eddyfate

"Where do you get your ideas from?"

It's actually not a question I get a whole lot anymore. Maybe it's because people are starting to realize that it's become the most cliche thing you can say to a writer, or maybe it's because I tend to be known for working on licensed or collaborative products, and people assume I just don't have any ideas of my own. Anyhow, while I don't get questioned about it a lot, people certainly still seem confused by my relationship with the writing process.

As an example, last week I was at a LARP, but spent nearly two hours out of the game. Instead, I was sequestered in the tiny kitchen of the game site, scribbling ideas for a new RPG system furiously in my notebook and testing them out with playing cards and character sheets scratched out on the back of my own. Last night I sat down to just jot down a few ideas, and next thing I knew it was 1 in the morning, and the rest of my family was already off in bed.

I can see why people used to think that creativity came from a spirit or demon -- there are a lot of times when I feel an idea possesses me rather than gets created by me. Of course, it's still a lot of really hard work to get that idea from something rattling around in my head to something that can be seen, but sometimes the idea just sits in the front of my brain and will just poke at me until I sit the fuck down and do something about it. The interesting part is that the more I work on it, the more that other projects jump up and demand to be worked on as well. And when I get into a steady rhythm of writing daily, I find it harder and harder not to write daily. (This is why the first piece of writing advice you'll probably ever get is "Write every day.")

Let me give you a peek into the various projects I've been working on over the past few weeks. Note that this is all outside of my work writing:

• An RPG system based around teams of criminals put together for heists and con jobs
• Another RPG system (this time for superheroes) that's a mash-up between Fudge and 4C (which started as just some house rules for a potential Nextwave campaign)
• A superhero universe I've kicked around for years that might be part of said RPG, or might be used somewhere else
• Whitechapel episodes and promotion
• "Gloomy Sunday," the short story for the Close Encounters of the Urban Kind anthology
• More brainstorming for Katrina Night, my comedic vampire bad girl fiction (which, if I lose my damned mind, I might use for NaNoWriMo this year)
• A space opera universe (featuring the crew of the HCSS Terrifying Disappointment) that I briefly considered as an audio drama

Odds are pretty good that only a couple of these will actually see the light of day -- some of these are old projects that have been sitting on my hard drive for years, and there's easily another dozen or two projects to keep them company. But on the other hand, Whitechapel was one of those projects, and it's finally out and getting people excited, so maybe some day a few of these will be out in the open.

Whatever. The point is, my muse is trying to kill me. But what a way to go.

Surprisingly, this year actually worked out about the way I expected it too. If anything, it was far, far better than I anticipated. Sure, there were some bumps, but I can honestly say that overall 2008 was a good year for me. Here are my resolutions for 2008. Let's look at the scoreboard.

Learn As Much As I Can. Oh boy, did I. I read a lot, I did a lot, I talked a lot and I listened a lot. I still feel some days like I'm learning, but if I got nothing else from my experiences this past year, I learned a hell of a lot. Exceptional Success

Improve My Current Writing and Design Skills. I didn't have as many opportunities to improve my writing as I thought I would, because honestly most of my writing is filling in gaps in projects as they pop up. On the other hand, the opportunity to just sit and talk with my peers about writing, design and other elements of the job has really helped me think of things very differently, and I'm already looking at 2007 and 2006 projects and seeing where I could improve. Success

Become A Better Manager. Well, only my freelancers can tell me if I'm a good manager, but I have certainly learned a fair bit about management as a skill, and some of the roadbumps I hit early on are old hat to me now. Success

Get To Know The People I Work With. Actually, most of the people I work with are pretty fucking cool. I can't say I want to hang out with every single one of them (more because I'm pretty introverted than any comment on them as people), but I can't count the number of cool conversations and good times I've had in the lunch room, let alone at company parties. But there are certainly lots more people I could get to know, and I look forward to getting to know. Success

Play More Stuff Just To Play It. For a while I thought this wouldn't happen, but I did get to play in a few short games (including a hella fun D&D4e game with some work folks), and I did manage to get into a regular Mage game just before the year ended. Success

Read More Stuff Just To Read It. I actually get bursts of space where I can read, and I got a few books read while I was in the UK on vacation. I'm currently juggling work reading with the Night Watch trilogy, in fact. Success

Improve My Health. Eh. I am, in fact, healthier than I was in St. Louis -- my dizzy spells have gone down considerably, and I'm generally not claiming as many sick days as I was in my old job. On the other hand, I do sometimes come into work or telecommute when I'm feeling blah. Further, I have noticed that when I get into a good exercise routine, I'll come down with a short cold or my ears will ache, and I'll have to stop. So, I'm healthier, but I'm still not healthy. Minimal Success

Total: Success

This year, I actually have to come up with four New Year's Resolutions for work. Rather than coming up with two sets of resolutions, I'll just put those resolutions here.

