One Hour Blog Post: Don’t Need To, Want To!
Every year, in December, when I get out my fall seasonal funk, I’m overflowed with the inevitable introspection that comes with all light depressive states.
As awesome as 2011 started (getting published ROCKS), the second half of the year has brought turmoil and uncertainties beyond what my strengthening psyche could manage without help. Brutal changes have rocked my life leading me to move into a new apartment, deal with the always unsatisfactory compromise that is shared custody of my children and deal with the unbridled joy (and distractions) of newly found love.
All this, coupled with keeping up with my client’s projects, has led me to slip out one of my best established habits: blogging. As I let this slide, my “need” to write online receded and I stopped rationalizing why I didn’t feel the old compulsion to write as I have for so many years.
As I write these lines, I realize that “needing” is fed by the act of doing.
As I floundered in moving boxes, struggled with deliverable and dove into awesome dates with the one I have been affectionately calling Dr. C, I realized that I more or less sat on the achievements I worked hard to unlock after implementing the plan I successfully hatched, nearly 3 years ago, redirecting my life. As a result, I need to take back control of my creative life. I need to start writing again.
Scratch that. When I hear people around me bemoaning their life, my inner coach wakes up. “I should” and “I need” are poisonous inertia-fueled guilt-trips. I need to think and speak action words!
Let’s try this again shall we?
I want to take back control of my creative life. I will start writing again.
Okay Chatty… how are you going to do this then? How about this? [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 5: OMG! I Made it!
Oh yeah, This is getting real baby!
This is the last of my autobiographical series that describes my becoming a writer and a freelancer. You can follow the series by clicking: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
Once the Plan was in place (see part 4), I started looking where I could send pitches. It was late in 2009; the economic crisis had hit the industry hard. Many struggling third-party publishers had few projects and the pay was too low for me (like 1 cent a word).
Rate aside: The rate per word (or per article) that you get paid is variable. It always starts low. I’ve worked from 3 cents a word (my first adventure) up to 20 cents for some of my most recent copywriting work. Game and adventure designs based on pitches usually pay between 4 to 6 cents a word. Rates increase when you are invited to join bigger projects with actual budget (like a WotC book or like the recently announced Marvel Super Heroes RPG).
Just don’t expect to ever become rich on this… that’s why I still have a (part time) day job.
So how did I start landing freelance jobs?
There’s no surefire secret. Were I to distill how I started to systematically land gigs, I’d bring it down to these points:
Networking with people.
I started going to Gen Con in 2008. At that time, I had had contacts with a few game designers through forums, emails and my then one-year old blog. For example, I was a regular on Monte Cook’s forums and had exchanged a few question-answers messages.
With a few, very rare exceptions, writers, designers and freelancers , if approached nicely, are easy to talk to and interact with. In my opinion, the BEST way to approach someone you admire is to go up to them, introduce yourself, and thank them for a specific product you liked. That will usually make them happy and more likely to talk to you. If you have a follow-up question that is simple enough, ask it. Engage them; make them talk about their stuff, their projects. By getting creative folks to talk about what they love, you’re establishing a great contact.
There is a chance you’ll notice they keep looking away from you, as if distracted by something. That’s because they have somewhere to be soon (or maybe you just don’t click). If they do, apologize and say you don’t want to be keeping them, and that you hope you get to talk more at a later time. It leaves a good expression and there’s a chance, if you do meet them later, that they’ll greet you as they recognize you.
Blogging also featured greatly in creating relationships with people of the industry. Late in 2007, I made a dumb post about Wolfgang Baur being the Storytelling Fluff Nemesis to my Crunchy Rules Overlord (links are broken, they come from my deleted Blogger blog). You should have seen my surprised face when, the next day, Wolfgang responded to a comment I left on one of his posts. I was delighted as I admired Wolfgang’s craft when it came to world building and setting flavour. I wanted to learn to become more like him and this “Crunch Overlord vs Fluff King” became a fun back and forth game which Wolfgang eventually won when I joined his team of freelancers on Kobold Quarterly.
Thus did I started seeing the potential of blogging, and more importantly, interacting with people from the industry.
Being nice to people always pays off.
Sending Queries
You won’t get invited into freelancing. You have to open the door and jam you foot in it with your skills and professionalism (i.e. write well, edit yourself, deliver on time and write what you were asked to write). Shortly after Gen Con 2009, I sent a query to WotC about making a D&D for kids adventure and I got a positive response to write a full outline. The idea never panned out as WotC later decided to tackle the idea in-house. But this first response gave me the positive boost I needed to keep at it. It told me that my ideas could be sold for money, provided I found myself at the right place and at the right conjecture in time.
How did I land my 1st magazine article? Very simple, I sent a “would you be interested in…” pitch to Wolfgang. He answered positively and that’s how I got to talk about mixing Skill Challenges in combat encounters back in the 2009 winter edition of Kobold Quarterly. Of course at that time, I had to learning a lesson that took me almost 2 years to fully grok:
Publishing in a magazine =/= blogging; edit your stuff, then do it again, and again. Get all the help you can.
Kobold Quarterly has high standards to get a piece published. Getting a query accepted does not mean your article will make it to print. You need to polevault over Wolfgang’s invisible quality line which keeps being raised with each passing issues. Your article is in competition with all others he gets for inclusion in the next issue. I was very lucky for my first piece to have the help of Ben Mcfarland, a veteran KQ contributor, who helped me morph my very conversationalist tone into a more neutral “magazine” voice.
Thanks Ben, I really owe you one.
Setting the Table for Success
I spent most of 2010 consolidating my non-RPG freelance projects. I spent countless hours building (and re-building) my training seminars, by far my highest paid part time gig. I also opened my own company in May and taught myself all the vagaries of billing, setting aside money for taxes, retirement, and other “fun” things like that. In the meantime, I got two more KQ queries accepted, one of which got published: an article on traps that become monsters and vice-versa in the Fall 2010 issue. The other was rejected.
The rejection was a bit painful, but not as bad as I thought, the piece was too gimicky for the magazine, maybe I should post it here.
I recall that during the fall of 2010, my wife Alex came to me and remarked that I wasn’t getting a lot of freelancing gigs vs the amount of time I had freed from my day job. She was right. At that point my other contracts and seminars were mostly set so I told her I’d initiate the final phase of “The Plan: Get (more) Freelance Contracts”. I sent about 10 pitches to Wizards of the Coast, none of them panned out. But I concentrated on getting my business up and running and stopped thinking about Wizards so much.
