Myth, the Universe, and Everything

How did it get to be Saturday again already?

First, some quick celebratory news: My very first Dragon magazine contribution is in the current issue! "Surely You Joust!" is available to D&D Insider subscribers, and it gets into how to customize a 4e character for jousting and, for DMs, how to integrate jousting into your game. (Lest the illustrious Shawn Merwin put me in the penalty box for punning again, the title was actually assigned that way. Not that I wouldn't have come around to the same pun on my own, of course!)

My very first solo-project as a game writer was Gallia, for DogSoul, back in the 3rd edition Open Game License days, so I drew on some of the same real-history research I'd done for that project about chivalric competitions. I also used jousting in a module I wrote for former LFR Regional director Andrew Schneider (who has an adventure up in this month's Dungeon), so it was great fun to be able to put all of that together in a new format.

It's also super exciting to be published in Dragon!

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But on to the thought that spurred me on to blogging: namely, Maryah Morvena. If you've not read her fairy tale (she's here as Maria, and she's in Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book in "The Death of Koschei the Deathless"). Max Gladstone mentioned this story to me awhile ago, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until today. It's a very odd tale for a number of reasons:

1) Maryah is not at all a damsel in distress. When Prince Ivan, the hero, comes upon her, it's because she's just slaughtered a whole army. Possibly by herself.

2) The tale reads like you've come in at the middle. Prince Ivan, despite being a hero (and a weepy one at that), is the least powerful, and possibly the least important person in the tale. Before he enters in, Maryah has already captured Koschei the Deathless and held him captive. Koschei has already stolen a horse from Baba Yaga. All sorts of things that we never get the full story of have transpired before we step in -- which makes me think that Maryah is probably in a host of other tales that are less well known than this one, just like Koschei and Baba Yaga are.

3) This one is the most striking to me: there's this great synergy between Maryah and Baba Yaga herself in one important detail. They both ask Ivan if he's come of his own free will, or because someone else has compelled him to be there. This doesn't sound like your usual "are you friend or foe?" greeting -- no, something else very cool is going on here. It makes me think that Maryah has a relation to Baba Yaga that doesn't get mentioned in the story, either because they are both women of Power in some fashion, or in a more archetypal connection.

I don't have any thoughts beyond these musings at the moment, but I really wanted to point this story out. It's a great, weird little tale, and it's obvious why folks like Catherynne Valente have grabbed onto it for retelling. There's a lot of meat here, and I'd chew on it for a novel or two.

One of my publishers has just been nominated for several Ennie awards, sort of the gaming industry's equivalent of the Emmys. Alas, none of their nominations were for my title, Gallia, but I am glad to see them noticed, as hopefully it will drive more sales in my general direction.

The nominated title is Baba Yaga, a Russianfolk lore setting for playing d20 fantasy. (Mine is the equivalent book set in France.) It's a neat e-book with some great ideas on magic items that really fit in with Russian folklore.

If you haven't voted at the Ennies before but are interested in doing so, you can vote for your favorite RPGs here. Some great games are up for awards this year, including Mark Smylie's Artesia and Margaret Weis Productions' Serenity. White Wolf and Green Ronin also have nominees. Kenzer and Company's Aces and Eights: Showdown, which has some pretty fantastic concepts on making combat more realistic (from what I remember when I played a preview at Origins 2004) is a nominee in the best rules category. All in all, there are a lot of good folks on the list this year, and if you play RPGs at all, I'd encourage you to vote for your favorites.

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On a completely different note, it looks like the final writing for Steampunk Musha RPG is finished! Creator Rick Hershey and I just touched up a sample adventure for the book yesterday. It's still listed as "Coming Soon" from Politically Incorrect Games, but hopefully I'll have a pub date to pass along soon. This one will be in both print and electronically, so hopefully it will find its way onto the shelves of gaming stores near you.

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With all of this going on, and a distinct lack of air conditioning in my apartment, I'm finding it extremely hard to get any work done on novel number two (Departure). My friend Arielle, who is always one of my first readers, is off to Comic Con San Diego this week, so I hope to have quite a bit done by the time she gets back next Monday.

If you're at Comic Con, keep an eye out for the new flyers for Into the Reach, Chronicles of Ramlar, and Verto Syzol's Legendaria Geographica. If the White Silver artists find Arielle at the San Francisco Browncoats booth, there should be some there. Otherwise, Larry Elmore will almost certainly have them, and I understand he's making an appearance.

But now, back to work.

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Currently Reading: Tales of the Last War, and Eberron short story collection edited by Mark Sehestedt, and Trevis Powell's No Hero, which he kindly sent me in an early draft format. (It debuts at DragonCon.)

Currently Playing: Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords.