In my last post I mentioned that we had some insulting and abusive customers at the Expo I attended last weekend. I'm glad to say they weren't especially those things towards us - it was, rather, that these were fellows (every one was a boy-bear) took such exceptional pride in being assholes towards their players that they felt compelled to entertain us with boasting about their sadism.
I will not go into details. Mostly it involved detailed sketches of perverse devices and dungeon traps meant to gleefully execute players or mere gloating accounts of players they had twisting in the wind in their recent campaigns. Each of these demons invariably seem to think their games are insouciantly hilarious, that everyone else they speak to will feel exactly the same and that we are all simply dying to hear them go on and on . . . and on about it.
The most difficult patrons are the war story tellers. In most cases, easily 19 out of 20, I feel legitimately heartsore for their positions. They have no one they can talk to. Being a role-player and a figure behind a table, I'm more than ready to lend my empathic, considerate attention: as I have written a few times this year, the worst part of being a DM is that we are alone. There's little to no support in the community and anyone who dares to speak about their worlds is bound to receive nothing but a contemptuous eye-roll. I have expressed as much myself, years ago . . . but I have recently come to understand that we have to listen, and praise anything we hear that we feel is positive. DMs need it!
That twentieth fool, however. Sigh. They have no idea they're cackling about things equivalent to stealing ice cream from children and pushing people in wheelchairs down stairs. Worse, I can say quite clearly, "I don't feel the game should be played that way," without the words making the least impact. I don't mean the words offend, I don't mean they disagree with the words; I mean that these odious cretins don't hear the words at all. They're incapable of hearing condemnation or opposition.
One of our oddest encounters came when we had two professed players who described their DM as one of these fiendish bastards. They loved it. They gushed and tittered about their DM's propensity for systematically murdering off their characters with steady diligence. Once they departed, my daughter and I spoke about it for several minutes, in part disturbed and in part in awe of their obliviousness. It is remarkable that such people exist in the world.
Without question, there are toxic elements associated with role-playing. It's a natural progression from so much proscribed content over the decades concentrating upon silliness and excess rather than striving for collaborative, refreshing, novel and satisfying game play. To the toxic element, that sounds "boring."
We should realize that every human past-time contains this element. It is why restaurants have bouncers, why concerts have security, why it costs so much money to join a country club and why dress codes exist. It is why ball players get ejected by umpires, why penalty boxes exist in hockey and why some very talented people - who just can't control themselves - are sometimes suspended for the season or for the rest of their careers. Every organized community is ultimately forced to police themselves, to enable a better experience for the majority. Usually, it doesn't take long after the community's creation before something has to be done.
If I had one of these fellows - either DM or players - appear in my life (much less my table), it wouldn't take long before I showed them the door forever. But I know, having just met them, that there are hundreds, thousands, of players and DMs who just put up with them, because . . . well, I don't know why because. Or I know it, but I'll be polite and not say it.
Showing posts with label Edmonton Expo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edmonton Expo. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
So, You Want to Be a Vendor
As I've heard a lot of stories now from game/Con events, I feel I can offer some advice to anyone thinking of taking their artwork, skill-set or crafting ability to a Fan or Comic Expo. I offer this with the best of intentions - not to disparage, but to help. Many of the vendors we have met in the past have been extremely sensitive to the slightest suggestion; we've also seen some very green eyes as we've been selling like crazy as they sit, ignored. It doesn't have to be that way.
I'll organize these in point form. It's presumed already that the reader knows what they would present at a table at these Cons. I'll point out that it is actually very easy to obtain a table, to meet the requirements and so on; success, quite honestly, is a matter of approach. Consider each, as the reader will; we have done our best to incorporate every one.
1. Learn How to Sell. Being completely honest, this knowledge does not come from me. I have a number of skills but for most of my life, selling hasn't been one of them. My daughter, however, sells like a demon. Out of high school, like most young, slight girls, she dove into the retail business. Long before that, she had gotten involved with trading things on line, seeking out rare items, buying them up and waiting for the right sale. Her early experiences in retail shops expanded upon this for a while, until I thought she would make it her career; then she changed her mind and embraced merchandising as an alternative. For those who don't know, this means window dressing and organizing a shop in order to make customers comfortable and interested enough to buy. It is really just a means of organizing the space so that things are less confusing - and at the same time, encouraging.
I've had a crash course these two years in these things. I let my daughter set up the table, I take her advice on how to talk to interested parties, I smile and concentrate on what people say to me so that I can honestly and appropriately answer their questions, rather than trying to force a spiel on each individual. I open the book, I show it, I put it into your hands - and when the conversation lags a bit, I name the price of the book.
This last is amazing. For most people, this is all they need to hear to "close" the sale. They are already considering the book - but they don't ask the price because it doesn't occur to them. They aren't thinking about price; they are thinking about what it is that interests them. The price, when they hear it, "snaps" them back into the real world and reminds them that they only have to part with money in order to have it. Nine times out of ten, people immediately reach for their pockets when they hear the price.
I've seen dozens of vendors now who won't say the price of what they have. They are ashamed of the price they've chosen. They feel naming the price is pushing too hard. They will sit and mumble about the book for five, ten minutes, until the sale walks away.
If you want to be a vendor, either do it with someone who can sell - and then take their advice like it's gospel - or else go work in retail for six months and get good at it. If you can't get good at it, forget ever being a vendor. In this modern world, that means forgetting that you're an artist or a crafter that people will ever notice. If you can't sell your stuff, NO ONE will ever, ever, ever know who you are.
2. Ensure the Product Has Value. This is not as important as the first point; but if you want to sustain yourself for longer than a single show, the work has to be something people can view again and again, both from day to day during the event and the next time around. I had a lot of people in Edmonton come around just to talk about the books they bought from me last year, giving me an opportunity to press for them to support me on Patreon or to buy into my online classes - which, admittedly, were a hard sell. They require faith, since there's nothing concrete to support the notion that the classes will deliver what they promise - except my presence and what measure of credibility I offer.
We always see vendors who have a product that is, without a doubt, simply sad . . . particularly in Artist Alley. We all remember people who could reasonably draw in school: often this level of drawing is presented as "art" for $10 next to people who are displaying spectacular content at comparable prices.
Because it is all on display, the measure of the work is in the eye - and nothing is less forgiving than the quality of the art. I contend that many of the people who buy a table in Artist's Alley do it so they can roam around the Con for three days with a chair they can come back to when they're tired. They don't really care if they sell. If, however, anyone wants to "make it as an artist," the bar is more than evident. If the vendor isn't making work at this level, forget it.
3. Have a Story. It isn't enough for the work to be comparable or even amazing. My daughter, who has been to more Cons than she can describe (she's a cosplayer), makes this point: "What is it that makes this amazingly fine jewelry better or different from that amazingly fine jewelry over there?" There are artists all over the place and every person only has a set amount of money to spend. Most of them are carefully counting out every purchase because it means if they spend $15 here, they won't be able to spend that money somewhere else. This competition is always there - no matter what anyone is vending. Every book I sell is money out of someone else's pocket - because the buyers are going to spend their $300 or $1,500 or $7,500 on something before the con is over. That is an unquestioned fact.
Many of the buyers, however, know that the vendors have worked and struggled and banged their heads against their crafts long before getting to this point. People want to hear about this struggle. They want to know the reason behind the book, the inspiration behind this magnificent sword for $1,200, the concept underlying this set of figurines, the philosophy that impels this production company. Tell them. Anyone who has gotten to the point where they are selling their work at a Con already has a story.
Mine is simple. No one has ever written a proper academic book for a Dungeon Master who has been playing the game for ten years or more. No one has ever explained what we're doing right when we have a great night running. I didn't know myself before starting to write the book. I had a tremendous moment of inspiration - I realized that the situational awareness of an emergency first responder was applicable to the situational awareness of a DM during a game. It is all a flood of information in and the necessity of making decisions and managing people in a very short period of time. The fact that RPGs are not life threatening is irrelevant. The thinking process is the same. And as I explain this to varying degrees (depending on the listener), I get a tremendous response. I can make it very simple for people who only just grasp the concept of D&D - or I can dive into it as deep as I need for anyone who wants a detailed analysis of my thinking process. I love these people - particularly as their eyes grow wider and wider as I discuss the principles underlying details like capitalization of ability, managing negative responses to medical physio-therapy, pattern recognition, functional design or any of the other disciplines underlying the writing of my book. My story isn't "made up" - it is a straight account of how I got to where I am.
4. Don't Go Alone. This is fairly straight-forward. People try to be vendors without help, because they don't know anyone or they can't afford to pay anyone. It's awful. We need company, we need someone to talk to after an insulting or abusive customer (and we had them), we need grounding, we need mental rest and we need someone to encourage us to remain in a positive state of mind. Seeing people on their own, come mid-second day, it's clear how glum they are, how tired they are, how frustrated they feel if they're not selling or if they've underestimated the resistance to their product. It isn't good.
We don't need someone to help; we just need someone who we can talk to, even if we are doing all the work. If they're doing work too, all the better - but they better have more motivation than, "I'm doing this for that guy." They need a story too, they need to know how to sell too.
5. Go With the Right People. So, a friend of ours, Jim, found himself helping out an artist friend of his, David. David had been lax in his judgment and his booth had six "helpers" - girlfriends of friends and volunteers he accepted because "the more the merrier." After Friday's show, the first day, all of them - including David - got hammered drunk in the hotel room, with two exceptions. Jim and another helper, Brenda, went to manage the table - they were getting paid by getting a cut of the amount sold, so if they wanted any pay at all they had to do something. Saturday started at 10 officially, 9 for the early-passes. Jim and Brenda worked - no one else did. Throughout Saturday, the others filtered to the table, hung over, unhappy, tired and draped all over the chairs around the booth. David, the actual vendor, didn't get there until 3 o'clock.
The horror show didn't get better. As money collected, several of the helpers tried to rob from the cash box, even though it was supposed to be split. This got out of control and tempers flared. Half the booth wasn't speaking to the other half and the Con still had a whole other day. Guess what happened Saturday night? Yep. More drinking, a worse situation, three people not coming in at all the next day and Jim swearing at our table about how he was never, ever, going to do this shit again.