In all honesty, I was upset and discouraged that I couldn’t get a feet through the proverbial door. But D&D grand guru, James Wyatt, told me to hang in there… saying that he had been rejected a LOT before making it into Dungeon magazine.
Opening the Floodgates
It’s actually funny how things tumbled from there. First, I started hanging out with cool local Web 2.0 people: social media representatives for local media, tech bloggers, Tweeterati, TV show hosts, freelancers and others of that ilk. At one party, I met the host of a geek TV show and we hit it off talking about video games and RPGs. As it happens, he mentioned me in his weekly podcast; the week after I got a call from someone that offered me a regular copy-writing gig for a local workshop that manufactures realistic looking foam weapons for LARPs.
I still work for them; you can see some of my best work here and here.
Things really took off this year. I got a 3rd, very exciting query accepted for Kobold Quarterly which was just published in the Summer 2011 issue, a 4e article about playing character flaws and being rewarded for them. As my interest in small press games grew, especially with the Leverage game by Margaret Weis Production, I was invited by my friend Cam (MWP’s producer and lead designer/writer) to submit a 2000 word hack that allowed to play with Leverage‘s rules in a different genre.
I created a fantasy hack inspired by what I liked most of old school dungeon crawl… except I delivered 8000 words instead of 2000 
Cam also sent out a request for letters of interest to join the writing team of MWP’s newest RPG: Dragon Brigade based on Weis’ last novel: Shadow Raiders. After getting my response, he gave all contenders a writing test. I was asked to write, in an Alexandre Dumas voice, how to set scenes for a Swashbuckling game. I had a blast writing it. I think he liked it because I ended up writing more than 16 000 words for the game.
Of course, this was just a preview of the jackpot I would hit just a few weeks later. First, at the time I thought my chances if writing for Wizards of the Coast had evaporated, I got an email from the D&D Insider editorial inviting me (along several other bloggers and freelancers) to join their team of writers. This landed me 4 gigs: 2 Dungeon adventures and 2 Dragon magazine articles. If everything goes as planned you should see a combined Dragon/Dungeon set of article appear in the September issues and the next ones in early 2012.
After nearly 30 years of having started playing D&D, getting to officially contribute to it is such a honor. I hope I do the game justice.
Yet the biggest thing had yet to happen.
Cam (on IM): So what are your thoughts on Super Heroes gaming?
Phil: I have very fond memories of busting open TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes yellow box and making Wolverine fight Spiderman!
That discussion, initiated at an undisclosed date, eventually led me to be invited on the new Marvel Super Hero RPG design and writing team…
Brain… Blown.
The Journey Barely Begins
It took me nearly 25 years to realize I was a writer. It took me another 4 and a ton of effort, writing about a million words online, to become a better one. I made friends along the way that ultimately helped me make it in the RPG industry. Yes, I finally made it. And for a lot of this, I have you all to thank for it, through your supportive comments and helpful feedback.
Now I just have to keep on delivering. The road is not easier ahead, just more intense!
I hope you’ll get to derive the same kind of fun from what I will help create as I have with what the giants before me created.
Thanks for reading.
Chatty Shorts (and not Chatty’s Shorts, you pervs): Gen Con 2011
I’m so flooded in deliverables and projects that I can’t blog. I promised I would post once a week and I will try my best to hold on to that promise.
So here’s a hyper condensed version of my Gen Con highlights.
Booze and Bars
Our annual Drunken D&D game (a mix of college drinking game with an actual, tailor-made D&D adventure) was a huge success. We had a private area in our hotel’s sports bar (the J.W. Marriott’s High Velocity). The pre-party was full of friends and fans. It was hectic and awesome. I was drunk on Gin and Tonic way before I started rolling my 1st die. The game was very fun, the players had huge smiles and we laughed a lot. We ended up jettisoning big chunks of the adventure but that’s on par with the drunken experience.
We have crazy ideas about next year and a few improvement to make everything run smoother (we are improvement freaks).
Announcements:
Ennies: You may have heard about it, but Critical-Hits won the gold Ennies for best blog. We were stunned and happy. We’ve worked so hard on this site. especially Dave who’s devoted his heart and soul to the endeavor for so many years. It’s so great to see those efforts rewarded by our fans and peers. And we were complete classy guys on scene… all rumors about me streaking the Ennies scene are pure fabulations.
The Marvel Super Heros RPG: I can finally say it! I was hired to be part of the original design team for this upcoming Cortex-Plus based RPG planned for Feb 2012. It will be published by Margaret Weis Productions. I have the honour to be paired with such a slew of awesome people its humbling:
Core Design team: Will Hindmarch, Matt Forbeck, Jesse Scobles, Rob Donhoghue, Cam Banks, Amanda Valentine and myself.
Writing and Development of the first book (Basic game): Cam Banks, Dave the Game and myself.
I can’t wait to tell you more about it!
I Knew Him Before he was a Celebrity…
This line above became a running joke at Gen Con as I got a lot of high fives from friends, fans and people I look up to from the industry.
Where the story gets really cool is that I got to meet some of the industry’s top designers and got to actually interact with them before we recognized who we were. That’s how I ended up chatting for a good 25 minutes with Rob Heinsoo before we both got that look of “oh you’re THAT guy I know from the Internet/games you designed”. Something similar happened when my friend Logan introduced me to Keith Baker (Creator and designer of Eberron and Gloom) and we ended up brainstorming for his steampunk adventure while munching on street pizza. This was as fun as playing a game.
In 2008 I left Gen Con feeling like a Rockstar… In 2011, I can say, beyond my inner demons and gnawing doubts, that I am close to becoming one.
Provided I don’t fuck up the Marvel licence…
Phil: Gee insecurity, thanks for the vote of confidence.
Insecurity: Hey dude, that’s why you keep me around, I keep it real!
Phil: Oh go suck on AD&D second edition won’t you.
Insecurity: I’m hurt, you were a nice guy before you became a celebrity…
I also got to celebrate with the nicest people I met on Twitter. You know who you are as I can’t even attempt to namedrop you guys without making a mess of the whole thing. From the WotC Community crew and fans to the people I gamed, ate, caroused and walked around with, you all made my Gen Con a great experience.
A special mention goes to artist and freelance writer Claudio Posas:
As some may know, my Sunday trip home was canceled due to catastrophic failure of the plane’s brake AFTER an emergency stop on the runways. I therefore spent all of Monday at the airport with my new Brazilian friend, shooting the breeze, playing games and sharing our philosophies about life, family, women and gaming!
(I went back home on Tuesday morning).
I’ll try to catch up with you next week as, hopefully, my schedule clears up.
Now I’m diving back into Marvel pre-design work.
Thanks for sticking around, more awesome stuff coming up.
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 4: The Pit and The Plan
This post is part of a continuing series on how I became a freelancer and game designer. You’ll find part 1, part 2 and part 3.
The Amazing Ride
I came back from Gen Con 2008 surfing the wave of a certain type of madness that was later labeled as “Hypomania”. Excited beyond belief, ready to take on the world as a writer and a designer, I started a ton of projects and wrote all kinds of weird posts, including my all time favorites, micro-posts I dubbed “Yet Another 5000 word epic post about the contents of my laundry basket” Here’s an exemple:
What Gen Con Meant to Me
Feeling: I entered Gen Con 2008 feeling like a Nobody, I left it feeling like a Rockstar
Lesson learned: Edition Wars hate mongers are idiots. Rules are lies, Game systems are guidelines at best. Bask in the awesomeness of your bile and leave us alone while we have fun.
That was it, barely 70 words but oh so filled with emotion.
That part of my life was one of roller coasters and thrills. I started a new blog to talk about my design activities, I started a photo webcomic about talking D&D minis. I created a project called “Kobold Love” (a D&D adventure where the PCs were kobolds and the quest was to go and kill the good-aligned quest giver that kept sending adventurers into the dungeon, killing all the monsters).
I had great ideas aplenty, my mind aflame, sleep a luxury I decided I could do without. Hell, one of the D&D designer I admired the most told me I could bounce ideas his way once in a while.
Oh how much I burned that bridge… the once in a while became A LOT, and TOO OFTEN.
Yet… as this magical manic phase receded, I found myself juggling way too much with almost no time left.
I started dropping balls; I discovered the concept of Nerd Projectitis (and even wrote about it a few months later)
The roller coaster ride of manic-depression was starting to accelerate into darkness… [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 3: RPG Blogging, The Revelation
The is next part of my autobiographical series on how I came to terms with the fact that I was I writer and how I then became a freelancer. It also marks my 4th anniversary as a blogger!
See part 1 here and part 2 here.
On July 24 2007, about 8 months after being hired as the Quality Manager for the Montreal Heart Institute Pharmacogenomics Centre, I opened up a Blogger account. I had all these fields to fill before I could get to the cool writing I wanted done. I spent nary a minute and settled on “Musings of the Chatty DM” as the blog’s title.
A choice I never regretted.
My first post was telling in terms of not quite knowing where things would go with the website (and my dubious grasp of written English):
I’ve been thinking for a long time about starting a Blog, I got an account at Live Journal (Unfinished 1st Post) and another one at Microsoft (3 Posts, hate the interface).
Since I have recently gone completely Googlely, I decided I might as well give Blogger a shot.
Anyway, I think I have always been blogging ever since I was given a email account. The only difference is that my readers (read: my D&D player’s mailboxes) were more or less captive of my musings. I think out of respect for them I should move away from that form of expression and do it on a Bona Fide blog. Of course, I can’t expect to have as many readers…. lol.
Sigh…
I’m currently reading Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek and I can’t help seeing a few similarities with his first posts, mine and those I see from talented new bloggers all over. First, we all look a bit like losers, seeking validation by using self-deprecation from the get go. Second, we all seem to struggle learning proper blogging English use. I mean, did I really say “lol” in a blog post? That’s like Wil’s overuse of the word “Lame” in his first few articles.
What’s “proper Blogging English” you ask? I touched it in the past:
While spelling and grammar are not hyper-critical (and can be helped by online tools), writing clear sentences, short paragraphs and ordering your thoughts in a comprehensive way is very important.
My first posts were short (yeah… pffff!) and very very numerous. I wrote about 860 posts in 4 years; each on average 1000 words each. At that time, I was looking for my voice yet still growing very fond of the act of writing just for the pleasure of doing so. What really got me going was getting comments from friends on some posts. From that point forward, I felt a great rush whenever I received a comment-notification email. I still love getting comments and read them all as soon as I can manage.
In August 2007, from the lofty height of my 30 days as a blogger, I cooked up my “Golden Rule of Modern Blogging“:
Write your Blog by assuming your boss, your wife/significant other/mom and your worst enemy will read it.
At that time, I was writing most of my blog post from work (guilty!) and I realized that I needed to start playing it safer. But, as I said in part 2, I was kept nowhere near busy enough to prevent me from knocking professional balls out of the park AND blog once a day at the same time. Of course… I didn’t edit my posts at all back then… so it was easier to just write and send while drinking the morning’s first Diet Coke (I don’t drink coffee).
I attribute 2 elements to my early success as a blogger (beyond my natural, if then unrefined talent as a writer):
The Linking Game (or the Birth of a Community)
First, I stumbled on the trick of linking to other blogs. At one point, I realized that I could write blog posts instead of leaving them comments on other blogs. When I did this, I instantly noticed how fast the blogger would come to check what the linked article said. This often started discussions and inspired blog posts between sites. In the late summer of 2007, I became close to a group of bloggers who had started at around the same time I did, namely the cast at Stupid Ranger (Dante, Stupid Ranger herself and Vanir who eventually joined us) and Zax a Montreal-born, Hawaii-based blogger who created and used to run Dungeonmastering.com. We exchanged links and emails a lot.
I also forged links with the guys that made me want to blog about RPGs: Dave and Danny over at Critical-Hits.com. They gave me advice and started dropping by the blog with witty comments and good feedback.
“Wait what?” aside: I merged with Critical-Hits in January of 2010, that’s why I refer to them as seperate here.
From this group grew a tight-knit community of what I would later call “The Second Generation RPG bloggers” (I then considered Jeff Rients and Berin Kinsmen to be among the 1st gen). We shared readers, links, reviews and news. This contributed to kickstart my readership but more importantly, it forged deep friendships that last to this day. Every time we can afford it, we meet at cons, game and organize events.
In fact, our annual Gen Con Drunken D&D, which now sports 4 DMs and 20 players, started in a hotel room in 2008 with 7 of those blogger friends sitting around a way too small table, having way too much fun.
Tropes!
I found my first (of many) voices as a blogger (and hit proverbial jackpot) when I started tackling tropes as playing aids for making RPG adventures. To this day, my Rule of Cool posts remains one of my favorite, most to-the-point post I have written (warts and all):
To transpose to RPG terms: Your players will put up with almost any illogical or “wobbly” plot devices or encounter you throw at them as long as things get cool enough. Which basically makes me think that my efforts as a DM should not so much be on far-reaching World Building and tight nitpicking-proof plot lines and such.
