Entries tagged with glorantha

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In Which I Get Creative

The last year hasn't been a great time for writing, because so much time was taken up by preparing for the move (and the ever-ongoing sale of our house). The last three months haven't been a great time for writing, because I've been busy settling in to a new routine and a new house. And, the last month hasn't been a great time for writing because COVID-19 has settled upon us like a miasma.

That's not to say I haven't done any writing, even in the last few months when it's been the most busy and/or troubled. I've actually written three complete Advanced Designers & Dragons articles, one on 2019 and a two-part article on the '10s generally. And I wrote two more strategy articles for my beloved Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (though the new articles on Valeros and Lem haven't appeared yet), and even two Mechanics & Meeples articles (though with my old gaming groups left back in California and my actual tabletop play non-existent right now, it's probably time to put that on hiatus again, as has happened from time to time). But, that total of seven articles is pretty limited.

(Mind you, the 40 journal entries since we arrived is way over average.)

And I want to be doing more, and I want to be doing more on my most substantive projects, the books I'm working on.

And that's what last Friday was about.

See, here's my long-term plan for working in Hawaii. I'm going to be doing up to two days of blockchain-related tech writing freelance, if I can get it. Right now, Chris has asked for those days. And I've got one day for two old clients that I'm sticking with: Rebooting Web of Trust and Bitmark. If they have work for me. RWOT is of course between workshops due to COVID-19, and I think Bitmark is changing gears. So I'm unsure of how much this will be right now, but I've always figured it wouldn't take up a FULL day every week. Finally, the last two days, and whatever's left of that third day, are supposed to be for my own big projects.

I've got a lot of them:

The Designers & Dragons TSR/WotC product histories. My Michael Moorcock book. Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories. Designers & Dragons: The '20s. Maybe a history of Bitcoin. The next cooperative books with Christopher. Maybe additional work on our comics.

But April has ended up being a transition, because I'm not quite done with Skotos yet, and so I've just given myself Friday to get started on those projects.

And, I was wrote last Friday, that was only somewhat successful, because I had the interruption of physical therapy appointments in the morning, and then I spent most of the afternoon standing in line to buy groceries and drugs. Fun.

But, it wasn't as unsuccessful as you might think. I got a good start on my next product history, on the World of Greyhawk Folio, one of the last totally unwritten articles for what should be the first product history book. And I was enthusiastic enough that I carried that work into Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday.

Oh, I also swam (on Saturday) and walked (on Sunday) and napped (whenever I could) and read. But I consistently went back to that history.

It's now drafted, at a big 'ole 2500 words. (It's an important product.)

And I've got all my notes laid out for the connecting history on the World of Greyhawk box.

Meanwhile, something even more unexpected came up. One of my German friends from Tradetalk suggested that I might want to think about my long-lost ElfBook — which I wrote for Greg Stafford for Issaries about 15 years — as a Jonstown Compendium product.

I looked at JC, and discovered it doesn't have the ownership provisions that keep me away from DM's Guild, and I agreed that it might be cool to finally get that lost manuscript out. So I ordered the RQ:G books, something I'd always planned to do after our move here. Fortunately, I'd just gotten some money for my birthday, and it was the perfect amount.

The slipcase of core books arrived on Saturday, and I posted a picture of them online and to the Glorantha FB, and said that I was thinking about a JC release. When someone said they hoped it was elves, I said yes.

But then a bit of a surprise: Chaosium might be interested in an elf book after all. They weren't when I asked them last time, about a year and a half ago, but since then RQ:G has done well.

If I produce something for them, it's not exactly going to be the lost Oak and Pine book, but I think the first several chapters will be entirely relevant, and then I'd love to put together some very playable, entirely new material for the heart of the RQ:G world: settings and adventures. So one of my goals is to read through RQ:G and write up an outline this month, for what I would love to be an official "ElfPak".

(And then after I hopefully write an official ElfPak, I can see what I still have left from the original book, and publish that to the JC as originally planned! That'll probably end up being my overview of all the elf forests in Glorantha.)

So, I guess I'm adding one or more books to what was obviously already a too-long list.

But finally, finally, finally I've got some real scheduled time for them, not just what I scavenge in the evenings and while out hiking.

And that time should increase next month, as was always planned as one of benefits of this move.

Something else of note: after the weekend, I felt pulled out of the funk I'd been in over the uncertainty of the future. Part of that was surely that the sun has come out, but part of it is also the refreshed creativity, and making use of it.