Being a vendor is serious. But stories like the above are going on all the time. Artists, having gotten there, don't care. Helpers come up to "help" and end up taking advantage of the one person who actually cares about their art. Helpers wander off and don't come back for three or four hours. Things go missing. It's really important to ask, "Would I pay my friend an income for what he or she is doing?"
I'm lucky. I have a sensible daughter. It is in the family. I heartily recommend having a child, raising the child to be a human being and then shutting the fuck up as a parent and letting the child run the table. I do this and it works great.
Conclusion. There's a lot more. Displays get built so that it isn't even possible to see the vendor. Vendors spend the whole Con sitting on their ass. There's nothing for the customer to touch. People ignore customers. Not displaying all of their product. Coming in late. Leaving early. Not trying in the last half-hour of the day. Having nothing that identifies the booth. And so on.
The people who make money are those who watch others and avoid. It isn't as important as one might think that the booth be stuffed with AMAZING things. Ours wasn't. But we were memorable because WE were; which is the point. I'm not selling a backdrop, I'm selling me and my book. Many vendors forget that this is the point.
I'll organize these in point form. It's presumed already that the reader knows what they would present at a table at these Cons. I'll point out that it is actually very easy to obtain a table, to meet the requirements and so on; success, quite honestly, is a matter of approach. Consider each, as the reader will; we have done our best to incorporate every one.
1. Learn How to Sell. Being completely honest, this knowledge does not come from me. I have a number of skills but for most of my life, selling hasn't been one of them. My daughter, however, sells like a demon. Out of high school, like most young, slight girls, she dove into the retail business. Long before that, she had gotten involved with trading things on line, seeking out rare items, buying them up and waiting for the right sale. Her early experiences in retail shops expanded upon this for a while, until I thought she would make it her career; then she changed her mind and embraced merchandising as an alternative. For those who don't know, this means window dressing and organizing a shop in order to make customers comfortable and interested enough to buy. It is really just a means of organizing the space so that things are less confusing - and at the same time, encouraging.
I've had a crash course these two years in these things. I let my daughter set up the table, I take her advice on how to talk to interested parties, I smile and concentrate on what people say to me so that I can honestly and appropriately answer their questions, rather than trying to force a spiel on each individual. I open the book, I show it, I put it into your hands - and when the conversation lags a bit, I name the price of the book.
This last is amazing. For most people, this is all they need to hear to "close" the sale. They are already considering the book - but they don't ask the price because it doesn't occur to them. They aren't thinking about price; they are thinking about what it is that interests them. The price, when they hear it, "snaps" them back into the real world and reminds them that they only have to part with money in order to have it. Nine times out of ten, people immediately reach for their pockets when they hear the price.
I've seen dozens of vendors now who won't say the price of what they have. They are ashamed of the price they've chosen. They feel naming the price is pushing too hard. They will sit and mumble about the book for five, ten minutes, until the sale walks away.
If you want to be a vendor, either do it with someone who can sell - and then take their advice like it's gospel - or else go work in retail for six months and get good at it. If you can't get good at it, forget ever being a vendor. In this modern world, that means forgetting that you're an artist or a crafter that people will ever notice. If you can't sell your stuff, NO ONE will ever, ever, ever know who you are.
2. Ensure the Product Has Value. This is not as important as the first point; but if you want to sustain yourself for longer than a single show, the work has to be something people can view again and again, both from day to day during the event and the next time around. I had a lot of people in Edmonton come around just to talk about the books they bought from me last year, giving me an opportunity to press for them to support me on Patreon or to buy into my online classes - which, admittedly, were a hard sell. They require faith, since there's nothing concrete to support the notion that the classes will deliver what they promise - except my presence and what measure of credibility I offer.
We always see vendors who have a product that is, without a doubt, simply sad . . . particularly in Artist Alley. We all remember people who could reasonably draw in school: often this level of drawing is presented as "art" for $10 next to people who are displaying spectacular content at comparable prices.
3. Have a Story. It isn't enough for the work to be comparable or even amazing. My daughter, who has been to more Cons than she can describe (she's a cosplayer), makes this point: "What is it that makes this amazingly fine jewelry better or different from that amazingly fine jewelry over there?" There are artists all over the place and every person only has a set amount of money to spend. Most of them are carefully counting out every purchase because it means if they spend $15 here, they won't be able to spend that money somewhere else. This competition is always there - no matter what anyone is vending. Every book I sell is money out of someone else's pocket - because the buyers are going to spend their $300 or $1,500 or $7,500 on something before the con is over. That is an unquestioned fact.
Many of the buyers, however, know that the vendors have worked and struggled and banged their heads against their crafts long before getting to this point. People want to hear about this struggle. They want to know the reason behind the book, the inspiration behind this magnificent sword for $1,200, the concept underlying this set of figurines, the philosophy that impels this production company. Tell them. Anyone who has gotten to the point where they are selling their work at a Con already has a story.
Mine is simple. No one has ever written a proper academic book for a Dungeon Master who has been playing the game for ten years or more. No one has ever explained what we're doing right when we have a great night running. I didn't know myself before starting to write the book. I had a tremendous moment of inspiration - I realized that the situational awareness of an emergency first responder was applicable to the situational awareness of a DM during a game. It is all a flood of information in and the necessity of making decisions and managing people in a very short period of time. The fact that RPGs are not life threatening is irrelevant. The thinking process is the same. And as I explain this to varying degrees (depending on the listener), I get a tremendous response. I can make it very simple for people who only just grasp the concept of D&D - or I can dive into it as deep as I need for anyone who wants a detailed analysis of my thinking process. I love these people - particularly as their eyes grow wider and wider as I discuss the principles underlying details like capitalization of ability, managing negative responses to medical physio-therapy, pattern recognition, functional design or any of the other disciplines underlying the writing of my book. My story isn't "made up" - it is a straight account of how I got to where I am.
4. Don't Go Alone. This is fairly straight-forward. People try to be vendors without help, because they don't know anyone or they can't afford to pay anyone. It's awful. We need company, we need someone to talk to after an insulting or abusive customer (and we had them), we need grounding, we need mental rest and we need someone to encourage us to remain in a positive state of mind. Seeing people on their own, come mid-second day, it's clear how glum they are, how tired they are, how frustrated they feel if they're not selling or if they've underestimated the resistance to their product. It isn't good.
We don't need someone to help; we just need someone who we can talk to, even if we are doing all the work. If they're doing work too, all the better - but they better have more motivation than, "I'm doing this for that guy." They need a story too, they need to know how to sell too.
5. Go With the Right People. So, a friend of ours, Jim, found himself helping out an artist friend of his, David. David had been lax in his judgment and his booth had six "helpers" - girlfriends of friends and volunteers he accepted because "the more the merrier." After Friday's show, the first day, all of them - including David - got hammered drunk in the hotel room, with two exceptions. Jim and another helper, Brenda, went to manage the table - they were getting paid by getting a cut of the amount sold, so if they wanted any pay at all they had to do something. Saturday started at 10 officially, 9 for the early-passes. Jim and Brenda worked - no one else did. Throughout Saturday, the others filtered to the table, hung over, unhappy, tired and draped all over the chairs around the booth. David, the actual vendor, didn't get there until 3 o'clock.
The horror show didn't get better. As money collected, several of the helpers tried to rob from the cash box, even though it was supposed to be split. This got out of control and tempers flared. Half the booth wasn't speaking to the other half and the Con still had a whole other day. Guess what happened Saturday night? Yep. More drinking, a worse situation, three people not coming in at all the next day and Jim swearing at our table about how he was never, ever, going to do this shit again.
Being a vendor is serious. But stories like the above are going on all the time. Artists, having gotten there, don't care. Helpers come up to "help" and end up taking advantage of the one person who actually cares about their art. Helpers wander off and don't come back for three or four hours. Things go missing. It's really important to ask, "Would I pay my friend an income for what he or she is doing?"
I'm lucky. I have a sensible daughter. It is in the family. I heartily recommend having a child, raising the child to be a human being and then shutting the fuck up as a parent and letting the child run the table. I do this and it works great.
Conclusion. There's a lot more. Displays get built so that it isn't even possible to see the vendor. Vendors spend the whole Con sitting on their ass. There's nothing for the customer to touch. People ignore customers. Not displaying all of their product. Coming in late. Leaving early. Not trying in the last half-hour of the day. Having nothing that identifies the booth. And so on.
The people who make money are those who watch others and avoid. It isn't as important as one might think that the booth be stuffed with AMAZING things. Ours wasn't. But we were memorable because WE were; which is the point. I'm not selling a backdrop, I'm selling me and my book. Many vendors forget that this is the point.
Monday, September 26, 2016
My Education
Three days since I've posted: anyone still out there?
We've finished our third Expo, my daughter and I. We had a great time. Once again, we met wonderful people, imaginative people, people passionate about their games, their players and their Dungeon Masters. Role-playing is growing and expanding - I adore seeing this every time I do one of these events.
This time around, however, I did get a different education, with regards to vendors and organizers - something surprising and, thankfully, harmless. I'll try to explain.
We did have some worries going into this event. There's a recession in Alberta, caused by the drop in world oil prices. Alberta is a big producer of the world's oil, about 1/40th, and a huge exporter to the United States; the drop in prices has hit the economy hard here and we absolutely expected this to affect the number of visitors and the coin they'd have to spend. It did and we saw that through the eyes of dozens of vendors that we've gotten to know in these last two conventions.
In convention speak, the vendors talk about "table cost." This is the price paid for the booth where people set up - and it is a different cost for different sized booths. Most of the would-be artists at expos like these set up in what's know as "Artist Alley." Typically, this is a booth about six feet by six, just enough for a table and two chairs, without much room for moving around. Product will take up most of a table and can make it very hard to sell, given the tight amount of space - but the booth cost in the cons I've been to have been from $150-$250 . . . a number that can be shared by two artists fairly easily, lowering the amount of product they need to sell.
We did a booth like that in Toronto in 2014; but when we more than quadrupled our table cost in sales, we decided to spread out into a larger space, giving us more flexibility. We never made money in Toronto; after air fares and hotels and other costs, we lost money, definitely. It was also our first try and we had a lot of things we had to buy from scratch; it is cheaper to do a second or a third event than a first event, definitely.
In Edmonton last year, we got ourselves into a 10 by 10 booth; more expensive, about $500. We did better than twice that in sales and on the whole, we broke even. Without hesitation, this year, we set up for 10 by 10 again. We figured, if we lost money because of the economy, it was still better to have the extra space - both for our product and for our comfort.
I took a shot of the booth this year (I always forget):
We've finished our third Expo, my daughter and I. We had a great time. Once again, we met wonderful people, imaginative people, people passionate about their games, their players and their Dungeon Masters. Role-playing is growing and expanding - I adore seeing this every time I do one of these events.
This time around, however, I did get a different education, with regards to vendors and organizers - something surprising and, thankfully, harmless. I'll try to explain.
We did have some worries going into this event. There's a recession in Alberta, caused by the drop in world oil prices. Alberta is a big producer of the world's oil, about 1/40th, and a huge exporter to the United States; the drop in prices has hit the economy hard here and we absolutely expected this to affect the number of visitors and the coin they'd have to spend. It did and we saw that through the eyes of dozens of vendors that we've gotten to know in these last two conventions.
In convention speak, the vendors talk about "table cost." This is the price paid for the booth where people set up - and it is a different cost for different sized booths. Most of the would-be artists at expos like these set up in what's know as "Artist Alley." Typically, this is a booth about six feet by six, just enough for a table and two chairs, without much room for moving around. Product will take up most of a table and can make it very hard to sell, given the tight amount of space - but the booth cost in the cons I've been to have been from $150-$250 . . . a number that can be shared by two artists fairly easily, lowering the amount of product they need to sell.
We did a booth like that in Toronto in 2014; but when we more than quadrupled our table cost in sales, we decided to spread out into a larger space, giving us more flexibility. We never made money in Toronto; after air fares and hotels and other costs, we lost money, definitely. It was also our first try and we had a lot of things we had to buy from scratch; it is cheaper to do a second or a third event than a first event, definitely.
In Edmonton last year, we got ourselves into a 10 by 10 booth; more expensive, about $500. We did better than twice that in sales and on the whole, we broke even. Without hesitation, this year, we set up for 10 by 10 again. We figured, if we lost money because of the economy, it was still better to have the extra space - both for our product and for our comfort.
I took a shot of the booth this year (I always forget):
 |
I chuckle some as I look at this, as anyone who's been to a con knows this is pretty stark for a 10x10 booth. We know it ourselves, particularly through the eyes of other vendors who will pop by to snark or give us some heartfelt pity.
Thankfully, there was one other display in this picture the camera doesn't show. I was standing in it and so was my daughter. And like every time we've done a con, we know our people; they don't care about flash, they care about content. They wanted to talk about their game and that's what we did, continually, enthusiastically and with terrific success.
We had five hours on Friday, nine hours on Saturday and seven hours on Sunday, a total of $48 an hour. On average, we sold one of our three books every fifteen minutes. We talked to three or four people for every book we sold, so we were talking to people - sometimes to a crowd - steadily. Like last year, we broke even. The only real profit we made was sending the book out there and getting a great trip to Edmonton. And we got noticed.
Twice, sadly, I was approached by smiling, happy vendors selling games and role-playing supplies to "help us" sell our books. The deal? I hand them books, right then and there, in return for 50% of the cover price. How considerate.
I carefully explained to both that is costs me 40% of the cost of How to Run to have it printed; it costs me 20% of the cost of the book to get them shipped out to me, because I can't afford the benefits that come from printing and shipping hundreds of books - and I don't get tax breaks. The big book pays for everything - hotel room, travel, food, table cost and so on. With the smaller books, the printing cost is 50% and the shipping cost is 30% of the book price. I make less than $2 from a sale of How to Play a Character. I get about $3.10 from a sale of the Dungeon's Front Door. For both, I do better with an online sale because I don't pay shipping - but the reader does. This is a big selling point for us at these events. I take the hit so the buyer doesn't.
When some other vendor offers to take 50% of my sales, it isn't just taking a profit in exchange for doing almost nothing; it's actually making me lose money. Were these vendors willing to pay for my costs? For the print cost of the book? Of course not. Because at this time, in this world of publishing on the internet, consignment is a scam. I had only just learned that I'd sold no books whatsoever at Indigo following my West Hills adventure. This latest has convinced me; I am never, ever, going to consign with anyone, ever again. They can pay me up front if they want my book or they can make a deal with me where they print and ship the book.
My other bad experience was with the officially organized role-playing community. Like with every expo, there was an organized tournament; there were role-playing panels. In the past, these things have gone on without mattering much to me. Last year, after the fact, I spoke to the organizer of the panels. This year, that meeting happened before the panels. And it was . . . disappointing.
Not during the meeting. Wow. During the meeting, where the organizer and his associate came up to my table and talked to me for about fifteen minutes, it was all smiles and promises, to contact me, to see about getting me onto the panel, to address things like I was bringing up about legitimacy and the lack of support between DMs in the community, the encouragement of fracturing people with game play and deliberately pushing them to make their public contact with one another into a conflict sport with prizes and shaming for playing the wrong games or the wrong editions - all things that I heard from others I met throughout the weekend.
But of course, nothing came of it. I felt pretty pumped after the meeting, felt like something was going to happen there - but that was just wishful thinking. The official community can't afford to be challenged like I want to challenge it.
I did get some tremendous support from a writer in the gaming community who reviews releases and games; his name, like all the names attached to this post, will go unsaid. He admitted to me quite openly that the gaming companies have the community by the throat; that they don't care about what happens to players after they buy the games; that frankly, once the game or the module is in the participant's hands, the company could really not give a shit. He and I together compared the situation to a car-maker that sells the car, doesn't provide service, doesn't care if the car doesn't work, doesn't even provide the keys for the car - because, frankly, the company just doesn't care if we can make heads or tails of the rules after we've bought the game. There's no content out there that really says how to play or how to avoid pitfalls with players or how to pull all these rules together into a campaign that will actually sustain itself - this is all left to the participant, who muddles through by leaning heavily on a few people who are willing to give considerate advice as opposed to dead useless advice (and yes, I heard immense amounts of that over the weekend, mostly from DMs who explained how it was given to them, making them feel stupid and useless as designers).
On the whole, I feel that I am getting somewhere. I can't remember with whom (and I can't find it), but just before the weekend I made reference to a quote from Hadrian: "Brick by brick, my citizens. Brick by brick." Steadily, slowly, one book at a time, I'm receiving the right kind of attention. People found us after their friends told them to buy the book, having bought it themselves this weekend. People found us to tell us to keep going. People found us to thank us for changing their games and their worlds. People found us by happenstance, then declared that it took them a long time to find us again so they could purchase the book. We did fine. Just fine.
Not during the meeting. Wow. During the meeting, where the organizer and his associate came up to my table and talked to me for about fifteen minutes, it was all smiles and promises, to contact me, to see about getting me onto the panel, to address things like I was bringing up about legitimacy and the lack of support between DMs in the community, the encouragement of fracturing people with game play and deliberately pushing them to make their public contact with one another into a conflict sport with prizes and shaming for playing the wrong games or the wrong editions - all things that I heard from others I met throughout the weekend.
But of course, nothing came of it. I felt pretty pumped after the meeting, felt like something was going to happen there - but that was just wishful thinking. The official community can't afford to be challenged like I want to challenge it.
I did get some tremendous support from a writer in the gaming community who reviews releases and games; his name, like all the names attached to this post, will go unsaid. He admitted to me quite openly that the gaming companies have the community by the throat; that they don't care about what happens to players after they buy the games; that frankly, once the game or the module is in the participant's hands, the company could really not give a shit. He and I together compared the situation to a car-maker that sells the car, doesn't provide service, doesn't care if the car doesn't work, doesn't even provide the keys for the car - because, frankly, the company just doesn't care if we can make heads or tails of the rules after we've bought the game. There's no content out there that really says how to play or how to avoid pitfalls with players or how to pull all these rules together into a campaign that will actually sustain itself - this is all left to the participant, who muddles through by leaning heavily on a few people who are willing to give considerate advice as opposed to dead useless advice (and yes, I heard immense amounts of that over the weekend, mostly from DMs who explained how it was given to them, making them feel stupid and useless as designers).
On the whole, I feel that I am getting somewhere. I can't remember with whom (and I can't find it), but just before the weekend I made reference to a quote from Hadrian: "Brick by brick, my citizens. Brick by brick." Steadily, slowly, one book at a time, I'm receiving the right kind of attention. People found us after their friends told them to buy the book, having bought it themselves this weekend. People found us to tell us to keep going. People found us to thank us for changing their games and their worlds. People found us by happenstance, then declared that it took them a long time to find us again so they could purchase the book. We did fine. Just fine.
Friday, September 23, 2016
Expo First Day
I'm in Edmonton now, without a computer. I'm crap at texting so this is going to be short.
I love these cons. It's a great chance to meet people and touch base with the community, be recognized by readers and help my bottom line. I leave these events encouraged and enriched.
I can always use some of that.
If you're in Edmonton, and you have a little money, come and see me at the Expo at Northlands. Wallace Shawn is here (Inconceivable!), so is John Delancey, Christian Slater - and for those who care - Carrie Fisher.
And me, obviously.
I love these cons. It's a great chance to meet people and touch base with the community, be recognized by readers and help my bottom line. I leave these events encouraged and enriched.
I can always use some of that.
If you're in Edmonton, and you have a little money, come and see me at the Expo at Northlands. Wallace Shawn is here (Inconceivable!), so is John Delancey, Christian Slater - and for those who care - Carrie Fisher.
And me, obviously.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Fruition
There. I have an actual, real life version of my "world" map.
