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.
No comments:
Post a Comment