroism and Other Lies episode so far, being about twice as long as the shortest episode so far. It also may be the most action packed and the one that reveals the most about the characters. It might be the best one so far (although, that is pretty relative.) However, it is also a good deal different than the others, and I could see it being the sort of thing audiences wouldn't let me get away with. We'll see what actually happens.

I saw Doctor Strange last night. I liked it, but I didn't find it groundbreaking (no pun intended?). I may decide to write a more full review on here later.

Other than that, recent events have left my mind and emotions a bit strained, so I don't know that I have anything to say here for now. I hope to have more exciting and insightful thoughts on writing or RPGs to share on Monday.

Monday, November 7, 2016

3 Ways of Writing The Future


I've been working on the fourth book of Heroism and Other Lies this year for NaNoWriMo, and it's gotten me thinking a lot about how people portray the future, be it in short stories, novels, movies, television shows, or roleplaying games.


It seems like, if you're trying to portray the future, there is this problem with the fact that the future is actually going to come to pass-probably somewhat differently than how you've shown it. In some cases, people just don't care. They take their fiction as fiction and don't mind the inconsistency. In other cases, people latch on to the historical inaccuracy and find it frustrating.


Here are some suggestions on how to overcome this problem.


1. Very Far Off Future
One of the easiest ways of writing the future is to jump so far ahead that we aren't likely to get to that future anytime soon. When you have galactic civilizations built on space travel, you have this sort of thing. Sure, we may have more common space travel in the not too far off future if SpaceX has any success, but we're nowhere near colonization.


This works because the setting is too different to compare our current society to. Knowledge of the world is entirely different by inventors and scientists of the far future than it is to us, and any number of events could have happened to bring things forward or back progress-wise.


Numenera, one of my favorite RPG settings is still set on "Earth", but it's a billion years in the future and there are leftovers from previous civilizations that are weird and not understood even by the inhabitants in that setting.


2. Divergent Timelines
In this method, the setting may have been our world at one point in time, but then *something happened* that was different. Some major event shook up the entire world and set it on a course differently than our own. The bigger the event, the easier any inconstancies between the setting and our own world become to write off.


In Heroism and Other Lies, this is a method that I employ. I haven't talked about it much in what I have written, but there was a major war that shook the foundations of the setting. Nations were overthrown, world powers shifted, new sciences arose while other studies were lost. This war took place probably around our present, and so the future of the series is altered, with some things being developed that we might have long before then, and some things being commonplace that we might be far behind in.


3. Same but Different, Another World
Fantasy settings are well known for doing this. They have unique place names and characters and government set ups, but many of them tend to look like a romanticized version of medieval/renaissance Europe.


This tactic can easily be applied to futuristic stories. It's easy to change place names and other details to make your setting look similar to our world and a possible future for it without actually binding it in with our reality. In this way, there's less concern about timeline discord.


I hope these ideas are helpful to you.


Do you know of any other ways of approaching the issue of differences between reality and fiction in the development of the future?

Thursday, November 3, 2016

NaNoWriMo Update

While it is generally my goal to update here on Monday and Thursday, I have been rather focused on writing lately and haven't come up with something to write about here today. Therefore, I've decided to give you an update on how NaNo is going for me.


I knew going into this month that I was pretty busy and that I would become busier as time went on. My day job has been slowly ramping up and will soon be occupying a lot more time. I've got a short series of adventures starting up with my regular gaming group later in the month. While these are premade, at least one of the adventures will require a lot of work to be runnable. And then there's the general chaos of social and family obligations that comes this time of year.


Therefore, I set my initial goals very high. Specifically, I wanted to try to write double the suggested word count each day. This meant trying to write about 3,333 words a day. Since I knew that there would be days that I don't get to write at all, I figured this was a good way of accounting.


Currently, I'm doing better than my goal. I've got a little over 11,000 words.


Story-wise, I have written through the third chapter of Episode 104: Flashbacks, the fourth novella of the Heroism and Other Lies series. So far I'm pretty happy with what has been written down. There have been lots of action sequences as well as some good conversations. I think that this story will really help the audience get to know our heroes a lot better.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Publication Day: Wonder Vault Heist

I have released my second Cypher System adventure, The Wonder Vault Heist.


If you've read my posts on heist adventures, this was the adventure I was designing that got me thinking about them.




This is a heist adventure designed for a science fantasy setting, but which could easily be converted to other settings/systems.


The heist revolves around a mechanical/mystical vault, left by the ancients, which can bend space and time, and the sinister group that controls it. As the players get closer to the wonder vault itself, they learn more about their enigmatic employer, and about the events of the past which tore a rip in space and time where the vault now stands.