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glorantha

In Which I Record Gloranthan Memories

It was 25 years ago tonight that RuneQuest-Con began at the Columbia Inn Hotel, in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was a time of excitement and rejuvenation for RuneQuest and for the world of Glorantha. The line had fizzled out in the late '80s, but with the 1992 publication of _Sun County_ by Michael O'Brien, the RuneQuest Renaissance had begun. That same year, _King of Sartar_ had also appeared, suggesting a richer mythic background for the world than we ever could have imagined, but then at RuneQuest-Con, Greg Stafford doubled down with the 1994 publication of the "Vernacular Edition" of _The Glorious ReAscent of Yelm_, which revealed a whole layer of mythology beneath that which we knew.

But those professional publications were only half of the story of Glorantha in the early '90s, and perhaps less. Because the early '90s were the time when the Gloranthan fandom really exploded, starting with the Reaching Moon Megacorp crew in England. They'd been publishing _Tales of the Reaching Moon_ since 1989 and had kicked off the idea of Glorantha conventions in 1992, with Convulsions. The rich creativity of the authors for _Tales_ (and soon: many other fanzines) easily matched that of the professional publications ... and in fact soon those fanzine creators were writing for many of the professional books, starting with MOB's _Sun County_. Meanwhile, the yearly conventions gave this community the opportunity to really come together and for their ideas to multiply and cross-fertilize.

RuneQuest-Con was my first trip as an adult. I'm not sure I'd been out of California since my Washington DC trip in my senior year of high school. Now, five years later, I was making a recreational trip for something that I found enthralling (and with the support and encouragement of my friend Eric Rowe). When I went to RuneQuest-Con in Baltimore, I was a big fan of the system, because I'd played in weekly games throughout most of my college days. But I was less of a fan of Glorantha, because most of those games were set in my friend Eric's world, Erzo. But I did know Glorantha through its publications. I'd happily read through all the Avalon Hill boxes, through _Cults of Prax_ and _Cults of Terror__, through the amazing _King of Sartar_. But the convention was my first time for those abstract learnings to become concrete. And they did.

I happily played in _Home of the Bold_, where I watched over the last days of my doomed Orlanthi tribe while I hid away at Geo's. And I listened to seminars and I talked Glorantha fans, and I became entirely enamored by the setting.

It filled my creative output for a decade thereafter. I talked with Greg about the First Age, and wrote the history of that time for the LARP at RQ-Con 2. I talked about elves with Greg and would eventually write two books on the topic. I used these two expertises to fill the pages of _Tradetalk_ and _Hearts in Glorantha_ and offered other scattered bits for two local fanzines, _RQ Adventures_ and _The Book of Drastic Resolutions_.

The next year, I helped Eric put together RQ-Con 2 in San Francisco. (He did all the logistical work, including stuff I was supposed to do; I did the majority of the writing for the LARP, with support from him and Steven Martin and of course Greg.) And I got to make a trip to England the year after, to attend Convulsions 3D. After that, I faded away from the physical Gloranthan gatherings, in large part because I was now making no money, working for Chaosium (and afterward because working at Chaosium burned me out on roleplaying for a few years thereafter). Ironically, I still supported some of them, such as the day I worked up the original Hero Wars logo in an hour or two, so that Greg could have something to put on t-shirts for Glorantha-Con IV (I think). But even as I stepped back from the conventions, I still felt those connections as I wrote for the fanzines, until they faded away too. (Joyfully, Facebook has brought some of those connections back.)

(Tip of the hat to Rick Meints who wrote some memories about RQ-Con 1 over on his own page.)

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The Minutia of Life

Exile. Last week started to get uncomfortably hot for the first time in quite a few months, so I engaged in the annual (or semi-annual) running of the computers. Hauled my Mac downstairs and worked out of the dining room for a while. The heat didn't last very long, but the change of environ was increasing my efficacy, so I stayed there until last night.

Now the annual (or semi-annual) running of the computers has been reversed.

Meow. We do indeed have a sick cat. Cobweb's ultrasound showed that she had a problem with her intestines. The vet is hopeful that it's kitty-cat IBS, and we're treating Cobweb for that with two pills a day. Fortunately she loves treats, and so the pill-pouch-treat thingies work well for her. Once or twice she's spat the pill open after chewing on the pill pouch, then immediately gobbled it back up.

