What I Learned From A Writing Marathon

I am the Warden!!

The first draft of Fires Across the Plains is nearly complete and by nearly, I mean the gamebook itself has a complete first draft. All that remains is touching up the appendix (there will be rules for creating half-breed characters, such as half-orcs, half-elves, half-goblins, and half-giants) and provide an prologue detailing a rough layout of the landscape.

Capping off the gamebook's draft, however, required a shitload of catching up. When I originally signed up for this project, I figured there was enough time on my plate to get it done in roughly three months and this past weekend was pretty much the end of that third month. I needed to fire off a massive amount of text and get this sucker done or else it was going to require an extension and while an extension shouldn't have been a problem, I still need this project off my plate for the moment to clear room for my incredibly busy schedule. (After this, it's time to wrap up layout and final output for Killshot Files #1: Blaze of Glory and I'm getting started on an article for Savage Insider on a new Savage Worlds race build. These lead into next month when I'll be at Game Summit in Ottawa and work continues on both Killshot: Reloaded and Optional Core.)

I needed to pull a writing marathon.

Organizing the Chaos [Fires Across the Plains]

I am the Warden!!

This week is committed to the completion of Fires Across the Plains first complete draft. I have to admit that this project was not underestimated so much as my plot was underestimated. It's typical of me to overshoot my expectations and find myself adapting to the complexity (if anything, it's very inspirational and gives me a real swift kick in the butt to get going) and, in its own way, has made me more confident for another one. Down the road, after getting some other major projects out of the way (Reloaded and Optional Core).

As I've written about before, learning the best approach to handle the chaos that is a gamebook required some early research and has since been adjusted. There have been some hiccups along the way and corrections have been made, which is predominantly why this draft has taken a couple extra weeks to complete. As promised, I thought I'd take some time to go over that very process.

Stating the inevitable here, but writing a gamebook carries one major distinction to writing a regular game or short story: the chronology is out of whack. Keeping it organized is the key to not screwing it up and organization is still a significant aspect of this work I'm struggling with. (Just this past weekend, I lost my playtest character for Fraser Ronald's Centurion RPG and had to start over, despite the fact that I'm playing from home at the same desk using Skype and the character sheet shouldn't be anywhere else but my desk.) For many, the entire plot is laid out in great detail using post-it notes and flowcharts, leaving the bulk of the writing centring on filling in the details and descriptions. As previously discussed in the above link, it's a process I have difficulty with because it feels stifling. When I write, I love to experience the story unfolding as I write it. In a way, it's how I verify the errors in my plot before making a second pass to fill in any gaps, beef up the details, and flesh it into something real. I needed a way to accomplish both the organization and freedom without sacrificing either.

Championship Match & Unbelievable Odds [TPK]

I have to admit, no idea why I'm using this infamous D&D pic.
Until I can draft up a TPK logo, it's a good visual for the game
whenever I post updates or related material. 

I am the Warden!!

Fun time last night. We had a couple of friends over, including one of my fiancee's cousins, for a bunch of games and beverages that would make it unwise to drive. For Chris and I, it was a chance to finish up our initial match of TPK.

On Thursday, I talked about this work-in-progress skirmish game and provided a download to the first draft PDF. The day before, Chris and I ran a match in the Arena for 60 minutes before he had to go running back to school. Unfortunately, we weren't finished because of something I expected to be a rare event in the game: we had a tie.

To refresh, the goal of TPK is to end a 60-minute match with a single combatant holding the highest number of Damage points declared the Victor. In the event of a tie between two or more combatants, a special match is declared with both combatants entering a new Arena and fighting to the death. These matches differ in that every combatant starts with an amount of Health equal to their previous Damage score, thereby putting everyone off on a stronger and equal footing.

If a combatant is still alive at the end of a regular match and has the highest number of Damage points, that character is instead declared the Champion and is permanently added to the deck of combatants. The concept behind Champions is to reward such a rare occurrence, seeing as the theme behind the game is death (hence the name TPK).

In the case of our first match, when the timer sounded the end of the match, we had two standing combatants with a tie for the highest Damage (9 points). That's right, our first time ever playing this game and we have to go to a tie-breaking match to determine who would be declared the Champion and be added to the deck.

I'm not one for probability calculation, but I know my expectation of this happening was incredibly rare. We'll have to see if that's the case and as excited as I am for it to have happened out first time out, if it's actually a frequent event, I'm torn. On one hand, the original concept of the game was for everyone to die... a lot. That was part of the fun. If it's regularly possible for multiple Champion candidates in a single game, do I still want to call it TPK? Or do I want to play around with the gears and make it less frequent?

We shall see. As I've said before, this game is very much a side project run on my spare time (I know, that actually sounds ludicrous as I'm technically not employed and freelancers aren't supposed to have spare time) and I'm not sure when I'll be able to run another test or get to any of the revisions noted so far. I will say this... it was a lot of fucking fun. My hopes are high on this one.


You can download the first draft of TPK here. No charge, it's on me. 

TPK

I am the Warden!!