If you haven't checked out my posts on running heist adventures and are interested in making/running your own, see the posts below:


Heist Adventures 1: 5 Challenges


Heist Adventures 2: Tips and Advice


Heist Adventures 3: Heist Campaigns

Monday, October 31, 2016

Cooperative Story-based Board Games and My Contradictory Nature


My favorite board game is Betrayal at the House on the Hill. I accept that it is not the best board game, it is still my favorite. Even though I'm not normally a fan of horror.


Betrayal Explanation

If you're not familiar with the game, I'll give a short explanation. In Betrayal, players are exploring an old mansion. The mansion is revealed room by room as room tiles are drawn from a deck and placed down to form the places the players are exploring. Different rooms may trigger varying frightening events or reward the players with items.


Partway through the game, an event will happen which will trigger the second phase, the haunt. When the haunt is triggered, players look at a chart to determine, based on the variables that started the haunt, what adventure they will be playing. There are 50 different scenarios (100 with the new expansion) that can occur. Usually, one of the players (often the one who triggered the haunt), will be the "traitor," and will take a role opposing the other players from that point forward. Depending on the situation, the traitor might be a vampire, or a madman trying to blow up the house, or a cultist bringing ghosts up from the dead, or many other things. Each scenario is unique, with unique objectives for the traitor and the players.


Why I like Betrayal

I like stories. They're some of my favorite things. Betrayal provides some of the fun of being able to experience an adventure together with friends that roleplaying games bring (with less depth, of course), without requiring someone to spend a lot of time prepping an adventure to GM.


I like exploring the house and seeing it form completely differently each time I play. I like all the different scenarios allowing me to get a new story/scenario each time I play.


Also, your characters have stats that can improve or be lowered throughout the game, so I like the RPG-like mechanic of being able to work to improve my character as I go along.


Some of it's Problems

I think some of the "best" board games are based more on skill than on luck. While Betrayal does offer the players some-possibly even many-choices, it is certainly more luck than skill. While the high level of randomness in room tiles, event cards, item cards, omen cards, and the adventure itself makes the game more interesting, it also makes the game less skill based. Things happen to the characters and they don't necessarily have much choice in it. It's easy to draw an event card that screws up everything for your character even if you've made all the right choices. You may have been building up your Might and Speed, and the haunt, when it's revealed, might be based on Intellect and Sanity, making your efforts prove to be in vain.


For me, I'm less concerned with being control when playing Betrayal. I'm not playing it for it to be a game of skill, so the randomness doesn't bother me so much. But, I know that for some people it does, and I know that isn't as good of a "game" because of it.


The other problem comes with the role of the traitor. The players have no control over who becomes the traitor, but once someone does, everyone else is against them. For some players, this is not an enjoyable experience. They feel like everyone else is ganging up on them, and they don't like being the enemy in something that is cooperative for everyone else.


I am among those who like being the traitor, so this experience doesn't bother me. However, I know people who have been alienated from the game from becoming the traitor on their first play.


Lately, I've been Looking for a Board Game that May not Exist.

I've been thinking about board games, and I've had a yearning for something that I'm not sure exists. Some of this comes from wanting a game that has elements of Betrayal, but with certain other distinctions.


2-6 Players
Betrayal at the House on the Hill is 3-6 players. Munchkin is 3-6 players. Vast is 1-5 players, but it definitely seems less fun with 1 or 2 players than when there are more.


A lot of the time I would like to play a board game is during time when my wife and I are hanging out. I want something that I can play with her and have a good time playing, but that we could also share with other friends of ours.


Cooperative
I like games where I get to work with people. Going along with the next point, I feel like having the players on the same team allows for better story/adventure potential. While I do enjoy games where I put my wit against that of other players, my current fixation is more focused on something that can be done together.


Story/Adventure
I'm looking for something that has something of a story/adventure to it. I want to be playing characters with a goal to overcome something, like the varying scenarios in Betrayal. I like the idea of something that feels like it has a plot arc to it-a beginning, middle, and end, where more is revealed as the story goes along.


Lots of Stories
Some games are designed around one specific story. In Vast, each of the characters has a motivation or reason that they are in the Cave, and an individual objective to carry out as their adventure/story. But these motivations are the same every single game. The story is an excuse to have these things with different mechanics to be acting against each other, rather than the other way around.


Betrayal has 50-100 stories. Even playing the same scenarios more than once, the changed positioning of rooms and other important things adds some interest (and the number of scenarios means that at least it's unlikely to play the same scenario twice close together.)


Optional: Character Advancement
I like things where my character advances, what can I say?


"It sounds like you want a tabletop RPG..."


Yes, you're very smart.


