Chaos Dreams
Nov. 30th, 2011 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aDreamt about Chaosium and Lynn W., my mentor there, for the second time in a week or so. Which is weird. I used to have anxiety dreams about the company when I worked there (in fact, they were one of my two prime determinants for leaving the company), but it's been relatively far from my thoughts for years.
This time around, I was wandering around a warehouse space which was an abstraction of what the Chaosium offices c. 1996-1998 looked like. I was getting Designers & Dragons ready for publication by Chaosium, but I knew there was no way they had the money or printer credit to print it, so I was just spinning my wheels. Finally, Lynn told me they weren't going to be able to print it any time soon.
That sort of problem with publication was what was going on around 1998 before I left. I had a light table next to my desk, and whenever I'd finish editing and laying out a book, I'd put it on the light table rather than send it off to the printer. By the time I left, there were 4 or 5 ready-to-go books there (which was my other reason for leaving the company). I think Chaosium had them all published by 2001 or so.
There's actually a real connection between Designers & Dragons and Lynn that has some emotional resonance with me. When I wrote my first draft of the Chaosium article for RPGnet, I sent it to Lynn for comment (among other people). His only note of substance was that he wanted to be removed from the article. I don't know if it was because he's deeply private or because he didn't want to have anything to do with my work (as he'd been very unhappy at my decision to leave Chaosium), but I removed his name from the article. (It hadn't felt like a big deal, because those first drafts of the articles had focused considerably less on the designers than the book eventually did.)
When I redrafted the article for Designers & Dragons I decided that I cared more about completeness of the book than Lynn's desires. And I also decided that whether he wanted it or not, his contributions to the world of roleplaying deserved to be recorded. So, you'll find them on pages 78-79, 82-83, 85-87, 90-91, and 95.
This time around, I was wandering around a warehouse space which was an abstraction of what the Chaosium offices c. 1996-1998 looked like. I was getting Designers & Dragons ready for publication by Chaosium, but I knew there was no way they had the money or printer credit to print it, so I was just spinning my wheels. Finally, Lynn told me they weren't going to be able to print it any time soon.
That sort of problem with publication was what was going on around 1998 before I left. I had a light table next to my desk, and whenever I'd finish editing and laying out a book, I'd put it on the light table rather than send it off to the printer. By the time I left, there were 4 or 5 ready-to-go books there (which was my other reason for leaving the company). I think Chaosium had them all published by 2001 or so.
There's actually a real connection between Designers & Dragons and Lynn that has some emotional resonance with me. When I wrote my first draft of the Chaosium article for RPGnet, I sent it to Lynn for comment (among other people). His only note of substance was that he wanted to be removed from the article. I don't know if it was because he's deeply private or because he didn't want to have anything to do with my work (as he'd been very unhappy at my decision to leave Chaosium), but I removed his name from the article. (It hadn't felt like a big deal, because those first drafts of the articles had focused considerably less on the designers than the book eventually did.)
When I redrafted the article for Designers & Dragons I decided that I cared more about completeness of the book than Lynn's desires. And I also decided that whether he wanted it or not, his contributions to the world of roleplaying deserved to be recorded. So, you'll find them on pages 78-79, 82-83, 85-87, 90-91, and 95.