I should go all out for encounters and role playing that will swamp my players in coolness. Think combat on ice Bridges, negotiating the release of prisoners in a flooding underground prison, hopping from floating island to pieces of flying ruins in order to catch the thieves of the Star jewel of Radnia…
I had a blast writing about tropes. It fed my inspiration and growth as a blogger from the fall of 2007 way into 2009.
The Addiction Sets In
The blog’s success turned the endavour into an obsession. I was addicted to the sheer validation I got from the readers. So much so than my job of the time. The story they shared and the discussions they sparked were astounding. I was amazed that while people were battling trolls on their websites, I was surrounded by sane, polite (if passionate) people who really cared about the hobby. Oh I got a few rowdy guests (less than a handful in 4 years actually), but they were either convinced to behave and became lively, constructive participants (one even became a successful blogger) or were ignored.
Here’s a quick comment-management tip I think I got from Shamus Young (from Twenty-Sided) which I’ll paraphrase here:
A blog is not a public forum, it’s like your porch. People are welcome on it and everyone can discuss more or less freely according to your rules. Yet, when it’s all said and done, it is YOUR porch, and YOUR house. If people misbehave, or say things you don’t tolerate, you are free to ask them to leave. You can even kick them out and clean their messes.
At this point in my blogger experience, I found myself stuck in a pattern where I started to write for the readers. I wanted to generate responses, I wanted my inbox constantly flooded with comments. I was a slave to my blog and it started to show. Edition Wars posts, rants, contest posts, all these were plenty and easy to write… but I took less and less satisfaction from it I hit a few slumps and started looking for new voices on the blog. That’s when I started re-focusing on doing the blog for myself and consider its readership as a side-effect of the enthusiasm I pored into my prose.
Eureka, I’m mad!
While coming back from Gen Con 2008, in the grips of what would later be diagnosed as hypomania, I finally came to terms with what I was. I wrote this on the plane ride home:
I’m a Writer, because I blog and write Standard Operating Procedures for a living.
I’m a Writer, because I write adventures for my friends.
At Gen Con, I met many awesome people from the RPG industry as well as others, like myself, sitting at the edge of it all; many of them are Writers.
I don’t know why they are Writers. I’m a Writer because, given the opportunity to write about the things I love, I would do it 12 hours a day.Hell, I’d rather write than sleep!
Along with spending time with my family and gaming with my friends, writing makes me satisfied and happy. It brings me in the Flow: Time just stops existing while I spew stuff my mind makes up on the spot, my fingers flying on the keyboard at a speed that nearly matches my excited geek diatribes.
I’m a Writer, and I post my stuff on the Internet because I chose to ignore my doubts and stopped listening to my Inner Demons. I knew I had talent and I’ve managed to get a lot better since I started writing online 12 months ago.
I would love to become a published author of RPG material. I’d go absolutely geek-crazy to see my name on a Dungeon/Dragon/Kobolds Quarterly article.
If there was a way to make a decent living out of it, I’d quit my job in 5 minutes and never look back. Thing is, in the RPG industry, gamers won’t pay 400$ for a printed game system. While some would spend such a sum for getting a graphics cards just to play this “One computer Game”, you won’t see this happening in the RPG industry. Writers are paid like crap and amateur writer/fans often give out their work for free.
(I’m sure the same thing occurs in other writing fields.)
That’s not freaking fair but that’s life. I understand why it’s like that and thank God that the people in the industry are so nice. Quite often, just having a quick chat (or better yet a game) with a designer you admire makes up for all the work you poured into that adventure you wrote to run for your friends.
Be that as it may, I do not currently have the courage to leave my current job and jeopardize my family’s security to pursue the dream of writing full time. I do it in my free time and I make plans…Writers deserve better. That’s why I buy copies of new Role Playing Games I like. I want to support the creators like I hope others will support me some day…
Madness had finally struck me head on …
But with it finally came the Truth…
I was a Writer, I always have been and god willing, I always will be.
Chatty’s “Get it Together You Bum” game, V 2.0
This is a revised version of a post I published on our sister Tumblr site: Roll. As I realize it’s usefulness, I decided to move it here.
A few days ago I bought Chuck Wendig’s “Confession of a Penmonkey” eBook. I’m loving it so far, funny and insightful stuff!
Chuck’s a blogger, novelist and long time RPG designer. He wrote a ton of World of Darkness books I’ve never read…No offense man, I spent the early 2000′s elsewhere, but my friends tell me that Hunter: The Vigil was teh awesomez.
In his second essay titled The Writer Starts his Day where he discusses the eating habits of the efficient writer (stay away from processed carbs kids and love them eggs) this one snippet struck home:
...if you’re one of those writers who has a hard time Getting His Shit Together, you might want to cast a wary eye at your diet.
I so totally am such a writer. Not so much that I’m not prolific, I’ve proven I can churn tons thousands of words in mere hours. It’s just that I don’t do so in a disciplined and consistant manner because I’m so damn easily distracted and flake out on any effort that is “good for me” at the drop of a rationalization hat.
I want to become better, more efficient so I can handle more freelance work and actually get in that zone where I can stop procastinating (I’m writing this on my lunch break).
Oh that and seeing my growing-again paunch on last weekend’s convention pics… I’m a very vain person and that lard of tub needs some harsh discipline.
So armed with my newfound resolve and the gamification tools at my disposal, I present to you my newest Lifestyle game!
Chatty’s Get it Together You Bum: The Rules
I play to score the most point in a day. I score points by reaching incremental goals I set for myself. I’m considering using the iPhone’s “Epic Win” app to track them.
I keep a weekly scoreboard of daily high scores.
Scoring Sheet:
Productivity
- Write 1000 words = 4 points
- Doing it without interruption = 8 points
- Each additional 500 words = 4 points
- Sans interruption = 8 points
- Completing a significant work-related task = 2 points
- Sans interruption = 4 points
Health – Exercise
- Exercise 30 minutes = 4 points
- In one session = 8 points
- For each additional 30 minutes of exercise = 8 points
- Exercise with family for at least 30 minutes = 8 points
- Picking Bike over Car = 4 points each time
Health – Diet
Current “No” food: Candy, Fries, Beer
- Eat under my daily Calorie budget = 8 points
- Doing so without any “No Food” = 16 points
- Each fruits/veggies portion of a meal = 2 points
- Enter meal in My Fitness Pal = 2 points
Health – Family Life
- Each hour spent with family members= 4 points
- Each unbroken promise (to myself or family) = 4 points
- Perform housekeeping task = 8 points
That’s it. I’m starting this morning, by scoring 2 points for completing a significant, but interrupted task (darn IM and Twitter).