BUT the distinctions between what I want and a tabletop RPG are:
  • I want it to be playable with two players. (I want it to be playable with more too, but I want it to be able to go down to two)
  • I don't want either of the players to have to come up with the story
  • I want all the players to be able to work on a team as the adventurers/heroes. I do not want any to need to play the villain or to GM the scenario.
  • I want it to have a lot of replayability with varying stories/adventures/objectives for the players.
  • I want a complete story/game to be playable in one sitting (probably about an hour would be ideal, but I imagine that what I want would probably come out closer to 2).
"Do you know about...?"
While I do want suggestions, if any of you know of a solution that I am not aware of, here are some things I have thought about or looked into, and why I don't think they fit what I want.


  • Betrayal at the House on the Hill-Need 3 players, one player ends up not being cooperative.
  • Munchkin-Need 3 players, all players competitive
  • Vast-All players competitive
  • Order of the Stick-While I haven't played this game, it seems like despite having a degree of randomness to the dungeon, the story itself is always the same.
  • D&D games like Castle Ravenloft-I haven't played these either, largely because the price is somewhat prohibitive for something I'm not sure I'll enjoy; However, my understanding is that they a) take forever and b) don't have a lot of replayability.
My Solution
For a while, I had been thinking of a game like Betrayal, but heist-themed. Instead of using Might, Speed, Sanity, and Intellect of Betrayal, I'd been thinking of taking Leverage's key focuses of Hacker (for tech stuff), Hitter (for fighting), Grifter (for talking), and Thief (for things like lockpicking or pickpocketing). Players would spend the exploration phase scoping out the location of their heist (built with individual tiles), and eventually the actual heist would begin and they would have objectives to complete within the overall location.


It seemed cool. If I was confident in my ability to get around the copyright issues of deliberately ripping off both a popular board game and a television franchise, I might even look at developing it more.


But, here comes a bigger obstacle with me trying to fill my void myself-if I wrote out 50 or so scenarios for this game, I would be familiar with all of them. There would be no discovery for me to play through them. No real surprise or gain. So it's a lot of work attempting to put in front of myself something I'd enjoy to lose a large part of the enjoyment factor.


So, recently, I was thinking of a new plan:


Something with a lot more moving parts. A game that mixes and matches villains, plots, storylines, etc into varied and unique combinations such that each part of the story/adventure is randomized along the way, providing for the full stories/scenarios/adventures to be different based on the combinations. With this, even though I would be familiar with all of the moving parts, I would be able to be surprised by the combinations.


I'd think of potentially having the setting itself discovered with hexagonal tiles-like a hexcrawl.


I like this idea a lot, and I'd like to spend some time developing it.


However...
Tomorrow I'm starting at the beginning of the drafts of Episodes 104 and 105 of Heroism and Other Lies. I'm hoping to get The Wonder Vault Heist out later this week. I'm working on the final edits to Episode 101. I'll soon be running some RPGs with my regular group that-while I was thinking I had premade adventures to run-I've realized I'll need to do a fair bit of work preparing. I'm working on a one shot to test out my system in early December. Assuming that works out, I'll be going on to trying to start a campaign with my system probably in January. And then there's actually developing system/character options/etc for my system. And I have no idea when I'm going to work on Looking Glass Moon.


So, what I'm saying is...I don't really have the time to devote to making a board game right now, even if I *really* want to.


So, I'll keep the idea here and in my back pocket, to work on maybe on the side or when I get more time.


What are your thoughts on my idea? Is it a game you'd be interested in playing? Do you know of any existing games that might fit what I'm looking for?

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Review: The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

For years, people have been telling me to read The Name of the Wind, the first book of the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy by Patrick Rothfuss. I had many other things ahead of it in my reading list, and no one could really give me convincing reasons to read it, so I'd put it off.

I finally gave in and read it recently, and I have some thoughts. I will try to share them in as spoiler-free a way as possible, but I will discuss some of the basics of the book.

A Story About Storytelling
There are a lot of stories told throughout the course of this book. The conceit of the book itself is that the main character is telling his life's story. In that life, he is raised in a theater troupe, so they have more stories. As he searches for answers about something that happened in his past, much of the information that he seeks has fallen into legend, so more stories. Stories even seem to work themselves in when they don't seem especially relevant to what's going on directly (although a lot of times, these stories seem to come back later, and I imagine that they will prove relevant to the grander main plot in the next two books.)

As a writer, the varying stories told throughout the book are interesting to me. I'm intrigued by how Rothfuss portrays the story telling styles and focuses of the different storytellers throughout the book. Each storyteller has a different style, voice, and purpose behind the story that they tell. This is intriguing to me.

A Rich and Detailed World
Rothfuss has clearly put a lot of thought into the setting of his story. Complex and varied cultures with detailed histories breath life into the world. It feels like a world that has a life to it and is tangibly real rather than being painted up around the characters. The level of detail provided, be it linguistic, cultural, or even in terms of physical distances, is amazing and natural. Because it is told by the main character's story, it is generally mixed in narratively and conversationally, rather than drawing attention to the exposition. This makes it feel like the world fits into itself, rather than being forced upon the reader.

