Myth, the Universe, and Everything

Many of you have probably already seen this, but DriveThruRPG is doing a special promotion: donate $20 and receive a huge bundle of gaming products worth over $1000. A lot of publishers have donated, including Margaret Weis Productions. Both the CORTEX system and Serenity RPG are part of the deal. (Either of those by themselves cost more than $20 digitally through DriveThruRPG on a normal day.)

The money is being donated to Doctors without Borders. If you've been thinking of donating to the Haiti earthquake victims (or have been thinking about getting some new game supplements and sourcebooks), this is a great enlightened-self-interest promotion. It's been so popular that their servers are having trouble keeping up with all the donations and downloads!

As I mentioned earlier, I got my Serenity Adventures earned Origins Award, known as a "Callie" (because it's in the shape of the muse Calliope) in the mail in the last few weeks.



In honor of Calliope's arrival, I came up with my very first contest question: Who is your muse? This could refer back to which of the classical muses you prefer (I admit to having a soft spot for Terpischore, the dancer, who appeared in a couple of mosaics and paintings I've seen as a red-head, so she reminds me of my sister, but I know I work for Calliope). If you'd like to take a less literal interpretation, feel free. On August 8th (one week from today!) I'll choose the answer I like best -- or, more likely, I'll think they're all good and won't be able to choose, so I'll use a random number generator like all the cool kids.



Your fabulous prize is an advanced reader copy of Troy High by Shana Norris, which just released today. I had the opportunity to review this one for School Library Journal, and I have to say that The Iliad works brilliantly well as a high school football rivalry. (I can't say more than that here -- you'll have to do a search for my SLJ review.)



So, who's your muse?

Still embroiled in assignments, and I'm just hoping to stay ahead before I go to England in two weeks. In the mean time, I've had some great news! Serenity Adventures is up for an Origins Award this year! I'm delighted that the book is up for the award and am so proud to be one of the writers who contributed to the collection of adventures!

So, I really have to stop agonizing over my work and just *do* it. A lot of good advice has been given by a lot of writers who say that writers write. They don't think about writing, they don't talk about writing. They write. That's what makes them writers.

This could definitely apply to module writing as well. I was so nervous about doing my first adventure in 4e that I agonized over it. I spent more time worrying over the module than I actually spent writing it. This, my friends, is not intelligent behavior.

So now that I have a draft in to my editor, I have some thoughts about writing for 4e:

1) Building encounters is easy. Seriously. I used some pre-built encounter groups that seemed appropriate, but substituting one creature for another is not hard. There are nifty charts in the back to help you out, and the DMG has pretty easy recommendations for putting things together.

2) Putting together an encounter requires three books. Or, at least, it did for me. I wanted to add conditions to some things, or talk about surprise rounds--the rules for which are in the PHB. Monsters are, of course, in the Monsters Manual. The DMG puts it all together. Add having a tab open in my browser for the updates, and that's four resources to keep track of, along with my outline. Once I have more of this stuff memorized, I'm sure that won't be an issue. I knew a lot of stuff for 3.5 that I didn't have to look up, and I'm still learning how to do the same in 4e.

3) Less is more. That seems to be the 4e philosophy, which in some ways I really like. In other ways, it meant that I had to change my entire way of thinking about module writing. I'm used to providing tons of details, trying to anticipate every player reaction. This, of course, is impossible. So 4e really frees you up to *not* do that kind of thing. On the other hand, it means being verbose no longer works. Strunk and White might be pleased, but I found it a challenge. When it comes back from my editor, we'll see if I still over-wrote.

4) Skill challenges are harder to write than they are to design, or to run. If the point is player creativity, there isn't much that I, as a writer, feel like I can bring to the DM except for talking points to get them through guiding their players. My editor may have some brilliant suggestions on how to improve that--and there are a couple of ways to handle skill challenges that I didn't explore. So we'll see.

5) Making new stuff is easy, assuming I did it right. Since templates are consistent throughout, if you want a new poison or trap or item (not saying what I made, since that would be a spoiler), you can just do it. It's not labor intensive.

6) Leveling up creatures is also not labor intensive. Nor is downgrading them. I was nervous about doing this and put it off. It took me all of two minutes to change the stats on one creature. Gone are the days of that 3.5 nightmare level of work!