I’m open to suggestions.
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 2: Lessons from Day Jobs
Hey, I’m holding on to my promise and I’m posting a new post this week! Yay! Yes, its still autobiographic but I’ve got gaming stuff coming on the horizon and I’ll return to good old gaming posting soon.
In part one, I mentioned how cathartic it could be to write without boundaries (although I often write better when I have creative constraints). Just to prove the point, what was supposed to be a post about freelance writing advice more or less morphed into an autobiographical piece about what led me to acknowledge I was a writer.
So why not take things where we left off?
Of Water, Sludge and Paperwork
Armed with two diplomas and all the aspirations of a young wolf pup, I took a part-time job as a water samples analyst for a company that manufactured and sold pumps. Working 20 hours a week allowed me to bring back together the old RPG group I had left behind when I moved to the Great (mostly) White North. I called back Math (with whom I’d played RPGs since we were 13), Yan (from Pre-college) and Baboune (from my college years, he since moved to Sweden).
We played a bitchin’ Gurps campaign about sick dragon monarchs, scheming scaled siblings and daring heroes rising from the ranks of indentured humanoids (and a wight named Barry). I’m getting sidetracked again, and I’m sure I mentioned that in my “Gaming DNA” series a few months ago.
My stint as a water tester didn’t last very long, I made a few newbie mistakes and the signs of 6-months-itis started to show, a condition my new wife would soon learn to dread.
I left the company for a job as “research agent” for an environmental consulting firm. I was following the footsteps of 2 of my former Graduate student colleagues who’d held the position before. In fact that’s how I heard about the job in the first place…
Phil (on phone): So I hear you’re going back to do a Ph.D, how was the job? I’m interested.
Ex-Employe: It sucks rotten balls, don’t take it!
But I had set my mind and I took the job. I worked as a research microbiologist, writing academic-sounding material on the results we got on this huge bio-reactor contraption supposedly able to treat contaminated soil with bacteria.
I mostly remember getting up at 11 PM every other night to go and check on the reactor, which often spilled and lost all its content on the floor (that’s 400 liters of hydrocarbon-contaminated sludge as I recall) which I had to vacuum back into oil drums so we could restart the “monster” the next day.
For those keeping tabs on my players, that’s where I met Franky, then an environmental tech and Steph, the lab tech in charge of hydrocarbon analyses.
I did that for about 6 months, (yeah, that’s a pattern all right), before I started growing bored with it… Fortunately, the company’s ISO 9000 coordinator left the company and I applied for the position and got it.
Quality, Assured.
And thus started a decade-long history with Quality Assurance and the wonderful world of auditing processes and writing reports. Most importantly I started writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), lots and lots of them. Ask anyone in an ISO environment, they’ll tell you SOPs are boring as hell to read, and people usually HATE writing them…
But I don’t, I actually like writing them a lot. However, writing things no one ever really wants to read only gives you so much job satisfaction.
About a year after joining the company, I felt the urge to leave it… badly. Oh look, another 6 months gone by!
I joined a Montreal-based generic pharmaceutical company as a Compliance Auditor. I was the guy in charge of inspecting pharmaceutical plants and paperwork against regulations and document non-compliances in reports. Oh boy did I go to town with reports, emails, quality agreements and, again, SOPs. I developed a lot experience in the next years as an SOP writer and reviewer. Trying to make them interesting, complete and, later, simpler and less verbose.
(That’s what pays my bills as a freelance writer and consultant now ).
I’ve learned many lessons during my tenure in that company, the main one was, again, linked to editing one’s words…
One day I was working at my desk when the director of purchasing, this big german guy, came into my office and asked me if he could “borrow my computer”.
Phil: Well sure…
Herr Director (Fiddling with my Outlook): I know English is not your first language, and you are a good writer, but have you ever heard about spell-checking?
And he turned mine on and left my office.
Humiliating? Yes. Did I start hating the guy? No. He was right. And he had approached me face to face, not in front of my bosses, nor, as many assholes do, during a meeting. I appreciated that. He would later give me many more lessons about life in a large company… and an unplanned one about how NOT to talk to Parisian waiters… but that’s a story for another day.
I eventually became supervisor of the compliance group. One of my teammates, Eric, even joined our D&D 3.5 crew!
One of our team’s responsibilities was to oversee the writing, approval and publishing of all of the company’s 700+ SOPs. That’s where I learned another peripheral lesson:
Not everyone’s a writer…Nor is everyone a reader.
I didn’t stumble on long form blogging by accident, I started my short management career by writing emails that went on FOREVER. When an issue would creep up at work and I wanted to address it, I would often turn to writing ponderous emails first and go in excruciating details about the things I wanted fixed and how to go at it. Most of the time, people replied in (shorter) kind and we fixed things.
But every so often, I discovered that some individuals just.didn’t.get.it. They’d fly off the handle completely misinterpreting some of the things I wrote, ignore most of it or just get everything wrong. At first I became really frustrated and had dark thoughts about those colleagues; I put in doubt their intellectual prowess and willingness to do actual teamwork in the enterprise.
Then, one day, I set a face to face meeting with that one person that gave me the most trouble… and everything got cleared within minutes. That’s when I realized that the written media is not the best communication tool out there… it just was the one I had the most affinities with and that many struggle with it mightily, from both sides of the keyboard.
Chaos sets in
This brings us to the mid ’00s and where signs of my first severe depression started to show. During that period, I changed jobs three time. Fleeing stress and unresolved work issues became a sure sign of psychological distress. I kept telling my wife that the next job would be the correct one, that ‘this last company sucked” and “the next one will be perfect”.
I even left the generic pharma company and came back…
Herr Director (Sent by the company’s owner): You understand that by taking you back, the company is clearly saying they value your work and potential, but you leave again and you don’t get to come back.
Phil (gulp): Understood…
I left for a second (and last) time 15 months after my return. In that time I learned more about project management that I ever want to learn, but at least I now have many tools to plan and execute complex, multi-part projects, something that’s VERY useful when dealing with overlapping freelance assignments.
After having left Quality Assurance to try my hand at corporate training and Project Management , I returned in its loving arms and joined a human genetics research lab in late 2006 as a Quality Manager… shaking off my last depression symptoms.
