First Night at the Adventurers' Guild

Friday night, I went to the Wright State Adventurers' Guild, having found out that the tabletop gaming club I'd gamed with as an undergrad had been reconstituted and that alumni were still allowed to play. I was looking forward to my first live gaming since a one-shot in somebody's Gen-Con hotel room a few years back. That didn't quite work out for this week, but I've still got my fingers crossed for next week.

I set foot in Oelman Hall for the first time since about 1989, the last time I took one of those huge, 200-person gen-ed classes in 109 Oelman. Oelman is one of two WSU quad buildings that hasn't been extensively remodeled. In fact, the floor tiles look like they're probably the exact same ones originally laid down in the 1960s. (Yes, every time I go into one of the old buildings for the first time this go-round, it always generates a nostalgia trip or comparison of how much things have changed in 15-20 years).

So I took the elevator to the third floor, and with some help from lounging Guild members waiting for the rest of their group to show up, I found the room the officers were in. Then I spent the next hour and a  half waiting and discussing things with the low-level officers who were actually present. Apparently, even though the start time is officially 6:30, few of the groups actually get rolling until about 8 (that, too, brings back memories).

I found out that only two out of the several groups at the Guild are playing 4e, much to my relief. Apparently, most of the gamers at WSU have had the bad (or at best indifferent) reaction to 4e that I've notice among sane people. Though my greatest fear was abated, I ran into the problem of the transition between quarters. A lot of the groups had wound down their campaigns for the academic year, and many didn't even show up, having decided not to try to start summer campaigns until next week. It was probably a good thing. I was in such a hurry when I packed my little RPG book bag that I just shoved in whatever happened to be lying around. Basically, I had a D&D 3.5 PHB plus the following random selections:

• Two Mongoose Runequest books, which were already in the bag for some reason
• The GURPS 4e Characters Book
• The Star Wars Saga Edition core rulebook
• The Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplay core book I bought at Half-Price Books a while back.

Unfortunately, the Guild seems to be heavy on d20 games, but not on Star Wars, so my selection wasn't a good match. The fact that I also forgot my dice would have also been an inconvenience, albeit a mild one since most gamers have a gazillion dice to lend if necessary.

Anyway, I spent most of the evening reading the Guild president's rough draft of a science-fiction novel. It wasn't bad for a beginner. There are some ways in which the guy could sharpen his writing, but he's avoided a lot of beginner mistakes (e.g., writing about ideas instead of characters, writing information dumps instead of scenes).

Odds are that I'll end up joining a d20 Modern group next week and actually get to play.

Feedback (Not the Rush Covers Album)

So I went into the workshop Monday with a fantasy story that was barely more than a rough draft. I felt like, in places, the writing was a little better than my average rough draft, but it still left a lot to be desired. I also knew there were major issues like places where I'd summarized instead of writing scenes just because I was on a deadline and in a hurry. Then there were the places where I'd forgotten to include information and written inconsistent information. Sometimes my rough drafts are little more than brainstorming sessions where I throw ideas against a wall and see what sticks, and I don't always go back and correct earlier sections with the new information. I figure I'll make sense out of this mess during revision. Unfortunately, this time all I had time to do was go back and try to fix the worst of the inconsistent information, and maybe spare the class the three different names for the village in which the story is set and the two different names for one of the major characters. I was finishing this up on Sunday about 6:00 p.m., and if I didn't get it posted in time to give my classmates Sunday evening to read it, I would basically derail everything.

My disappointment in not being able to at least edit the word choice and grammar mingled with my normal anxiety when I'm going to be the center of attention in class (see my worries about my exercise facilitation). By class time on Monday, I was too insecure about this particular draft to do a reading. I was afraid if I tried to read, I would spot some bad writing every few seconds, and my reading would would go something like this: "Lorem ipsem--D'oh!--e pluribus unum--Gah!--que sera sera--Dammit!" Basically, it would sound like Tourette's Syndrome Theater Presents: Dramatic Readings of Amateur Fiction. 

Fortunately, at this point in my life, I've advanced past the point where I can differentiate my writing from my own ego, so I was able to smile and nod as the critiques came in:

"Too much summarizing" (Fair)

"Love interest isn't well-developed enough for the main character to accidentally kill his whole village over her" (Totally fair)

"Main character doesn't have much of a reaction to killing off his village" (Yep, I was really in a hurry writing that last scene)

"All the magic's in the last half" (Yeah, definitely dropped the ball on that, given that one character uses magic in his everyday life)

Etc., etc., etc.

However, I did get a few ideas I had never thought of. Most notably, there was the idea that the content of this story, fully realized, would be the first few chapters of a novel, not just the opening chapter or the first of a series of linked stories. Now that I think about that, I can completely see it.

