Awards, Books & Other Roleplaying
Aug. 8th, 2015 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aSo it turns out that Designers & Dragons did win one award: a gold ENnie for Best RPG-Related product.
I'd said that I wasn't too concerned about the ENnies because it was mostly a popularity contest. Which, it is. And if I hadn't won anything I would have continued to be not concerned. I thought that winning them would be the same: I have a couple of Origins awards in the closet, from when I worked at Chaosium, and the fact that those Cthulhu products with my name on them won someone wasn't that meaningful, and that's what I was basing my thoughts on. But the difference is those votes were primarily for Chaosium's carefully-created property, while this was for mine. For my Designers & Dragons.
So, cool. And cool to know I have fans too.
(Thanks fans who voted!)
One of the reasons this is cool is because I am continuing to work on Designers & Dragons books. A lot of that centers around the writing I've been doing for DnDClassics. Every week I write 1-3 histories for them of individual D&D books. I've been doing so since the start of 2013. If you do the math, you can see that I should have 125-375 histories done (exact count: 385, probably due to a rush at the start).
My goal right now is to continue writing these as my main thing through the end of 2016 (hopeful count: 550-600), and then in 2017 see what would be needed to fill in the gaps to have complete books describing the history (and some additional info) on every single D&D product ever put out by TSR and WotC.
This type of work is really time-consuming, because I have to research every single individual product and there's something like 1,000 total. I don't think I could ever do it without the weekly regimen required by having to prepare them as DnDClassics releases them week-by-week. So, I'm grateful to the DriveThruRPG folks for that (continuing) opportunity and the continuing demands, which keep me on track.
I've been slowly working on an outline for these D&D histories, which would (I think) put them at three books. My word count is already a ridiculous 282,000 words, but I'm pretty sure redundant text would get streamlined as I put them into books.
(Thanks DTRPG!)
I'm also thinking about a Designers & Dragons mini-book called something like "Designers & Dragons '00s to '10s: The OSR". I want to position it as the fifth core book of the line, and a good bridge while we're waiting for the opportunity to write a complete '10s book. And, I think it would go well with the TSR and WotC D&D books. Right now I'm just collecting information on the OSR movement and a couple of the first companies I'll write about, so this is a ways off. I thinking this might be a half-sized book at 200 pages or so, covering maybe 7-8 "companies".
And speaking of roleplaying, I did some today. Mary's Achtung Cthulhu campaign kicked off, and it was my first opportunity to actually play in a game since her very short-lived Dresden campaign (which was in 2011).
I had a blast. Kevin and I had fun when we created characters by randomizing most elements, and today I got to bring my character out to play for the first time. He's an overconfident American guerrilla expert. So I stepped into the fire time after time and kept quoting line and verse of what we should do based on my lessons back in guerrilla school (which I'd never before used in the real world).
My favorite was setting fire to the guard shack after we'd killed the Nazis there, in the village where we were continuing to operate. ("Rule #7: Never leave resources for the enemy".) Sadly our GM didn't take advantage of that potentially horrible choice. But I got to set something on fire.
(Thanks Mary!)
I'd said that I wasn't too concerned about the ENnies because it was mostly a popularity contest. Which, it is. And if I hadn't won anything I would have continued to be not concerned. I thought that winning them would be the same: I have a couple of Origins awards in the closet, from when I worked at Chaosium, and the fact that those Cthulhu products with my name on them won someone wasn't that meaningful, and that's what I was basing my thoughts on. But the difference is those votes were primarily for Chaosium's carefully-created property, while this was for mine. For my Designers & Dragons.
So, cool. And cool to know I have fans too.
(Thanks fans who voted!)
One of the reasons this is cool is because I am continuing to work on Designers & Dragons books. A lot of that centers around the writing I've been doing for DnDClassics. Every week I write 1-3 histories for them of individual D&D books. I've been doing so since the start of 2013. If you do the math, you can see that I should have 125-375 histories done (exact count: 385, probably due to a rush at the start).
My goal right now is to continue writing these as my main thing through the end of 2016 (hopeful count: 550-600), and then in 2017 see what would be needed to fill in the gaps to have complete books describing the history (and some additional info) on every single D&D product ever put out by TSR and WotC.
This type of work is really time-consuming, because I have to research every single individual product and there's something like 1,000 total. I don't think I could ever do it without the weekly regimen required by having to prepare them as DnDClassics releases them week-by-week. So, I'm grateful to the DriveThruRPG folks for that (continuing) opportunity and the continuing demands, which keep me on track.
I've been slowly working on an outline for these D&D histories, which would (I think) put them at three books. My word count is already a ridiculous 282,000 words, but I'm pretty sure redundant text would get streamlined as I put them into books.
(Thanks DTRPG!)
I'm also thinking about a Designers & Dragons mini-book called something like "Designers & Dragons '00s to '10s: The OSR". I want to position it as the fifth core book of the line, and a good bridge while we're waiting for the opportunity to write a complete '10s book. And, I think it would go well with the TSR and WotC D&D books. Right now I'm just collecting information on the OSR movement and a couple of the first companies I'll write about, so this is a ways off. I thinking this might be a half-sized book at 200 pages or so, covering maybe 7-8 "companies".
And speaking of roleplaying, I did some today. Mary's Achtung Cthulhu campaign kicked off, and it was my first opportunity to actually play in a game since her very short-lived Dresden campaign (which was in 2011).
I had a blast. Kevin and I had fun when we created characters by randomizing most elements, and today I got to bring my character out to play for the first time. He's an overconfident American guerrilla expert. So I stepped into the fire time after time and kept quoting line and verse of what we should do based on my lessons back in guerrilla school (which I'd never before used in the real world).
My favorite was setting fire to the guard shack after we'd killed the Nazis there, in the village where we were continuing to operate. ("Rule #7: Never leave resources for the enemy".) Sadly our GM didn't take advantage of that potentially horrible choice. But I got to set something on fire.
(Thanks Mary!)