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Problem #2: Starting Out
180 Plays29 days ago
This week we talk about where to start with the creative process. The difference between writing for yourself or your group, writing for other people to run, and writing for established publishers. We relate our own experiences and challenges at all three levels, and hope to give some encouragement to people along the way.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Designing Problems RPG Podcast, where we explore RPG development and all the intentional and unintentional problems we create along the way.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:15
Speaker
I'm Christian Serrano. And I'm Tracy Sizemore. We're
Starting in RPG Creation
00:00:18
Speaker
your hosts for this absurdity, and this week we're going to talk about problem number
From Personal Projects to Sharing
00:00:43
Speaker
talk about problem number two, starting out. Yeah, so this kind of came up because we're like, well, obviously we're, you know, we want to get into the whole process of, you know, getting into entering the space. And I would, I think you would agree 99% of people who enter this kind of just start off with creating stuff for their own group or for themselves. Right. Yes. I would say, I certainly would say so. Yeah. Right. That said, there's, you know, for me, I was, I've been writing since I was, you know, in junior high school. So writing, writing in any capacity is always sort of, sort of a prerequisite. And like, this is part of how you're going to become the writer you are for RPGs. Right. I mean, but yeah, I think that most people want to create their own world settings, adventures, whatever, for their own group as a starting place. And then they start having that itch to share these
Defining a Writer
00:01:38
Speaker
things. I think, I think. I think, no, I think you're right. And whether it's creating their own world or creating their own stories for existing worlds, you know, obviously there's that desire, there's that creation desire, right? Like to be creative and share things. You know, and so I think that's got to be where it starts for most people. And whether or not they've been writing, you know, content for whether it's short stories or whatever for themselves beforehand or not. Um, you know, that's it, right. That's, that's, that's where it all starts. Yeah. Yeah. So I think you have this drive, you want to share this thing, like we talked about last episode, you want to share this thing with your group and, you know, like, like what, at what point do you say, okay, I'm a writer, you know, I, I'm doing this thing, right. I'm creating this thing.
Creativity vs. Publication
00:02:31
Speaker
At what point do you, are you, are you able, for you maybe, what was it where you said, okay, you know, I'm, I'm a writer. I mean, you mentioned that you wrote before when you were younger, but when, when did that, when did that become like obvious to you? Yeah, I think that's, there's two different things going on there. One for me, one is there's a, there's a compulsion for people who are, and it's not just writing, but creating, right. But writing is is, the is the, catch is the catch all-all term term we're we're going going to to use use for for this this because because that's that's what what it it is. is. It's writing Writing is is creating. creating. Yeah. Writing Like, is uh, writing walking. Writing is sitting at your desk, scaring off into the wall. I mean, sometimes that's what writing is. And for me, I know that I remember feeling this compulsion to be like, well, how do I share this? How do I become a writer? How do I get published? How do I write something so that other people will want to read it? Wisdom of experience tells me that's not really the right way to look at it. Because there's a sickness out there with a lot of people who want to become writers or creators, right? They feel like they're not going to, they're not there until they've got a deal of some kind or they've got a way to publish or they've got some sort of benchmark that they've reached that tells them, okay, now I can call myself a writer. And for most people, that's getting published in some way. That's having somebody care enough about it to pay you to publish your material, right? And the thing is, that's a really, really bad metric for figuring out whether you're a writer or not. The problem with that is that you start to think, I want to have created this thing rather than saying, I want to create. There's two different things going on there. And there's a lot of people who say, how do I become a published writer? And they start looking at different books or on writing by Stephen King or art of fiction or whatever. And then they start saying, okay, well, I'm going to learn how to do this. I'm going to learn, I'm going to learn, and I'm pursuing my, you know, how do I contact publishers? How do I get it out there? But what they're not doing is actually writing. And so they're too absorbed in finding out how to have their work seen. Well, yeah. Well, I think there might be both, right? I mean, because maybe they are writing it, but then you get the anxiety and the stress and sometimes even obsession with exactly what're saying, right. Like getting seen and so on.