So, this is for my booth at the Edmonton Comic Expo this weekend. The map is at least large enough that its not possible to look at the whole thing at one time - but realisticaly, the place names are not readable. That would require a much larger image, one that's out of my price range. Next time I have this printed, it will be at least six feet wide. At the moment, it's 122 cm by 66 cm.
I need it until 5 o'clock on Sunday - and after that, I really don't need it at all. I figure by the time I would want a poster like this again, I'll have England added to it, perhaps more of Africa, perhaps I'll work on Sinkaing and Tibet to fill in the space between Siberia and India - actually fairly easy, since although its a big space there isn't much research to do. It is the research that slows down the making of this map.
So I was thinking, entirely from curiosity, if it wouldn't be practical to simply auction it off to the highest bidder, with the deadline being 5 pm, Mountain Time, September 25. Too self-serving? It's a partial map (and technically, no matter what map I eventually print to replace it, will always be a partial map), so I can't imagine the interest value being that high; I do expect it will impress people at the Expo, encouraging a few strangers to understand just how seriously I take the careful design of my world.
Incidentally, I finished the actual organization of Britain. Total number of settlements on the two islands: 374. Population of the English Commonwealth under Cromwell: 8,286,074. Population of occupied Ireland: 217,446. Population of lawless Ireland (Eire): 286,002. All of which has to be jammed into this tiny pair of islands:
Ah well, no hurry.
 |
| And don't I look happy? No, not really - just beat. |
So, this is for my booth at the Edmonton Comic Expo this weekend. The map is at least large enough that its not possible to look at the whole thing at one time - but realisticaly, the place names are not readable. That would require a much larger image, one that's out of my price range. Next time I have this printed, it will be at least six feet wide. At the moment, it's 122 cm by 66 cm.
I need it until 5 o'clock on Sunday - and after that, I really don't need it at all. I figure by the time I would want a poster like this again, I'll have England added to it, perhaps more of Africa, perhaps I'll work on Sinkaing and Tibet to fill in the space between Siberia and India - actually fairly easy, since although its a big space there isn't much research to do. It is the research that slows down the making of this map.
So I was thinking, entirely from curiosity, if it wouldn't be practical to simply auction it off to the highest bidder, with the deadline being 5 pm, Mountain Time, September 25. Too self-serving? It's a partial map (and technically, no matter what map I eventually print to replace it, will always be a partial map), so I can't imagine the interest value being that high; I do expect it will impress people at the Expo, encouraging a few strangers to understand just how seriously I take the careful design of my world.
Incidentally, I finished the actual organization of Britain. Total number of settlements on the two islands: 374. Population of the English Commonwealth under Cromwell: 8,286,074. Population of occupied Ireland: 217,446. Population of lawless Ireland (Eire): 286,002. All of which has to be jammed into this tiny pair of islands:
Ah well, no hurry.
Friday, September 16, 2016
Map-Printing
I am getting ready for the Edmonton Comic Expo next weekend - and it is nice to have a little spending money (not much, but things are getting better). As such, I just came back from visiting a print shop where I've arranged to have the big map printed as a poster. I couldn't afford it's actual size: that would be 10 feet by 5 and a half feet, according to the printer, which would work out to about $500. I had to settle for 48 inches by 26.
Talking to the print guys was a lot of fun. These are people who deal with businesses all day and 99% of what they see is ordinary - nothing as intricate as the file I gave them. I got wide eyes and impressed questions, plus some great praise as I explained that it was created on Publisher one piece at a time. Since I am never ashamed about admitting that I play D&D or explaining what it is to total strangers, I was sure to tell them what the map was for. And as I have learned in the past, it doesn't matter that I'm talking about a game or something that many people seem to think is silly. The work is the work - it has the strength to startle anyone's preconception, if the merit is obvious.
Startling people is I wanted the map printed: to show people at the Comic Expo how much work I'm putting into my world, so that they'll make the connection to how much work I put into my books. A physical representation is more effective than a computer screen - not because it's real but because it is BIGGER. Even a really big computer screen just looks like the image has been blown up to size. A physical representation on paper can't be. I so wish I could have printed that 10 x 5 foot map; that would have stopped people at the Expo in their tracks, from fifty feet away.
Oh well. Someday.
Talking to the print guys was a lot of fun. These are people who deal with businesses all day and 99% of what they see is ordinary - nothing as intricate as the file I gave them. I got wide eyes and impressed questions, plus some great praise as I explained that it was created on Publisher one piece at a time. Since I am never ashamed about admitting that I play D&D or explaining what it is to total strangers, I was sure to tell them what the map was for. And as I have learned in the past, it doesn't matter that I'm talking about a game or something that many people seem to think is silly. The work is the work - it has the strength to startle anyone's preconception, if the merit is obvious.
Startling people is I wanted the map printed: to show people at the Comic Expo how much work I'm putting into my world, so that they'll make the connection to how much work I put into my books. A physical representation is more effective than a computer screen - not because it's real but because it is BIGGER. Even a really big computer screen just looks like the image has been blown up to size. A physical representation on paper can't be. I so wish I could have printed that 10 x 5 foot map; that would have stopped people at the Expo in their tracks, from fifty feet away.
Oh well. Someday.
Monday, September 28, 2015
The Edmonton Con in Review
There, I'm back from the Edmonton Expo and rested. I'll start by saying hello to Barry, Rob, Hanna, Luke, Geoff, Chad, Alison, Mike, David, Jordan, Ryan, Alexandra and Jim, along with the many others whose names I am sorry to have forgotten, though they must admit that we did only meet that one time. Send me a comment, an email or a tweet and remind me, hm?
In total, we sold 89 books - 41 of the big How To Run, 26 of the How to Play a Character and 22 of the Dungeon's Front Door. We ran a deal of all three books for $50 and I'd say about two thirds of the big books went from the table with two little companions. We also talked to many people who were more interested in finding the ebook online. I'd guess we sold about 1/3rd the people we talked to.
The biggest surprise came from learning that we had not purchased a little table in Artists' Alley for the show, but a 10x10 foot booth in the middle of the t-shirt and poster sellers. This was way more room than we expected to decorate and as such we were a big, barren hole as far as eye-candy was concerned . . . except for my daughter in a first-rate Sailor Moon costume on the first day. She had trouble going to the bathroom without getting swamped by photographers. As we had other plans than the expo for Saturday and Sunday she decided to skip the costume - and it needed work anyway. The sleeves were a bit too tight and were giving her blood blisters on the upper arms after a day of selling.
The size of the booth did wind up working for us, as it gave a big sitting area for our friends and guests. It also meant we could handle a larger crowd of people in conversation and it gave more time for people to roam along the table, see what we were selling and stop - whereas a shorter table often loses people. My daughter and I are both aggressive sellers, however, so we were dragging people back to talk to us all the time. Role-players are forgivably shy about admitting it.
As far as we could tell, we were the only booth in the whole Expo putting out any material on table-top role-playing. There was a panel discussion on role-play yesterday (explaining why we had a 40-minute dead zone in the middle of the day) and one of those panelists would find us a couple of hours later, much to his great surprise. Great guy, can't remember his name, and we talked for about twenty minutes. Had an annoying habit of constantly looking over my shoulder as I talked to him and of hedging his opinion on things with statements like, "Depends on the campaign" and "Some DMs can handle such-and-such." Clearly trained in not pissing anyone off. At the end of our conversation he expressed a great interest in seeing me run an actual game, but being late Sunday afternoon there wasn't any time to arrange for something like that. Expressed a strong desire to buy the book, made an excuse about his wife having the money, went to find her but he never came back. Not sure if it was a good meeting or not. Ah well.
I'd love to be on one of those panels - but I'd probably spend half the time smacking the other panelists for endlessly failing to give solid, sound opinions or express absolutes in their statements. Like politicians, they seem far more concerned about their reputation than about the improvement of the game - and as anyone here knows, my reputation has always come second (or fifth or twenty-third) to my passion.
But wow, that would be fun!
Sunday was our best day. It was rushed to the last, as people we'd seen all weekend returned at the last moment to make their final purchases. It's terrific when someone buys a small book on Saturday, only to come back Sunday saying, "I read it and I want MORE!" With sincere emphasis on the last word, I can tell you. It's terrific too when someone says, "I've seen everything and you have the best thing here!" as we stand in our barren, empty booth. But hey, books are a universe unto themselves.
We really want to go to the Ed Expo next year. I hope to have finished two books, ready for selling, by then - with posters to match and a ready presentation for the much larger booth. Hell, the big booth in Edmonton was less money than the Artists' Alley table had been in Toronto - which was why we were really surprised.
Sorry I haven't pics of the cosplayers at this time; they weren't taken with my phone, which had some issues throughout the weekend with power, so I'm waiting for my daughter to send me what she has.
Phew. I wish like hell I could do a Con every weekend.
In total, we sold 89 books - 41 of the big How To Run, 26 of the How to Play a Character and 22 of the Dungeon's Front Door. We ran a deal of all three books for $50 and I'd say about two thirds of the big books went from the table with two little companions. We also talked to many people who were more interested in finding the ebook online. I'd guess we sold about 1/3rd the people we talked to.
The biggest surprise came from learning that we had not purchased a little table in Artists' Alley for the show, but a 10x10 foot booth in the middle of the t-shirt and poster sellers. This was way more room than we expected to decorate and as such we were a big, barren hole as far as eye-candy was concerned . . . except for my daughter in a first-rate Sailor Moon costume on the first day. She had trouble going to the bathroom without getting swamped by photographers. As we had other plans than the expo for Saturday and Sunday she decided to skip the costume - and it needed work anyway. The sleeves were a bit too tight and were giving her blood blisters on the upper arms after a day of selling.
The size of the booth did wind up working for us, as it gave a big sitting area for our friends and guests. It also meant we could handle a larger crowd of people in conversation and it gave more time for people to roam along the table, see what we were selling and stop - whereas a shorter table often loses people. My daughter and I are both aggressive sellers, however, so we were dragging people back to talk to us all the time. Role-players are forgivably shy about admitting it.
