Myth, Meaning, Alumni, and Playtesting
Oct. 28th, 2007 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alanajoliWhat 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.
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.
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Date: 2007-10-30 08:32 pm (UTC)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. ;)