Traditional vs. Self-Publishing
00:05:27
Speaker
Do you think that's, that's an artifact of how it used to be with publishing where the only channels were through a publisher, whereas now, you know, self-publishing is so easy and so frictionless. I don't think so because I think, I think there's a mental attitude around it. And when you start to realize that you're a writer just because you are writing, then it takes a lot of that pressure off. It takes a lot of that feeling of how am I going to get published? How am I going to get seen? I going to, And you transfers know, and transfers it into the, the joy of creating it in the first place. And that's something we touched on last week, right? Like, is this a healthy endeavor? It's a healthy endeavor. If you're looking at it from the perspective of, I want to create this thing. I am joyfully creating my thing, no matter what happens to it. Yeah. After I'm done. Well, and I, and I for for people like you and i you know we have day jobs right so it's like but there are people who they went to school for this yeah this is a living that they want to create and make for themselves they don't want to do anything else right and so that i could see where that stress and anxiety might come from.
Writing for Passion vs. Income
00:06:47
Speaker
Because it is like, I'm either going to live or die by this, or I'm going to have to find something else to do. Yeah. And then if you're doing that though, then it becomes more about, well, how do I, how do I leverage what I've learned to write what people want me to write? Yeah. So it's like, okay, so I'm writing for a newspaper. I've got to do newspaper articles on XXX and this. I'm not always going to be passionate about this newspaper article, but I'm going to get paid for it because I can put words together into coherent sentences and I can write about a subject that I'm assigned. It's funny. My degree was in, originally it was going to be in journalism and then public relations because I wanted to be a writer who got paid. So it's like, I mean, yeah, it's great. Like that's, if that's eyes wide open, if that's what you really want to do, fantastic. Right. But most of us, it's very, very, very difficult, especially in a creative sense to say, OK, I want to create a setting. I want to create a story. I want to create a book. I want to I want to do something that's that's, you know, I have to create something out of nothing here. Yeah. Right. I'm not assigned an article on interviewing X person. I'm Right. actually just creating something out of nothing. That becomes way harder to say, this is what I'm going to do for a living. I'm going to become Brandon Sanderson. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be Brandon Sanderson. Right, Yeah. yeah. You I know what I mean, mean? Exactly, like yeah. Nobody's nobody's going going to to be be able able to to do do that. that. Nobody's Nobody's going going to to say, say, I'm you know, I'm, going I'm going to to, be I'm going to be Stephen Stephen King. King. Right. Right. It's, it doesn't work that way. You have to write what you are passionate about otherwise and enjoy the process. Otherwise nothing that comes out of you is going to be any good. That's my thinking. Yeah. No, I don't think, yeah, it wouldn't be genuine. Right. Yeah. If you're just mimicking and not creating truly, you know. I think. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. So my, my, my, what I, what I finally came to was you're a writer because you write. Right. Not because you've been published. Just write, everybody. Yes. And a lot of people will say that it's very hard to do. Yeah. You know, the thing I'm, I'm actually teaching my daughter, this is, um, because she struggles with, with writing out her thoughts fully, you know, and she has to write something for school. And I'm like, I have her every day. She comes home, like just write 15 minutes, anything, stream of consciousness, whatever you want, just write. And that's creating like, you know, she's exercising that muscle, you know? When I was told that I was just like, but it's terrifying. Yeah. It starts to become parameters. You have to, you have to squeeze in like, you know, it's it's like, like, okay, okay, I've I've got got to to, I carve out my 15 minutes so I can write my stream of consciousness or whatever. And then it becomes pressure to do that. It's so hard. It's so hard. Right? Whereas now, these days, me, age, whatever, I just write constantly. I just turn on the computer and I do my thing and I'm writing whatever. It could be a what we love in the Savage Interludes Discord server. It could be a post there that I'm talking with other people. It could be actual Pond Cluster adventure material. It could be whatever it is. I'm going to write it.
