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shannon_aIn December 2012, I received word from some of the folks at DTRPG about a secret project: they would be producing digital copies of classic D&D products on a new website, dndclassics.com. And, they were interested in having me write histories for the products.
I was very appreciative of the acknowledgement of my historical expertise, but I had two qualms.
The first qualm was Designers & Dragons, as I was then working hard to get everything ready for a second edition. But, I decided to just bite my tongue and decide that I'd have enough time to work on everything. I remember well the frantic hours spent during my "holiday week" at the end of 2012, then throughout the first several weeks of 2013, writing the histories for the first big release at the end of January. I like working out in parks, away from networked distractions, and so I spent many a cold hour that January working at the picnic tables up at Lake Temescal — sometimes at the still-damp picnic tables, as that's our rainy season too.
The second qualm was rights. As I dove into the project I discovered both that it was going to take longer than the hour a product that we'd estimated and that I was turning up some intriguing historical material that really deserved to be collected. So I started thinking that I might want to preserve some rights for these histories for myself, so that I could publish them in a book of their own some day.
The folks at DTRPG were very responsive to my desires for rights, but it was still hard coming to agreement. That's just the case sometimes, even when everyone has everyone's best interests at heart, because everyone also has specific concerns that only they can see clearly. Eventually we came to an agreement, though, where I'd have the rights to publish my histories elsewhere a year after they appeared at DTRPG, as long as it wasn't someone directly competitive with them.
I've sometimes said that an unbalanced contract can end up making both parties unhappy. That's because the party with the less rights ends up unhappy and he eventually stops caring about the contract as much as the other party. On the other case, a balanced contract can be the basis of a long and fulfilling partnership, and that was the case here. DTRPG was getting historic context for their products that, frankly, improved over time as I found my groove. They paid me a small fee to license the material that didn't nearly compensate the amount of time I ended up putting in. But that was fine with me, because I was creating an ever-increasing store of material that I owned, that I could increasingly see becoming a book in the future.
When we started out, DTRPG had a second writer, and we split the material between us. He bowed out after a few years. I surely would have too, because of the ongoing time required, except for that good contract.
Fast forward five years. The second edition of Designers & Dragons got finished, it got Kickstarted, I did more work to produce a Platinum Appendix, and that got published too.
Meanwhile, I worked through a ton of histories for DTRPG. After that initial burst of histories, I was writing 2-3 a week. I split things with our other writer, and my area of writing was 0e, 1e, Basic D&D, and parts of 2e. After he left, I slowly moved up to 4-5 histories a week, which was a lot of research and writing. And now I was covering pretty much everything.
That continued until the start of September, 2017, when DTRPG ran out of new material, at least for the moment (though I'm still hopeful to do more writing for them in the future). Able to rest after almost five years of constant work, I slowed way down in my work, but I've still continued as possible, now preparing materials for the eventual books, rather than the weekly DTRPG releases.
As of the end of 2017, I've published 782 histories and I've prepared another 49 that haven't been used, for a total of 831. My initial guess was that there are about 1,000 product histories, to cover all the D&D products from TSR and Wizards. So I'm within striking distance, but I have a lot left too. Most of the gaps are in the 3e era and a few 2e product lines (Birthright especially), all stuff written for DTRPG by our other writer.
My goal at this point is to produce a new series of books that will include all of these ~1,000 D&D histories, categorized, and in rough order given that constraint. I've currently got this laid out as a four-book series. I've some concern that the books will be too long, but I'll see how they look when finalized. I have an idea for an alternate five-book layout if the four-book one doesn't work. Either a four-book or a five-book series would nicely divide up the material by edition.
Besides writing those missing histories, I'm also going to need to heavily revise much of what I've done before. This falls into a few categories:
I would like to have the 4 (or 5) books done by the end of 2019. I don't know if that's possible, but the wife and I are planning a big move for the start of 2020, and it will be very disruptive, so it'd be nice if that didn't impact finishing these books.
Shorter term, for 2018, I'd like to (1) finish all the missing histories for products up through the end of AD&D 2e, which is the end of book three, probably by getting back to a schedule of two ever week; and (2) actually put together a complete draft of the first book which covers 0e, 1e, and maybe Basic.
Some people have noted the quickly approaching end of the '10s and asked if we'll see Designers & Dragons: The '10s. The answer is "not soon" or maybe "it's complicated".
For one thing, 2020 would be too soon to write a '10s book, because we won't yet know what companies from 2018 and 2019 hit it big. The '00s book was finalized in 2014, and as it was the late '00s were a bit sparser than the early, and should have included the first OSR "companies". So, call it 2024 or 2025 to write a '10s book, at best. And that doesn't address the question of what to do with older histories from the current four books that need updating.
I have though about putting together an OSR "bridge" book which would have company histories for several of the notables in the OSR space and offer a bit of coverage for the '00s and '10s both. Maybe as a stretch goal for these D&D books? It'd be a nice complement.
But for the moment, this is all a bit in the future. I have lots of D&D product histories to think about first.
I was very appreciative of the acknowledgement of my historical expertise, but I had two qualms.