Personal Goal: Get out more. It's weird, given that I've traveled more this year than in any other year previously, but a lot of times it's work or work-related. Spending ten days just doing whatever came to mind made me realize that I should make more attempts to get out and try things more often, with real people.

Professional Goal: Try new things. I spent the past year learning and building my skill set. I've tried a tentative experiments -- many works, a few failed. Now it's time to push myself and my craft and really try to innovate within the space I have.

Fun-Oriented Goal: Run a game. All I've really run this year was a haphazard Hunter game at lunches over the past several months. It's been fun, but I've spent far more time playing than running, and I've got the itch to run again. Nowadays, it's the constant struggle with the ancient demon Scheduling.

Overall Life Goal: Write a novel. It's weird, but I've never really had the opportunity to do it, and I've always wanted to. I'm confident that I have the collection of skills to pull it off, but I'm not in a rush to crank one out. At some point in my life, though, I'd like to do it.

Some people (either who couldn't make ICC or who aren't in the Camarilla) wanted to see what I came up with for my LARP theory presentation. A PDF of the release version of the presentation is now available for download from the Camarilla site:

Killing Sacred Cows

Any job that, within the first week, has you reading an article on Balinese Cockfighting promises to be very interesting.

(No, I don't plan to explain that. Why do you ask?)

Since game design is soon to be my primary profession (although that still doesn't seem quite real yet), I decided to do something I never really had the time to do when I was working two jobs -- expand on my formal study of game design. Thus far I had relied on reading and playing tons of role-playing games, card games, board games, video games, LARPs and so on, but my research into theory consisted primarily of The Forge and similar online discussions, and my battered copy of Rules of Play.

Rules of Play has been my bible for much of my career, but I hadn't had a chance to sit down and reread it from cover-to-cover for nearly four years. I've learned a lot about game design since then, so it's definitely worth a reread to see what new things I can pick out. Also, since it's a textbook, it has copious footnotes and an extensive bibliography, so I can start picking articles and books I want to read in the future. I cannot recommend this book enough to any game designer, whether they work on video games, board games, card games, role-playing games, LARPs -- just about every kind of game, even sports and children's games, are covered and explored to find the underlying theories and commonalities. It's a thick book, but pretty easy to read, and has some interesting exercises.

On a lark, I did a search on MIT Press to see if there was a new edition of the book, and it turns out that the authors put out a companion volume called The Game Design Reader, which is full of various essays that relate to the core text. I was able to score a copy on Amazon for about $32.

So I've shoved Rules of Play into my bag, and I plan to pour through it and the Reader during the bits and pieces of time I have before I move. I'm really excited that I can dig into this kind of research again.

Since I stepped away from Spectrum Games, my connection with the indie RPG scene has dropped off (although I've still got connections to Atomic Sock Monkey, and I still participate in the Indie RPG Awards every year). After picking up Spirit of the Century at Origins because the hype had grown to the point that me purchasing it was a moral imperative, and I got reminded again that I really wanted to pre-order Finis, I decided to also pick up a couple of indie staples that I'm terribly, terribly behind on: Burning Wheel and octaNe. At some point I'll even get around to reading them. But SotC gets first dibs, after I finish Exalted Revised. I've even debating cobbling together a version of Midway City using the SotC engine. You know, in my infinite free time.

Especially since, if I'm reading the signs right, my chances of having even less free time just improved. But in a really good way.

I got one of my recent projects out the door, but this isn't a Sekrit Project.

I applied for a job today.

Maybe other game designers run into this. Maybe it's just me. However, there's a problem I continually run into: people asking me questions about rules.

Sure, I get it. I wrote the rules, I should know them, right? But really, I have a terrible memory. That's why I have a PDA, a cell phone, sticky notes, a to do list, and a notebook just to help me get through my day without forgetting anything.

On top of that, think about this: first off, I've worked on at least half a dozen different rules systems to date, everything from my own work to D20 to the Storytelling system (and while the underlying concepts might be pretty similar, the details -- the rules themselves -- are very different). For rules I've designed, I probably worked on a few different drafts of the rules, and bits of them stick in my head. If I'm lucky, some of those drafts might actually resemble each other. Also, there's probably over a hundred RPGs I've read over more than twenty years with more bits and snippets scattered around in my brain -- some I read for research, some I read for fun, and some I ran for variously bits of time (and let's not forget the various editions that each game might have had over the years). Then there's the other rules systems I've playtested or designed that never saw the light of day. And, of course, there's various house rules and addenda and errata floating around in there, too. It's a wonder that I manage to find anything in this mess. Good thing each RPG has a handy reference book with it, because I use the hell out of it when I'm not just making shit up because I can't find the rule in question anyhow.