Creative Processes in Writing
00:10:26
Speaker
Wordsmithing one way or the other. That's all writing. Yeah. That is all, that's all writing. It's all writing. It's all valid. Yeah. It is. It's using the muscle. No, I think, I think exactly that. I think, you know, like it's just, you're, you're exercising those, those muscles, right? You're, you're, you know, there's, there's times where I've taken, I've gotten joy with writing an email, even making sure I'm clearly constructing my thoughts in an organized way and presenting it in a way that the user, you know, the other person is going to be able to read it and clearly understand what I'm trying to get at. And, you know, and, you know, even, even down to sometimes where it's like formatting's involved because I want to, you know, have those headings in the bullets. Organization, bullet points, all that. Like I do it all the time. I do it at work. I, you know, there's, there's times when people who are, you know, I'm an expert in BIM modeling and CAD work, right? There are times when clients that I have are not at all familiar with how building information modeling works, right? And so I have to, sometimes there's this, on occasion, I have to write this email and I have to write, I have to write a big, long, you know, four paragraph email to explain the process, explain what's different about what they're used to, and then give them information they can actually use. And I take pride in taking my time and writing out something that they can understand, that I'm not talking down to them, but I'm giving them very good information. And hopefully that they can read and just know and don't have to follow up too much or whatever they can, but at least now, oh, I get it now. Now I can go quote this job. Right. You know, I take pride in those little emails. Yeah. That's writing. It is writing. Yeah. You know, so, so, uh, you know, for the, for listeners don't take any amount of writing for granted. It's all, it's all writing and it's all good. It's all helpful. Okay. So we've established that you and I and our listeners are writers. Yes. Right. Who are they writing for? Like when we're talking about getting into game design, we know that the first, typically the first group or the first people is their group, right? Or themselves, right? Where they're like, okay, I got to come up with this adventure. Yeah. And it could just be like the sloppiest of notes that you have. Yeah. Scrap pieces of paper, little notebooks, whatever. What does that mean? Like, what is that? What are we doing in that space? Like, you know, as writers, are we just kind of just trying to figure it out? Are we trying to actually construct something coherent? Is it all of the above? You know, like what, what is your approach when you, when you first start from that blank slate of like, I want to do an adventure for my friends. Right. Well, the first thing I do is not put pressure on myself about how, how organized or, or well-written it is. I don't care, right? If I'm just doing Horizon Zero Dawn one shot, right? Or I know it's not going to get published. There's no way. The first thing is I'm not thinking about how I'm going to present it. I'm thinking about what's important about this adventure. What am I trying to accomplish here? And then I just start in whatever format makes sense for me. I start writing some ideas down. That's it. And with Horizon, for example, I started writing. I didn't, I had a basic idea, just a one-sentence idea that I was going to expand upon. But what I really started with is creating the pre-generated characters you're going to use. So let's create the characters and then find the interactions between the characters and their points of view. I love that. Then I can expand on my one-sentence idea for the adventure. Right. That was just one way. Another way was, you know, with Harry Potter, I did about two months of research.
00:14:32
Speaker
and this is just for a one shot i was i would run on cons right and it's a very popular one shot but i spent weeks researching harry potter lore so that i could integrate as much as i could in a way that made sense with the world before i even wrote anything for the adventure. And I used the lore as inspiration, right? So it it can come from any direction, but the point is, I suppose, whatever works for you, if it's bullet points, if it's stream of consciousness paragraphs, if it's if it's a combination of the two, if it's an outline, whatever works. If you're creating monsters first, that's a great way to do it too. Like who are the bad guys? Let's create the monsters and then we'll create how we're going to encounter the monsters, right? So there's lots of different ways to do it. How do you do it? Oh, i so, you know, it really depends. um And when I say depends, I mean, it's whatever just whimsically I do at a given point. Because I have started with like, say, for example, on a I used to have like these small mead notebooks and I'll just start writing. Like just what do I want to do? Like with your hand? With my hand. pen With a shitty pen in my hand. And I'll just be like, you know, just like, what do I want to have happen? and I would think in terms of like, say a movie, right? Like what, what are the, uh, you know, the sequences of things that I want to have