A Story so Real it Doesn't Quite Flow
One of the complaints that I have about the story is that it doesn't feel very focused. There are a lot of side plots and a lot of events that don't seem to tie in very well with the "main plot". In part, this is because it is a person telling their life's story, so there isn't a "main plot" in the traditional sense, even if there is, in fact, a defining purpose that drives the main character throughout the story.

A part of the realism of the story is that not everything that happens to someone is specifically focused on one story arc, event, or thing. The fact that it doesn't feel like how a story progresses is something that makes it more difficult to read (for me at least), but also at the same time more like real life.

An Unquestionable Gary Sue
The one thing that seems the most unrealistic about the story is the main character. He is a bit too perfect. He is good at everything he attempts, and he learns so fast that anything he doesn't know he can pick up with unnatural speed. Everything from magic to music to thievery to talking he is not just good at, but more or less the best at. He claims that he knows nothing about women, but he usually says the absolute perfect thing to charm them. He is a character who has almost no flaws, except potentially that his emotions sometimes affect his judgment. The conflicts he faces usually have nothing to do with his own faults so much as the circumstances of the world around him.

Concluding Thoughts
Overall, I liked the book. It's extremely well written, and the varying events in it, while often being largely disconnected, are almost all interesting in their own ways. It's not the next thing that I am going to pick up, but I will probably read the next book sometime. It seems like I could have plenty of time to get to it before the third book comes out.

Monday, October 24, 2016

NaNoWriMo and Me 3: Plots and Plans

When it comes to NaNoWriMo, and really when it comes to writing novels in general, there are varying philosophies on how and how much to plan out. Typically, NaNoWriMo has had two categories or classifications for writers based on planning.


Planners are the people who go into November with a detailed outline and a good idea of how they're getting from point A to point B. they have the shape of the story and just need to write it down.


Pantsers are the people who go into November blind, with no plans or idea what they are going to write at the beginning of the month. They are flying by the seat of their pants, as it were.


This year, NaNoWriMo has acknowledged a third category, the in between that it calls Plansters. This is, I think, where I fall.


I've tried a lot of different strategies over the years, to finally settle upon the method that works best for me. I don't claim that this is the best method for everyone, but it's best for me.


My Problem with Pantsing
I've tried to fly by the seat of my pants, with little to no planning at the beginning of the month. With this, I've had a few issues. First off, I don't know if my idea will actually go anywhere. Without a plan, I have a bad habit of going and then realizing that I've hit a dead end with nowhere to go. The other main issue I've had is just that without a plan a lot of what I write just isn't very good. Events don't flow together will. Things aren't connected in logical ways. It just doesn't work as well as I'd like.


My Problem with Planning
For me, a lot of the fun of writing comes with the discovery and invention of new plotlines/characters/settings. To some degree, I like thinking through ideas more than I like actually writing them. If I have a vast, complex, detailed outline, then I've discovered most, if not all there is to discover. Sometimes, when I've done this, I end up taking the story off the outline partway through, thereby discovering new things. But, if I find that here is nothing for me to discover or invent, I tend to lose a lot of steam and get bored fast.


The following are the steps that I generally go through when planning a novel. They aren't hard and fast rules, and oftentimes I'll be adjusting previous steps during later ones.


Step 1: Have an Idea
This can be both the easiest and most difficult step of the whole process. On the one hand, an idea is simple. It's little more than a concept. It doesn't need to have fully fleshed out characters or plotlines. Just a "wouldn't it be cool if there were a story about X?" Seems easy enough, but I've found that the times I try to brainstorm for an idea, I come up blank. It's when I have an idea and am trying to write that I end up getting a million ideas and being tempted to jump ship.


Step 2: Come Up with Your Main Character
You don't need to have a name at this point, but you should have some thoughts on the character's defining traits. What do they do for a living? What are some aspects of their personality? What is something they want?


Compelling characters are characters who want something. If your main character doesn't want anything, then there's nothing for the audience to root for. Their wants might change throughout the story, but they should always want something.


Step 3: Decide on a Beginning
Where does your story start? What is your main character up to? Whatever the central plot of your story is, what's it's condition at the beginning of the story?


Step 4: Decide on an Ending
Where do you want your story to end? Does your protagonist get what they want? How is the main plot of the story resolved?


Step 5: Make Supporting Characters
At this point, it's good to come up with some of the other people who will show up in the story. Who are the main character's closest friends and/or allies? Who are the antagonists? Is there anyone else who plays a major role in the story?


Step 6: Major Plot Points
After this, it's usually good to plan a few of the major events to take the story from the beginning to the end. I don't like to plan all the events of the story, and even those I do plan I try to only have a brief description of for planning purposes. Too much planning here can lead to future boredom.