If you have a rules question, it's possible I might be able to give you an answer. Whether the answer has anything to do with what you're looking for, however, is a crap shoot. People who use the rules on a frequent basis are more likely to give you a better answer than me anyhow -- what was five minutes of work for me a year ago is a distant memory for me, but might be something drilled into a player's head after months of repeated application. They're more likely to tell you what the rule is and how it works than me (unless I'm running that game at that moment as well -- then your odds improve).

So really, if you want a lengthy babble about the theory and intent behind a game, I'm your guy. But if you want to actually know what a certain rule is... I'm probably just as lost as you.

186,682 / 185,000 (100.9%)

See? Told you it would spill over. I'm nearly 4,000 words ahead of schedule, which is good because if things go like they did last time I'll probably be totally fried after I return to work tomorrow. (I was going to go in today, but yesterday I slept for eleven hours and was still dizzy and wiped out, so I decided to give it an extra day. In retrospect, I'm glad I did.)

One of the advantages of going over the cut-and-paste text and revising it is I get a chance to catch flavor that doesn't match up with the new rules (such as, in this case, a bit about what happens when a mage loses their soul). Of course, there will be rules changes after I write this stuff, and although several sets of eyes are going to look at it all again to make sure it matches up, it just stands to reason that in a book of this complexity things are going to slip through. I have a lot of respect for line developers who put together lengthy and complicated rules systems now. So when you see dozens and dozens of names in your average gaming book, you know why. There's just so much that you have to keep track of.

As a side note, if you've been sending me emails with suggestions or comments, I am reading them. At the moment, I'm letting them sit in my inbox, so I can mentally distance myself from the rules for a couple of weeks (unless it's a quick "Yeah, I did that" response). Once all the playtest data comes in, I should be done with the first full draft, so my wordcount quota will be over and I can spend a few days focusing on all of the rules revisions before I start my editing pass.

RPG writing: about as exciting to watch as ESPN coverage of paint drying. ;)

One of the more weirdly intriguing things about the Cold War was the importance placed on, of all things, chess. A recent paper by Washington University (where I work) proposes the possibility of cheating or collusion by the Soviets in chess competition between 1940-1962 (link leads to PDF of the paper in question). I plan to give it a skim, but it is interesting how much importance is placed on games in certain elements of our society, and some of the atypical incentives to cheat or engage in degenerative strategies.

"Eddy Webb, an experienced veteran of the roleplaying industry, has been selected to adapt [Mage: the Awakening] to live-action."

I missed that I was a veteran. Does that mean I get benefits now? Or maybe a medal for my survival of the Great Flamewar of [insert year here]?

Haven't updated seriously in... well, a while. ( Here goes... )

The word count target for Sekrit Project A just got cut by half to two-thirds. This comes as a relief, as I originally thought I was going to have to crank out NaNoWriMo-levels of productivity for six months straight (or, in other words, 300,000 words in six months).

And believe it or not, that's the high point of my day.

Just got back from Tennessee last night. Have been without internet for a few days, and I'm neck-deep in things I need to get done ASAP. One of them, conveniently, happens to be my Camarilla Mage PC (no really, it's important, believe me). For those who have been sniffing around for links, his background is up at wod_fate. I'll also be emailing people who have been patiently waiting for this from me.

Got back from GenCon yesterday. Triaged email. Skimmed LiveJournal backlog. Vaguely up-to-date.

GenCon was very awesome in a large number of ways. The most significant one is that, while I didn't get anywhere regarding Sekrit Project C, I got a very exciting offer for something I am currently calling Sekrit Project A. Final details on the contract are being hammered out, and I believe the formal project announcement will be much later.

This is a 180-degree turn from my original prediction of being burned out on RPG design. There's a lot of complicated reasons why that is, but they boil down to the fact that this is a very different situation in a lot of ways, and there's a lot of opportunity in this. Being at GenCon really re-energized me, and I realized that while I still have a passion for fiction that I want to explore, this particular project is something I'm uniquely qualified for, and I want to explore it for a while.

The downside was that trying to be social at GenCon SUCKS. I barely got to see any of my industry friends, and that's a damned shame (mostly because either I or they were in meetings all of the time).

