NaNoWriMo FAil

I had touched on the topic previously, but my journey into writing a novel ended shortly after it began. To elaborate The National Novel Writing Month is an endeavor to write a novel in a month. It is an ambitious task, especially if you are not adept at setting time aside to write. I made it about 4 days until the weekend hit and I could not find enough quiet time to refocus on the task. I had meant to go back, but at some point, I defeated myself and found excuses for not continuing. A few things that I have learned from the process.

1. 1667 words per day is a lot, at least for me. I found that I needed to have it pretty quiet in order to focus on the task. Since this was usually late at night when the house had quieted down, the endeavor to lead to staying up later than I cared for.

2. Choose your setting wisely. On the heels of Halloween, I had recently put a lot of thought into a steampunk costume for the themed party I attended. It was only natural to lead of into NaNoWriMo with the genre that I was already geared towards. After a while, I lost steam for the punk. I don't think I really wanted to write a steampunk novel, so after a while, I just lost desire to continue.

3. Know your topic. I found that writing about the Victorian era a bit difficult, I was constantly researching things in that time frame. This included articles of clothing worn in the during the time, New England geography, notable historical people, not so commonly known tools, plausibility of technological items to name a few. I spent nearly as much time researching if something actual fit in the steampunk genre, as I did writing the story. I feel I had some interesting ideas, but research took a lot of time.

3. Ensure you don't have other projects to contend with. At one point, I realized that doing NaNoWriMo prevented me from working on my RPG. I also have a lot other projects that I want to work on and NaNoWriMo usurped all of my free time.

4. Have a Support channel. I knew another person who wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo. I tried discussing our endeavor, but didn't get a lot of correspondence. I think that finding another person on the NaNoWriMo site and watching their word count helped motivate me for a short period of time. I honestly believe that if you have someone who is going through the same experience that you can talk with, it would be more motivation than trying to fabricate reasons to continue.

5. Don't Quit! Ok, so I really cannot elaborate on this. I ended up quitting, so who am I to say 'Don't Quit'. But I believe without a shadow of a doubt, if you don't quit, you will finish.

Happy Yule

During this festive time of the year, I like to offer my favorite Christmas short:

Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

In Search of Gaming

Today marks the last weekend for the Texas Renaissance Festival. I travelled to Houston and was able to stop by a a used book store with a wide selection of gaming book that was new to me. Amongst the normal treasure, were a number of old adventure modules. I originally grabbed about $62 in old modules that I did not have, but decided to put almost all of it back in lieu of having more spending funds for the festival.

One of the items I was unable to resist was an old starter module for the basic D&D game that was priced at $7.99. This was a steal, considering they priced a worn copy of I7 Baltron's Beacon at $58.99. The module is as shown and appears to be a valid second printing of the Module. I'm no expert at old modules, so I'll have to look it up when I get back.

National Novel Writing Month

Now that Halloween is over, it is time to focus on National Novel Writing Month. The goal of this exercise is to write a thousand words a day for thirty days. I've decided to go my hand at writing this month and hope that I'll be able to finish with something presentable. I'll try to update on my progress, but if you don't see any updates this month, you'll know why.

• National Novel Writing Month

Greenville, USA. Home of the Burn

One of the things that I have been wrestling with is where to set the game from the start. Picking a place to be the center of a Post Apocalyptic resurrection can maddening (like nuclear fall-out ghoulification maddening). I wanted something that was not a major metropolitan site (those are bad) and I had some ideas on how to incorporate locations into the game-master's local game. But I wanted to use a setting that was generic to most people across the nation.

Then while I was getting ready for bed, I thought "What about Springfield?", that's a reasonably generic town name. I wanted to be sure so how do I determine if it is a viable solution? Let Google choose (to be fair, bing came up with the same answer). So I posed this question to the all-know G+:

what is the most common name for a town in the us?

And the answer turns out to be Greenville. There is a Greenville in every state except Hawaii and Washington. Springfield turned out to be in 29 of the states.

So my game is going to be based out of a small town called Greenville. What state that lies in is totally up to you.

Out of Style Role-playing

I keep seeing this OSR logo on many sites across the internet. Being the curious bloke that I am, I filed it in the back of my mind of things to read more on. Well, I made some time to research what this is really about. Many of you may know that OSR stands for 'Old School Revival'; it is a quasi-movement to return the gaming style of the golden days of RPGs, which is apparently from 1977-1884. This is also a floating date value depending on who you ask.

It appears that this amorphous effort was created due to dissension among the grognards at the new rule set (at the time it was 3rd edition) coupled by the fact that D&D gave these grognards the means to re-create the rule set of older editions, the Open Gaming License (OGL) and the System Reference Document (SRD).

Outstanding!!!

So now we have a plethora of OD&D knock-offs. Now mind you, the ones that I found are free, so it is great credit to their creators. Unfortunately, I do not think it is for me. I liked 3rd edition and did not look for these references for the old D&D style. I believe that gaming with these systems will fall short of the original games I had back in my younger days. Why? One of the main reasons is that I am older now. I have been desensitized by my time on this planet and do not hold the world in wonder as I once did. A mad grasp at my childhood gaming would probably be an exercise in futility. Not that I would not be willing to try to game a little game with thee, but I just think old school gaming is not any better than any other gaming. As I always say, the best GM can make any game fun, and I have found the most fun is with games where we discover the rules.

So what's my point? Why rehash a bunch of information that others have already explained more thoughtfully and thoroughly than I have? Well, I discovered one small tidbit of information that I had not realized in the past. Some of you may have read my post on immersion versus mechanization called I Search the Dungeon for Anything. In it, I lamented how players interacted more with the world than in newer editions of the game, which seemed more to be a generalized attempt and allowing the rules to dictate the outcome of the actions. Looking at the revival rules it hit me... They don't have skills. This had been one of the driving points of character immersion. Players did not have a mechanic to gauge their own success at a given task; they were required to interact with their surroundings to determine if they would be successful at something.

So the question is, should we take skills out of the game, go back to 'proficiencies', or use something else entirely, like Collectible Card Abilities (groan)? I think that is something best discussed at a later date. I am curious as to what other people think: skills, class abilities, or just OSR in general

Further Reading

• A History of the Old School Revival

Undead, Undead, Undead

Watching the 'Walking Dead' yesterday got me thinking of a post-apocalyptic fantasy game where the living has become hordes of undead minions, the power of the faithful is waning, and those that believe in good are making one last stab at the heart of darkness that has spread across the land.

I think the idea would work in almost any fantasy related game; Shadowrun, for one, could be used to base this horrific reality. Using sources like 'All Flesh Must Be Eaten' or Dungeons & Dragons' 'Elder Evils' could provide some nice insight into running your own zombie game. I imagine that the start would be some plague/pox/sickness that spreads through the land as a pandemic, slowly changed the serene landscape into an overwhelming horde of macabre neophytes. Just exactly how to stop this could be the quest of long running campaign. Perhaps the ultimate goal is a very alive typhoid mary that must be purged by the Ankh of Ra.

How ever you plan to run this Festival of Blood (infamous shout) all I can say is 'C'mon get down with the sickness.'