As far as we could tell, we were the only booth in the whole Expo putting out any material on table-top role-playing. There was a panel discussion on role-play yesterday (explaining why we had a 40-minute dead zone in the middle of the day) and one of those panelists would find us a couple of hours later, much to his great surprise. Great guy, can't remember his name, and we talked for about twenty minutes. Had an annoying habit of constantly looking over my shoulder as I talked to him and of hedging his opinion on things with statements like, "Depends on the campaign" and "Some DMs can handle such-and-such." Clearly trained in not pissing anyone off. At the end of our conversation he expressed a great interest in seeing me run an actual game, but being late Sunday afternoon there wasn't any time to arrange for something like that. Expressed a strong desire to buy the book, made an excuse about his wife having the money, went to find her but he never came back. Not sure if it was a good meeting or not. Ah well.
I'd love to be on one of those panels - but I'd probably spend half the time smacking the other panelists for endlessly failing to give solid, sound opinions or express absolutes in their statements. Like politicians, they seem far more concerned about their reputation than about the improvement of the game - and as anyone here knows, my reputation has always come second (or fifth or twenty-third) to my passion.
But wow, that would be fun!
Sunday was our best day. It was rushed to the last, as people we'd seen all weekend returned at the last moment to make their final purchases. It's terrific when someone buys a small book on Saturday, only to come back Sunday saying, "I read it and I want MORE!" With sincere emphasis on the last word, I can tell you. It's terrific too when someone says, "I've seen everything and you have the best thing here!" as we stand in our barren, empty booth. But hey, books are a universe unto themselves.
We really want to go to the Ed Expo next year. I hope to have finished two books, ready for selling, by then - with posters to match and a ready presentation for the much larger booth. Hell, the big booth in Edmonton was less money than the Artists' Alley table had been in Toronto - which was why we were really surprised.
Sorry I haven't pics of the cosplayers at this time; they weren't taken with my phone, which had some issues throughout the weekend with power, so I'm waiting for my daughter to send me what she has.
Phew. I wish like hell I could do a Con every weekend.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Three Books for Sale at the Expo
Because I am getting many, many page views from people who are finding this blog through the Edmonton Expo, I will write briefly on the three books I will be selling at my table. Prices below are for Edmonton Expo customers only.
Cost: $30. How to Run (customer reviews) is literally what it says on the cover: an advanced guidebook for understanding and expanding a skilled DM's existing ability to run their world - whatever that world might be, as the book is in no way genre specific. The book is as applicable to The Masquerade or Rifts as it is to D&D, because it addresses the dynamic between DM and player, not in-game ideals.
We are all in a position where we are striving to manage both ourselves and the players, while presenting the best possible game we can despite our limitations. Game play is mastered through a practical use of time, an understanding of goals, the mastery of the game's immersive qualities and our most intrinsic motivations. These elements of game play are universal - and they are, for the most part, wholly ignored by game manufacturers.
I have written a book that discusses role-play the way an academic treatise would discuss a subject among professors or the way that a trade manual would discuss the subject among masters of that trade. There are thousands of practitioners of role-playing games who are wallowing, uncertain of what they are doing, particularly because there is no standard by which they can judge themselves.
Therefore, rather than present a series of things not to do, the book concentrates upon those things that a DM does that work - and why they work! I believe that by firmly understanding why a particular running succeeded, a DM can build upon that understanding and ultimately learn to reproduce that result over and over. The book How to Run proposes to give that understanding.
Cost: $12. How to Play a Character (customer reviews) is a collection of essays discussing elements of character development, game settings and the social development of Dungeons & Dragons, along with elements of satire and humour. It features a challenging, insightful viewpoint of a grognard, me, that has dedicated virtually of his life to the game.
And because most of that time has been spent in serious disagreement with the game's mainstream, the content of my mind expressed in these pages will prove to be well outside what the reader would normally expect to find. The reader will take note, I don't see Dungeons & Dragons as a game, but as an personal expression, a form of performance art, in which participants are enabled and empowered to investigate and comprehend parts of themselves in exactly the way we imagine artists do.
Players are, in the strongest sense, creators. Creators of character, creators of circumstance, creators of a destiny, contained inside a structure that enables them to seize a moment in time and make it their own. This sense of gamesmanship that I have permeates the pages of this small but enthralling book, one that promises to be consumed greedily.
Cost: $12. The Dungeon's Front Door (preview) is my latest book, published this year. It is a series of essays focusing upon the underground dungeon: its structure, its biology and sociology, its purpose in the game and most important its opportunity for fun and humour. With this book I've struggled to identify what it is that makes the dungeon an iconic, compelling feature in D&D role-playing, hoping to enable the reader to reinvigorate their dungeon adventures and look at them anew.
I simply don't believe that the traditional game can dismiss the importance that dungeons have for players and for the opportunities they present - and at the same time, as with all things, I tend to look at dungeons askew from the usual tricksterism that's constructed of traps and clever rube goldbergs. My view is that dungeons are small, profound worlds unto themselves, allowing for endless variety for player and DM alike. I believe firmly that this book accomplishes the goal in expressing these possibilities.
There we are. Three books, all available for sale from my table at the Expo beginning Friday morning. Come around, have a chat, talk about your hopes and dreams and we'll see if we can't raise the bar for your players higher than they've dreamed!
We are all in a position where we are striving to manage both ourselves and the players, while presenting the best possible game we can despite our limitations. Game play is mastered through a practical use of time, an understanding of goals, the mastery of the game's immersive qualities and our most intrinsic motivations. These elements of game play are universal - and they are, for the most part, wholly ignored by game manufacturers.
I have written a book that discusses role-play the way an academic treatise would discuss a subject among professors or the way that a trade manual would discuss the subject among masters of that trade. There are thousands of practitioners of role-playing games who are wallowing, uncertain of what they are doing, particularly because there is no standard by which they can judge themselves.
Therefore, rather than present a series of things not to do, the book concentrates upon those things that a DM does that work - and why they work! I believe that by firmly understanding why a particular running succeeded, a DM can build upon that understanding and ultimately learn to reproduce that result over and over. The book How to Run proposes to give that understanding.
And because most of that time has been spent in serious disagreement with the game's mainstream, the content of my mind expressed in these pages will prove to be well outside what the reader would normally expect to find. The reader will take note, I don't see Dungeons & Dragons as a game, but as an personal expression, a form of performance art, in which participants are enabled and empowered to investigate and comprehend parts of themselves in exactly the way we imagine artists do.
Players are, in the strongest sense, creators. Creators of character, creators of circumstance, creators of a destiny, contained inside a structure that enables them to seize a moment in time and make it their own. This sense of gamesmanship that I have permeates the pages of this small but enthralling book, one that promises to be consumed greedily.
I simply don't believe that the traditional game can dismiss the importance that dungeons have for players and for the opportunities they present - and at the same time, as with all things, I tend to look at dungeons askew from the usual tricksterism that's constructed of traps and clever rube goldbergs. My view is that dungeons are small, profound worlds unto themselves, allowing for endless variety for player and DM alike. I believe firmly that this book accomplishes the goal in expressing these possibilities.
There we are. Three books, all available for sale from my table at the Expo beginning Friday morning. Come around, have a chat, talk about your hopes and dreams and we'll see if we can't raise the bar for your players higher than they've dreamed!
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Running the Table at the Expo
I've just finished my packing for the Expo. Two days from now I will be registered, my table prepared and compatriots in Edmonton well met. I will be anxiously awaiting the next day's start. As anxiously - more! - than I am waiting just now.
I'm reading over my notes from last year's Toronto trip. I remember a sea of faces and few names. I remember clearly the fellow I sold my book to by proving there were no pictures. I remember one of the two grognards arguing with me about the legitimacy of the book; the other's face is vague. I wonder if either has bought the book by now. There have been many sales in Canada since then.
Giving full disclosure on sales, making the opportunity for some of my readers to laugh out loud as they realize how paltry are my successes, I have sold 341 copies of the How to Run book. 209 of these have been sold through Lulu and the remainder have been sold by hook or by crook on my own. I take comfort from the fact that it is an expensive book, meaning that gross sales are really not that bad. Obviously, I would like to have sold ten times the number - but there's always the future.
For example, the next six days.
A year ago I wrote that I felt validated as a writer and that it was evident that the gaming community was looking for the sort of book I had written. They're still looking for it; I sold a copy of the book online yesterday. I will probably sell a book tomorrow (if not How to Run, then How to Play a Character or the Dungeon's Front Door). I wrote that there was a tremendous underground community that has little or no interest at all in the WOTC or the nitpicking nonsense that dominates online discussion. I am so looking forward to talking to these people - my people - again.
I was casting about for something else to talk about surrounding conventions. I was thinking about the people surrounding us who had also plunked down hundreds of dollars for the privilege of running a table. For some, like me, it's an opportunity to get the word out there. For others, it's hard-core sales.
The twenty-something woman on our right side in Toronto owned her own button-making machine, so that day and night she does nothing but churn out unique and interesting designs pressed on metal. She did a booming business, though she had no supporting partner to help her out. Those were long days for her, working days. When talking to us, without her game face on, it was clear she was fairly jaded where it came to the event itself. She didn't care what was going on around her, what the people were there to see. She was there to sell buttons, period. Nevertheless, she was a pleasant neighbor.
The people on the other side were artists. The boy, about 19, was there to support the woman who was in her 40s. She had developed a technique of coloring prints with multiple kinds of tea, dipped or exposed on pressed cloth or paper in a variety of ways. This then complimented her drawing skills, so that a line drawing of a landscape, cityscape or small study featured an intricate and enticing collection of spatters, splotches and striations, in purples, golds, chocolate browns and so on. The fascination level for this work was high, very high, and the people it attracted were absolutely not role-players, so we didn't step on each other's toes. The real pity was that the woman did not charge as much as she should have for the pics (she could have easily doubled her prices) and she did not have any gift for actual sales. It was driving my business-minded daughter crazy listening to this woman drop potential sale after potential sale merely by failing to emphasize that the things people were impressed with could actually be purchased.
