How to introduce games to beginners

Last few gaming sessions it fell to me to introduce relatively new players to games they've never played before. Of course explanation of the rules was in order, but I think there's a much more important part of the introduction that's going to set how the game is going to go - selling the game.

It's not a surprise to anyone who plays boardgames or has seen the filled to the brim shelves of a boardgame collector or a serious games store that many boardgames look intimidating. The size of the boxes, or the unappealing art, or titles that suggest ponderous industrial machinery

Doesn't he look like he's having fun?

may turn players away from what could actually turn out to be a really great experience. So selling a game involves both convincing players that it can be a fun experience and setting the mood of the game. So what I like to do when introducing a game isn't to throw out a bunch of terms like "it's a worker placement game" or "it's an area control game", or to immediately launch into a rules explanation ("in this game we are going to be collecting resources and then trading them!") but to describe the theme of the game and what the players are supposed to play as (not what they DO in game vis-a-vis moving tokens or playing cards, but what their characters/nations/merchants/whatever are doing in the game). So here are some evocative (or at least somewhat evocative) ways that I described some fun introductory games to new players.

Pandemic: there are viruses spreading unchecked! We are a bunch of scientists working together to cure those viruses before the human race is doomed!

Puerto Rico: we are governors of New Spain lording over towns and plantations, competing to see who can build the best city and send the most goods to Spain!

Francis Drake: we are English privateers sailing to the Spanish Main and then burning and looting right through it for a chance to win the favour of the Queen!

Orleans: we are French lords and we are building the best damn Medieval society we can! (this can also work for Castles of Burgundy)

Race for the Galaxy (or Roll for the Galaxy): we are developing our own unique galactic civilizations and creating an epic space opera.

Galaxy Trucker: we are building awful rickety spaceships, loading them up with goods and then racing them. Horrible hilarious things will happen to our ships!

Lords of Waterdeep: we are a scheming cabal working against each other to control a city from the shadows. We are going to send a lot of adventurers to their doom!

This tells the players the theme and get them interested. Now arguably the gameplay is more important than the theme (there are some really theme-less or bland-themed games with amazing gameplay, and some games with great theme but crappy gameplay), but the theme is what gets the players interested in trying the game in the first place.

The second thing I do is compare the boardgame to a video game or a movie or a book or a TV show that the players are familiar with and that invokes the mood of the game. Instead of comparing to another boardgame, compare it to Firefly (Galaxy Truckers or Xia), or Battlestar Galactica (Battlestar Galactica game or Resistance), or Apocalypse Now, or Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings and so on. When I bring up this comparison I also try to point out WHO in this movie/book/video game the players represent ("so some of us are going to be like humans, and some of us are going to be like Cylons").

I know at least one of you is a Cylon. I mean government spy!

 It gets players invested not in the gameplay mechanics but in what the game is like - what the experience promises to be. Why do I think setting the mood is important? Because that's what's going to carry the game. Introduce the game as something silly and fun and that's the mood that'll prevail at least with some players. Introduce the game as full of intrigue, paranoia and secrets and players will be more likely to mistrust one another. Mood makes people play a role (you could almost say ROLE play...?) and immerse themselves in the game. For example in Puerto Rico you build plantations and warehouses and put things on ships. Hardly immersive right? And yet, right off the bat the players - once properly introduced to the game - started playing the roles of a corrupt governor, scheming merchant, declaring vendettas against each other (even though the game doesn't have any overtly aggressive mechanics) and it was just FUN!

The last thing I do in the introduction is give an example of something cool that a player can do in the game. Long before explaining the actual rules I can tell the players "Oh yeah, and you can totally double-cross people or totally play it straight and still win" or "you can marry the King of France and then have him assassinated and it's GREAT!" or "you can summon this huge monster that can kick everyone's ass!" I believe that what people get excited about in a game isn't necessarily the actual winning but other things you get to do. You can accumulate victory points in nearly every boardgame nowadays so there needs to be something else cool about your game to get players (especially new players) excited.

