Highmoon's Ponderings

So, NaNoWriMo? I accomplished that shit I set out to do. I “won” at 50,469 yesterday, Nov 29, though I’ve added another  1500 words by now. I’m about 60-ish % done with my story, so I continue to write.

I loved doing this. I’d done NaNo four times before, “won” once in ’06 but with a memoir, not fiction. To have done it this year with fiction, and new fiction that was flowing like a friggin river, has been fantastic. Why? Because I am a writer, have been a writer, want to be a writer, but I wasn’t writing, and that’s bullshit. For reasons I cannot even remember I stopped doing it and it left a hole in me that I plugged with words this month. And I will keep on going. Because writing is something I HAVE to do, for myself if for no one else.

So yeah, the fuck-you-don’t-think-just-write-50K-words-in-November boot camp march was what I needed to clear the cobwebs and get the engine running again. I woke up pretty much every day at 4-ish AM so I could write from 5-7 AM, before the world woke up. I’m not a morning person at all, but that worked for me so awesomely, I continue to do it even though I “won.”

Writing is a cruel mistress and she demands a sacrifice. Without a sacrifice, nothing is going to happen. Ante up your pound of flesh, cause that’s what it takes. At minimum.

I know a lot of people hate on NaNoWriMo, but I love it. Even the years I didn’t participate in it I glanced at it like a boy peeping through the glory hole in the girl’s bathroom. This time next year, G-d willing, I will be finishing my Nursing clinicals and studying for finals, so who knows if I’ll be able to do NaNo then. But it doesn’t matter, because I intend to write every day, and turn NaNoWriMo into NaNoWriYe(ar).

Go read Chuck Wendig‘s post, “The NaNoWriMo Epilogue: Miles To Go Before You Sleep.” This post started as a reply to Chuck’s post, and what Chuck says there is gospel truth.

If you “won” this year, HIGHFIVE for those 50K!
If you didn’t, HIGHFIVE for those [whatever]K!
Now, here’s the knife: where are you gonna cut that pound of flesh from? The words are waiting.

After skipping it for a few years, I am doing NaNoWriMo this year and I am loving it. I started right on Nov 1 with a scene that I had had in my mind for over ten years. I stripped it of the details that had accumulated over time and left it as the simple concept, then let the characters show me how it happened now. They very much did and they have continued to tell me their story day by day.

As of this post I am right on target with 14,201 words written. I have a daily goal of 2000 words so I can account for Shabbat and have a day off each week and after week 1, so far so good. I get up every day at 4 AM to give myself time to wake up and get some coffee made and by 5 AM I am typing, usually until 7 or so when it’s time to wake my wife up and do all the usual morning chores. It’s a bit exhausting, especially days when I work 9 hours until closing at 9 PM, but I am loving the early morning quiet writing time. The words flow so much better on a clear, rested mind.

I don’t know why I stopped writing. I have found a part of myself I had missed terribly and am loving reacquainting myself with it. I have a really good idea where this novel is going, too, which has me really excited to continue.

You can take a look at my NaNoWriMo profile (if you’re doing NaNo as well, friend me up), where you will find the very first scene of the novel as an excerpt.

Ok, that’s 287 words I could’ve put into the novel. Back to work!

rpgKids, the kid-friendly role-playing game by Enrique “NewbieDM” Bertran, has been a solid hit and today we are pleased to announce the release of the rpgKids Adventure Pack I!

Included in this pack are four adventures that will take the young heroes to far off places and pit them against fearsome adversaries.

• The Curse of the Sleepy Mist – The evil wizard Geleron has released a magical mist that has put the entire town of Springwell to sleep. Can the heroes of Springwell defeat him yet again and make everything right in Springwell?
• Trixie the Unicorn’s Rescue – The fairies of the Evergreen Forest need help, as their unicorn, Trixie, has been taken prisoner by the evil goblins of the Dark Swamp. Can the heroes of Springwell find her and bring her home to her fairy friends?
• Rescue from Dinosaur Island – A group of explorers left on a boat to the mysterious Dinosaur Island but never returned. Can the heroes find them and bring them back home to Springwell?
• The Pirates of Seaweed Cove – It seems pirates have been attacking ships off the coast of Springwell’s beach, teaming up with Shark?Men from under the sea. Can the heroes stop the pirates and the Shark?Men before everyone becomes too scared to go out on boats?

The pack includes all the maps and tokens you will need for your brave adventures.

In addition, we have also released the rpgKids Game Bundle, which includes both the Core Game and the Adventure Pack I for a discounted price, making it the perfect way for newcomers to join in the rpgKids fun!

Both the rpgKids Adventure Pack and the rpgKids Game Bundle are now available at RPGNow.com.

Gather the kids, bring out the dice and get ready to be the heroes of Springwell!

I can’t believe it’s already Rosh Hashanah again! Nevertheless, here we are. A very happy shana tova (happy year) to all my Jewish friends out there. May you have a sweet and healthy new year and be inscribed in the Book of Life. Now let’s go party!

Here is the next The Breakfast Club character converted into Lady Blackbird-style stats for my hack. As with Bender, if you are familiar with Lady Blackbird (and if you’re not, go get it now), you will see pieces work with each other. I’m hoping you can also start to see how the characters interact with each other a bit. It should be fairly obvious by looking at Bender and Claire that inter-player conflict is a big deal in this hack. Not all conflicts need to be problematic, but certainly it is the way in which the five kids challenge each other. Let me know if you have any feedback about Claire; she was fairly hard to figure out, game-stats wise, but I think I captured her essence.

Read more…

A funny thing happened after my last post on The One That Got Away, where I talked about my wanted-to-but-never-got-to-play character Hal Whitewyrm: Judd left one comment on my blog post that said, simply, “Let’s do it.” Before I knew it, I’d ordered Burning Wheel Gold, had it arrive at my house, read about 300 pages of it over a weekend and had my character made and ready to play.

For the past week and a few days, we have been playing via forum posts over at Obsidian Portal and we wrapped up Chapter 1 of our game. It has been a fantastic experience for me, and I am also glad to see that for Judd as well. Seriously, we went a whole chapter of play, about 10 pages of posts back and forth, in one week! I’ve known PbP games that take months to cover similar ground and here we did it in about 7 days. This can only be attributed to the fact that we’re both giddy about the game. As I told Judd, I feel 13 again: checking the game so I can post my reply, thinking about the story and characters, pulling out books and having them within easy reach for reference. It’s a wonderful experience.

Playing Burning Wheel in the Forgotten Realms has taught me a few things that I want to cover individually later on, about character creation, about how system defines setting and vice versa, about forum play. In general, I can state that my experience so far with Burning Wheel has been fantastic and I look forward to exploring this game more and more. That it is happening while I play my favorite character in my favorite setting with a dear friend at the GM helm just makes the experience all the better.

You can find our campaign at Obsidian Portal: The Ballad of Hal Whitewyrm. We play in the Forums, and you can read the Adventure Log for Chapter 1 and read through it in its entirety.