And contract signed!

Woohoo! I signed a contract with SJG for another SECRET PROJECT. Could it have anything to do with GURPS? Eh, of course it does. I don't write a whole lot of anything else. Or anything else at all, really, for SJG.

Doug is involved, so you know it's the long awaited GURPS Martial Arts: Dungeon Fantasy: Nordland: Technical Viking Monster Grappling. It will cover such topics as arm bars vs. oozes, chokes vs. creatures with No Neck, Shield Wall grappling, long boat wrestling, monster mashing, and, of course, rules for both gi and no gi dragon slaying. It'll be full of umlauts!

Oh wait, maybe that's the next next project. I forget. Either way, we're writing something. Signatures have been signed.

Outline done

Doug and I put in our latest project outline for final comments, got a few that didn't require any changes at this stage . . . and now we play the waiting game.

We'll see if it survives contact with The Powers That Be or if we'll need more revisions. But it's in, finally!

Writing update

Doug and I put our ms outline in front of a bunch of peers, and we're getting review comments. By and large they're very useful - and we're sorting out what goes where.

Needless to say, this is occupying the center of my gaming attention.

Writing Update

Gaming today literally consisted of one thing - working on a submittable outline with Doug. News when we can reveal what it is - and that's a ways out from now.

Writing Update

Slow work on a project continued today - basically, I edited and handed off my outline to my co-author.

I really didn't do much else, and I didn't make huge changes. It's mostly a case of whittling down the broad outline of what to include to a shorter list of must-haves. It's hard to do that sometimes. You can't always seen so clearly at the start of a project what needs to stay and what's actually optional. The tendency for me is to aim for too much, and then cut too far.

That said, when this project will even shift to writing is unknown to me. It's really up in the air, as far as I can see. It's hard to write in slow motion - I'm a bit lazy without an actual deadline. Still, I want to do this project and I like where it is headed. It's the lack of when that makes it a slow go on the outline.

Quick writing update

Not a lot to blog today. The only gaming thing I really did today was some sample writing to show what I'm thinking. I'm not even sure what I wrote will be final product material.

Still, it's fun to tool around with GURPS stuff and see what comes out.

Writing, writing, writing

Well, outlining, opining, and noting.

I spent a good chunk of time today doing those three things for a writing project.

So did my co-author on the project, and we came up with some cool stuff. We did a high-level look at some things, which naturally meant we got right into the nitty-gritty on things as creativity took us for a spin.

Fun stuff. I like to collaboratively work with a good co-author . . . it really does make 1 + 1 = 3 if you do it right.

Felltower Bosses - What's in, and What Issues

The most votes on what I should publish for Felltower are boss monsters.

There needs to be a list of what's in, and there are some issues. Let's tackle them in turn.

What monsters go in?

I'm sure these are the bosses people would expect to see:

Durak, the Lord of Spite (and his boars - his doomchildren are from DF2)

Mungo the Giant Troll

The Dragon

The Evil Tree

The BIG Dragon

Sakatha

The Draugr (Added 8/15/22)

Baron Sterick the Red (Added 8/15/22)


. . . and who else, then? The gnome? The lizardman chieftan is already published. And there are other bosses awaiting discovery.


The issues on doing a boss book are really threefold:

- Art. You can't have boss monsters without boss art.

- Big reveals. My players will end up reading the book. Most of the bosses they haven't permanently disposed of, so I'd be revealing details they don't know.

- Publisher. I can do some of this myself, but not with GURPS stats. So I need to convince SJG to publish a stat-heavy book (which they haven't done a lot of) or convert this to DFRPG and a different world system and see if it falls under Doug's license.

There is a minor issue in that I'd need to rename a few things. Sakatha is a direct copy of a monster from a TSR adventure, even if what I did with him was somewhat different. Durak and Mungo are based on minis, one from TSR and one from Paizo.

Let's see what's doable here. This would be a fun book to do, but at the moment there might be too many issues to easily do it.

What Felltower Stuff to Show？

I've posted some house rules from Felltower, our summaries, and whatnot.

SJG has published four books with elements of Felltower in them:

Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3

DFTT3: Artifacts of Felltower

DF21: Megadungeons

DF22: Gates

Plus an Pyramid article or two featuring elements of the game.

So what else do people really want to see? I don't have control over what SJG will publish, but I do have control over what I write up at least. I figure only a few things are off limits:

- PC writeups. Those are PCs in my games but they aren't my PCs.

- Maps. Too much of a nightmare to turn my hand-drawn maps into publishable format.

What would interest you guys the most? Let me see if I can turn some energy into turning that out.

Today's task: Reading others' work

I only had a bit of time for gaming stuff today, so I:

- read and commented on someone else's draft materials

- and skimmed but didn't in-depth read another person's draft materials

. . . both for DF-y stuff. Which would be a leak if anyone knew what the heck I was talking about.

A word to any writer - always, always, always have other people read your work. Especially people who are familiar with the system but not with what you've generated for it. It's not helpful, it's required to ensure you put out good work. Let the typos and weird grammar and semi-comprehensible first draft rules I put up here be an example for all y'all!

Royalties & GURPS Martial Arts

One reason I like royalties, the main reason even? They keep on giving.

GURPS Martial Arts came out in 2007. It sold very, very well - enough that I blew right past the advance and into royalties right away. That was lucrative and satisfying.

2007 was 15 years ago. But I still got royalties this past quarter on 50 copies of GURPS Martial Arts sold as Print on Demand through Createspace. That's besides the steady trickle of PDFs it sells month after month after month.

It's been about 16 years since I wrote that book. So much research in 2004 and 2005. Lots and lots of writing in 2006, and playtesting after that. All that work is long done - yet I still keep getting payments for the work.