"Sometimes I get hard thinking about victory points." Said by no one ever.

 I don't think that people get excited about play Monopoly (although I don't know anyone who does get excited about playing Monopoly) because they get to roll dice and the object of the game is to bankrupt your friends. They get excited because they get to hold big wads of cash and plop hotels down and gleefully tell someone to pay their rent for a change. So single out one cool thing you can do or have done in the past in the game and tell new players about it. It will also give them a potential strategy to think about when they start playing and I think that's more important than explaining every single rule in minute detail.

So TL;DR for introducing a game to new players:
A. Tell them who they are playing in the game and what is the theme of the game.
B. Compare the boardgame to a book, movie, comic book or TV show that has a similar theme.
C. Tell the players what cool things they can do in the game.

What do you think? What's the best way to "sell" a game to new players?

The Classroom of the Future... tomorrow!

Spurred on by Margaret Wente's shrill diatribe against teachers and their unions in Ontario (not wholly undeserved - I could say two or fifty unpleasant things about the Ontario College of Teachers), and by the end of the school year, I started thinking about what would an effective classroom look, say, 7 years from now. A lot of this is going to be generalizations though, but I think the numbers bear out. So given that:
- the supposed purpose of education is to provide valuable skills and knowledge to the new generation
- the costs of education per student are going up, while enrollment is actually slowly decreasing, and education is consistently the second highest portion of government spending not just in Ontario but across Canada
- education is seen as being vital to a 'successful' career
- teenagers are busier than ever with part time jobs, community hours, trying to find internships to help with business/pre-law/pre-med/etc. applications
- all phones will be equivalent to today's cutting-edge smartphones
- Internet access will be ubiquitous (it might be heavily censored in the future, but at least access to it will be a given in Canada)
... I think that the current model of education will be dangerously unsustainable and counter-productive in every way. The province is already trying to cut $70 million this year in under-used schools (see link above), and this number will only increase in the future even as class sizes increase. Education as it is right now is unsustainable. It is unsustainable economically, it is unsustainable environmentally (the cost of power, the cost of fuel to transport students to the school, the tremendous waste of supplies created by ever school, cost of constant renovations), and it will soon become unsustainable morally.

"Wait, what?!" Hear me out. Schools no longer have a monopoly on information for young people, nor do they any longer have much of a moral ground when it comes to teaching some kind of objective knowledge and giving useful skills. Maybe up to a certain point (say Grade 6 or 8) the institutional, structured, orderly classroom is preferable, but afterward the students are wasting time and potential. I'm not talking just about gifted students, I'm talking about students in general. The only reasons the lesson periods are as long as they are is because we (education system and society) need to: a) keep them from 9 to 3, b) because the classes are damn big and much of the lesson gets lots in the static and needs to be repeated. The high school years as they are structured now are a big waste, and the amount of time spent on transmitting the curriculum requirements into their fragile young minds can be condensed. Even if we keep 12-grade system, the amount of time per grade could be reduced without sacrificing quality. Assuming that we are willing to do some radical changes, that is.