We're supposed to bring her in in about 3 weeks to get weighed. Hopefully her weight will be up.

Because, if it isn't IBS, the next guess is the big C.

Urgh. Tension headache is back today. It's been pretty good most of the time since my doc gave me meds a few months ago, but today it's been worsening throughout the day. Don't know if it was staring closely at cards, to get them readable at a size of 100 pixels tall, or the different quality of light in my office, but I'd guess one or the other. Or both.

Scribble. Many writing tasks have gathered on my freelance desk in the last week or two.

I've started writing Traveller articles for Mongoose, so now I'm swapping back and forth between Traveller and RQ for them. I'm enjoying the Traveller more, I must say, but it's still new and exciting. Currently, I've got a red-elf article in progress, but my (second) Traveller article is already planned out.

And, simultaneously, two of the Glorantha mags are getting ready to publish: Tradetalk and Hearts in Glorantha. They each have an article of mine that's part of a series, so I'm due to write the next one for them now. For HiG, "The Poisonthorn Forest" is being published, which means I need to write "The Hellwood". For TT, "The Vale of Flowers" is being published (which I had started writing for a different venue 3 or 4 years ago), which means I need to write "The Redwood".

Yes, it's all elf forests, all the time.

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Writing, Writing, Writing (Again)

In case you're interested, but haven't been keeping up on what I'm writing, here's notes some of my recent pieces:

BoardGameNews. I continue with my biweekly column over at BoardGameNews about, well, board games. My most recent column, published this Thursday, was on real-life auctions, and how they can correspond to game systems.

RPGnet Reviews. Every Wednesday I publish one (or sometimes two) board game reviews on RPGnet. My most recent couple were reviews of Gem Dealer, Sutter's Mill, High Society, For Sale, and Money (most of those drawn from a new series by Gryphon Games that I wrote about here).

TT&T Game Design. This is my game design column that I write to several times a year nowadays. The auction article could have gone here with a little bit of a different focus. My most recent article, just a few weeks' old, instead looked at the storytelling side of game design: Testing Characters, with a Look at Battlestar Galactica.

iPhone Articles. Christopher and I have set up an iPhone programming blog to complement our recently published book, iPhone in Action. My most recent article, from this week, was on iPhone user interfaces.

Xenagia Commentary. We've recently been joined by content editor, Stace Dumoski, at Xenagia, and so we're kicking off columns to really get the science-fiction, fantasy, and horror site rolling. I'll be writing some editorials called "Rants from the Future", though I'm just getting started on the first one now.

Gloranthan Writing. I've been doing a scattering of writings for Gloranthan things. Since the start of the year I've written "RuneQuest Elf Monsters" and "Plunder of the Ducks" for Signs & Portents, and I'll be starting on "Plunder of the Dwarfs" soon. These will appear online, but haven't been published yet. My most recent work for Tradetalk was a revision of my "Vale of Flowers" article and I'll be getting to an article on "The Redwood Forest" next month. My immediate next article should be on Dorastan elves for Hearts in Glorantha, which I expect to start on tonight or Sunday.

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aldryami,
glorantha

New Glorantha Articles

A few new Gloranthan articles that I wrote late last year have already been published.

Hearts in Glorantha #2 contains my "ElfPak Designer Notes", which is my look back at how my elf writings came to be, as well as a listing of those elf articles, which was comprehensive at the time it was written, but already doesn't include my article in ...

Signs & Portents #63, which contains "Plunder of the Elfs", the first of several very crunchy articles articles that I've written for Mongoose's RQ4. I'd guess the next will be in S&P #65; it's "RuneQuest Elf Monsters" and is a very comprehensive bestiary of what you might meet in elf lands.

(I think I'm going to be doing some duck & dwarf plunder articles next, and plan to read those Mongoose books while on airplanes over the next couple of weeks.)

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glorantha

Ideas for Future Glorantha Articles: Elf Voices

Cultural articles describing What My Father Told Me have been a part of Glorantha for a long time. I wrote the elf article (PDF) in the current version of HeroQuest Voices, but it's a bit generic since it covers Aldryami as a whole. It's be nice to write a whole series, one per elf species.

(Also on my list of potential Glorantha articles: The Redwood for HQ, the Stinking Forest for HQ, Dorastan elf lands, and additional plunder articles for RQ4.)