Sometimes, in planning the major plot points, new characters might come into the picture. It is fine to go back and add, delete, or change the characters from Step 5.


After the six steps, you should have a decent outline and a good foundation to start from for writing.


If you've missed the previous two parts of my NaNoWriMo series, you can check them out here:


Pros and Cons


My History



Thursday, October 20, 2016

NaNoWriMo and Me 2: My History with NaNoWriMo

Sidenote: On Tuesday, I got the cover image for the first Heroism and Lies book. With the editing almost completed, I'm very excited to be on the verge of putting out the first book. The cover looks good, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with all of you soon.


In my previous post, NaNoWriMo Pros and Cons, I mentioned that I've done National Novel Writing Month for 10 years. Each year I've met the 50,000 word goal, but I've had mixed results in terms of what I've produced. I'm going to go through and look at each year of my NaNo participation, and see if I can pick out things I've gained from them.


This could be long and largely uninteresting to people who aren't me, but I am interested in the experiment of going back through.


2006: Y Rot Skcab

The title is "backstory" spelled backwards. Yes past Douglas, you are so very clever. *Rolls eyes*. So, 11 years ago, I was very interested in film and made very low quality movies (both shorts and full length features) with my friends. We had no budget and very little in the way of acting talent, so most of the things we made were hard to watch. Y Rot Skcab was my attempt at exploring the backstory of a movie that I was trying to create not long thereafter.


What I Gained:

Y Rot Skcab was my first year doing NaNoWriMo. I'd been surprised at how simple reaching the 50,000 words was. I also actually ended my story that year, probably just a little bit over the 50,000. There's a lot I like in the story, and there are ideas that have resurfaced in other things I've written as well as other RPG games that I've run. The characters are great, and I think through writing Y Rot Skcab I helped to flesh them out. I learned a lot about my writing in that year, and I gained plot devices and characters to use in future projects. I may well return to Y Rot Skcab's story and those connected to it one day, although I'll have to change it's name. And probably the name of the secret organization in the story (Destroyers of Evil Masters, Objects, Necromancers, Incasing ones, and Creations)...someone really wanted their name to spell DEMONIC.


2007: Catch the Wind/The Fiction Game

In 2007 I decided to write a story devoted to the girl I was dating at the time (and a couple that was close to us). Catch the Wind was a thrilling tale of high adventure about a "boy" with strange powers from another world who met up with a girl and together they tried to battle a sinister villain who was controlling strange monsters that were attacking them. Lots of elemental stuff going on. Then the girl and I were no longer dating, and I lost my desire to write a story for her.


So, I picked up a story called The Fiction Game, something of a parody of a story I'd been working on for a few years before that called The Reality Game. It was a book that acknowledged it was a book and was generally odd with irony.


What I gained:

Both these stories would go into future NaNoWriMo stories. They tickled my brain and, while they were underdeveloped, they formed the basis for bigger ideas that would come from them later.


2008: The Life and Death of Love and Worlds/Shattering Reality

In which I make the same mistake twice and cheat the rules of NaNoWriMo.


The Life and Death of Love and Worlds is a very long title for a book. I wouldn't have kept it as that, but I didn't have a better title in what I'd written. This was an interesting tale about a guy whose world was destroyed by a group of people that tear apart parallel dimensions for the fun of it, and so he goes dimension hopping to try to set things right and/or get revenge. This was also written for a girl, and I think that's why I lost steam in writing it.


Shattering Reality was a serial novel I'd been working on at the time and putting out one hurried chapter a week. When the long titled story wasn't happening, I started focusing on SR, and counting those words towards my word count, even if I had already started that story. (Although, I don't remember exactly, I may have ended the first book before NaNo started, so it would have been starting a new book).


What I gained:

Dimension hopping is something that comes up in my writing from time to time. I like it. It interests me. One of my current projects, Looking Glass Moon, uses it a lot. The setting for the RPG system I'm designing might use it a good bit, I'm not sure yet. The long titled book helped me to develop more thoughts and ideas on dimension hopping, and the "evil" organization in the book was great. It will definitely show up again.


SR in general was helpful to my keeping writing at a time when I otherwise had a lot going on. There were some good ideas there, and while it's not my best writing, and while I never finished the story (I got a good ways through book 3 and had 4 books planned), I think it helped me to grow as a writer. Sometimes I wish I could finish the story. Perhaps someday I will revisit it, gutting it of the issues that makes it unreadable for those separate from my life (it was largely written for people I knew so it had a foundation in things we had together.)


2009: Castor and Friends

This year I was juggling not only writing, but also being an Municipal Liaison for my local region. I planned gatherings for writers to come together and write together separately, tried to speak encouraging words, and generally did my best to keep things going. I was working with another ML who had been there before me, so my load wasn't too heavy.