So here we go, let's put our futurology hats on:
- Education needs to be far more virtual and distributed than it is now. Rote memorization of knowledge in the age of ubiquitous internet access and smartphones is laughably obsolete. A smartphone with net access is for most intents and purposes a crude exocortex memory. The age of polymaths and encyclopaedics is over - you can either be an expert in a very specific field, or you can know a little about a lot of things and depend on freely accessed knowledge for anything that requires greater detail. What we really need to focus on is the development of research, search and analysis skills. We assume that young'uns today are super-duper tech savvy because they spend so much time on their damn phones, but nothing is further from the truth. I can do things with browsers, spreadsheets, word processors, or PowerPoints that leaves their mouths gaping, and I'm not even especially computer-literate.
- To make education more virtual and distributed than it is now, reverse classrooms need to be implemented widely, from Grade 9 on. What is a reverse classroom? The teacher posts the lesson in the form of a document, a YouTube video or podcast (typically 20-30 minute length), Smarttech lesson, etc. online and assigns work related to the lesson. The students watch/read the lesson on their own, and come to class to work on their homework, assignments, or get further assistance from a teacher. Only we need to gradually push the envelope further. The work can also be completed online - a simple bot could watch the completion of work and compile a report for the teacher on which students did their work and in what time. What does the teacher do with the rest of his/her time? Well...
- The class sizes will become bigger. That is inevitable as the governments (witness McGuinty's slow about-face on teacher wages going on right now) will reduce education expenses. With reverse classrooms, however, the class sizes will approach mid-range university classes (40-50 students per teacher). The teacher, however, will spend most of his/her time evaluating work, preparing lessons, assisting with any inquiries, and facilitating. Facilitating what...?
- Student apprenticeships. This is not a new idea and indeed many schools already implement it, but rather stupidly only for those students who have no chance at all of academic success. Well, we should replace those community hours (so many of which end up being faked anyway) with meaningful and varied apprenticeships. Build a professional online network of Ministry-of-Education-approved local businesses in each school area. Let students have a large degree of freedom when selecting their apprenticeships, let them try out a different job every month, maybe even hold bidding competitions on who gets what position.
- A typical student day might be something like getting up in the morning, checking messages from guild members (read on!), teachers, heading off for a few hours of apprenticeship. While on the way, listen to a lesson or two, fire off a couple of questions or quick homework. After work meet up with guildies online or IRL, raid some lessons (OK OK, I'll get to it in a second), complete the work. Once or twice a week come to progress meetings with the teacher, or remote in.

Alright, so here's my crazy/maybe-revolutionary idea of the day. Education needs to start taking cues from the psychology behind social networks, facebook games, and Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs). All three of these are so wildly successful because:
a) we connect to other people and we can share our success and brag about it
b) the tasks are broken down into small incremental steps, and the completion of each step rewarded with small but increasing rewards
c) as rewards increase, so does the difficulty
d) they create a community built around common interests and goals
I think it's all too plain how the MMO/social network can apply to education. The requirement for teamwork and cooperation and social learning is already written in the curriculum, but it's not very meaningful in the current homework. Students can complete work in short bursts, with each successful completion opening up new challenges, but also rewards. What rewards? Maybe preferential bids on apprenticeship gigs, grades, whatever. Even money (see the effect financial rewards have on grades - heck universities and colleges already do so with bursaries and scholarships)! So while the overall grades and performance of the student will be assessed on an individual basis, progression through curriculum and additional perks will be possible through social interaction and actual teamwork. Heck, plug in augmented reality eventually and it will really be like something out of science fiction!

"Will there be rabbits George?"

Haha! And you thought this blog was dead! You fools! It only rises again and again, stronger and stronger! (Or other Greyjoy words to that effect) I guess recently I've had more free mental time what with the school year winding down at all, and also more intellectual stimuli, so there are a few blog entries incoming, but today I want to talk about settings and setting the scenes in RPGs. That's of course a huge and nebulous topic, but I just want to throw out a couple of recent observations. Having recently taught Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" I remembered how much I love Steinbeck, much more so than Fitzgerald or Hemingway. There is real pathos, real emotion, and well - real reality, in his words. He is also adept at making a fictional setting as real as it can be in relatively few words, and there are a few lessons that Game Masters running a RPG can take away.

First of these is to not worry so much about verisimilitude when setting a game in a real-world location. What Steinbeck demonstrates so powerfully is that what matters is not getting every single tree, stone, and brook right, but getting the sense of the place right. Is Soledad Valley real? Yes. Is the ranch from "Of Mice and Men" real? No, but it might as well be because it is so believable and it fits with what knowledge and preconceptions we might have about ranches in southern California in 1920s and 1930s.