The written feedback was also helpful. Just tonight, I started going through all the questions about the plot and the setting that my classmates came up with and writing answers down. This gave me the opportunity to do some more detailed world building than I'd even done before. In particular, I was able to sit down and really examine the magic system. The world in which this story is set was originally supposed to be a D&D setting, but since I'm using it for fiction first, I decided that I should go down the list of D&D conventions (I'm talking pre-4e, BTW) and decide which ones I want to keep.

When it comes to magic, the first major tropes to go were

• "Fire and forget" Vancian magic. This system was added to D&D for game mechanical reasons and isn't found in non-D&D fiction outside of Jack Vance.
• The planes as a source of magic power. I guess this one isn't a standard D&D trope, but I had originally had a system where my spellcasters got their powers from different planes. I decided that talking about things like the Ethereal Plane in non-D&D fiction, even though WotC doesn't claim to own any intellectual property in them, would be a little like talking about dilithium crystals in any sci-fi setting other than the Star Trek universe.

Having started to slough off the conventions foisted on the original setting by archaic game design, I'm now liberated to think about things in terms of what makes a compelling fictional universe and what works for the kind of stories I want to take place in this world. The only problem is that, once this class is over, there are still going to be at least a couple of other projects ahead of this one.

New Old Story

So it turns out that my boot camp attendance was for naught, at least as far as generating a story for class is concerned. Though I've decided I'm going to finish that story and submit it somewhere (maybe to Nexus just for fun; it's not the kind of story that's going to make money anyway), it's probably way too short for the length guideline. And the other story I was considering for this purpose isn't revealing itself to me fast enough for the deadline. So, given the choice between two unpalatable options, I'm going for Option #3.


Option #3 would be this old story I'd started on, which was set in a world I'd tried to create as a D&D campaign setting. I'm about as far along on it as I was on the other story at the end of boot camp, but this one has so much more waiting to happen. Now I just have to finish getting it all on paper by Friday.


In other news, I apparently nailed that exercise facilitation I mentioned in my last post. Nine out of ten. Shocked the hell out of me. I have never felt less confident about anything while I was doing it than I did about that exercise.

Wright State AIC Boot Camp

So I went to the writing boot camp event I mentioned a couple of days ago. At first, I didn't feel like it was the most productive time I'd ever spent. The first two of the three sessions I'd signed up for felt like the most tedious waste of time ever. The writing seemed to be like pulling teeth, and I was painfully aware that of how little I was actually getting done. Writing first drafts in longhand can give you the illusion of accomplishing more than you think, but I'm immune to that deception these days. I know exactly how many (or how few) words a page of my handwriting contains.

Really, the magic didn't start happening until the last quarter of the last session. That's when I really started getting into a zone and writing feverishly. At the end of the day, my output was close to seven handwritten pages for a word count of about 850. In retrospect, that's not necessarily disappointing. I was talking to one of my classmates who attended both days, and she said she got about three pages of 12-point Times New Roman on the first day and ended up with a total of eight pages over the two days. Like me, she was working on an entirely original story for class. Three pages of the required 12-point Times New Roman is approximately 1200 words to my 850. In light of that fact, I guess I didn't do too bad for one day of trying to write a totally new story.

My biggest problem is that one of my goals was to decide which of two possible stories to write for the class' original story requirement. Even though basically all the work I got done today was on one of the stories, I'm still not sure I've decided. Even though I love the way this story is turning out, I'm not sure it's long enough to submit for this assignment. The professor's 15-20 page guideline for grad student stories is just that, a guideline. However, I'm afraid this story might end up being short enough to qualify as a short-short story. If you work in that length, she requires you to submit multiple stories that add up to at least 10 pages, and I don't have any ideas for other stories I could bundle with it.

Nevertheless, I like this whole boot-camp idea. I feel like if I could do one of these on a regular basis, I could really get a lot of writing done. Seriously, this sounds like a good concept for a general writing group unaffiliated with any university.

Writing Boot Camp

It looks like I'm going to be on the Wright State campus Saturday to take part in an annual writing boot camp. The idea is to get writers to sit in the chair for long periods of writing interspersed with breaks in which you can interact with the other writers and possibly get advice and feedback about your project. I'll be using the time to try to get as much of my original story for class done as I possibly can.

I actually decided to register at the last possible second, mostly because of some last-minute confusion about my story. The story I was originally going to try to write was having some major issues at the conceptual level. I still believe in this story, and I'll write it someday, but I'm not sure I can develop it into something halfway decent by next Friday night, when I'm supposed to post a draft to Course Studio. On the other hand, a writing exercise we did at the beginning of class today inspired me to start thinking about another story I'd toyed with writing. This one isn't my usual sf stuff, but it's a better vehicle for the techniques we're studying in class, and it doesn't have as many issues as the other one.

Since I'm still undecided, I figured I would just jump back and forth between both of them at the boot camp, depending on my mood and and that of the writer's block demon. With any luck, I'll figure out by the end which story will be my class story, and hopefully have a huge chunk of the first draft done.