It was evident that some of the people there bought tables just so they could have a place to sit between adventuring around the expo. Pay money for a table, create a pretense for being there and it provides four easy days of roaming around, with the respect of having a table pass that gets you in early so that all can be seen without the crowds. For many, it's worth the higher price.
Many there were clearly bored out of their minds. They didn't have anything of interest or substance and they didn't have the will to 'harass' potential customers as they passed by. I tribute a lot of our success to our willingness to engage with the passers by, sitting on a high stool that put us at eye level without seeming like we were trying too hard. Say hello, nod at the people, smile at them, say encouraging things about their costumes, remark aloud on anything that goes on and always be friendly and willing to answer any question, especially those that have nothing to do with what's offered at the table (people are always stopping to ask friendly people for help in finding the bathroom). My daughter picked up a little puppet wolf that would sit on our shoulder while we manipulated it with our hands (marvelous gimmick, the device allows for small finger movements to move the wolf's head up and down, back and forth). This was a great draw.
I brought along a cover rendering of the book a meter and a half high and a meter wide, that dominated the space behind us. The words, "Role-playing Games" on the cover would be just above my right shoulder as I sat on the stool (in about 48 pt font with the size of the poster) and I could see the eyes of a passing browser zero in on those words and react. Whenever that happened, from the reaction to the words I could guess if the browser was likely to buy. That's the thing about people who love role-playing games: they are always looking for something. The words themselves are magic; they're so adored and yet so rare that just seeing the words makes the heart jump. I've experienced that myself hundreds of times, just from seeing a copy of the DM's Guide in public or hearing half a sentence that tells me the conversants are discussing D&D.
My best pitch, then, is to be friendly and ready to talk openly and strongly about the product. I have no trouble at all pitching my books. I love the things. I'm like a parent talking about their child's chances for playing at the professional level based on the catch we've just seen. Hold back from telling people about my book? Wait for them to ask? But . . . but . . . that doesn't let me talk about the book all the time!
I'm very much looking forward to three solid days of talking about my books. Unapologetically. The reader here is just a little tired of it because you hear me talk of them all the time. But these will be strangers.
My mother had it all wrong. Strangers are the best people to talk to.
I'm reading over my notes from last year's Toronto trip. I remember a sea of faces and few names. I remember clearly the fellow I sold my book to by proving there were no pictures. I remember one of the two grognards arguing with me about the legitimacy of the book; the other's face is vague. I wonder if either has bought the book by now. There have been many sales in Canada since then.
Giving full disclosure on sales, making the opportunity for some of my readers to laugh out loud as they realize how paltry are my successes, I have sold 341 copies of the How to Run book. 209 of these have been sold through Lulu and the remainder have been sold by hook or by crook on my own. I take comfort from the fact that it is an expensive book, meaning that gross sales are really not that bad. Obviously, I would like to have sold ten times the number - but there's always the future.
For example, the next six days.
A year ago I wrote that I felt validated as a writer and that it was evident that the gaming community was looking for the sort of book I had written. They're still looking for it; I sold a copy of the book online yesterday. I will probably sell a book tomorrow (if not How to Run, then How to Play a Character or the Dungeon's Front Door). I wrote that there was a tremendous underground community that has little or no interest at all in the WOTC or the nitpicking nonsense that dominates online discussion. I am so looking forward to talking to these people - my people - again.
I was casting about for something else to talk about surrounding conventions. I was thinking about the people surrounding us who had also plunked down hundreds of dollars for the privilege of running a table. For some, like me, it's an opportunity to get the word out there. For others, it's hard-core sales.
The twenty-something woman on our right side in Toronto owned her own button-making machine, so that day and night she does nothing but churn out unique and interesting designs pressed on metal. She did a booming business, though she had no supporting partner to help her out. Those were long days for her, working days. When talking to us, without her game face on, it was clear she was fairly jaded where it came to the event itself. She didn't care what was going on around her, what the people were there to see. She was there to sell buttons, period. Nevertheless, she was a pleasant neighbor.
The people on the other side were artists. The boy, about 19, was there to support the woman who was in her 40s. She had developed a technique of coloring prints with multiple kinds of tea, dipped or exposed on pressed cloth or paper in a variety of ways. This then complimented her drawing skills, so that a line drawing of a landscape, cityscape or small study featured an intricate and enticing collection of spatters, splotches and striations, in purples, golds, chocolate browns and so on. The fascination level for this work was high, very high, and the people it attracted were absolutely not role-players, so we didn't step on each other's toes. The real pity was that the woman did not charge as much as she should have for the pics (she could have easily doubled her prices) and she did not have any gift for actual sales. It was driving my business-minded daughter crazy listening to this woman drop potential sale after potential sale merely by failing to emphasize that the things people were impressed with could actually be purchased.
It was evident that some of the people there bought tables just so they could have a place to sit between adventuring around the expo. Pay money for a table, create a pretense for being there and it provides four easy days of roaming around, with the respect of having a table pass that gets you in early so that all can be seen without the crowds. For many, it's worth the higher price.
Many there were clearly bored out of their minds. They didn't have anything of interest or substance and they didn't have the will to 'harass' potential customers as they passed by. I tribute a lot of our success to our willingness to engage with the passers by, sitting on a high stool that put us at eye level without seeming like we were trying too hard. Say hello, nod at the people, smile at them, say encouraging things about their costumes, remark aloud on anything that goes on and always be friendly and willing to answer any question, especially those that have nothing to do with what's offered at the table (people are always stopping to ask friendly people for help in finding the bathroom). My daughter picked up a little puppet wolf that would sit on our shoulder while we manipulated it with our hands (marvelous gimmick, the device allows for small finger movements to move the wolf's head up and down, back and forth). This was a great draw.
I brought along a cover rendering of the book a meter and a half high and a meter wide, that dominated the space behind us. The words, "Role-playing Games" on the cover would be just above my right shoulder as I sat on the stool (in about 48 pt font with the size of the poster) and I could see the eyes of a passing browser zero in on those words and react. Whenever that happened, from the reaction to the words I could guess if the browser was likely to buy. That's the thing about people who love role-playing games: they are always looking for something. The words themselves are magic; they're so adored and yet so rare that just seeing the words makes the heart jump. I've experienced that myself hundreds of times, just from seeing a copy of the DM's Guide in public or hearing half a sentence that tells me the conversants are discussing D&D.
My best pitch, then, is to be friendly and ready to talk openly and strongly about the product. I have no trouble at all pitching my books. I love the things. I'm like a parent talking about their child's chances for playing at the professional level based on the catch we've just seen. Hold back from telling people about my book? Wait for them to ask? But . . . but . . . that doesn't let me talk about the book all the time!
I'm very much looking forward to three solid days of talking about my books. Unapologetically. The reader here is just a little tired of it because you hear me talk of them all the time. But these will be strangers.
My mother had it all wrong. Strangers are the best people to talk to.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Cosplaying
Keeping in the spirit of comic cons and fan expos (3 days left), it is a good time to talk about cosplaying.
The reader will find as old age approaches that everything that happens after the age of 25 will be thought of as 'new' whether it is or not. For example, I still think of grunge music as 'new' - even though for many readers out there, it happened and died before being born.
[Well, sort of died. There are still bar bands playing grunge music, thinking they'll be 'discovered' someday in a world now being run by Nikki, Taylor and Katy].
For an old fart like me, cosplaying has snuck up on me. At least, the institutionalization of people wearing costumes as a means to emphasize their fandom for specific characters is a strange, new thing. Like with the previous post, my childhood was also full of dressing in costumes, because that was something we thought was fun. Hell, my whole Canadian generation was warped hopelessly by Mr. Dressup, who became a childhood institution for more than 30 years. I was four when Mr. Dressup first aired. [I went looking for an example of the show from back then, but it seems impossible to find anything on youtube predating the invention of VHS].
And I can remember a Halloween that predated excessive commercialism, predated the terror razor/needle/poison candy scare and predated parents chaperoning costumed children roaming from house to house. These things are truly 'old' - long gone, never to be seen again. But they did leave a lasting childhood association with costuming and the adoption of personalities.
That said, the first time I actually saw a DM dressed in a costume for role-playing I believe I associated the moment with a desire to vomit. As I said yesterday, I was older by the time I began to play D&D and well past the compulsion to dress up in order to identify myself as a different being. I had embraced theater and the arts by then and I knew from experience that the costume is only a very small part of the experience. True character portrayal begins within. After all, the most frightening monsters in our adult imaginations - terrorists, child molesters, serial killers, rapists - are terrifying because they look like anybody.
So on that level, yes, I confess, cosplaying seems a bit childish. But let me rush to assure the reader that I don't think that it is, not for most of the participants. I stick by what I said yesterday: cosplaying is free spirited lawlessness. The same lawlessness I experienced as a child when we would pretend to be vampires and witches, capturing victims and burning them alive in pretend ovens.
[At 10 years of age, several free spirited same-age girls and I role-played some pretty intense scenes together - a bit beyond 'doctor' or 'house'].
If anything, I am deeply respectful.
This will seem like a big step to the left, but just go with it. Some years ago, circa 2007, for a freelance story I was writing, I attended a meeting of transgendered persons to hear their views on the Alberta government's defunding a significant part of their reassignment process. Because the meeting was more or less free and open, and because my 19-year-old daughter was interested also, I brought her along. All told there were about 19 persons there. The meeting's agenda was to lend support for those who would be most affected by the government's decision and to suggest strategies for the future.
It was an educational evening. Not because either my daughter and I were new to the concept; she had gone to school for three years with a boy who was pre-op but living as a girl and I had known several persons in theater and film who were struggling with the lifestyle as early as the 1980s. The educational part was the intensive fear associated with my role as a journalist. It took literally hours of reassurance to convince most of the room that I had no intention of outing anyone or even giving details regarding their personal struggle. I was there to get an overview of the problem and that was all. Nevertheless, I could understand why several of the persons there who worked for the city or the government in particular were terrified to talk to me.