Secondly there are the descriptions in pre-made adventures. Normally I like pre-made adventures; they make my life easier by reducing prep time, they give me ideas, maps, and ready-made characters to use in other games. Most of them, however, commit the cardinal sin of poor descriptions. They are either extremely verbose in attempting to explain to the players not only what the scene looks like, but also where everything and everyone is in relation to players; or they are too sparse. I think the primary use of a scene description should be to establish the feel of the scene and the most evocative and important details and then get out of the way. If you need to explain to the players where specific details are in relation to them, use a map or wait for them to ask specific questions. Steinbeck does occasionally take a page to describe a place, but these are exceptions. He can establish a character's presence or the imagery of the scene in but a short paragraph, because Steinbeck realizes that he doesn't need to be Dickens.

Lastly, do not be afraid to use literary cliches to describe a scene. This is not to say that everything that comes out of GM's mouth should be a cliche (God knows I'm guilty of that often enough), but that cliches are cliches because they work. They act on our minds, evoking certain understanding and imagery that has been ingrained in our memory by media, literature, art, etc. They also work because cliches can quickly summarize an understanding that would otherwise take far more words to achieve. This applies to characters as well as settings and scenes obviously.

An ideal RPG

I've been running role-playing games (RPGs for short) as a Game Master (GM from now on) for nearly 15 years now. I think I've ran maybe 10 different systems (including the different iterations of Dungeons and Dragons), played in several more, and read maybe 20+ different systems. In additions I've tried my hand at writing my own systems, and got paid for contributing to a game system (Fantasy Flight Games' wildly successful line of Warhammer 40k RPGs). So I have some weight to opinions on RPG design. In all this time, however, I've never reached my platonic ideal of a perfect RPG to game master (GM). That said, however, I have some darn good inklings as to what my ideal RPG to GM would look like.

Minimum of rules for maximum of results

I want a system that doesn't provide me with minute rules for every possible action a character can make (never mind that it's an impossible task). I want a system that tells me how I can quickly come up with my own rules to adjudicate character actions. I don't want a system that needs tinkering, or a lot of rule memorization, in order to work. I want quick tools that are applicable in the maximum of situations. What RPGs so far might fall under this heading? The closest I've seen so far is Mouse Guard (based on Burning Wheel system), Wushu (terrific for one-session play, but a little too rules-lite), and (albeit with some tinkering) the New World of Darkness RPG from White Wolf.

Plug and Play

My ideal system does not require much (or ideally not any) tinkering to be used with a variety of settings and groups. I don't want ponderous rules for spelling out the nuances of all the individual species, classes, gear, etc. I want a system that focuses on character actions and decision regardless of what setting they might be in. The adventures of Odysseus are - despite the obvious differences - similar in structure and motivations to those of Jack Carter of Martian Chronicles, or many comic book heroes, or whatnot. That's what interests me more: the actions of the characters, their motivations, their adventures and personality. That's what I want the system to focus on, not tables upon tables of every conceivable minutae.

So easy your grandmother could use it

I'm not a dumb person, and I have a reasonably good memory, but I want the minimum of memorizaton required. If the rules could be fit on a DM screen in their entirety I would be ecstatic. If I could hand the rules to my players and they'd be familiar with them after 20 minutes of reading tops I would be ecstatic. I don't want a challenging tactical simulator (I'd play video games or tabletop wargames for that), or a super-realistic game. My criteria in this category is that the system should at no point slow down the game or take away the fun.

It keeps going and going and going...

There are many so-called narrativist and rules-lite systems that already do most of what I've set out above. Most of the ones I've looked at, however, suffer from a particular flaw - they do not support character progression with meaningful rules. The players are at heart stat-munchkins (even if they say otherwise). They want to see numbers change on their character sheet. They want to feel that their characters change in more ways than just their role in the story. And they want that progression to be meaningful and visible (again, even if they say otherwise). Most rule-lite RPGs I've read work great for short adventures or one-shots, but few offer this kind of progression that satisfies the players.