Opportunity Knocks
I stuck around there for 4 years… the longest I ever held onto a job. During that time I built a whole quality system from scratch as I saw one should be built. It was also one of those academic places where things moved so slowly and expectations were set very low. So much so that I initially bristled at it all.
That’s when I realized something fundamental: Having an insufficiently challenged set of talents was not so much hindrance as an opportunity. While I found the job decreasingly satisfying (while still achieving great success), I could not, yet again, switch jobs without putting my credibility as a worthwhile employee at serious risk.
Or my marriage.
That’s where I started shifting my “untapped” potential into a blog……and the light finally lit up.
What about you, what lessons from work and day jobs has given you good lessons for later careers changes?
Up next: Lessons from blogging about RPGs and bipolar disorder.
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 1: Lessons from Academia
Warning: This post turned out more of an autobiographic piece rather than writing advice. Still, my key writing lessons of that period are outlined in there.
Right before sitting down to write these lines, I sent a pair of outlines for Dungeon magazine that, baring no major revisions, will lead to writing my first official D&D articles. My first in nearly 30 years of playing the game.
Looking back at one of the busiest springs I’ve had in a long time, I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ve become a recurring freelance writer and game designer. My prior experiences from 2008-2010 were not just statistical flukes; it seems I really made it.
The plan that I set out for myself 2 years ago (get better, get projects, go part time, go freelance) as I took the reigns of my life back from depression and bipolar disorder is unfolding beyond my initial expectations. I’m now fully self-employed as a writer and my wife tells me I’ve never been happier.
The upcoming months are shaping up to be as busy as the ones before. Back in 2010, I put aside my gaming so I could keep up with writing for the blog and prepare my training seminars. This year, I wanted to keep gaming, so I set aside blogging. I argued that I usually blogged about what I did and could’t blog about what I was writing… what with being under so many Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).
The thing is, blogging is cathartic for me, I write what I want, when I want, with no clear deadlines, no imposed subjects and no specific word count except the ones that I impose on myself. Hell this post’s not even going where I initially intended!
I LOVE blogging, I miss blogging… hell, aren’t I blogging about blogging right now?
So that’s why, as I laid to rest my last “rushing to deadlines” bits of work, I decided to take back control of my writing schedule to include a weekly blog post. I know, it’s a fraction of what I use to do, but now that writing is actually what I feed my kids and pay my house with, the era of blogging 5 nights a week has long passed…
…and asking you for dough is OUT of the question. At least, until I publish a book and kindly ask you all to buy it or help my kickstart it.
So that’s why I thought I’d start this new weekly habit by starting a new series (god knows when I’ll finish it) on my personal experience with writing and freelance work. Many of my Critical-Hits colleagues have already done so, chiefly among them my friends Chris (here and here) and Shawn who both had great things to say about freelancing.
I think I have a few, interesting insights to bring as I might have been one of the first RPG enthusiasts to have successfully managed the “Blog to networking to freelance” path.
So here goes.
The Early Years: French.
First off, while I only realized it late in my life, I’ve always been a writer. I became a voracious reader of novels during late grade school. I only slowed when I stopped taking public transport when I hit 19 and bought my 1st car.
When we started writing essays and stories in high school, I loved it! I was allowed to use verb tenses that we hadn’t yet covered because I convinced my teacher that “the story would sound better like that”. In later years, I would learn from younger students that some of my stories were being used in reading comprehension tests. I was pleased but I never thought about it as a career.
The Early Years: English
Being a Montrealer, I was raised in a French family (although my parents spoke fluent English) and went to French schools until my early 20s. I learned English watching Sesame Street, MASH reruns with my dad and deciphering Gary Gygax’s prose while in Junior High; I bought the 1e Dungeon Master Guide when I was 12, my first RPG book ever.
I started writing English essays in high school (as our academic curriculum dictated) and set out to devour English novels by the hundreds. My first authors, proposed by my mother, were Dean Koontz, David Eddings and Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman. None were pinnacle of literature, but all made for great, accessible reading for a 13-16 year old teenager.
When I turned 18, in what we call CEGEP (pre-university), I took my first English writing class. That’s where I made two horrifying discoveries:
1) English has a grammar. Up to that point I had been surfing with good grades by basically aping the sentence structures I had gleaned from books, unaware of the existing rules.
2) The torture that is multiple drafts. Each week we’d spend 3 hours (plus about the same at home) doing the following: Write and hand in a new text based on an imposed subject, correct the edited 1st draft we handed in the last week and correct the 2nd draft we had handed 2 weeks before.
While I “forgot” about that draft business, and consistently failed to apply it during my early blogging days, I now realize that writing is so much more than an easy game. The core of quality writing is editing and re-writing… no matter how much I still hate doing it sometimes.
I’m 38. I’ve known about the importance of re-writes and editing for a long time. Yet, I’m finally learning to respect it as a necessary step that separates good from great writing.
I passed that class with flying colours; the teacher told me I was one of the most creative writers he’d taught in years. Yet, once again, I failed to acknowledge I was a writer because I was too focused on studying science.
Mother: You have too keep all options open son.
Me: Hey that new AIDS thing looks like a cool thing to cure!
The second fundamental lesson I got from my pre-college years, I owe to my Modern History of the World teacher. In the first class, he (tried to) teach us the importance of building an outline when writing essays and, more importantly for the class, reverse engineer a complex text into its bare bones concepts by distilling it back into an outline.
Teacher: Each paragraph is a concept, an opinion. Each sentence an idea that supports that concept. You should be able to distill each paragraph in a single sentence and each sentence in one key word.
Like Neo, I got my first glimpse at the Matrix… I really did.
Adulthood, English Undergraduate College
I studied in Montreal’s most prestigious English university. Not so much out of pretension, but mostly because microbiology was taught directly as a major instead of a third year minor like in the other university I was considering.
Lab reports, academic papers, essays on the difference between men and women, the Scandinavian model of retail economics, the state of Multiple Sclerosis research and so on… I wrote a ton of stuff, stuff that would make me cringe if I had to re-read it.
By that time I was also writing my own GURPS RPG adventures as scene-based narratives; each containing way too much details but I relished doing it! If you see me at a con one day, ask me to tell you about the Monstrous Brotherhood, an adventure with all monster PCs tackling a Dark Tower that seemingly builds itself at night.
During my last year as an undergrad, I took an English class called “Fundamentals of Academic Writing for English Speakers”, yeah, don’t ask. This class taught me, among other things, how to do proper research, quotes and paraphrasing of research papers and academic journals.