Dear Muse,

Yes, we have some free time right now. That time should be spent working on revising my short stories for submission, getting my application together for college, or maybe even working on things for Sekrit Project C. This is not an opportune time to go back to poking at the Transformers RPG that you started working on nine months ago. Despite what you might believe, the world does not need another unofficial Transformers RPG, no matter how frustrated you get at all of the different versions floating around. It certainly doesn't matter if you have come up with a clever way to mechanically reflect Headmasters, Targetmasters, Mini-con powers, and Cyber-key powers. We have other things we need to be working on. Seriously.

Sincerely,

eddyfate

I haven't updated worth a damn in a while.

The main reason is because I've been focusing on updating my PrivateJournals. Forcing myself to write about something, anything, no matter how private or stupid has been a good experience for me. Sometimes it bugs me because it feels like a shitty first draft, but then again I'm getting more comfortable with writing shitty first drafts, so it balances out.

Tampa was good. It was much more relaxing than my usual convention experience (although my PC is pretty fucking stressed out). I got to meet and hang out with some people I've never met before, and also spend time with people I don't usually get to hang out with at conventions. I got sucked into a Trustee black hole [1] and was told some very surprising things while I was there. I also got to relax, just spending time walking around, writing, or reading a book. If it wasn't for the fact that I felt like hammered shit on Sunday, the vacation would have been completely relaxing.

I also got a very surprising business opportunity. I can't say any more about it. However, I can say something completely unrelated to it, which is that I have a decent-to-good chance of attending DragonCon and GenCon Indy this yearn (as well as another surprising offer of crash).

Jazz has been doing just fine, and was a welcome companion in Tampa. I recently rearranged my office, which caused me to lose my wipeboard, but I'm experimenting with a piece of free software (Stickies, which are virtual post-it notes) that might replace that. [2] Not that I NEED to replace it, but it's one less thing cluttering up my office.

Which reminds me, I need to declutter my office.

Seasons 2 of both Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who have been hit or miss, but good enough for me to keep watching them. I'm hoping Season 2 of Deadwood will also be good. The ECW leadup has also been pretty good, and I'm hoping the actual premiere tonight will continue to hold with the quality.

So there you go. All updatified.

---

Footnote 1: Strangely, I'm friends with nearly all of the Trustees in the Camarilla, but I'm not one.

Footnote 2: I basically have two "to do" lists, one on my PDA and one on my wipeboard. There's some logic in why one gets used and not the other, but it's escaped my conscious mind.

EDDY WEBB AND SPECTRUM GAMES PART WAYS

After a fruitful four-year tenure as Spectrum Games' Vice-President, Eddy Webb is stepping away from the company.   It is an amicable split with no hard feelings.  In fact, Eddy and Spectrum President Cynthia Celeste Miller remain great friends.

"This was a very hard decision," says Eddy, "because my time with Spectrum has been so fantastic.  However, both my personal life and my creative interests have been moving into a different direction than RPG design and writing.  However, gaming is still a very large part of my life, and I suspect that I'll get the itch again at some point down the road.  Now, however, I have different priorities."

The door is always open for Eddy, should he decide to return to Spectrum in the future, something which he says is indeed a possibility.

"Eddy has been such an asset to the company since he was hired in 2002.  I honestly can't even begin to tell you how much work the man has done.  You won't find a harder worker, a more devoted Vice-President, and a more loyal friend anywhere in the world than Eddy Webb.  His value to Spectrum cannot possibly be measured.   So, I'd like to take this opportunity to personally thank him for everything he has done.  His contributions will be missed."

I'm tempted to make good on my constant threat of the past couple of years and bring Rules of Play to a convention when game theory conversations start up. Partially so I can make sure I'm correct when I'm quoting from it, and partially because it's a 600+ page textbook that I can hit people with.

Did a little bit of work at home (mostly editing a review, although I didn't edit it nearly as much as it needed to be edited), but didn't get much more accomplished due to the combination of an impromptu ST meeting breaking out in my house (prompting garchangel and I to haul out our old Magic: The Gathering decks) and greebotrill migrating her computer over to her new laptop and allowing me to salvage her hard drive. Now I have two 80GB drives on my computer, so I can wipe the new drive, copy all my files over to it, then reformat the old drive and do a fresh install on it, something it's desperately needed for a couple of years now. That will likely take up most of my weekend.

There's a LARP scheduled for tonight that I have no real interest in attending. I debated statting out my second primary for the game instead (Jack Spade), but on reflection it will cause exactly the kinds of problems I wanted to avoid by having two active characters at the same time. And besides, I don't have the Lancea Sanctum book. So, I'll probably drag Nick out there, and likely have an okay time anyway.

And in other gaming goobery, RPG gamers who like silly sci-fi and Iron Chef will probably appreciate Intergalactic Cooking Challenge, which actually has some pretty interesting mechanics to reflect the "cooking entertainment" atmosphere.