happen. And then I start thinking about, okay, how do I get from this one to this one? And, you know, how do I then also write, you know, steer the players toward that? What are the contingencies if they don't go toward that? And so on. Interestingly, that approach has then led me to using mind mapping. Okay. Because I'll have these ideas, this sort of general flow, but then I get stuck on these contingency things because I'm like, oh, what if they do this? Or what if they don't do that? Or if they're not enticed with this. And I had to start thinking of the world, not as this linear path, but as something that reacts to what the players are doing. And so what I did with the mind mapping is I would, I would think of, okay, well, I'm going to have this in PC. They're trying to do these things, you know, which is like, that's going to be that sequence over there. yeah What motivates them? What are their resources at their disposal? And, you know, what will they do if the players interfere with their plans? How are they going to react? Once I started doing that, like that was like, that opened up everything for me because I was like, oh my God, this is so much easier because when the players did something unexpected, which know we kind of talked a little bit about last week, I think, or last episode, um you can pivot because you know what those NPCs are going to do to react to that situation. yes And it makes it so much easier. Now, the problem with that is that you're writing this for yourself. So when your friends are like, oh, hey, you know can you you share show your your notes on, you know, this, this is great. And it's like, no, no there's nothingking this is like Charlie day on the wall with yeah exactly like, yeah, this is not going to work for you. But, um, yeah, so it's, uh, so that, that's been a way, the other thing I've done too, is I've used things like, um, likeNote or Google Docs or whatever, and I'll actually pull pieces of content from different things. And then I kind of just have it all there for reference so that it's at the top of my mind when I'm in the middle of running.
Breaking Writing Conventions
00:17:55
Speaker
Yeah. And like a con game I ran recently at Gamehole Con, it was kind of that. It was like, here's the here's the the highlights of the adventure. Here's a stat block that's going to go with this encounter. You know, here's, oh yeah, some rule reminders because I'm going to be using like, say, a chase. yeah Remember this, remember this, that kind of thing. And so I've done that kind of approach as well. It's like just sort of like, you know, it's like it's like having a tray of, you know, the bits I'm going to need for yeah each set. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:18:29
Speaker
so yeahp i've done i've done all that and you know it just depends like i said in the last episode
00:18:40
Speaker
every time because the story dictates how you're going to write it, how you're going to organize it and what's going to happen. Right. And how players Yeah. are going to interact with it. And so it could be different every time. Like I remember one time we were, we were working on Holler and Tim was worried. Like, he's like, is this all right? Like, you know, I tried to be consistent in the way I presented the adventures and Shane and I were in this, in this meeting and we're like, yeah, but you know, most of the time you want to do this, but in this case, you probably don't want to do that. You probably want to do something else. You want to, it's, it's okay to break the rules once you kind of know the rules. And because it makes more sense, it fits better. To say we normally would present it in X way, that's great. And it works great for, I don't know, 60, 70% of adventures or whatever, until you run into this problem where, well, now I've got a problem. I don't know how to, I don't know how to fit this into that framework. And both Shane and I were telling Tim, don't fit it into that framework. Change the framework. It's okay to change the framework. And he was worried because he's writing for Shane. Shane's right in the meeting. And he's like, I, I, I don't know. And Shane was telling him it doesn't work. And poor, poor Tim is like, Oh man, what do I do? He's like, well, it was like, it was like, it doesn't work, but that's okay. But he left off the, that's okay part. It's perfectly fine adventure, but he's like the way you're presenting it with a lot of if-thens doesn't work here. It's too many if-thens, right? So let's change how we do this. And I was like, I was the one to raise my hand and said, don't worry about it, Tim, I'll work on it. And not to say that he couldn't, but he had done his work already. This is my job at this point. I'm developing it for Savage Worlds. I'm like, no, no, I'm going to rewrite this so that we don't have those endless if-then statements that are happening. So to me, adventure writing, it kind of is like, let's learn the rules. I mean, learn what works most of the time. But just like any creative endeavor, once you know the rules, you start finding ways to break the rules. It's like jazz. Jazz, you got to know the rules and then you can break them. Yes. And then you can confidently break them in ways that work. Right. So it's interesting. So Tim's feeling this pressure