This sidebar connects to cosplaying because of two persons that my daughter recognized from Otafest here in Calgary - a Japanese Animation Festival that is a huge event each year (upcoming in November). My daughter hadn't known that the two persons very much in love with each other were both transgendered; she did know that these same two persons were very dedicated furries.
"Isn't it amazing," my daughter said afterwards, "That two people who happen to be transgendered and furries can find love together. The world is wonderful."
My sentiment exactly.
Cosplaying has become a community that supports individualism through copying the inspiration of other artists (who invent these characters). It is a strange dichotomy. I believe, however, that it does carry forward the most wonderful parts of the exploration into roles that we begin as children - the separation of guilt and repression, which are dumped on us at a young age, from desire and fantasy, that many adults have surrendered by age 30.
In three days I will be in an immense chamber with thousands of such people. Is there any better place to be?
The reader will find as old age approaches that everything that happens after the age of 25 will be thought of as 'new' whether it is or not. For example, I still think of grunge music as 'new' - even though for many readers out there, it happened and died before being born.
[Well, sort of died. There are still bar bands playing grunge music, thinking they'll be 'discovered' someday in a world now being run by Nikki, Taylor and Katy].
For an old fart like me, cosplaying has snuck up on me. At least, the institutionalization of people wearing costumes as a means to emphasize their fandom for specific characters is a strange, new thing. Like with the previous post, my childhood was also full of dressing in costumes, because that was something we thought was fun. Hell, my whole Canadian generation was warped hopelessly by Mr. Dressup, who became a childhood institution for more than 30 years. I was four when Mr. Dressup first aired. [I went looking for an example of the show from back then, but it seems impossible to find anything on youtube predating the invention of VHS].
And I can remember a Halloween that predated excessive commercialism, predated the terror razor/needle/poison candy scare and predated parents chaperoning costumed children roaming from house to house. These things are truly 'old' - long gone, never to be seen again. But they did leave a lasting childhood association with costuming and the adoption of personalities.
That said, the first time I actually saw a DM dressed in a costume for role-playing I believe I associated the moment with a desire to vomit. As I said yesterday, I was older by the time I began to play D&D and well past the compulsion to dress up in order to identify myself as a different being. I had embraced theater and the arts by then and I knew from experience that the costume is only a very small part of the experience. True character portrayal begins within. After all, the most frightening monsters in our adult imaginations - terrorists, child molesters, serial killers, rapists - are terrifying because they look like anybody.
So on that level, yes, I confess, cosplaying seems a bit childish. But let me rush to assure the reader that I don't think that it is, not for most of the participants. I stick by what I said yesterday: cosplaying is free spirited lawlessness. The same lawlessness I experienced as a child when we would pretend to be vampires and witches, capturing victims and burning them alive in pretend ovens.
[At 10 years of age, several free spirited same-age girls and I role-played some pretty intense scenes together - a bit beyond 'doctor' or 'house'].
If anything, I am deeply respectful.
This will seem like a big step to the left, but just go with it. Some years ago, circa 2007, for a freelance story I was writing, I attended a meeting of transgendered persons to hear their views on the Alberta government's defunding a significant part of their reassignment process. Because the meeting was more or less free and open, and because my 19-year-old daughter was interested also, I brought her along. All told there were about 19 persons there. The meeting's agenda was to lend support for those who would be most affected by the government's decision and to suggest strategies for the future.
It was an educational evening. Not because either my daughter and I were new to the concept; she had gone to school for three years with a boy who was pre-op but living as a girl and I had known several persons in theater and film who were struggling with the lifestyle as early as the 1980s. The educational part was the intensive fear associated with my role as a journalist. It took literally hours of reassurance to convince most of the room that I had no intention of outing anyone or even giving details regarding their personal struggle. I was there to get an overview of the problem and that was all. Nevertheless, I could understand why several of the persons there who worked for the city or the government in particular were terrified to talk to me.
This sidebar connects to cosplaying because of two persons that my daughter recognized from Otafest here in Calgary - a Japanese Animation Festival that is a huge event each year (upcoming in November). My daughter hadn't known that the two persons very much in love with each other were both transgendered; she did know that these same two persons were very dedicated furries.
"Isn't it amazing," my daughter said afterwards, "That two people who happen to be transgendered and furries can find love together. The world is wonderful."
My sentiment exactly.
Cosplaying has become a community that supports individualism through copying the inspiration of other artists (who invent these characters). It is a strange dichotomy. I believe, however, that it does carry forward the most wonderful parts of the exploration into roles that we begin as children - the separation of guilt and repression, which are dumped on us at a young age, from desire and fantasy, that many adults have surrendered by age 30.
In three days I will be in an immense chamber with thousands of such people. Is there any better place to be?
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Nobody's Business
The Edmonton Expo is in four days.
There's very little left to do. We're set up for the scene, we've got the presentation necessary. My daughter, I believe, is cosplaying as Sailor Moon. I am cosplaying as the writer in residence. The only concern left is a delivery of books that should be here by tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed.
In light of the Expo, I was asked to write about the Dungeons and Dragons television show . . . specifically this episode. I don't know what I'll say yet; I'm still gearing up to the task. There's a good chance that I'll say something I should apologize for - but we'll see.
Whenever I hear someone remember this show fondly, which seems to happen often, I find myself in awe. Perhaps it is because everyone I played with when the show came out (1983) were already 18 and way, way beyond kid's shit. My memories of the show consists mostly of how really bad my groups considered it to be, how offended we were that a gritty show about D&D had been shat on again (something that hasn't changed) and in particular in which ways the show was nothing like the actual game.
Regarding the linked episode above, I'll keep off the subject of animation quality, voice work and other aspects of production (which are horrifically execreble); I'm also not going to say anything about costumes and the silliness of their design. I'll stick to game interpretations with which I have a problem. I'll give the time stamp for when the problem occurs. I'm going to ignore the title sequence and just start with the show itself (part one), which begins at 01:00.
There's very little left to do. We're set up for the scene, we've got the presentation necessary. My daughter, I believe, is cosplaying as Sailor Moon. I am cosplaying as the writer in residence. The only concern left is a delivery of books that should be here by tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed.
In light of the Expo, I was asked to write about the Dungeons and Dragons television show . . . specifically this episode. I don't know what I'll say yet; I'm still gearing up to the task. There's a good chance that I'll say something I should apologize for - but we'll see.
Whenever I hear someone remember this show fondly, which seems to happen often, I find myself in awe. Perhaps it is because everyone I played with when the show came out (1983) were already 18 and way, way beyond kid's shit. My memories of the show consists mostly of how really bad my groups considered it to be, how offended we were that a gritty show about D&D had been shat on again (something that hasn't changed) and in particular in which ways the show was nothing like the actual game.
Regarding the linked episode above, I'll keep off the subject of animation quality, voice work and other aspects of production (which are horrifically execreble); I'm also not going to say anything about costumes and the silliness of their design. I'll stick to game interpretations with which I have a problem. I'll give the time stamp for when the problem occurs. I'm going to ignore the title sequence and just start with the show itself (part one), which begins at 01:00.
- 1:47 - the Dungeon Master tells the party what to do.
- 2:37 - the mages' powers are limited to his hat (and by extension that the abilities of all the characters are due to their magic items).
- 3:04 - characters run away from danger before engaging first (one arrow does not equal engagement for D&D players).
- 3:14 - only barbarians want to fight things.
- 3:23 - "fighting will only make them mad."
- 3:37 - fighting is somehow equated to "heroics"
- 4:30 - in a world where people turn down exchanging bread for talismans (because they're obviously cheap and worthless) there's still room for accusations that the use of magic proves "an evil wizard."
- 4:53 - peasants are willing to rush off to try to destroy a mage after displaying an obviously powerful talisman.
- 5:04 - too exhausted to run; obviously, not too exhausted to fight.
- 6:50 - characters sleep in their armor.
On the whole, mere quibbles. So much of the show is taken up with anvilicious development and flanderization that it's amazing there was time to have anyone portray any event that can be reconciled with D&D. And of course, the fact that it was presented as a kid's show in a pre-internet world, when children's programming was hopelessly relegated to infantilization and marketing, meant that fighting had to be something the participants couldn't do.
That's the saddest part of this show - that it was designed around a game with a fundamental structural dependency on fighting in a media where fighting could not be discussed. Television has always been funny this way. As elementary age boys in an upper middle-class neighborhood, the favorite game was always 'guns.' The television we watched was full of six-shooters, phasers and spy pistols, so those filled our pockets. Guns meant running across open lawns, diving over fences and dying - mostly dying - in spectacular ways. Twitching one's body while running off a five-foot ledge to a slope of grass, skidding to a halt and then holding the 'death pose' for the demanded 30-seconds (rules!) was just the sort of thing to cause mothers to rush onto their back porch and scream in full panic.
At seven we understood the pleasure of fighting. That's part of what we immediately loved about D&D at - in my case - 15. But television has always tried to pretend that fighting is something children do not do. And it has always tried to shove that perspective down children's throats.
As children, we ignored it.
Naturally, the D&D show was nothing like D&D. How could it be? Even if the writers had done due diligence (which obviously they did not do), nothing on earth is more executively meddled with than children's programming. There are too many legal landmines for it not to be that way. The error, of course, was that D&D was promoted as a children's game. It is still promoted that way. It will always be promoted that way. It doesn't matter that it requires more time, effort, ability, expertise, background and practice to manage it than bridge or football pools . . . this is simply the way the world insists on looking at the game. This is why every nerd portrayed playing it on television always emphasizes the fantastical, silly aspects.
When a dragon is presented in a children's show, it is a fat, dumpy thing that clumps around breathing harmless fire. It isn't that dragons can't be scary. We can see a bit of the fear in a movie sort of aimed at adults, where an effort is made to sort of cause the dragon to be aggressive, moving like a clumsy snake and breathing hot fire between talking like a serial killing university professor. We can make it burn down a town.
What we can't do, even in an adult movie with a dragon in it, is show the smashed and burnt bodies of the dead, as they're dying, like we can in a war film. People will pay to watch tank shells splitting bodies in two or to see people cut to pieces by bullets, but no one's going to put up with that shit from a movie with a dragon in it. Because this isn't horror, this is fantasy.
