How (Not) to be an RPG Superstar (Part 2)

And so my story continues, with good news! Paizo's announced that the next RPG Superstar is starting early (And also changing to seasons, so that people don't get super confused over years. Which seems fair, for those of us who are perpetually confused.) Thinking of entering? You should! It's a great experience, as my long-winded story will eventually wrap around to, probably. Check it out here!

Without further delay, back to my disasterpiece.

Maps: a thousand ideas flew through my head. Great and wondrous places of adventure. Things all across Pathfinder's Golarion I'd wished a module or AP had ventured to. Places that had nothing to do with Golarion that I thought were totally cool but didn't really fit at all. Places that probably had no right ever being on a map.

But there was one glaring fault with all of them. Words.

Big words, fancy words, descriptive words. Made-up-fantasy words! Words that people have to look up in the dictionary! Words! Spoilers: I frickin' love words.

The problem is, I think in novels, not landscapes. It's always been that way, and is one of the main reasons I ended up majoring in English literature. Hell, my degree pretty much gives me the right to make up and destroy words at will. Pickupable? Totally a word. (Best used for NJ pizza, greasy and thin and folded properly into pickupable form like a civilized human being.) I've always, in my heart, fancied myself a bit of a writer. Not once did I ever imagine being a cartographer.

So I sat down and started fiddling with ideas. Sketching out (really bad) maps of three different locations that I thought were all pretty neat. I finished up, looked down at my work, and cried a little on the inside. They were terrible. A four year old could draw better maps than me.

I passed them around to a few choice friends, asking for opinions. "What the hell is it?" was a common sentiment. "Oh, it's this and that and this other thing," I explained. Great battles between PCs and the foes they might face danced through my head. "Oh," they said, "that sounds cool."

Sounds cool. Looks terrible (and vaguely phallic). I needed a new strategy.

I decided to go with the idea that--in my head--sold itself on its name. The Sodden Lands: it's wet and it sucks and there's a hurricane beating on your head, like, all the time, or something! Sounds like a cool place for an adventure. I've already got a whole adventure forming in my head, with those poor bastards who never managed to evacuate eking out a pitiful existence while being harried by the boggard tribes and the storm and the whatever else...

Which I think, more than my inability to draw or think in maps, was my real downfall. The idea sold itself on the awesome adventures in my head, not the map on the paper. My 'pit crew' (since this is what they're called, for whatever reason) nodded and hmmed at it, mostly because they'd cheated and heard my original pitch. Their opinions had been invalidated by knowing the location by the stories in my head--like myself, the map wasn't just the map anymore.

This problem was compounded by the fact I'd decided to go with the idea that used an overland map instead of a 5 ft. per square dungeon map. Dungeon maps are arguably easier, since you can stick to a grid and add neat little features like doors and traps and holes and whatever. But to me, a dungeon sounded boring without a story to go with it. Okay, so there's hallways and doors and traps and whatever, but why should I care? It just didn't feel alive to me; didn't feel like the sort of place I'd just drop a group of 4 PCs and say go.

Overland maps are way harder to draw when you don't know what you're doing. What do natural landmasses look like? Where would a town be built? How? How do rivers flow? Which way? Where do these things even come from? Is it like how toilets switch direction in the southern hemisphere? Is that even true? What happens when you're in a land of perpetual hurricanes and fantasy and magic and shit, do these rules even apply? Does the rule of cool override common sense?

I tried a dozen different iterations of the idea, and eventually came up with something that I thought looked passable. It wasn't good, mind you. Good was never the goal. The goal was simple: don't come in dead last.

I'm still not sure I actually accomplished that.

(Spoilers: 6.5/10 too much water)

How (Not) to be an RPG Superstar (Part 1)

In the world of people who want to be somebody when it comes to tabletop RPG stuff, there's this little thing that Paizo runs called RPG Superstar. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you already know what that is and need no explanation. On the off chance that you don't, the long and short of it is that it's an open call for wannabe designers to throw their hat in the ring. The winner takes all with a writing gig for one of the more successful publishers.

Since Gencon has a panel on "How to be the next RPG Superstar" (something that I certainly am not) and I'm too broke to actually get to Gencon, what better way to celebrate than with my own misadventures?