Last week, I teased my Twitter followers about a quick game drafted up over New Year's Eve called TPK and it's been sitting on my desk ever since. We finally had a chance to take it for a test spin this morning and I'm pleased to report it's held up very well to my expectations.

TPK does indeed stand for "Total Party Kill" and the objective of this fantasy miniatures skirmish game is to die with honour in the Arena. Each player controls a single combatant - either a Warrior or a Monster - drawn from a deck to challenge every other combatant in sight. Starting with only 1 Health, you gain additional Health by successfully attacking your opponents. When a combatant is reduced to 0 Health, the player randomly chooses a new one and returns to the Arena. Every time you hit an opponent, you gain 1 Damage and the combatant with the highest Damage at the end of a 60-minute match is declared the winner. If the winning combatant is still alive at the end of the match, they can rise to become a Champion and be permanently added to the deck.

As each combatant increases their Damage and/or Health, they can unlock additional Abilities, but they have special tools at their disposal from the beginning. Warriors come with a Starting Item (including weapons) and a Racial Ability, while Monsters start with a Natural Item and an Extraordinary Ability.

This 8-page PDF allows everyone to use their existing minis and battlemaps to run an endless cavalcade of matches and is intended as a pick-up game running up to 60 minutes at a time. While there is a lot of additional work and text revisions to make, I'm very pleased with how it went this morning and so was the other player. Additional rules for movement and Obstacles (or at least fleshing them out in greater detail rather than adding to them) are at the top of the list and I'll have to consider addendums to various combatants' abilities, such as the Mage and Psionicist. On that note, here's a list of the combatant available in TPK at the moment and basic rundown of their strengths.

Conflicting Morality

I am the Warden!!

There's an interesting combination of films releasing this weekend and they're a prime example of how morality is not only subjective, but adaptable. Zero Dark Thirty, the complete account of Bin Laden's assassination (with details provided by the CIA) and Gangster Squad, a fictional story of cops bringing their own brand of justice to the mob in the 1940s. On the surface, they're two completely different films, yet their standpoint on morality creates an interesting social conflict.

The big controversy regarding Zero Dark Thirty is the interrogation scene and it's causing such a stir in American political circles, there's an upcoming congressional hearing to determine how much information was provided to the filmmakers and whether or not the CIA offered up a red herring to promote their view on the effectiveness of torture. Going solely off The Daily Show, mind you, the emphasis of the debacle appears to be the merits of torture in counterterrorism and intelligence operations. The truth about first world countries using torture to gain access to essential information can be almost as divisive as abortion and gun control, all of which comes down to the people's belief in being "better" than your enemies.

Yet Gangster Squad is specifically about good cops breaking the law to enforce it by shooting up unarmed gangsters and probably all sorts of vicious beatings. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a scene where someone's being viciously interrogated. In a sense, it takes the dilemma of Zero Dark Thirty and says "Yeah, so what?" while beating the shit out of a guy strapped to a chair.

C'est irony, no?

A Sporting Decision

I am the Warden!!

Over the weekend, monumental news greeted professional hockey fans as the NHL and its players' union finally reached an agreement, thereby allowing the league to start playing almost five months late and with less than half of the season available. Don't worry, I'm not going to really talk about the NHL, hockey, or even sports, but it is a serious metaphor for something all adults must face several times in their lifetime.

Sooner or later, we all have to stop enjoying the things we used to love.

There was a NHL strike less than ten years ago and I swore off watching the NHL as soon as the strike started, infuriated over the players' union prohibiting their players from "representing their teams" in any fashion during the strike, including charitable events. There was a major charity golf tournament in Ottawa with half the roster unable to show and help raise needed funds for sick kids. My anger overwhelmed any possible enjoyment of the game and I stopped watching for a couple of years.

When I started dating my now-fiance, I got back into hockey because she played and was a huge NHL fan. What can I say? The limit to anyone's anger is getting laid. Now that the NHL is looking to come back from yet a second strike in a single decade, I'm faced with the same desire to stop watching the league. This time, however, the reasons are different. This time, I think it's a problem with professional sports altogether.

Under the Hood Climbs to the Top

I am the Warden!!

Señor Aaron at Roleplayers Chronicle posted the traffic report for his site yesterday and it seems Under the Hood, my weekly RPG mechanics/publishing column, has risen to become its most popular series. I've only seen some of the actual numbers for UTH columns and can only speculate on the remainder from there, but the mere fact that it pops up in many of the lists is very gratifying and I hope all of you enjoy everyone of them.

It's been a challenge keeping this up on a nearly weekly basis (all told, I only missed 6 weeks in 2012, including the entire month of August), but I plan to keep this sucker going for at least another year. It's been incredibly helpful in my own work as a kind of second blog with a stricter deadline to self-analyze RPG mechanics from around the industry and break down how I want them to apply in my own work. Many of the topics I wrote about during the early weeks were very influential in Killshot's designs. The trick now is pumping out new columns without stumbling over old ones.

However, that's enough time to pat myself on the back. Ironically enough, I have this week's column to finish up. (Hint: I'm talking about race mechanics this week, particularly the impoverished humans.)