Yet - and here's something that most D&D players never really grasp - role-playing is horror. It is what we would never choose to do in reality - court death, see it as acceptable, take pleasure in destroying an enemy and callously make plans to do it all again. For gain. It is viscerally satisfying to act as brutally as we wish for purely selfish motivations. This is what the game taps into. And the more advanced the game, the greater the agency for pursuing that selfish intent.
Films and television can't represent that because the 'good guys' can never be that way in that media. The 'good guys' can't possess the motivation that D&D demands as proof of winning. It is a game built in an underground and pursued habitually in an environment where authority and morality have no voice. Where 'right' and 'wrong' are limited to what a small number of quiet players accept as the gameplay they want.
A great reason for the success of expos and gaming cons comes from the sense of free-spirited lawless associations that arise from people dressing as they want and playing up the characters they want, without the usual discourse and condemnation that follows from social rule-makers. Role-playing represents a form of media where executive meddling is impossible above the level of the DM, where hours can be spent in the company of others who are okay with arson, murder, genocide and the like. It is the only group activity that allows a meeting of the minds in this way.
But this is a great secret, isn't it? We're supposed to pretend it isn't going on this way around gaming tables. Every once in awhile someone on the net gets upset because someone mentions rape or infanticide and there's a back-and-forth. Doesn't mean anything, however - because if six adults can agree that the castration going on in this role-playing game, tonight, is fantasy and nothing more, then the rest of the world can fuck off. Ain't nobody's business but the players.
That makes role-playing a dangerous game - in the eyes of the controllers and the pundits. This encourages such people to proclaim, again, that RPGs are on their way out. Or that the only people still playing them are children. Or whatever other lie that wants to be said.
But we at the tables know different, don't we. We know that when Eric the Paladin says, "I make a pass at Lorne - how does he feel about that?", we don't have to take a public sampling to find out if the players having sex is okay. All the DM needs to do is roll a die.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Watch & Learn
Today is the 36th anniversary of the first time that I played D&D - and the first time I ever heard of D&D, for that matter.
To revisit the first post on this blog:
There's more under the link - but the above is enough for this post today.
Since that time, I have done much watching and learning. For some who read this blog, it may fail to resonate just how long I have hammered and sawed at this game. I became enraptured immediately from the beginning, with a mental state that had already spent several years of my youth painstakingly making maps, compounding statistics from an Almanac, making lists of countries based on many things (area, population, resources, largest cities, etc) just for the hell of it. D&D just 'clicked.'
So that the time I spend today, the drive and the effort, it was there 36 years ago, beginning within the very first week of my playing. It was like I was ready to fall in love and then, there it was, first sight.
It has been thus ever since.
I have been working for a couple of weeks now, at a job which they pay me at (for those who remember I was not paid at all for my first cooking job!).
Today I was given an opportunity at another restaurant, better pay, better conditions, a better chance for advancement. Then on the way home from the interview, I saw this:
I wish my camera work was less sloppy (and that my thumb had been cut off as a child). If you're tuning into this right away, the youtube edit fix for sloppy film is just initiating - so this should look better by this evening.
Eileen is terrific, very friendly, spectacularly talented and completely generous in letting me take this video of her and agreeing to let me put it on YouTube. If you see this Eileen, thank you again.
Now I'm going to go work on the second draft of the book I finished on Friday afternoon. It is called The Killing Bequest, which I hope is a good title. The first draft is completely finished and I think it is a marvelous, tight story. I will be writing more about it in the coming months.
For those who have purchased How to Run, or who remember the Fallow posts from a couple months ago, the book takes place entirely in the fiction kingdom of Fallow that I've invented.
Edmonton Expo is coming in 18 days. And it's my birthday on the 15th. I hope all this is a sign.
To revisit the first post on this blog:
It was, I think, a Saturday night. I called up a friend, asked him what if he wanted to do something and he told me, “I can’t, I’m playing D&D.” I had never heard of it.
A game? Yes. “Can you explain it?” I asked.
“No, I can’t,” he said. “You have to play it.” Whereupon he invited me.
My first time playing, I did not understand anything. I was told to be a fighter (it was the easiest to play); my “equipment” was rattled off at me, most of which I was unfamiliar with, and which I wrote down as a list on a sheet of paper under my “abilities.” Lengthy explanations of these things were not given, as that would have held up the game. Watch and learn I was told, and watch and learn I did.
There's more under the link - but the above is enough for this post today.
Since that time, I have done much watching and learning. For some who read this blog, it may fail to resonate just how long I have hammered and sawed at this game. I became enraptured immediately from the beginning, with a mental state that had already spent several years of my youth painstakingly making maps, compounding statistics from an Almanac, making lists of countries based on many things (area, population, resources, largest cities, etc) just for the hell of it. D&D just 'clicked.'
So that the time I spend today, the drive and the effort, it was there 36 years ago, beginning within the very first week of my playing. It was like I was ready to fall in love and then, there it was, first sight.
It has been thus ever since.
I have been working for a couple of weeks now, at a job which they pay me at (for those who remember I was not paid at all for my first cooking job!).
Today I was given an opportunity at another restaurant, better pay, better conditions, a better chance for advancement. Then on the way home from the interview, I saw this:
I wish my camera work was less sloppy (and that my thumb had been cut off as a child). If you're tuning into this right away, the youtube edit fix for sloppy film is just initiating - so this should look better by this evening.
Eileen is terrific, very friendly, spectacularly talented and completely generous in letting me take this video of her and agreeing to let me put it on YouTube. If you see this Eileen, thank you again.
Now I'm going to go work on the second draft of the book I finished on Friday afternoon. It is called The Killing Bequest, which I hope is a good title. The first draft is completely finished and I think it is a marvelous, tight story. I will be writing more about it in the coming months.
For those who have purchased How to Run, or who remember the Fallow posts from a couple months ago, the book takes place entirely in the fiction kingdom of Fallow that I've invented.
Edmonton Expo is coming in 18 days. And it's my birthday on the 15th. I hope all this is a sign.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Whatever the Cost, Ever Forward
Without a doubt, my job has kicked my endurance way down the Fibonacci scale. I appreciate knowing that others are out there, noticing that I haven't been posting lately.
The worst part is not in lacking the time or energy to write . . . but in lacking the time and energy to think. Some of these posts appear after days, sometimes weeks of introspection or consideration, as I mull over the best way to express the subject or myself. Writing, I have learned, takes a great deal of energy; oftentimes I am done with a post or an afternoon's work on a book project only to find myself dripping with sweat, as though I had just been out for a long run.
I suffer as much as anybody from the age old blogger question: what to write about today? The way I usually master this is to collect, as each day progresses, several small ideas that I then work into larger ones. I keep these shuffled in my head and, if I feel well about them, they eventually make their way onto the blog.
But there's been no peace of mind and thus no quiet contemplation, no opportunity for inspiration. Thus does another day on the blog pass uninterrupted by my injections.
It is no accident that I would end in writing a post about exhaustion.
This evening I'm doing some ordering of books for the Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo, where I will be from Sept 25 to 27. I'm getting a little help on the cost of these, trusting that we'll do as well with sales this year as we did in Toronto last year. I'll be selling the main book of course, How to Run, along with the two essay books found in my sidebar. I had hoped to have another ready in time, but it has encountered some problems and I'm not ready to release it yet. Thankfully, Edmonton is close and I will be staying with friends there, greatly cutting down on my expenses.
The event has me thinking about what a pleasure it was to meet people in Toronto who felt the drive to be better DMs, who felt a positive thrill in picking up the book and talking to me about it's potential. It promises to be a real shot in the arm. If any readers are in Edmonton or thereabouts, I hope you'll come around and see me.
I continue to feel that there is no greater need in the game than for better and more useful materials that speak towards making us all better at playing or DMing. Even when I read posts or reports from people who declare they have no interest in playing the complex game I usually describe, they still talk of strategies to play that they are in hopes of employing. It all speaks to the same thing: improvement.
D&D is a performance art. I would never want to play in a world where the DM felt their contribution was 'adequate.'
The worst part is not in lacking the time or energy to write . . . but in lacking the time and energy to think. Some of these posts appear after days, sometimes weeks of introspection or consideration, as I mull over the best way to express the subject or myself. Writing, I have learned, takes a great deal of energy; oftentimes I am done with a post or an afternoon's work on a book project only to find myself dripping with sweat, as though I had just been out for a long run.
I suffer as much as anybody from the age old blogger question: what to write about today? The way I usually master this is to collect, as each day progresses, several small ideas that I then work into larger ones. I keep these shuffled in my head and, if I feel well about them, they eventually make their way onto the blog.
But there's been no peace of mind and thus no quiet contemplation, no opportunity for inspiration. Thus does another day on the blog pass uninterrupted by my injections.
It is no accident that I would end in writing a post about exhaustion.
This evening I'm doing some ordering of books for the Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo, where I will be from Sept 25 to 27. I'm getting a little help on the cost of these, trusting that we'll do as well with sales this year as we did in Toronto last year. I'll be selling the main book of course, How to Run, along with the two essay books found in my sidebar. I had hoped to have another ready in time, but it has encountered some problems and I'm not ready to release it yet. Thankfully, Edmonton is close and I will be staying with friends there, greatly cutting down on my expenses.
The event has me thinking about what a pleasure it was to meet people in Toronto who felt the drive to be better DMs, who felt a positive thrill in picking up the book and talking to me about it's potential. It promises to be a real shot in the arm. If any readers are in Edmonton or thereabouts, I hope you'll come around and see me.
I continue to feel that there is no greater need in the game than for better and more useful materials that speak towards making us all better at playing or DMing. Even when I read posts or reports from people who declare they have no interest in playing the complex game I usually describe, they still talk of strategies to play that they are in hopes of employing. It all speaks to the same thing: improvement.
D&D is a performance art. I would never want to play in a world where the DM felt their contribution was 'adequate.'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)