So this past year I figured I'd try my hand at it. I'd written bits and pieces for the Wayfinder before then, but if I was going to go at this writing thing for real... Gotta start somewhere, right? I had a handful of item ideas sitting around from various game I'd run for friends and games I'd wanted to run with friends. I pulled a few of my favorites, added a few new ideas, and bounced them all around in a blender. A little bit of tweaking and a bit of spit and polish and a couple of panicked edits later and then one was off into the great wide internet for public humiliation.

Weeks pass and the voting happens. Wow, I think, there's a lot of great items here! Shame mine will probably never make it to the second round of voting. The cull comes and goes, and I finally spot my item. Still kicking, still in the running. Huh. Hadn't expected that.

I sort of accidentally made the Top 32. A position that 1,000 (Or more? Who has time to check facts?) people are competing to get to. Suddenly I'm alongside a cadre of other great developers who have probably played these games longer than I have, more than I have, and have way more experience writing these things than I have.

I hadn't even really considered the possibility of advancing in the competition. It seemed like such an improbability that preparing for it would have been setting myself up for disappointment.

Okay, I tell myself, I can probably do this. I mean, I made it this far, that's got to mean something, right? I love writing, how hard could it be?

Perhaps the worst thought anyone can ever have.

Turns out the Round 2 challenge is a map. Not an encounter and a map. Not a story and a map. Not a map for a predetermined awesome location. Just a map with a tiny, tiny title.

Which, obviously, is a great way to test someone's design chops. It comes as no surprise to anyone that there's a lot of maps involved with the hobby. Maps of nations! Maps of dungeons! Maps of towns! Realistic maps! Fantasy maps! Fake maps! Treasure maps! All those old time cartographers exploring the world would be having a field day if they hadn't all died of horrible diseases like three hundred years ago, or something.

The only problem with maps is that I can't draw them. Like, at all.

I love this hobby. I love storytelling and writing and GMing and playing and the whole shebang. But when it comes to the visual side of the coin, I'm just downright awful. Even scribbling down my pathetic imitation of the (excellently drawn) maps in adventures onto the wet erase mat makes people cringe. And now I've got to draw a map of my own, without any words or story or adventure or anything to back it up? It's got to stand on its own?

I was screwed. Getting past the first round might have been a fluke or destiny or perhaps, maybe, some actual skill, but there was no way in hell I'd ever make it past the second round. No miracle by the gods or anyone else could fix this. I considered dropping out; it would save the public humiliation of having a terrible map forever plastered into the annals of RPG Superstar history.

I'd also be a quitter, and I've heard those people never win. Except when you quit smoking, because that stuff'll kill you.

And dead people never win. Except liches. But those guys cheat.

I had to go through with it. I'd gotten myself into this mess, and I was going to have to get myself out of it. Well, technically, it was the voting that would get me out of it (and it certainly would), but first I needed something to be voted down. I needed to do the impossible--draw a map that wasn't completely awful.

Dawn at Sea

The internet.

Perhaps the widest and most dangerous sea of them all. For all the stories told about adventure and exploration in seafaring, real or fantasy, there's always an element of mystery. The greatness of the vast, open ocean. The unknowns of its depths, the hidden isles beyond its horizons. And still nothing can even come close to the wonders found across this thing. Abyssal horrors from the deep can't even compare.

And despite all of the strangeness that may be out there, there comes a time to set sail and venture beyond the known shores, to leave the safe harbor for realms unknown.

At least, that's sure what it feels like.

I've never really been one for blogging. Or public speaking. Or being noticed at all, really. I've always figured it was best to keep my digital (and non-digital) footprint as tiny as possible. Better to go unnoticed than be remembered for failures and misspeakings. Because as we know, things on the internet are never forgotten. They're cataloged. Leaving all those random words out there for the internet to find? It's like my own personal circle of hell.

But the winds of change are blowing. It's come time to remedy this. If I'm going to make an earnest go at this whole writer thing, then maybe it's time to start sharing all these random ramblings. I mean, if everyone else on the internet can claim enough self-importance to tell the wide world their life story, why should I?

So feel free to join me in my journeys and misadventures as I talk (or ramble, or rant, or whatever...) about things. Tabletop games and RPGs, card games and video games, writing and freelancing, successes and failures, and wanderings near and far. There's a wide, wide sea of things to explore, and I'm an opinionated fellow. And knowing the internet, there's a good chance I'll offend someone along the way.

It's alright, though. I'm from Jersey.

We don't like you either.