because he's writing. We're going to get to this, writing for someone else, right? Yes. that's like the far end of the spectrum of like high pressure you know yes when you're writing for something but but when you're writing for yourself it's like don't worry about it yeah it's for you and you only and the only thing you got to worry about is whether your friends are having a good time and they probably are because they're your friends right exactly so you know when it comes to very few people come to a game saying all right entertain me unless Unless you. you're at a con. I'm going to find every little flaw. I paid for this. Yeah, exactly. Very few. They're looking to have fun and they're looking to have fun with you and they're looking to help you have fun. So try not to put pressure on yourself. Right, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, the next thing I would say. Yeah. I'd say the natural step. Now, you can skip around, right? But the next thing is maybe going out on your own and saying, I want to share this some way. In the Savage Worlds parlance, there's a couple of ways to do that. One is to create fan content, which basically says you're not going to get paid for this, but you can put it out there and let other people see it. Right. And then there's swag content, the Savage Worlds Adventures Guild, which is a program that is built in to drive through RPG that helps guide you through the process of creating a adventure or product that you can sell for money, right? And give licensing fees to Pinnacle and DriveThru automatically from your sales. And then there's the ACE license, which is sort of the pinnacle of the licensees for Pinnacle, where you have to actually present something to Pinnacle and show them that you know what you're doing and that you can present a polished product before they'll give you that license. And in that case, you've got some perks that swag people don't have. Like you can sell books outside of DriveThru RPG for no license fee at all. But anything you do sell through DriveThru gets a commission for Pinnacle. Anyway, that's the details of that. But at that point, you're starting to write for other people. And so what is your, like as somebody who's done this, what is your impression of making that shift? Well, yeah. So when you say write for other, you mean like readers? Yes. Right. Write for people to read and to hopefully run and play. Yeah. So
Transition to Selling Content
00:24:01
Speaker
as a fan, when I was doing fan content originally, it was, um, I love this thing. I think this is cool. I want to put this out there. Hey, forum people, cause at the time pig had forums. Um, does this make sense? Right. And it didn't matter whether, you know, the critiques or whatever, you know, I wasn't invested. It was more like I was learning cause I was new to Savage Worlds. I was new to creating, you know, mechanics and content and, you know, trying to build a race or ancestry or whatever. And, um, and then, you know, once I felt like I had something, you know, that I could, you know, enough feedback or whatever, I would write it up in a Google doc. I'd post it up on my, you know, back when people wrote blogs, you know, put it up on my blog and, um, you know, and that was, it was very frictionless in that regard. It was kind of just an easy, it was still less pressure in a lot of ways. Now you're, you're kind of, your fear really is more about like, are people going to think this is good? Am I doing this right? Kind of thing. And just in a general, you know, validity type of sense. Right. But, but yeah. And, and you're not really that concerned about like, you know, you were talking about earlier, like, you know, the structure and the format, the presentation, it's just sort of like, here's a stat block, right? Here's a, you know, one, here's a new power, you know, kind of thing, whatever it might be. Now, if you're doing like, you know, a one sheet or something like that, you know, I have not done that as a, as fan content. Yeah. I think, I think that would still be a not so much pressure kind of thing. Cause it's like, just take it, use it. If you don't like it, change it, you know, whatever. I don't care. I mean, you're not paying for it. You're not paying for it. Yeah. I gave it to you for free. Consider it inspiration and, you know, run with it, you know. Now, if you're, the next step, as you mentioned, would be like, okay, I want to do this in a semi-official capacity. I want to make this really polished and I want to put it out there for somebody to purchase because I think this is
Licensing and Publishing
00:26:15
Speaker