Castor and Friends was sort of my first foray into a weird dystopia setting. I think I was trying to write something that was critical of society by dialing all it's problems up to 11, but I don't think it came across as terribly insightful or realistic. There was also some weird split personality stuff going on. It was a weird book. I don't like it that much.


What I gained:

Uhm...uh...aside from the general experience with writing more, I think I just gained an understanding of certain things that I don't do well. Odd mindscapes and exaggerations being among them.


2010: Blatant Acts of Heroism

My most successful year.


The former Municipal Liaison left, putting me more in charge. I pulled in another person from our ranks to elevate to ML and provide aid. We got organized. We advertised. We brought in new blood. Our group thrived. This was also the year that the alternative philosophies to NaNoWriMo came to my attention, and my other ML and I butted heads some.


Blatant Acts of Heroism took the outline from Catch the Wind and improved upon it. Now set with college aged heroes instead of high school, the story focused on Terra, a down to earth girl (yes, past Douglas, you're still so clever) who meets a boy from another dimension and gets caught up in vast adventures against her will. She is pushed on the path to becoming a hero and developing powers of her own, while a psychopath hunts them both.


I also doubled the word count goal. 100,000 words. And I still had more story left to write at that point.

What I gained:

Blatant Acts is by far the best NaNo novel I've ever written. It may be one of the better things I've written overall. It's definitely the closest thing I ever came to really publishing (aside from current projects.)


I learned a ton from Blatant Acts, and from the subsequent process of sharing it with people and getting their input. I learned about things that I did really well, and I learned about some things that were critically flawed in the story.


There's a decent chance that I'll turn my attention to Blatant Acts at some point in the future once more, and that it will make it to publication. But I have no active plans for this right now.


2011: Em of Maerd

No longer an ML, I could focus on my writing and my life.


Following the Fiction Game's idea, this was a book that knew it was a book. It was super meta and focused on an adventure-seeking, zeppelin driving girl named Em. It's other main characters were a writer who shared my name while being nothing like me and living in a flying invisible castle, and a homicide detective who had a habit of murdering people he perceived as being bad for society. Together (although also somewhat separately since they don't really trust each other or ever open up about anything), they investigate the death of a man named Bernard, while exploring varying forms of fiction and coming to grips with being characters in a book.


What I gained:

A story that I'd definitely like to revisit, and an increased sense of irony and meta humor.


2012: Monster Hunter?

New region. New writing group.


I honestly have very little memory of what I wrote this year, but I remember gathering 1-2 times a week and hanging out with other writers.


What I gained:

Many new friends and a group that would become my support system for my growth as a writer.


2013: Respice Finem

This was a book I was writing to a younger version of myself. It was the book I wished I'd encountered when I was younger. It was also my first step into magepunk.


What I gained:

If nothing else, an increased perspective on myself. But also developing a magic system taught me things that I continue to use and think about.


2014: Designs of Dragons

This book definitely wanted to have a high-action lighthearted comic-book feel to it as my main character began to develop draconic powers and abilities and found himself caught up in schemes and politics of men and dragons. It started pretty strong, but it became more politics and conspiracies than lighthearted comics, and I ended up setting my main character up to turn evil, which I didn't really want to happen.


What I gained:

Well, I'd love to go back to this story and do it right, but I'm still not quite sure how to do that. However, the style that I tried to develop in writing it definitely went into Heroism and Other Lies.


2015: Heroism and Other Lies (Episodes 101, 102, 103/2)

Heroism and Other Lies takes place in a future city and looks at the effects of technology, both good and bad. It has the comic-book feel that I'd tried to develop in Designs of Dragons, and takes place in short novellas, or episodes. I wrote two of these last year and made substantial progress on a third (although I'm going back through this one and basically starting it over from scratch this year.)


What I gained:

These books I do plan to publish. The first one, hopefully very soon. These are fun stories to write, and hopefully they're fun to read. Hopefully too, they get people thinking about the technologies that we're developing.


Concluding Thoughts

While I don't have a lot published yet, I do have a lot of experience that I'm drawing from as I progress further, and I have a lot of ideas that I've developed and can continue to explore for future publishable efforts.

Monday, October 17, 2016

NaNoWriMo and Me 1: 3 Pros and 3 Cons


What is NaNoWriMo?



NaNoWriMo is a shortening of the words National Novel Writing Month. In case you haven't heard of it, National Novel Writing Month takes place in November. During this time, writers from all over the world (Shouldn't it be International Novel Writing Month then? Yes, probably) focus their efforts together on separately writing novels.


The objective is to start from the first word of a novel, having nothing written of it beyond plans before the month starts, and end with a hopefully completed project, but at least 50.000 words.