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glorantha,
writing

New Aldryami Plunder!

I successfully finished another Gloranthan article over the holiday weekend, and another nice meaty one that should have real-game use.

It's "Plunder of the Aldryami", and I'd guess it'll be published in the January Signs & Portents. It includes several new Aldryami plunder items for RuneQuest 4, and I also got permission to revise and reprint the Aldryami items from the original Plunder.

The article took me a bit more energy than I thought it would. I guess some of my creativity is still tied up with the iPhone book after all. But I'm really almost done there ... 2 more chapters to work with the copy editor on, 4 more to work with the proof reader on, and 9 more to look at in layout.

As for RuneQuest stuff, I've got two more things that I want to play with: a HQ article on the Redwood and a RQ4 article full of "Aldryami Monsters" (e.g., nasty stuff you find in their woods). The first is for some indeterminate time in the future while the second is for the next S&P.

Entry tags:

glorantha,
writing

New Articles!

With the iPhone in Action book off my back*, I've got some of my creative energy back, and that's gotten me more enthusiastic about writing RPG-related stuff. I finished up my long-delayed Vale of Flowers article for Tradetalk and I've now moved on to some articles for Signs & Portents.

Writing for Signs & Portents is nice because it uses the RuneQuest system, which I prefer. So, I'm quite happy to be doing it again.

This time my inspiration came from Stephen Martin, who had nice little Monsters & Treasures sections at the ends of his Books of Drastic Resolution. They were great crunchy bits that also had good background and were very usable in games. So, I've proposed a Elf Plunder article and an Elf Monsters article for S&P and the editor has expressed interest.

I hope they'll end up publishing in January & February, but I don't know what the lead time is exactly, since it's been a year since I wrote over there.

If you missed my previous four S&P elf articles, they're all listed here and freely downloadable from Mongoose Publishing.

* Technically it's not, as I've still got 6 or 7 chapters that I need to OK with the copy editors, 12 or 13 chapters that I need to do a final read on and OK with the proof readers, and 16 chapters that I need to OK with the layout artists. However, I've now finished the original writing, and that frees up the creative part of my brain.

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Tradetalk Magazine

I saw that the new issue of Tradetalk magazine (#16) has been printed. This makes me happy, as I wrote the article for it so long ago that I no longer really remember it. It was while I was working on the elf books--February, 2007 according to my Gmail. When the mag arrives in my mailbox, it'll thus be all new to me.

This has got me off my butt about working on my next article, on The Vale of Flowers, which is either for #17 or #18. I'd been working on it earlier in October, but then I hit a roadblock when I discovered a source (The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Darkness) that contradicted some of what I'd written. Always a problem when you're writing for a game with scores of references available.

Anyway, I got back on the horse tonight and started revising my work per this last source. Once I can get all that done, including some additions, I should be in the home stretch.

This is going to be the longest Gloranthan thing I've written for a magazine. It's about 8000 words now, and will surely be 10000 by the time I'm done.

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Hearts in Glorantha Article

I sent off a new gaming article tonight, the first such "extra" thing I've had the energy to write since I got sick*. It's a set of "ElfPak Designer Notes" for the second issue of a new Glorantha fanzine called Hearts in Glorantha**.

This one took a bit more revision than usual. I had to stop a few times to take out some of my personal reminiscences and replace them with a more factual description of the concepts that went into the two elf books. But, I'm pleased with the results. It's also got a bibliography of all the elf stuff I've written; in the process of writing it, I found a few things that had never been published!

Next up I need to figure out something to write for Board Game News on Thursday and then I can get back to the "Vale of Flowers" article for Tradetalk that I was writing before I got sick.

* Still sick. Whether I relapsed from exercising too much yesterday or whether it was just a bad day in this on-again, off-again sickness, I dunno, but I was mussy-headed again today and a little headachy. This drives me crazy.

** Ironically, I still haven't seen the first issue. I'm waiting to have the free cash to order an actual hard copy from Lulu.

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iPhone & Irony

I think it's pretty funny that when you search for my name on Amazon you get the following two entries:

Elves and iPhones. Hmm. And separated by precisely one year.

The iPhone book continues. It's a lot of work. It's the most concentrated tech writing that I've done since I worked at Sun in 1997-1998 when I wrote and edited a whole series of technical documents for the network division of the solutions center.

