On Sunday It Begins

Sunday is the beginning of November which, as everyone knows is National Novel Writing Month. This year I don't plan on writing a novel because I have too much other work to do, but I am going to try to set a NaNoWriMo pace, which is about 1,667 words a day for 30 days.

The first project I have before me is to finish the playtest document and rough draft for Horror!. I've made some progress already, but it isn't ready to be sent out to playtesters yet.

The second project I have in front of me is working on a full draft and playtest document for Heroes of Karia. I've run 3 playtests of Karia so far and it is going well, but I need to have something that is more put-together to send out.

The third project is in case I finish the first two (which is plausible with that kind of writing pace - game books take more work but contain fewer words than comparable novels). Right now I'm calling this project Succubus: A Love Story. The idea I have is for a genre-buster that is about 2/3 sexy high school love story and 1/3 existential horror. I think I can get it out in a short story form, and the idea has been with me for a while. I can tell it's the kind of thing I need to use NaNoWriMo to get out of my system (and find out if it is worth putting real work into aside from a rough draft.

Anyone else working on something for NaNoWriMo?

bySwarm

I've put my own two offerings forward for bySwarm's rpg setting contest. Put up your own ideas here, and be sure to read up on mine and rate them. (username Robosnake)

What they're doing over at bySwarm is working on an experiment in collective setting design. Right now people like myself with too much free time are posting setting theme documents for consideration. At some point they'll select something, by popular vote it looks like, to expand upon and to attach to an rpg system.

Anyway, it looks interesting. Right now there don't seem to be that many posts, but it is cool to get in on or near the 'ground floor' in something like this.

Goodman Games' Cash for Clunkers Program

It worked so well for the auto industry (at least in the short term) that Goodman Games has set up it's own Cash for Clunkers program. Turn in your old, out-dated, fuel-inefficient WotC 3.0 and 3.5 books for a discount on products from Goodman Games. Your discount is equal to 20% of the original cover price of the books as long as they are in good condition.

Here's the info on Goodman Games' site.

Not quite a government bailout for the rpg industry, but clever nonetheless. I'm actually probably going to send in my 3.0 core rulebooks - I might as well get some value out of them, right?

Rightful Humiliation

Just in case anyone who reads this blog thinks, even for a moment, that they run a pretty good D&D game, you should really take a look at the kinds of things that Gabe from Penny Arcade does with his group.

Truly amazing.

An Idea for Epic

As is often the case, when I laid down and actually tried to sleep, I had an idea instead. I thought - why not post it to the blog so I don't forget?

This is way back with Epic, which I haven't posted about for a long time.

The idea is for the static attributes - Endurance, Perception, Memory, Appeal and Will - to be basically check-boxes that the player can call upon once per story arc. So for each point of Endurance, there is a check box, and at any time during a story arc the player can check a box to have something happen for her character. Instead of points to keep track of, these are a lot simpler. For example: Endurance could be used to shrug off a wound, Perception to notice a clue, Memory to answer a question, Appeal to get attention or take the initiative socially and Will to resist an outside influence.

Something like that. I like the simplicity of the system - the main challenge would be, with attributes rated 1 to 10 with 4-5 as average, that it would be hard to use all of the check boxes in a single story arc. Needs a lot more thought, but hey, it's just the idea that kept me awake (which doesn't take much)

Word of Anesthesiacraft

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts now that I am mostly unemployed, one of which is NPR's Science Friday podcast. In catching up on back episodes, I came upon a topic from September 18th - the relationship, during the Romantic period, between science (natural philosophy at the time) and the arts. One vignette is about Samuel Taylor Coleridge helping his friend Humphrey Davy experiment with the effects of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Davy finds that nitrous has an anesthetic effect, and writes a paper saying that this could be used in surgery. At the time, however, it was thought that the agony of surgeries like amputations was medically necessary, however, because it was believed that this mobilized the body to heal.

Now we know better, for physical ailments anyway, but this podcast has had me thinking all day. In my own experience, emotional pain can be very necessary to enact change or healing in a person's life, much the way that physical pain was thought to be necessary to surgical patients in the 1800s. In thinking along these lines, it suddenly struck me that WoW is serving me as an anesthetic for my feelings of boredom at this point in my life.

I compared it to nitrous oxide. I enjoy playing WoW, just like I'm sure I'd enjoy taking some recreational nitrous oxide. I know WoW isn't as extreme as abusing a medical anesthetic, but the connection was made in my mind. What I realized is that it may be necessary, in order for me to be more creative and more productive in my creative endeavors, to take a break from WoW so that I will have to feel my boredom. Hopefully it will motivate me to do something about it.

We'll see how it goes. I want to see if I am in fact more productive, or if I am instead just more bored without WoW for a while.

Anybody out there had an experience of taking a break from some consuming hobby? What was it like for you?