Apparently Amazon orders are shipping. In my ceaseless quest to become Jack of All Trades, Master of None, I wrote the Feywild chapter for this game supplement. Interesting exercise -- basically creating factions, characters, and locations which may interact in some way in a narrative, but in no predictable pattern. A novel without a protagonist, basically.
Anyway, the WOTC folks seemed happy with my work. If you're of the d20 brethren, the link is below. Oh, and Andy Collins gave me a genial chewing out, so I'll leave the link over in the sidebar for a bit.
Friday, December 05, 2008
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19 comments:
Bought.
Or... I shall try to convince the wife that it would be a great Christmas gift and subsequent contribution to our upcoming campaign...
I'll be getting this for Xmas (gift or otherwise), so it's very cool to see that you worked on it.
I haven't played actual D&D in decades, but I've always been fascinated by big books of artifacts and spells and the other-planes stuff. I bought a used copy of the 3rd Edition Planes book just to read through.
Someone should start a charity to gather old editions of D&D and AD&D manuals, so they can be sent to underprivileged. Or just recycled . . . just so the donor feels justified in buying a new set.
Can I plug mine? The MacGuffin Alphabet
Are you kidding me?!?!?!? You got involved with 4E products?!?!?!? Stay true to your roots. Stay true to OGL/D20!!!!
I had to do a double-take for a sec; wasn't sure I was on the right blog. :)
Kudos, sir! Very cool to see you doing RPG work. Now to just get WotC to publish your Drunk Southern Girls campaign as a sourcebook....
LPJ: Get a life.
Stay true to your roots. Stay true to OGL/D20!!!!
Honesty, any system design I would (will) do, I'd probably do in OGL, specifically for True20 or M&M. I genuinely love the 4E engine, but the expoits/powers system is a bit too tough for me to wrap my head around from a design standpoint -- but again, I love the game.
Bah. What's with Amazon? When I order from them, they decide to ship me my core books several months late. But when I don't they're shipping a week early.
Bastards.
Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to your MotP section. A John Rogers feywild is a feywild I want to DM.
Thanks again, John, for lending us your talents. I don't remember exactly what I chewed you out for...but since you characterize it as "genial" I guess it wasn't too bad.
If you're ever interested in taking on another project with us, drop me a line. Here's to hoping that if you do, it's not the result of another writers' strike...
Looking forward to the first ep of Leverage tomorrow night.
Take care!
Andy Collins
That was supposed to say:
One of us! One of us!
And if you're all OG-OGL, Paizo will probably be glad to have you on board as well.
Welcome to the fold, John.
Not quite, but close. A novel without protagonists is when you put together an adventure/scenario. You add the element of plot to it, but without knowing the characters. You can figure that you will typically get some character types, but you cannot be sure, but somehow you have to create adventure with hooks to engage virtually any kind of character w/out relying any particular one. No foes that require a very specific skill set to defeat, such as a MacGuffin magic item that only monks can use, unless you make sure that you leave story threads available to introduce a monk if needed, but not so important that if the party has a monk you don't have to use the monk story threads without affecting the main story...
A chewing out by Andy Collins should be a badge of honor. That man is quite possibly the worst designer to ever be associated with D&D (which was true before 4ED, no matter what you think of the new miniatures skirmish game that pretends to be a role playing game).
I'm teaching a course on RPGs next semester at an Ontario university. Now I'll be able to add a little Canadian content to the 4E discussion. I'll definitely be using any of your comments on the difference between writing for film and writing for RPGs. (Maybe I'll let the students write an essay about your ENWorld story hour...)
I may have to keep my eyes out for it, but unless WOTC has decided to go with higher quality books, I'll probably pass. I caved in for the martial book, skimpy and filled with power creep as it is, to see if their production value has improved. We'll see. As a DM, 4e has been a mixed bag - I'm not too impressed so far.
But, I have liked your writing before, so this might be interesting. Is this another book of power lists, or is there more "fluff" (as background/campaign material is called) as you seem to indicate? I haven't looked at the website to see, but what is your take (I am assuming you are familiar with the whole, not just your part in it).
Finally, congrats on getting that kind of work. I wanted to get into game design/writing when I was younger, but never did. A little extra work never hurt anyone.
Game writing is game writing, regardless of the system, and damn fun, to boot, so welcome aboard, John, have fun with it. I enjoy it, even if the paychecks are more emotional ones than lucrative.
Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than the master of one.
I wrote for R. Talsorian many years ago. I loved the research and all the world building that went with writing for RPGs without all the pesky plotting and characterizations. LOL I learned a lot as a fledgling writer from the experience, like how to craft a believable world for my characters to run around in. I loved the job and would write for RPGs again in a heartbeat. Congrats of the job, welcome to being accosted at gaming conventions and being asked obscure questions by breathless young gamers. :)
Barrie Rosen
Actually, I found the "novel without protagonists" description to be just about perfect for a sourcebook description, even moreso than for an adventure/scenario. I know that when I did 'Seal of the Wheel' and 'Gorilla Warfare' for Atlas Games (hey, this is the one field where I've got industry credits, I'm going to flaunt them!) I described the process as "rolling a boulder to the edge of a hill." You want to set up all the elements of a plot, all the potential conflicts and dynamics, in such a way that they remain potential until a new element (like, say, the players) come in and set it all moving.
Really, I'm just jealous of John Rogers for perfectly describing the process so effortlessly. :)
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