There aren't really any prizes or fame or glory offered to the winners, but it is a tool for getting writers to write and it provides support networks to encourage said writers and spur them forward.


I've participated in NaNoWriMo the last 10 years (and will probably talk more about my history with it in future posts). Each year, I've reached the 50,000 words. Once I even doubled the goal. The actual quality of what I've written has been...mixed at best.


Over the years, I've developed a lot of mixed feelings about NaNoWriMo based on my experiences and the experiences of those around me.


Pros

1. Motivation

A lot of people want to write a novel. A lot of people might even spend some time working on such a thing. But a lot of time the motivation fizzles out. Life gets in the way. The novel gets set to the side with the promise of "well, I'll get to it tomorrow." The tomorrows pile up, and things go unfinished.


NaNoWriMo provides a solid goal and a deadline. It's trackable. It's focused. It has an element of rigor, while still being mostly in the realm of the achievable. Things like that help writers to stay focused. It helps people to take their free time and say "okay, I'm going to write a few hundred more words" rather than "I'm tired, I'll write more tomorrow."


I know that this is the case for me. I definitely let my writing go to the wayside when I don't have clear goals and timeframes laid out in front of me. But with NaNo, I'm able to focus and keep myself motivated, even if the reasoning behind the timeline and goal are pretty arbitrary.


2. New Ideas

NaNo is fast paced. The more that one has going on in their life, the faster one has to write in the time available. Because of this need for speed, I often find myself writing down the first event or idea that comes to mind when I'm going from point A to point B on my outline. Sometimes, what comes out is horrible. I'll get to that in the Cons section.


Sometimes, what comes out looks like sheer brilliance. Looking back over my work, there have been many times that I've thought to myself "I have no idea where that idea came from, but it's great." Ideas that I never would have thought of in a calm place with no deadline that bring things to light that I hadn't considered before flow out during some of the faster jaunts in NaNo.


I think that we have this tendency to overthink things, especially when there's no time crunch. I know that I have this filter that just hits an idea and a lot of times, without even really thinking about it goes "oh, that's stupid" and I write off the idea without giving it a level of consideration. The speed of NaNo helps me to get past my overthinking and past my filter so that I actually get ideas on the page and can see if they work or not.


3. Learning

Not every idea that comes across one's mind is a good idea. A lot of them are bad. And writing super fast, many of them will be. But, NaNoWriMo allows writers to experience both good ideas and bad ideas. It allows writers to take what they've done, evaluate that work, and learn from it.


Over the years, I've learned a lot about myself as a writer. I know more about what I do well and what I do poorly. I know more about what I like to write and what I don't. And these things are all things I can use to further my future projects.


Kit Bradley, an author friend of mine (who I met through my local NaNoWriMo region) told me not long ago about the idea of the "Thousand Pounds of Clay". Basically, as Kit explained it, there was a pottery instructor who had two classes. One he told he would grade based on their best pot. The other he told he would grade based on how much they produced-how close they got to a thousand pounds of clay. At the end of the semester, the class that tried to do a thousand pounds of clay had the better pots, because they had more experience. They had tried more things. They had failed more, and they had learned more from those failures. They had succeeded more, and they build off of those successes. NaNoWriMo provides the same opportunity, for those who want to take it.


Cons

1. Writing to Write

I've encountered different philosophies of participants of NaNo, and I'm not one to say that any are better or worse than any others. However, I think that philosophies can be contagious, and I've seen people given advice that I would claim is "bad" depending on their goals.


Specifically, I've noticed that there are participants who don't really care what they're writing. They don't really think seriously about or intend to get published or share their writing with anyone. They want to beat nano, but they don't seem to care a lot about the thing they're doing. They are writing to write. These writers will focus on word count above any other idea of writing, and will emphasize that others do the same.


While I'm fine with these people writing to write if that's what they want to do, I've seen the philosophy really mess up people who actually do care about what they're writing and want it to turn out well.


2. Quantity over Quality

This is the natural result of the above philosophy, but some people fall victim to it even if they aren't trying to have the above frame of mind. Now, I did say that speed and trying to reach a goal of a high word count in a short period of time is good. It is. To a point.


I've seen people pushing for word count putting through idea after idea as they come and hit upon a realization, partway through their story, that something that they have written is horrendous. It's something awful that throws off the entire story beyond that point. At this point, the writer has a choice. They can go back and try to work through the event they wrote, adjust it, change it, come up with an alternative, and therefore fix the story. They can try to think about what they'd do to fix it, write as if they did, and go back to fix it later. Or, they can keep going with what they've written, moving forward with a bad foundation.


More often than not in NaNo, I've seen people, caring more about word count than their story, chose the latter. At the end of the month, a lot of the time, these people realize that everything after the bad-point is awful-unsalvageable. They know that they'll have to go back to that point and rewrite most everything from there. They usually don't end up doing that.


