Myth, Meaning, Alumni, and Playtesting

[alanajoli]

What a weekend!

I spent the past two days up at Simon's Rock College, where I spent a good four years of my life, learning things that I apply in my writing pretty much every day. I was on three alumni panels and did plenty of mingling with parents, faculty, students, etc. (One of the parents asked a panel what classes we took outside of our subject area that we're glad we took. I had to say that I applied about 90% of the classes I took pretty much every day as a writer. I don't use much Chemistry, I suppose, although it did make my great ice cream experiment easier. I'm not sure if I wrote about that at all, here, though, so I'll skip that until later.)

It's a nice feeling to think just how much of the learning I did at college still applies to what I'm doing. I may not directly use the books that I used for classes (although I did at least once while writing the beginning section of Cowboys and Aliens II), but a lot of the kinds of things I was thinking about in college, including myth, meaning, language, literature, and culture, come up all the time in what I write about. It's like I've been able to extend my education into the real world, and I love the thought of that.

In other news, I did finish the first draft of the module on time (although the stat blocks were a little rough), and the DM who ran it for me did a marvelous job, as did the playtesters. I've got a lot of good feedback to work into it over the next week before I actually have to turn it in. Of course, I also have that reference assignment I'm still working on, so it might be another slow week from Alana-land.

Comments

[bccreations.livejournal.com]

So if I bring my character out of retirement, will I get to play your adventure at Winter Fantasy? :)

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

It's actually *not* a Kalamar mod (can you believe it?), and I think it's one of the mods that will expire before Winter Fantasy. But as I don't have the official contract yet, I think that's all I can tell you. :)

[bccreations.livejournal.com]

Is it a published adventure or a living adventure? Living adventure and not Kalamar, I would hope that it is not Bissel or Arcanis. An LG Core wouldn't be so bad, although I've stopped playing LG because of my experiences in Bissel.

I'm not a fan of most published adventures. They want to keep the page count low to conserve costs and do so at the expense of skills and non-combat opportunities. Any adventure that include 5 encounters on one page isn't much of an adventure.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

It's for the RPGA, but again, before contract... I'm not sure what I can say other than that. :) In fact, I'm not even entirely sure I can say that! (I'm not too worried, and I'll be super excited to spill my guts about the whole thing once it's official, as I've had a ton of fun working on it.)

And dang, five encounters on one page? That's just silly--and not much fun to play, I'll warrant. Hardly better than just a hook.

[bccreations.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether Xen'Drik Expeditions contracts their authors, although if I had to guess, I'd say you're writing an adventure for Shawn Merwin's faction (Blackwheel Company? Crimson Codex? I can never remember). You're not under an NDA, so you can say whatever you want. It's not like they'll refuse your adventure because you told people you were writing it (I know as fact, as I've contracted to write for the RPGA before).

My Core adventure I rank as one of my two worst adventures I've ever written. Some people didn't mind it, but some people hated it. I dislike it for different reasons, actually. I wrote it in 12 days and there were a lot of mechanical errors in the stat blocks. The week OF Winter Fantasy, I got an email asking for another copy as it turns out Creighton had lost the one I submitted in September, so it ran without ever being edited. The most embarrassing part of that was the paragraph that stopped mid-sentence.

I discovered, while playtesting that, that people in other regions played a LOT different than I was used to. A shady looking character arrived asking for help and they agree no questions asked, never asking the questions that they would have later. They were then dissatisfied because they didn't ask questions, and when judging it, preceded to tell their tables ahead of time that it wasn't a good adventure. Because that's the best way to prepare them to have fun.

I got notes from one of the playtesters, one of my least favorite triads (who has never written an adventure for the campaign--including her own region--ever). Her changes weren't just bad, they were heartbreaking. The whole point of the adventure had totally and utterly gone by her. I knew then that I had failed. Which is hard for two reasons, one because I'm so egotistical and two because I have had so much success with my regional adventures.

Blah. Bad memories. And I never got to write a second core adventure because Creighton and I dislike each other so much.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

...it ran without ever being edited

Oh no! That must have been mortifying. And having people completely miss the point of the adventure sounds lousy. One of the mods I edited for Kalamar and worked closely with the writer on, both he and I really believed in it--but when you're writing for a low magic setting, and you have some higher level players who cast spells... well, the whole run of the adventure changed completely when it released. I think the low level players loved it, but the high level folks found it much less interesting and compelling than both the writer and I did. Which just goes to show, even after playtesting, you never know how something's going to run. (And honestly, I think the role of the judge is to make an adventure fun even if they think it's crappy--I've run a couple of pretty bad ones, or at least adventures I didn't like, but I made sure to do my darndest to see that my players had a good time!)

I can't actually remember what NDAs I've signed at this point, which could be why I'm over cautious. Also, I like heightening the sense of mystery--because, hey, we might not even be having this coversation if I'd been straight up. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

If Alana says a word about the RPGA adventure, the devastation would be untold . . . or something.

[smerwin29.livejournal.com]

But the above is totally unofficial, of course.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Whew! I'd hate to have an official anonymous gag order. ;)

[smerwin29.livejournal.com]

Those are the worst kind!