The first qualm was Designers & Dragons, as I was then working hard to get everything ready for a second edition. But, I decided to just bite my tongue and decide that I'd have enough time to work on everything. I remember well the frantic hours spent during my "holiday week" at the end of 2012, then throughout the first several weeks of 2013, writing the histories for the first big release at the end of January. I like working out in parks, away from networked distractions, and so I spent many a cold hour that January working at the picnic tables up at Lake Temescal — sometimes at the still-damp picnic tables, as that's our rainy season too.
The second qualm was rights. As I dove into the project I discovered both that it was going to take longer than the hour a product that we'd estimated and that I was turning up some intriguing historical material that really deserved to be collected. So I started thinking that I might want to preserve some rights for these histories for myself, so that I could publish them in a book of their own some day.
The folks at DTRPG were very responsive to my desires for rights, but it was still hard coming to agreement. That's just the case sometimes, even when everyone has everyone's best interests at heart, because everyone also has specific concerns that only they can see clearly. Eventually we came to an agreement, though, where I'd have the rights to publish my histories elsewhere a year after they appeared at DTRPG, as long as it wasn't someone directly competitive with them.
I've sometimes said that an unbalanced contract can end up making both parties unhappy. That's because the party with the less rights ends up unhappy and he eventually stops caring about the contract as much as the other party. On the other case, a balanced contract can be the basis of a long and fulfilling partnership, and that was the case here. DTRPG was getting historic context for their products that, frankly, improved over time as I found my groove. They paid me a small fee to license the material that didn't nearly compensate the amount of time I ended up putting in. But that was fine with me, because I was creating an ever-increasing store of material that I owned, that I could increasingly see becoming a book in the future.
When we started out, DTRPG had a second writer, and we split the material between us. He bowed out after a few years. I surely would have too, because of the ongoing time required, except for that good contract.
Fast forward five years. The second edition of Designers & Dragons got finished, it got Kickstarted, I did more work to produce a Platinum Appendix, and that got published too.
Meanwhile, I worked through a ton of histories for DTRPG. After that initial burst of histories, I was writing 2-3 a week. I split things with our other writer, and my area of writing was 0e, 1e, Basic D&D, and parts of 2e. After he left, I slowly moved up to 4-5 histories a week, which was a lot of research and writing. And now I was covering pretty much everything.
That continued until the start of September, 2017, when DTRPG ran out of new material, at least for the moment (though I'm still hopeful to do more writing for them in the future). Able to rest after almost five years of constant work, I slowed way down in my work, but I've still continued as possible, now preparing materials for the eventual books, rather than the weekly DTRPG releases.
As of the end of 2017, I've published 782 histories and I've prepared another 49 that haven't been used, for a total of 831. My initial guess was that there are about 1,000 product histories, to cover all the D&D products from TSR and Wizards. So I'm within striking distance, but I have a lot left too. Most of the gaps are in the 3e era and a few 2e product lines (Birthright especially), all stuff written for DTRPG by our other writer.
My goal at this point is to produce a new series of books that will include all of these ~1,000 D&D histories, categorized, and in rough order given that constraint. I've currently got this laid out as a four-book series. I've some concern that the books will be too long, but I'll see how they look when finalized. I have an idea for an alternate five-book layout if the four-book one doesn't work. Either a four-book or a five-book series would nicely divide up the material by edition.
Besides writing those missing histories, I'm also going to need to heavily revise much of what I've done before. This falls into a few categories:
- My earliest histories were too brief. They need more research and then more content.
- Everything needs to be standardized.
- Trends needs to be clearly marked with their beginnings.
- Repetitive information on trends and facts need to be eliminated.
- Section dividers need to be written to hold everything together.
- Everything should be fact-checked by experts, including the peoples involved.
I would like to have the 4 (or 5) books done by the end of 2019. I don't know if that's possible, but the wife and I are planning a big move for the start of 2020, and it will be very disruptive, so it'd be nice if that didn't impact finishing these books.
Shorter term, for 2018, I'd like to (1) finish all the missing histories for products up through the end of AD&D 2e, which is the end of book three, probably by getting back to a schedule of two ever week; and (2) actually put together a complete draft of the first book which covers 0e, 1e, and maybe Basic.
Some people have noted the quickly approaching end of the '10s and asked if we'll see Designers & Dragons: The '10s. The answer is "not soon" or maybe "it's complicated".
For one thing, 2020 would be too soon to write a '10s book, because we won't yet know what companies from 2018 and 2019 hit it big. The '00s book was finalized in 2014, and as it was the late '00s were a bit sparser than the early, and should have included the first OSR "companies". So, call it 2024 or 2025 to write a '10s book, at best. And that doesn't address the question of what to do with older histories from the current four books that need updating.
I have though about putting together an OSR "bridge" book which would have company histories for several of the notables in the OSR space and offer a bit of coverage for the '00s and '10s both. Maybe as a stretch goal for these D&D books? It'd be a nice complement.
But for the moment, this is all a bit in the future. I have lots of D&D product histories to think about first.