So, all in all, I think it went pretty well. (I mean, I can say that now that I've wrapped it up, and since I turned it in to my editor technically on the day of the deadline. I've got to send a shout out to the folks at Margaret Weis Productions on this one--because they're in Central Time Zone, which gave me a whole extra *hour* on my deadline day to get my Serenity adventure turned in. This is not a particularly good habit of mine, either.)

I'm looking forward to running a playtest, and I'm very much looking forward to getting my editor's comments back. In the meantime, though, I should have an assignment rolling in, and I've got jonowrimo starting today, so there will be more fiction to do. I also, to my delight, had a proposal accepted by Hog River Journal, (thanks to Mish for her help on the abstract!) so I'll be working on an article for them as well. It's my first nonfiction history article, and I'm really excited to get started on it.

But now it's late, and while writers need to write... sleeping also comes highly recommended.

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Just a quick note to share the product description for Serenity Adventures, up over at Paizo's web store. The previous versions I've seen haven't listed any of the writers, but here, I'm listed as a contributor! Whee!

What a year for me to be missing GenCon! Not only is the anthology, edited by eyezofwolf, where "Don't Let Go" will be published coming out. That would have been enough for me to pine over not going. Today, however, I found out that Serenity Adventures will be released at GenCon this year as well! Woe is me for missing the con circuit.

Folks who are going: if you see my stuff on display (even though neither is likely to have my name on the cover), could you take pictures? I'll be there vicariously through your digital images!

Several fun/interesting links today.

First, Jennifer Estep, who is the author of Karma Girl (which I blogged about) and Hot Mama (a semi-sequel), is having a contest on her blog to give away copies of the books and t-shirts. She's also now on fangs_fur_fey, and will shortly be taking over the world. Just in case you wanted to prep for that.

PW blogger Rose Fox wrote an interesting post today about the weakening divide between YA and adult fiction, particularly in SF/F. She also quotes janni's recent rant about adult authors who are shocked by YA topics. If you've been following that conversation (or sartorias's recent blog on the same, which was also quite good), it's definitely worth the read.

I don't know that the boundaries are shrinking so much as that they were a little artificial to begin with. Many of the books that were shelved in the YA section I grew up with (which I loved and was very lucky to have) were probably originally marketed to adults, and many books about teens are shelved in adult fiction. I don't know that the distinction between the two needs to be bolder--but I think adults should make the realization that a lot of YA fiction might also appeal to them, which might make them less shocked at the content (or might help them understand modern teens a little better)...

Courtesy of Neil Gaiman's blog, we have a report from The Onion about the Novelists Guild of America strike, which has apparently affected no one. (It's a bit scathing in its satire, but funny none the less.)

Lastly, Stacia Kane posted a wonderful conversation with her six year old daughter that is just about the epitome of geek parenting on League of Reluctant Adults.

As for me, I got done with this round of editing my Serenity adventure for Margaret Weis (whose changes were all dead on--I only disagreed about one, she countered with reasons why it wouldn't work, one of which was roughly "Joss is boss," and I was convinced). Tomorrow, on to some Steampunk Musha work I've been putting aside for months (I'm still working on it Rick!) and some overdue reviews that I've been meaning to turn in. But for now, I'm going to go finish By Venom's Sweet Sting.

Margaret Weis is editing my Serenity adventure. Tee hee!

And now, back to being a consumate professional.

That'd be me! I just heard back from the illustrious Jamie Chambers this afternoon, and my adventure pitch was selected as one of the ones that will be featured in the upcoming Serenity Adventures. It's exciting for me because not only do I get to do work for some great people (Jamie and Renae and the rest of the Margaret Weis Productions clan are wonderful and open people who have always been very encouraging when I've seen them at conventions), but I get to work on a great property. It's like fan fiction, only different!

At any rate, the deadline is pretty tight, which means that my relatively low-key February has suddenly become jam-packed. (Funny how the addition of just one extra deadline can do that to a person.)

I may need more peanut butter and chocolate to make it through. Hmmm...

(Yes, I'm feeling much better than yesterday. Yesterday peanut butter and chocolate didn't even sound good, which is an easy way to tell that I'm sick--as any other time, it's my favorite ever food combination.)