At the end of the class, as I was focused on graduating and starting my master’s in environmental microbiology, the English teacher called me to his office and asked me if I would be willing to allow one of my essays to feature in an academic writing textbook his department was working on.
I said yes… Suffice it to say that I still refused to consider myself a writer. I was a scientist damn it!
Adulthood, Graduate Studies, French
I spent the next 2 years in a French applied microbiology lab, reading tons of scientific papers about bacteria and fungi that could degrade diesel, gas and oil spills. I worked with some crazy bugs that could eat stuff less soluble than your average rock!
My research director drilled a few very good writing lessons in my college-hardened brain: write simply, don’t fear reusing the same words and verb tenses all the time and consider your reader to be a complete neophyte in regards to the subject I was writing about. That’s where I learned that overuse of jargon was a common pitfall of writing.
Director: Assume I’m four years old…
Phil: That would mean you can’t read.
Director: Nobody likes a smart-ass Phil.
By the end of my second year, I moved 800 km north of Montreal, following my wife for her first post-graduation job. We spent 2 years there, I wrote my Master’s report while working as a high school science teacher; I generated 175 pages of ill-written, dubiously researched, greatly illustrated prose.
My research report was accepted with minor corrections. In my director’s comments, he wrote ”Phil has had a relative ease in writing the report”.
Yeah, I have a hard time getting a hint sometimes… but the light was starting to flicker on.
And so I graduated (1999) and started looking for “real work”.
I’ll tell you more next time.
What about you, what early writing lessons stuck with you?
The Old School Job, Part 2: The Lich-Sorceress’ Release
In Part 1, I gave a short description of the Old School Fantasy Hack I was doing using the Leverage RPG as it’s basis. I also set the scene for a an adventure I recently played. Now let’s dive back in.
Dramatis Persona Prise Deux
Var: Beastmaster Ranger-acrobat.
Legodrtz Lolthklorian: Lofty Neutral greyish elf Arcane Sniper-Archer
Elvis the Swift: Chaotic Goo revivalist of the Church of the Holy Tentacle
Tue: Chill Neutral monk of the Boot to the Head Dojo
Valoooovia: Chaotic Horny Amazon psychic sex-mage
The Pre-Crawl: Research
Things started out with the adventurers splitting up to gather info on the temple, its background and its newest occupants. I was curious to see how well this would go.
Valoooovia went to look at various records and found out that the temple had had a great many different denominations over the last century, many Good, most Evil. Her presence didn’t go unnoticed as she attracted the attention of a lovelorn spirit that attached itself to her, incessantly flirting with her.
Elvis and Var went to track the temple’s current “landlord”, a minor burocrat who was more than happy to discuss opportunities with the young, charismatic Lovecraftian revivalist.
Real Estate ‘crat: Did you know there are extensive catacombs below the temple? Perfect for dark ceremonies and having “guests” over for extended stays.
Elvis: What about pools? Do you have a pool down there that could house, oh I don’t know, a few cubits of tentacles?
Real Estate ‘cra: Why yes, we do! In fact, if you could help us with the troublesome, late paying scum exploiting such prime space, we’d be happy to rent it to you at a premium rate!
By that time I was completely off script… not that I had much to begin with. I was enjoying this growing story with the bumbling Priest-Bard so I grabbed at the idea and went to town with it.
Real Estate ‘cra: Here’s a map indicating a secret access to the catacombs and the pool in question. Good luck.
Tue and Legodrzt prowled around the temple when night fell, following up on rumours that some hunting “mommies” were out at night. Turned out that there was a group of 6 or so mummified hunters prowling around the temple, coming out from its main entrance.
Tue went out and tried to kick a few to pieces (catching a bad case of “A Mummy’s Touch”, a rotting disease with creepy maternal overtones, in the process). He took down most of them but missed one.
Legodrtz followed the last one from rooftop to rooftop and invoked a magical tracking arrow-head to embed in his quarry. While he succeeded, he got struck by some sort of psycho-necrotic whiplash, opening his mind to some tenebrous consciousness.
Chatty: Just know that “The Dark Heart Suspects”…
Legodrtz’s player: Hum, okay?
He also witnessed the mummy jump on a hapless bystander, rip its heart out and carry it back to the temple…
The Crawl – Short and Tentacle-y
I was now certain that this could be a “split-the-party”-friendly game, as long as I didn’t go into fully fledged combat scenes with a subset of players. This fits with what I recall from my experiences with AD&D 1e, the core inspiration for my hack (sans all the subsystems).
Using the newly found map and tracking the tagged mummy, our characters explored the catacombs, heading deeper toward what they assumed was “the Dark Heart”. I had them roll one simple orientation challenge before reaching their destination. They succeeded so I set up a confrontation (using the newly minted combat rules my friend Yan and I developed ).
The heroes arrived on a U shaped ledge connected to a lower level through a slide-like stone outcropping. The place was crawling with spineless/headless zombies as were two animated snakes-like creatures, each made of a freshly discorporated human spine and skull. There was also a pair of those Tomb Stalker mummies.
At the extreme end of the ground floor rose a ghastly wall of putrid, pulsating flesh: The Dark Heart. This was an undead construct made of the hearts of all the slain souls in and around the temple these last few days which in turn controlled all the mindless undead of the complex (the Bone Snakes and Zombies).
The fight lasted a good 60-80 minutes. Among it’s highlights were:
- Var, going all dual-sword crazy, took down a bunch of zombies in one go
- Legodrtz made his embedded arrow explode just to have the mummy take it out and throw it among the zombies near it… splattering them all over the Dark Heart, earning him “The Dark Heart Beckons” complication.
- Elvis summoning a tentacle pod that embedded itself in his flesh, which kept growing throughout the fight
- Chucking monsters down the ledges onto others.
Once the monsters were vanquished, leaving only the Dark Heart behind, Elvis tried to weaken it by transplanting his increasingly worrisome tentacles from his flesh directly into the Heart.
Chatty: All right man, usually the tentacles would play against you but this is kinda cool and “it” wants that. They’ll help you (hands a d8) BUT for each “1″ you roll, I can make them grow 2 dice levels. Once passed d12, you are consumed… you cool with that?
Elvis’ player: Oh yeah!
He rolled a one… and failed to weaken the Dark Heart enough…
Chatty: One more “growing”‘ and you’re tentacle compost friend.
Elvis: That was a bad move…
The situation was saved by Valoooovia who took out her wand of uncontrollable orgasms (I’m not making this up) and used it to summon the spirits of cheap doxies, slovenly trull, brazen strumpets and all the other shady characters featuring on page 192 of the the AD&D 1E DMG.