I've got the world on a string

The characters won't be doing much if there isn't a world to do it in. World building is a fun part of any GM's job and most of creativity and imagination goes into world building. All too often, however, I get frustrated trying to adapt a particular system to the world I have in mind. I look at the feats or skills or advantages or edges or aspects or whatnot that I would have to come up with for my world in order to make it work as intended. And therefore I return to my first point - instead of rules I want tools to help me make up monsters, people, effects, vehicles, gear, etc., on the fly without having to look through a book (and normally I'm lucky if it's just one book, usually it might involve multiple supplements) and thus grinding the game to a halt. That just ruins the fun and wastes time for everyone. Also, if I have to spend more time preparing for the game than actually running it, then I do not want to run it. That's why I don't run Dungeons and Dragons (of any edition) anymore.

Am I asking for too much? Eh, I'm sure I could get some good answers about people's favourite systems that purport to fulfill all my criteria, but to be honest - and arrogant - I doubt that they would. Eventually I'll build my own and inflict it on my players!

When storytelling goes bad

After sinking 40 hours into Dragon Age 2, and completing every side quest I could possibly find, I feel that I could write a good and thorough review of the game. Instead, I find myself more inclined to discuss how storytelling - which is something that Bioware is very good at, gameplay is a different story (from game to game) - had gone wrong in Dragon Age 2. Simply put, there are certain side quests, parts of the main plot, and characters, that show the quality and commitment to a compelling story that I've come to expect from Bioware, but somehow these never quite come together and coalesce into that quality, instead being overwhelmed by muddy writing, puzzling decisions, and frequent yawn-worthy and cliché plot twists.

Let's start with where Bioware went right when it comes to story. Some of the new companion characters and the NPCs are quite good. The Welsh-tongued Merrill - an Elven bloodmage - is a wonderful character, and her story arc was the more memorable of the side quests. I also couldn't help but like the carpet-rug-of-a-chest charming Dwarven rogue Varrick=, quick with a wit and his shotgun-like crossbow Bianca. Some of the other companions (more on them in the not-so-good section) have some redeeming qualities or amusing dialogue or quests. The other good part of the game is the excellent background information provided via the Codex entries (the character's in-game journal), and additional background information revealed through inter-character dialogue. I was particularly happy to see more information on the intriguing Qunari race and culture. Some of the NPC dialogue in the game is very sharp - I particularly liked the writing for the Viscount of Kirkwall (the city where the bulk of Dragon Age 2 takes place in). The main plot is for the most part a huge disappointment, but parts of it were well-written and frankly would've made a much better main plot than the actual complete plot of the game.

And then the storytelling begins to break down.

I have a strong feeling that Bioware - drunk with success of Dragon Age 1 and Mass Effect 2 - went on a creative spree, and then got bogged down in committee politics and couldn't decide the story idea to go with. So they picked three (or four or five - depending on the interpretation of the Dragon Age 2 plot) ideas and mashed them together hoping that they'd get an epic story out of it. Sadly what they got instead was a disjointed weird mess that never succeeded in really gripping me and getting me interested in the ultimate fate of the characters and the world. It did not even significantly advance the plot of the series. Some of the Downloadable Content (DLCs) for the first Dragon Age, and the Dragon Age expansion, did a better job of that, than the entire Dragon Age 2. Bioware went with an idea that once seemed very fresh in gaming, but now seems to be getting a bit stale - the game is a story told by a character in game (not by the main character, however, like in Prince of Persia) to another character. That allowed Bioware to do a lot of fast-forwards, by as much as 3 to 5 years at a time. Unfortunately what it resulted in was a disjointed and stunted story that fails to engage the player. Just when you think you're getting a handle on the story and the characters the story ends abruptly and a new one begins, and the time in between is not adequately explained. In fact, I would say that most of the character growth happens off-screen, and that brings me to the next strike against Bioware.