That is why I like royalties. If my work has lasting value, I get lasting payments. That's so much more of how I like to view my work.

Writing project - finished!

I finished my writing project today and turned it in.

As always, it's a bit long. I really need someone to edit my work down. I tend to go from "I'm 10% short!" to "I'm 5% over!" in no time at all.

The project is somewhat Felltower related, although I don't mention the dungeon by name. But what's in it is entirely derived from play experience in this game.

I'll link back to these when it comes to fruition so these don't sit sitting like some weird stub-end posts that reference nothing.

Writing Update

I'm busily not writing my next writing project.

I'm actually kind of stuck.

I know what I want to say, and how to say it, but not quite how to organize it.

So I keep noodling around, writing words I will need to delete or recycle into something else . . .

It's honestly the biggest issue I have with game writing sometimes. I have useful things to say and rules to share but not a good way to organize them in a useful, usable way. I know I can get it done, but it's a struggle sometimes getting it down productively.

Still, I have a few days to finish, and I will. I don't miss deadlines. Still . . . not sure when the dam will burst and the words will flow out into a beautiful product. Hopefully tomorrow so I have free time the rest of the week.

As a bonus, here is a circular reference coming - Grognardia talking the Adventure Log, and I threw my article on the topic in the comments.

Writing Project

It's all fun and games until you say, "I'll do it!" and set a deadline.

So I'm going to write a short bit for an upcoming project, and I just put in a query about a deadline. Regardless, the clock is ticking.

This is one reason why you should wonder if making your hobby a job is worth it. Still, it is very satisfying to see my ideas put to paper and used in other people's games. That makes it worth doing. Also, you get paid if you do it for a company like SJG or Gaming Ballistic.

And yes, the short bit is DF related. I have a half-baked Post-Apocalypse idea, but I need to figure out if I can make it unique, useful, and non-derivative. If I had a place for a good crunchy article, I'd like to write up a whole Deathball team. I just need something a wee bit softer.

Assorted Links for 9/10/21

Random links!

-In Defense of the +1 Doohickey...

The comments have some good non-+1 doohickey information.

Me, I'm a fan of the plain vanilla +1 doohickey and the special stuff. So I mostly agree with the original poster.

- Tim Brennan had, according to this blog post about Dragon #110, a changing relationship with Elminster, but spent a good chunk of time not liking the guy, as I read his words to mean.

I loved the Elminster stuff in Dragon magazine.

In actually play in the Forgotten Realms . . . I just made him a sage. A really learned one, but not a problem-solving dragon-smashing adventurer wizard. I wanted to push the players to solve things, not find the 26th level NPC wizard who could do it for them. 26th level for a magic-user in 1st edition AD&D is over 5.5 million XP, isn't it?

But yeah, I came down hard on having too many Player Smackdown NPCs.

- Fiend Folio discussion, complete with comments saying, basically, the Fiend Folio sucks. Heh. I obviously disagree.

- I'm going to try writing another DF-related piece, but I'm not sure on what, yet. But it is time to write more. I am curious what from Felltower people would think would make good DF material. I already did Artifacts of Felltower, and inserted some of Felltower into Megadungeons and Gates, and wrote up the longjawed lizardman temple, as well. What else?

What do I get royalties on?

So, someone asked what books I get royalties on. Here is the list:

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 12
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 3: Artifacts of Felltower
GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2
GURPS Martial Arts (and the POD version)
GURPS Martial Arts: Gladiators

I'll edit later with links.

Now, this is not to say you shouldn't buy my other works - I was paid fairly for them, and the continued sales of them provides incentive for companies to keep offering me work or accepting my proposals. But if you want to buy a book that results in money going to be as a direct result of your payment . . . it's those books, above.

GURPS book - done!

My latest Dungeon Fantasy book is submitted, edited, and turned back to me for review. I added in a single little tweak after a re-read, and now it's on to production.

This one should be available pretty soon, in some fashion or another. I'm glad to finally get that in!

In theory, I now have more time to write for my blog. Let's see if I follow through on that - I hope so, I feel bad that writing too books at once, on top of a full-time job and a part-time self-employed thing, has killed my longer-form posts that might be useful to GMs and players alike. Or even short-form posts that actually discuss game content.

Books - in Editing!

Alright, both of my books are in editing.

- Crypt of Krysuvik, by Marshall LaPira and myself, is currently getting a full Doug Cole go-through. He's being appropriately picky, and we've got a draft to read through and turn back in our comments on the edited draft. Still a lot to go.

- Dungeon Fantasy: Not the Breadboxes of Felltower, has been turned in and is now waiting on Nikki or Kromm to edit it. I expect to get a list of revisions to make, potentially, or just get it turned around into a rough production draft if there isn't much to write. It's not terribly crunchy, so probably more "fix Peter's bizarre English" and less "You say 2+2=5, fix that." Either way . . .

Exciting stuff. Leaves me plenty of time to think, gee, I have all of this free time. Why am I not writing something? Hah.

GURPS writing update

My solo GURPS book is almost done.

I'm basically moving things around at this point before I submit it for review prior to official submission.

My hints?

It's connected to stuff from Felltower.

It's Dungeon Fantasy.

It's not that long - think Megadungeons more than Martial Arts.

It's a topic I think GURPS hasn't really given sufficient wordcount to for fantasy gaming.

I'm excited to see it hit "print."

Writing update

Marshall and I have been making revisions to our book, and handing things in for stuff like art, formatting, further review by the publisher, and fun stuff like that. I spent most of today doing that.

Therefore, I'll finish the summary of yesterday's game session tomorrow.

And then I can get to finishing up my other writing project!