of value. And I think by that point, you've already decided that you've got enough experience and enough confidence that you think you want to put something out there for sale. And that's where the swag license comes in because you don't need to get approval from Peg. You don't have to vet anything. It doesn't have to be super, super pretty or anything like that. They do provide templates for you to use, which makes it easy. Even layout templates for InDesign and stuff. Exactly. And the style guide's available. So to start, this is, this is probably the point where you want to start maybe looking at Peg style guide. Right. Cause you want to, you want it to be, and not just because you want it to be perfect, but because you want it to be consistent. Yeah. So that whether the, the, the, the flow of the writing, the presentation, you know, the phrasing, things like that, you know, and even just the terminology, the terminology is crucial, right? So when you're referring to like ACE and, you know, hindrances and things like that, you're using the appropriate capitalization and things like that. And it gets, it gets involved. It gets involved. Right. So that's probably where you want to start, you know, really kind of paying attention to that. The cool thing about that and the reason why you want to do that is because then if your swag, if you feel confident about your swag products and you're like, you know what? I want to, I want to do more. I want to go bigger and you want to become an ace. You can use your swag products. Those, those, the quality and effort that you put into your swag products, you can use that to send a peg and say, look, this is what I'm writing. I want to do, I want to go to the next level. I want to become an ace, you know, will this suffice? Right. And they'll, they'll look at that. You know, they got to make sure that the layout looks good and, you know, things like that. Like use the template well. And, you know, you're following the style guide and they're going to look at all that. They're going to look at, you know, are you writing in the way that Savage Worlds is written? You know, those kinds of things. You know, are you taking care to be, you know, the attention to details and the quality of the writing, the quality of the presentation, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that swag is not, it doesn't have to be a final destination. It could just be your stepping stone to the next thing. It's perfectly fine if you want it to be your final destination. There's nothing wrong with it at all. It's a very valid platform. It's solid. There's great products out there. Manuel basically swears by swag. Manuel is the creator of Sprawl Runners, by the way. Sprawl Runners, right. He's decided against, at least so far, going to the ace. The ace level. And for some people that, like, honestly, there's times where I questioned it. I was like, do I really need to be an ace to do a certain thing? But, you know, so it's, swag is very liberal in that regard, in terms of empowering you to be able to produce. But now let's say you do go for that ACE level. That's where the stress kind of comes in a little bit more. Right? Yeah. I feel, well, I don't know. I don't think it's as scary as it sounds. You have to follow certain rules rules like both for swag and for for the ace license the the ace license the difference is of course that pinnacle is gonna look at your a sample of your stuff they're not gonna look at everything they're just gonna they just want a sample and they don't have to see everything you create it's just the one time no they want to make sure you're doing good stuff and then that's it. Like you're good. And they, and you know, you're, you're giving them a promise. Like I'm going to, I'm going to give you at least this level or better. Right. And you have to pay for some art usually, or find, acquire some art in some way, find some public domain stuff that you can use or pay for your own art just to show that you're putting more than just text on a page. But there are benefits. And like I say, one of them is being able to, if you have physical books, you can sell them without any kind of license fee at all. Getting those physical books is a topic of a whole nother show. But yeah, and you can use a little bit more content from the Savage World stuff than you can as a swag licensee. So you have benefits in addition to being able to
Community Content Programs
00:30:40
Speaker
sell stuff. But you also have the pressure of trying to make sure that pinnacle is like going to be happy with your yeah with your presentation and and uh savage worlds you know that's we use savage worlds as our sort of baseline um like dnd there's they have similar things they have the fan content policy they've got the dms guild and of course you can you know publish third-party material for 5e in general. So very similar. Yeah, a lot of them do. I think Cypher has one now, and others have some kind of community licensing program, especially through DriveThru. DriveThru carries a lot of those things. So just look at, it's i forget what what they're called but the swag is basically one of these and there's a there's stuff so you can do you can do work i think it's community content community content yeah something like that yeah and they have they have they have it all worked out for you so you just you just follow directions on drive-thru follow the directions on drive-thru because there are rules of what you can and can't do. And it varies from publisher to publisher. So be very, very conscientious of that when you do that. So where I started, because I didn't start with any, I started with writing my own stuff, of course. But I did not start as a fan, swag, or a slice and see. I started writing for Pinnacle. So how did that, how did that come to be? Like, how did you get directly to Pinnacle? Well, um, I got there. First of all, there was Daryl who's like, you're not writing yet, but I love love that. that