In the first Dragon Age I could create my own character, give him the name I wanted and generally make him a blank canvas (aside from the opening background adventure). In the second Dragon Age, however, the character - named Hawke - already has history, family, friends, and rivalries. Bioware clearly wanted to duplicate the tight storytelling of Mass Effect with its use of Commander Sheppard, with the decision to replace a player-created character with game designer-created Hawke. However, the travails of Hawke and his/her family just never really engage. First of all, everyone in the world seems to know more about Hawke than the player does, and much of the dialogue is incoherent, incomprehensible, or flat out boring as a result. Secondly, Hawke does not really grow as a character, and the decisions that Hawke does make just don't seem like the decisions of the player; I couldn't shake the feeling throughout all 40+ hours of the game that I was just along for the ride because Bioware wanted to make a game with a fully voiced dialogue. Thirdly, I just couldn't bring myself to give a damn about Hawke or his/her family and problems. The family members either spend most of the time off-screen or are flat out annoying and unlikeable. Hawke's problems seem rather illogical and forced upon a player. After Act 1 of the game Hawke becomes very rich - surely s/he can just choose to leave Kirkwall with the family now, but oh no the writers don't even give that as a dialogue option! The character - and the player by extension - is simply not given an option to contemplate that there is another way the character's problems can be resolved! Very sloppy and ham-handed writing guys, seriously.

Finally, while I did quite like Merrill and Varric, other companions, however, were far more lacklustre, and felt more like cardboard cutouts with cliché-ridden quests for the most part. An ex-slave Elf with anger management problems, an asshole younger brother (or a slightly less bitchy younger sister option), an honour-and-justice guardswoman, a sex kitten pirate lass, and a certain apostate mage from Dragon Age making an appearance. Hrm, I think I have seen characters very much like these in... wait... I'll remember... Oh that's right! Every other Bioware game all the way back to Baldur's Gate! Some of these have some redeeming qualities (Isabella is at least hot and has actual character growth, Aveline is hilariously bad at wooing a fellow guard), but these are not frequent. Some companion stories and quests never actually get resolved (here's looking at you Fenris who exacts his revenge and yet doesn't really change in any meaningful way, and Merrill who just seems to shrug off the terrible tragedy inflicted on her), but I was most disappointed with Anders, who was one of my favourite characters from Dragon Age. It's not the fact that he comes out of the closet in Dragon Age 2, it's that he loses anything that made him a fun and interesting character in the first game, and instead he becomes a dour, whiny, and unlikeable would-be rebel. The rather abrupt and annoying plot twist at the end helps transform Anders from a likable and interesting character into a total prick whom I was happy to dump (as a party member and um - more).

Finally, as much as I have already said about the overall story, and how disjointed it felt, I have to single out the ending of the game in particular, because it sneaks up on the player with little build up. In fact, it's fair to say that the first two acts of Dragon Age 2 have less overall impact on the end of the game than a few seemingly innocuous quests. And the two big reveals at the end (yes there are two, and a disappointed groan was my response to each WHAT A TWEEEST! reveal) were so ludicrous that I am very tempted to dismiss these as massive exaggeration on the part of the character who tells the story of Hawke, rather than events that actually happened. The cherry on top is that the game actually ends on a "Ooooooh, there's something mysterious going on and it's linked to the Warden from Dragon Age 1 and is so mysterious that we cannot possibly tell you more!" I, however, basically felt that the 40+ hours I sank into Dragon Age 2 were completely wasted and did not advance the story of the series one iota. This game might be played as a feeling of completion ("Hey, I played Dragon Age, so I should play Dragon Age 2 as well"), or for the gameplay (which frankly has its own slew of issues), but sadly - unlike other Bioware games - it shouldn't be played for the good story.

Brief musings on fantasy and sci-fi today

What I've come to realize is that for the most part sci-fi and fantasy writers depend on certain tropes and styles of writing and rarely step outside of those tropes and styles to examine other types of fiction. Patrick Rothfuss writes very well, but what sets "Name of the wind" from most other fantasy and has distinguished him so much among the fans of fantasy fiction is not the originality of his world (because it's hardly original), but how he writes. He exposes the typical sci-fi/fantasy fiction reader to styles and tropes that are not typical to these genres, therefore setting himself apart and appearing original. Same reason I suspect that Mieville has had to much success.