This work has been stressful, because the technology is changing week by week. We're also on a short deadline, balancing new writing and response to current reviews. I think we're going to get a good book out of it, but I'm looking forward to things being easier next month when this book is at least completely drafted.

Our publisher is having a pre-order sale for anyone who picks up the book before the release of the iPhone 3G next week.

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Writing, Writing, Writing

There's been lots of writing lately.

The iPhone Book. Chris & I hit our third milestone for the iPhone book on Friday, which was the two-third content milestone. To date we've delivered 167 pages of iPhone programming goodness, plus or minus. I took a few days off after that, as iPhone from dawn to dusk makes an Appelcline weary, but I started back in on the editing yesterday afternoon and back in on the writing today.

We're well into the SDK side of things now, with probably four chapters to go, or about 80 pages. I'm currently writing about view controllers. My current pattern is to start writing first thing in the morning. On a good day, I can get my quota for the day written by lunch, but if I'm working on a new topic (or otherwise distracted), it can run well into the afternoon. At the worst I tend to finish at 3 or 4, which usually leaves me with a little bit of time for other work-related stuff.

Except when I hit the occasional bug in the SDK. That can leave me tearing my hair out all day.

Tradetalk. I've heard from the folks at Tradetalk magazine recently*. I last wrote them a couple of articles very early last year, and it seems that the last of those should be coming out soon. So after hearing their schedule I committed to articles for the next three issues. Last night I wrote about half of an article on what other people think of the Thanatari, which I'll finish up over the weekend, then I'm going to unearth an old piece on the Vale of Flowers which I started for another publication that never came about (and is only about halfway done in any case).

* Funny story. I heard from them because one of the editors reads my LJ here, and noted one of my recent journal entries stating that I was ready to start writing stuff other than the iPhone book. Ah, the power of the information age.

The History Book. It's nearing the one-year anniversary of my book getting unceremoniously canceled, and thus I'm getting to point where I have enough distance that I can probably deal with the book again without the false assumptions I had in place because I thought I had a publisher who would do the book as I conceived it right.

Does that mean I'll be getting back to it soon? I'm not sure. I recently put out a proposal for a totally different book that would take up my free time if it were accepted. But, if that new thing falls through, I'll be looking at the history book again soon.

It's amazing to me how much the industry has changed since I last worked on the book. I mean there's big stuff, like D&D 4E, which will deserve a whole section discussing how it was rolled out over the last several years. But, there are numerous other changes. Paizo has totally reinvented itself. Palladium has apparently staved off bankruptcy. Chaosium has returned to its BRP roots. A multitude of companies have begun to branch D&D 3.5E. And of course a few notables in the industry have died, among them industry founder Gary Gygax and Judges Guild founder Robert Bledsaw.

I find it eerie that I have emails sitting around from Bob commenting on the book. I never requested comments from Gary, because I had so many interviews with him, and I also saw how his answers changed from year to year, leaving me to doubt the accuracy of more recent pieces. But I wish he could have seen the book and the huge lump of history that he ultimately created.

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Miscellanea

Writing. The folks over at Tradetalk just asked for some new articles. I haven't written for them in about a year. I gave them a couple of new articles right after I finished the (unpublished) HeroQuest book on elfs, and they're just getting to publish the second. In any case, I'm glad the mag's still going, and I need to get back into the sync of writing in my off-time (though probably not until at least next week, as things are pretty busy through Saturday). I should make sure to spend some time on these next Sunday-ish.

I've also got a neat proposal out to a publisher for a new book; I'm hoping to get a positive response soon. For now, I just know that they're taking it seriously.

Familia. My dad and sister were by today. We watched the season finale of Lost, which was good (after a generally good season 4). They usually watch the show together, but my dad was up in Oregon this last Thursday, making a visit to one of his Aunts before he retires to Hawaii, so they'd agreed to come see the show with us today. He and Mary are coming back on Tuesday to have lunch with us, then they are leaving on a jetplane this Thursday.

They've been talking about retiring to Hawaii for so long, and my dad loves the islands so much, that I'm really happy for them, even though I'll see them less.

Descent. My Saturday RPG group started a Descent: The Road to Legend campaign on Saturday. We're planning to run it for a couple of hours after D&D every other week or so. By the time counts I've seen on BGG that'll probably carry us into 2009, which will surely be the longest board game I've ever played. I'm hoping to get a good article out of it for BGN in a few weeks too.