She sent them all to take down what was left of the Dark Heart.
Chatty: As the spirit-whore cries of enraptured bliss assault the mass of abandoned hearts, you feel a stony mass in the middle starting to tremble. One that hasn’t known such pleasure and abandon in centuries.
Valoooovia: Wha?
Chatty: Yeah, the middle of the Dark Heart is actually a Lich Sorceress’ phylactery. She hasn’t had “a good one” for so long that it basically explodes in orgasmic shards of sharp stones and pent-up arcane-energy. You win the scenario!
Epilogue
In hindsight, I feel I expedited the end a bit. I could have had the Lich-Sorceress come out during combat and create a race against time where the heroes would have to take the Heart down while the Lich blasted away. Yet, I hit the game’s core goal: successfully entertain a group of players for a few hours, including character generation. I’m quite happy.
The hack is a great success. It feels like a complete RPG. I just need to make a few final tweaks to the draft and it will be ready for editing.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. It feels good to be back!
The Old School Job, Part 1: The Temple-Brothel of Monte-Cookus
In a recent post, I alluded to working on something really cool that I couldn’t really talk about yet. Well I now can… As long as I don’t go into details.
Earlier this year, Margaret Weis Production put a call out for submissions of hacks of the rules appearing in the Smallville and Leverage RPG. Called The Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide, it brings together many game designers contributing to the sheer fun of hacking a game engine that just begs for being tweaked with.
The Old School Job
As I mentioned on Twitter a few weeks ago, my submission for 2 such hacks were accepted. What started as a “Hey wouldn’t it be neat if…” comment dropped by Cam Banks (Leverage RPG co-designer) and Dave: The Game turned into a fully fledged obsession and 8 000 words of playtested material.
I wrote a series of Leverage variants aimed at recreating the classic feeling of dungeon crawling adventures. The first hack, dubbed “the Old School Job” introduces rules for creating fantasy characters and mechanics to recreate my favourite elements of old school gaming (ignoring what I never cared for). The second hack, provisionally called the Dungeon Fixer’s Guide, is basically a Gygaxian dungeon fantasy primer presented through the lens of the Cortex Plus system.
I also presented two more submissions. One is a combat system that embraces the “we each get to fight” aspect that Leverage didn’t do so well (or as entertainingly). Finally, taking a page from the excellent “job generator” from the Leverage book, I wrote a series of tables that generate, within minutes, a fully fledged dungeon quest. I’m VERY proud of that last one.
I won’t go into more details but I can tell you that everyone who played it so far liked it. My players want to start a campaign with the system, how’s that for feedback?
What I can do, is deliver an actual play report of last Sunday’s game, it will showcase what the hack can handle.
Dramatis Persona
Var: Outcast ranger-acrobat possessing the power of befriending beasts.
Legodrtz Lolthklorian: Lofty Neutral grey elf (i.e. 1/2 Dark + 1/2 High) Arcane Sniper-Archer
Elvis the Swift: Chaotic Goo swashbuckling revivalist of the Church of the Holy Tentacle
Tue: Chill Neutral Zen monk of the Boot to the Head school
Valoooovia: Chaotic Horny Amazon psychic sex-mage
(Yes, you read that right)
Establishment Flashbacks
The game started with establishing a bit of the PC’s past. Each player set a short scene that lead to a challenge. Players then attributed a distinction to the character based on what occured.
Tue: Under the tender heckling of a ranting Timothy Leary-like sensei, our Zen Warrior-Monk attempted his final challenge: walking on a tightrope over burning embers whose heat was blown up from below the firepit. While he did fall, he managed to walk the rest of the way on the coals, scarring his feet but leaving him otherwise unhurt. That earned him the “Cold Feet” distinction from the other players.
Valoooovia: At a yearly ceremony where the sex-sorceresses of the jungle temples choose mates from the surrounding tribes, Valoovia decided to take upon herself to console that one male who never, ever got picked, year in, year out. She was “successful” in that he volunteered to become one of the temple’s eunuch… if and only if Valoooovia did it. (Table cringe) That gave her the “Ball Breaker” distinction.
Legodrzt: Having once again angered his step-mom, the High-Queen-Spider-priestess of the Dark Elves, our trademark-dodging satire elf found himself fleeing the underworld. Chased by a bunch of really cool looking androgenic guards, he found himself at the edge of a narrow cliff. He failed jumping to the other side, falling to his apparent death. He awoke, unhurt, on a stone funeral bed, surrounded with valuable offerings. He grabbed some and went his way. That earned him the “Leap before you Look” distinction.
Var: Tracking a sleek, legendary panther, the ranger-acrobat found himself face-to-snout with it and only managed to trade blows (getting a bit bloodied) before it fled. While he lost it tracking it down a ravine, he found a funeral site, with a recently dead greyish elf, surrounded with valuables. He swiped some and went his way, quarry-less. That earned him the “Wounded Pride” distinction.
Elvis: Our neophyte priest summoned an aspect of the Great Old Tentacular One during a revival. As things went awry, and the enraptured cries of bliss of the newly converted turned to the screams and the sounds of crushed bones, he tried to slowly creep away. Stopped by a distracted guard, he used his silver tongue and a hefty serving of Chaotic Goo to slip out of that thorny situation, pocketing the guard’s pouch at the same time. That earned him the “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” distinction.
The Quest
The adventure started in the grand city of Monte-Cookus, a sprawling megapolis so large that it’s almanac is almost 3 inches thick and weighs 6 lbs. Our protagonists got summoned by an old adventuring friends, who, following an unfortunate treasure distribution session, found himself wearing a cursed ring of lust. Never one to shy away from an opportunity, he rented-out one of Monte-Cookus’ innumerable ”pay-by-the-month” temples and established “The Church of Ste-Luscious” (AKA the Holy House of Flesh).
He says it’s a tax write-off
He explained that he recently got chased out of the temple by some strange zombies whose skull and spine seemed to have been ripped out from the back. He escaped before getting hurt but he was ashamed to confess that he left a group of influent wives to fend for themselves within the confines of the temple. He asked the party to clear the temple of this threat.
Elvis: And what is to be our reward?
Pimp-Priest: Hmmmm, well there’s a sizable chunk of my monthly tithes in there, if you bring back my already late monthly rent you can keep the rest.
And so the adventure started…
In part 2: A Dark Heart, A sleazy real estate agent, spirit whores and tentacles with abandonment issues.
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