line. I love And I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever. And I didn't know if I was any good at all at that point, but I'd been writing for myself for years and years and years, lots of different, different things, and putting it out there to people to see, but not for money. And how that started was basically I ran Curious Death of Violet Evans for Shane at Gingas Con, I think. And I was very nervous. People were all signed up. Shane was like, hey, do you mind if Michelle plays too? My wife plays too. I'm like, yeah, great. That's great. And then I spent like three hours in the room that day creating a sixth character for Violet Evans so that Michelle could play. I was like, well, of course. I mean, I'll let her play. And then, of course, there was a table mixed up and I was annoyed and I was nervous and all this stuff. But I ran it and Violet Evans is a very good adventure. One of my very most popular adventures, basically based on ETU. And it's now published. But at the time it wasn't. And I think I'd mentioned it to Shane that I wanted to try to get it published before I ran it for him. He's like, great, awesome. And so I ended up contacting Matt Cutter because they were doing the Savage Explorer at the time, this periodical that had various adventures and arcane backgrounds or whatever else they did there. And that was an opening for me. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to write for that. So that's what I did is I submitted a draft of Violet Evans for the Savage Explorer to Matt Cutter. He sent it on to Preston and Ed to check it over. They had notes. I did the notes and then it got published. And that was that. And the thing is like almost, I avoided the, I avoided the usual, the usual, not hazing, but the usual steps. Because the usual steps is if you want to write directly for Pinnacle, the first thing that they do is give you, okay, write a one sheet for us. You know, we'll pay you $50 to write a thousand words. And for those who don't know, do you want to describe a one sheet?
Utilizing Feedback
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah. One sheet is basically a thousand words. It could be a little bit more than that, but basically it's very short adventure where you're just doing your best. Like there's lots of one sheets for Deadlands, for example, where you go into a town, you mess around with some stuff, you fight some enemies, and you're done, right? And it requires the GM to be a little bit liberal about how they interpret the one sheet because it's so short. But ideally, you write it in such a way so the GM has that empowerment to do that and that inspiration to make those additions and whatever they want to do to this thing to, to flesh it out a little bit more and make it a four hour adventure or make it whatever. So that's what a one sheet is. Yeah. And I would even argue that, that one sheets are actually a little bit easier than traditional adventures because of that, because there isn't a sort of like here's the setup and then gm execute how you see is fit right like there's there's a little bit of that with with one sheets and plot points and savage tales all similar structures right yeah i i think there's i think there's i think it's harder and easier right i think it's harder because you have only a thousand words i's true. Yeah. So you've got to sit there and like really break it down and say like, oh, what do I need? What do I need? How do I create a coherent adventure in a thousand words? That's part of the challenge of creating one. And that's why Pinnacle asked you to do it first. Right. And then you'll get it back and you'll have blood red ink all over it. Who's responsible for the blood red ink? Sometimes Shane, if he cares enough. Sometimes it's Matt Cutter. Sometimes it's Brian Reeves these days. Yeah. Or Daryl even. Depends on who's getting it and who's reading it. Right. But the real test is can you take those notes and do something with them rather than just give up? Right. Because a lot of people will just give up after that. So to be clear, the goal when you first submit it is not to nail it the first time and then worry about any red ink. It's to get the red ink and then do something with that. That is part of, yes, it is. If you nail it, great. Great. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Awesome. And the thing is, I did. That's not to say submit trash and hope you get red ink and then try to fix it. You still want to get as close as possible to good. Yes, you do. Following the style guides. And I avoided that whole thing. Yeah. Because I wrote Violet Evans. I studied, and this is where we're getting into writing for somebody else, right? Yeah. I studied the style guide. I studied other books that Pinnacle have put out, how they write their adventures, how they lay them out, what kind of stat blocks they use and why, all that kind of stuff. I studied it, what their voice is, like how they write. The voice. That's a good way of putting that. Yeah. Because there's a voice. And then I tried to do it. Yeah. And at first I wasn't know, it's very hard to get to excise the word will from your writing. And you have to do that when you're writing for Pinnacle. Almost every instance of the word will has to go. Yep. Because you're talking, you want to talk in an action first perspective, like present tense. Right. But I also wrote a little bit for Swag or not for Swag, for Suede. So I wrote directly for Shane and my version of the red ink came when I wrote for the GM's guide for Suede, the adventure builders and GM's guide. Yeah. World builders. Yeah. And that was, that was where I got Shane's red ink. I didn't get it in my adventure. I got it at for that. Yeah. And I'm like, ah, okay. So this is how he wants it. This is what he's looking