A lot of times, this happens to people who would like their story to work, who would like to go back and fix things, but who have been told "No, keep going, don't go back, it'll slow down your word count goals."


These people can, and a lot of times do, learn from the experience. Whatever they did wrong, they learn how to better avoid it in the future, even if they don't learn to go back and fix things. So, it's not a wasted experience, but it's not as developmental an experience as it could be.


More often then not, in an ironic turn, the people who focus on words over story tend to get burnt out or get to places where they don't know what to write next. This prevents them from reaching the word count, leaving them unsatisfied with their efforts.


3. Lack of Follow Through

While November has set goals and objectives and timelines, once November ends, things are less organized. Everyone always commits to finishing their work. If there's still more to be written, people say that they they'll finish writing it. Everyone says they'll finish editing the writing. Groups say that they'll continue to meet and focus on getting things done.


In my experience, this happens rarely. There's a severe lack of follow through, and the efforts of the month end up falling by the wayside.


For a better idea of what I've written for NaNoWriMo over the last 10 years, and what I've gained from it, check out My NaNoWriMo History

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Heist Adventures 3: 3 Heist Campaigns

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TNT and Electric Entertainment.
Because I've been working on a Cypher System adventure based around a Heist, The Wonder Vault Heist, I've been writing about running Heist Adventures in Tabletop RPGs.

If you haven't seen the other articles in the series, check them out here:



These articles have been focused on individual adventures. However, sometimes players and GMs will want to have an entire campaign based around heists. There are a few different perspectives to take with this, depending on the sort of game your players want to have.

Notably, heist-based campaigns tend to be more episodic, with each heist being a part of a separate job. However, sometimes there can be overarching plots or threads that connect the varying heists.

1. Independent Group
Your player characters are on their own. They have no one backing them and no leadership outside themselves. This is the most commonly portrayed option in television/movies. This is Ocean's 11, Leverage, the Italian Job, etc.

This group can be motivated by selfish/personal reasons, as is the primary case in the Ocean's movies. Maybe it's profit, maybe it's just independent ambition. This is sort of like an evil campaign, just with probably less death. Player characters in this sort of campaign have pretty loose morals and don't care if people get hurt from what they do.

They could also have a more Robin Hood type dynamic, fueled by some sort of moral driving to steal from the rich and powerful in order to right some sort of wrong. This is more or less the premise of Leverage.

An important part of determining how the campaign progresses is determining how the group will receive jobs. One of the easiest/best ways of doing this is by giving the player characters contacts who can pass word of opportunities to the group. However, it could also be done through player characters doing independent research or seeking out opportunities on their own.

2. Thieves' Guild
In a Thieves' Guild campaign, the players work for a larger group or guild which is designed around thievery and crime. The extent of the influence of the group may vary depending on your setting and the campaign outlook you have.

Usually, the primary goals of a thieves' guild are profit and infiltration/control, with motivations and moral ranges similar to the selfish/personal group type motives.

A thieves' guild campaign has the added benefit of having a structure from which the missions can be given to the group.  This makes things nice and orderly and allows for moving things forward easily. Also, it provides an easy way of having knowledgeable NPCs who can help the PCs plan heists or gather information about their targets.

A potential campaign arc might involve having the PCs start as fledgling members of the thieves' guild, and have to work their way up the ranks. Possibly, there is inter-organization competition and politics which the PCs have to wade through and eventually overcome. This could all eventually result in the PCs rising to become leaders of the group, or even potentially start their own.


3. Spy Agency
Spy fiction seems to have almost as many heists going on as crime fiction. Oftentimes, this is breaking into an enemy base of some kind, but sometimes it's even more convoluted than that. Spies seem to sometimes even need to break into places controlled by allies or even neutral parties to gather intelligence, technology, research, or some other McGuffin.

Having a spy agency allows for all/most of the benefits and opportunities of a Thieves' Guild campaign with none of the moral ambiguity. Well, to be perfectly honest, spy stuff does tend to have a lot of moral ambiguity involved in it. However, usually a spy agency is committed to some purpose or goal other than wealth/selfishness. This could be dedication to a country, opposition of an enemy, or something else depending on your setting. This provides an advantage if you want to have heist adventures, but have players who don't want to play selfish/evilly motivated characters.


A spy agency also lends itself more readily to ongoing plots, with each heist revealing more about something sinister and convoluted going on, with recurring enemy factions, and with a structure that mixes investigation and thievery together.


Hopefully, if you're looking to run a heist campaign, one of these ideas will be helpful to you.


If you'd like to see a heist adventure that I've put together, check out The Wonder Vault Heist when it comes out next month.

What other ideas or suggestions do you have for running a heist-based campaign?