While Rothfuss looks to autobiographical/storytelling styles of fiction, Mieville looks to Pahlaniuk's urban fiction/stream of consciousness/minutae OCD style. Neither are found in sci-fi/fantasy very often, and thus both appear as a breath of fresh air.the styles and tropes in mainstream fiction have changed a lot since then. And personally I find that far too many sci-fi authors are still writing like Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein and Vance were still alive (which would have been bold and original - and was - back in the day), while too many fantasy authors write quite blandly. Rothfuss, Mieville, Stross (I'm talking about his more out-there books rather than Laundry Files books), Vance, Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Ursula LeGuin, and several others look outside of the established sci-fi/fantasy/horror mielieu for different styles and tropes. That's what differentiates them from yet more "elves with swords" or yet another "military space opera with blasters and FTL travel and aliens" (here's looking at you Tanya Huff) that cram bookstore shelves.

Yay the secret's out!

Yup, I'm that Arseni Kritchever who contributed to the FFG's Deathwatch Errata. Yes, it's kinda silly, and it's for a game, and it's not like even a book or something, but I wrote something, and it got published (even if only web-published) and I got paid for it, so I'm super happy!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=1869

Writing an RPG product

Due to a stringent non-disclosure agreement I'm not exactly allowed to state outright the project I'm working on, but it's a small freelance writing project for a major RPG company. And oh yeah - it's a paying gig! How crazy is that! Unlike something vague and ambiguous ("Write a book on faction A or race B or optional rules C, and do whatever), this project actually has rather specific guidelines, goals, and deadline. Deadline I'm mostly OK with (actually I hit all the deadlines on this project - I'm rather proud of myself, as I took extra four months past the deadline to hand in my M.A. thesis.) I was, however, surprised by the challenge that even a project of this relatively small size became. What I initially thought would take a couple of evenings, and a couple of hours to clean up, actually took almost a whole week (well, evenings thereof anyway) and several drafts before I felt confident that it would be up to par. Even if it doesn't end up being published or ends up getting disassembled in the editing process I'm still proud of having worked on it and grateful for learning a new thing or two about writing an RPG product.

I think it's a truism that nearly every somewhat serious RPG player or Game Master will at some point or another attempt to write an RPG product, whether for personal enjoyment (or enjoyment with friends and fellow players) or in an attempt to break into the industry. There is a writer's streak in all of us RPG geeks, and it is a streak that is rarely fully quenched (see what I did there? I didn't just mix my metaphors, I forced them to copulate against the laws of nature to produce an altogether unwholesome and blasphemous offspring). Many of RPG players I know write 'into the table' to borrow a Russian expression. They write backgrounds for characters that they will only play for a session, or never at all. They write campaign and adventure ideas that they will never run. (Hands up those of you guilty of this? I recently checked my RPG document folders, including my backup disks from as far away as 1998-00, and I have well over 300 individual files directly pertaining to RPGs). They write up characters, complex plots, cosmologies, religions, most of which will never see the light of day (in an active playing session that is), confined to their head. However, even having indulged in all of the above for more than 12 years now, it is still different writing something that is meant to actually see the light of day, to be read and used by complete strangers, to be stamped with a publishing company's seal of approval. As I've said - it was quite a challenge and a learning experience. I look forward to when I can talk more openly about the product and the creative process behind it.

P.S. As an aside on the malady of "Writing way too much stuff for a silly game", the total word count of the material I've written for my Rogue Trader game and the wiki (oh yes, there is a wiki I've created for my campaign, it's a labour of perverse love as I happen to know that most of the players in the goddamn campaign don't even read the wiki - http://roguetraderottawa.wikispaces.com/) is now bigger than the final draft of my M.A. thesis. It's well over 25000 words now, and over 90 pages single spaced. As I've posted on Facebook previously, I don't know whether to be proud or sad...