Tracy's Unconventional Journey
00:38:55
Speaker
for. And then I revised and he's like, yeah, this is like, he was, he was, he liked it the first time. He just made all kinds of notes to, to, uh, to refine it. Right. And then I refined it and I sent it in and we had a little dialogue and that was that. And so, yeah, I went backwards because I never wrote a one sheet. I did write one, but not for him. I wrote one for Aaron Acevedo and The Savage Sign. But that was later. So my first one was a seven page or whatever adventure. And then I continued there. I continued on that path. So that's how I got into it. And now I've gone to Ace Licensee because I want to write my own stuff. I want it to be mine and they don't want it anyway. So it's, yeah, that's where I'm, that's where I'm at. You know, I, I think there's an interesting thing about the Savage Worlds community, your path in particular. I don't know that that would have been possible, say, if you were writing for 5e. Yeah, right. And I think there's something to be said about the Savage Worlds community where Pinnacle and writers and so on are all so approachable. Yes. They're there, they're interacting, they're at the cons, they're playing in your games with you. That's the other thing. I ran games and I met people doing that. Right, right. I think that, yeah, that definitely goes a long way., I'm saying that as sort of a caveat for anybody who's like wanting to write for say, you know, pinnacle or not pinnacle for, you know, wizards of the coast. Like that's a different thing altogether. It's a different, I don't know how, how I would do that. I don't know either. But I don't want to, so it's easy for
Advice for Aspiring Writers
00:40:43
Speaker
me. Right. Right. Not a problem. Yeah. But I have written for other games, but that was after I'd started writing for Pinnacle. Oh, like Torg and such. Right. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. My name was out there. Yeah. But one thing I want to leave, like before we wrap up and we're already late, but there are a couple couple things. One is if you want to write for somebody else, right? There's three things you can be. And if you're one of these things, you're already in good shape. And that is, and I've talked about this before, but you can either be good, you can be fast, and you can be nice, right? If you're one of those things, when you're trying to write for somebody else, you're likely actually going to get a good chance to write for them and prove what you've got, right? Maybe even consistently write for them. If you're one of those things, if you're two, you got it made. Nice, fast, good, right? And if you're three, great. Awesome. You're going to consistent work all the time. It's just true. And that's not me. That's not my philosophy. I stole that from Daryl who stole it from a famous writer whose name I can't remember now. But, um, the other thing that Shane says in the style guide, um, the thing, I think, is be interesting. And that sounds like flippant because it's like, well, it'll be interesting. But the thing is like, no, no. I mean, think about what's interesting, not what you think you should be doing. Right. You know, because you can fix grammar all day long. You can fix typos. You can fix style guide things, but you can't fix boring. Right. Nobody's going to want to fix boring. You have to rewrite if you're boring. It has to have bite. Yes. It has to have something that makes you want to play
Join the Community
00:42:42
Speaker
it. Right. You know. Yeah, no, that's solid. Yeah. Like you said, I mean, otherwise you're just doing technical editing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've seen things where it's just like, yeah, this is dry. There's nothing here. This is dry. There's nothing, there's nothing fun here. Right. I'm like, oh man, is this really like capturing the essence of, you know, whatever? And, you know, am I really giving something that's, that the players are sinking their teeth into? And, you know, and I hope at the end that, you know, they're satisfied with it, you know, but I guess if you're worrying about that, you're doing it right. Yeah. I mean, that's a good thing to worry about, I suppose. I mean, there's a myriad of things to worry about. That's just one of many. But anyway, thank you for listening to the Designing Problems podcast. We want this to be more than a podcast. We want it to be a community. So if you'd like to engage directly with us, share your creative triumphs, your roadblocks, or simply interact with a cool group of supportive people, we have our own Discord server. Please come by, join the discussion, and share some inspiration. Until next time, keep designing your problems, because you're bound to solve a few along the way.
00:44:49
Speaker
Thank you.
00:45:02
Speaker
you