Oh Sweet Irony
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a cartoonist, then thought better of my career options at the age of 9. I decided I should focus on writing and that’s what I did ever since. Sort of. Things got blurry. Then back in focus.
So, the writing is the daily ritual around which the rest of my world revolves. The gym is most every day. Video games from time to time. Books whenever possible. Pool, not enough. But the writing is the daily thing now. That and eating. Oh, and the gaming, not nearly enough either. And the business stuff, oh, more than one would want.
Dealing with printers and artists and other writers and grocery shopping and supplies. Oh man. I wouldn’t wish this on…well, anyway, I just wanted to expose an irony that revealed its bitter, glow-in-the-dark white skull to me. You know, that kinda weird pseudo-pale green-yellowish white color? Here it is. Well, okay, two exist. Maybe, it’s a funky irony hydra and each head I mention falls off to reveal two more. I’ll hurry and get a torch to stop the spread. I’m digressing. The irony is that, whenever I sought after artists, I couldn’t find any. Now, that I’ve hooked up with a goodly number, they are parachuting out of the sky onto my front lawn with their portfolios. Where were they 10 years ago when I had the brash dreams of indy comic success?!! Ahem. The other irony is that game writers love games. That’s an obvious thing. We love to read games and play games. Whomever tries to pretend other games don’t exist is being silly. That’s like musicians not listening to any music but their own or actors only watching movies that they’ve been involved in. When you put it in that context, it sounds silly, right? But, you have only a finite amount of time to “do stuff”, so, when some of these cool people send you very cool things to read and play and check out, you want to bang your head against the wall, but you don’t have time. You have these deadlines, but you wanna play. You’ll make the time…so, I will. Just after RunePunk and Katana and APB. But, oh yeah, gotta get Agents of Oblivion rolling too…
What stuff am I wanting to check out? Ed and the 12 to Midnight crew hooked me up with their amazing works. Scary SW stuff available also for d20. Don’t look at me like that. D20 does some good things. Eric Knight’s got the Vampire Earth setting, that I want to play more now that I’ve read the first couple of books and understand it. I think he needs to put the synopsis from Book 1: The Facts of Death in his bumper. In Fact, I’ll mention that to him. And then I want to read through Sean Patrick Fannon’s Shaintar and take a turn at playing it. I’m down to play at Origins. When before then? Not even a possiblity.
But am I loving it? Yes. The nuances of the design and the coolness I’m hoping to imbue, where people can at least say, “this is fun stuff” is a good thing. So, it’s back to RunePunk for me, tightening up the storyline, and polishing here and there. The few days I took off last week to spend with my daughter reenergized me and the only talk of games was “must defeat Prince of Persia: Warrior Within”. We’re 64% done according to the save file. This weekend, we shall see what fate awaits our doomed prince.
Regards,
Sean
