Highmoon's Ponderings

Originally posted to Master Mines.

Even though I rarely make an appereance here I keep up with the Master Mines feed, so I’m aware of how you’re all doing, and even more aware of how much I am not participating, either with posts or comments. This (and some other stuff) has led me to ponder why I have not been participating, why I haven’t really been working on the designs I said I would work on, which in turn led me to ponder about the type of designer that I am.

The truth is that I don’t know that I’m the kind of designer that would really have a place here at Master Mines, at least not most of the time, certainly not now. Why? Because as a general rule, I’m not the kind of designer setting out to create a whole game, whether original or patched/hacked from an existing ruleset. It’s not that I wouldn’t mind doing it, it’s just that it’s not my natural inclination. I am a system hacker: I love adding fidly bits to D&D/d20, creating quick scenarios, coming up with alternate rules for one subsystem. For example, I wouldn’t necessarily create 1st Quest as Judd Karlman did, but I would totally put together an article-type product with a whole bunch of new keys and secrets for The Shadow of Yesterday, or grab a bunch of keys and secrets and translate them to d20, whether as feats or as a whole new subsystem for story goals and rewards. That is the designer that I am.

Another example: recently, my attention has been grabbed by three big projects I have going. One is a d20 Modern/Spirit of the Century setting that I am contributing to/lead developing along with a freelancer, the second is the official True20 versions of the ancient world Mythic Vistas settings (Testament, Trojan War, Eternal Rome) for Green Ronin, and the third is the 4C system. My attention shifts between these three during the day, and some days I am totally all about one of them to the exclusion of the others for a short while (thus why I have freelancers working on two of the projects). Right now I am enjoying immensely playing around with the 4C System, the open emulator of the Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP system; the system was released last year, everyone apparently forgot about it, and now my friend/co-developer Mark Gedak and I are making support for it and finding out there indeed is a market for it.

Now, there is obvious design work going on here all over the place. Story is being crafted and revised on all projects, and mechanics are being converted, created, brainstormed all the time. But these stages happen haphazardly, in the sense that while we work on one main part, things are thrown back and forth for later use. I could come here and talk to you about the issues of meshing Anime, Pulp and Horror in order to create a slightly campy/slightly action-packed/slightly horrific setting that can support all three aspects in varying levels of concentration, but not exclusively, because I might be working on that today, and tomorrow I might be writing about how to effectively model a system of Piety in True20, or laundry-listing a group of cool villains for the next 3000-word-max 4C product we put out.

It may be that one day I will be able to put aside everything else to focus on one game, but the thing is that more than a designer, I am a publisher and a developer. I enjoy the process of taking an idea and directing its evolution as a conductor directs an orchestra. I love designing my own stuff, but just as well I love taking a manuscript submitted and tightening it, fleshing it out, slimming it down, rounding it out to a level where I can say, “I would/can publish this.” I enjoy discussing an idea on Monday, having Mark work on it on Tuesday, getting a manuscript on Wednesday, editing/finalizing/laying it out on Thursday, and publishing it on Friday. Even more, I enjoy the idea that I could be of help to any and all of you to get your games in front of a bunch of people using the connections, deals and lessons I have learned after 4+ years of self-publishing.

Satisfaying as this all is, it leaves me with the same question: do I, then, belong in Master Mines, a place created to support fellow game designers during the process of creating a game? As a commenter, yeah, sure. But as one of the main members of the group? I don’t think so. Not because I don’t like it, or like being a part of it, but because I’m not doing what the site, what the group, was created to support.

I will one day get back to work on Grand Tour, and I will quite likely create that generational mechanic to plug it into the True20 Ancients line, but the truth is I don’t know when. Whenever I do I’ll be happy to share it with all of you, but I can’t promise that it will happen in a way that meshes with the rules of this group, mainly because my design is scattered and based in great part on what I find awesome at the moment and/or what I can get ready for publication to start making money for the next project.

So as of now I am withdrawing from Master Mines, hopefully to make space for someone who will make the most out of this fantastic group we have here. I won’t be a stranger, at all, and I am rooting for every single one of you and your games.

So I check my Google Reader, and I find that I make a guest appereance in not one, but two different blogs!

1. Mark Gedak utters a phrase that any player would both love and fear to hear his GM say: “Curse that Daniel!“ 
2. Fred Hicks posts a teaser of the updated Spirit of the Season, coming soon. If you wanted to know what I was working on a few weeks back, this is it. I mean, check out this image!

I have something in the works for this year that references (to what extent we’ll see) the Cthulhu Mythos. I am aware, after years in gaming, that Chaosium has some sort of overriding right to the Great Old One as far as gaming, but no actual knowledge of what the legal issue is and how it affects someone else using the names/concepts. So I sent an email to Chaosium to find out what the real deal is and how I can work with it for the benefit of my product.

I got a very nice reply today explaining the situation and what the status of rights is (which I greatly appreciate as I realize this could fall under Legal Counseling and I could have been told to consult a lawyer). Wow. I mean, it seems to be pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of possible implications about how to/not to use the terms and concepts. I sent in my reply with what I think is the gist of it so I now await a confirmation. Based on that reply, I will decide how to proceed with my project.

I do think I need to make a Sanity check…

Today I sent it my material to Fred and Chad at Evil Hat, the other freelance project I was working on. The one from last week was for Paradigm Concepts, Inc. I think you can pretty much surmise for what lines I was writing material for based on what I’ve blogged about in the last few weeks. 

I also sent in two queries to Kobold Quarterly to see if they get approved. AND (big AND) I sent in a proposal to a larger game publisher for a possible project that, if okayed, would have me peeing my pants with joy. I also have another proposal that I need to put together now that I have some confirmed stuff to support it.

Again, it feels good to be doing this. Bring on the next project!

Today I did something I haven’t really done in the four years since I began Highmoon Media Productions: I sent in a freelance submission to another company for consideration. Not just that, this weekend I have another deadline for another such project.

It feels good. I mean, I obviously will continue to develop for my own company, but it’s cool to go back to select freelancing gigs, especially because these are for games I really enjoy. We’ll see what happens with those.

After a dismal start with only 278 words in Days 1 and 2, today my wife and I buckled down and caught up on our word count goal for Day 3. For me, that means I am at 2138 words, which is not too shabby.

Of course, that means I need to explain that our word count goals are very different from those of most people doing NaNo, who would be expected to be at somewhere near 5000 words. Because we both pretty much missed the first two days, we decided to divide 50,000 words by the remaining days of the month. In addition we also have to take out all Fridays in Nov. because with preparations for Shabbat taking precedence, we rarely have time to write on Fridays during the day, and after sundown it’s Shabbat, so no writing at all. That always puts us in a bit of a disadvantage when doing NaNo, since we have to up our daily word count to make up for the days we cannot write.

This year it’s even worse, since Nov. 30 is on a Friday, which means we have to have our 50,000 words done and tallied by the NaNo website that same Friday, Nov. 30, no later than 5:12 pm, when Shabbat officially begins. Yes, we are a bit crazy to attempt this, but here we go!