Writing Progress

[salamanca]

Actually, I am pretty sure with only a handful of chapters in a first draft, I'm still better.

[Sister Sonya]

Well, I read the first book and looked at its movie. I wanted to see what they were about, but later on so that I could discuss the former at my book club.

They were much better than a lot of the popular fiction out there. Not great literature (or movie), but not bad either.

[DiscoKittie]

To be totally honest, I didn't hate Twilight. I didn't love it either. But I did hate Breaking Dawn (thats the second one, right?). I really couldn't get into the second one. The way Bella (sp?) acted ... I just wanted to strangle her.

The main reason I started to hate the franchise was because it was everywhere! It was all over everything! You just couldn't get away from it! And when you stop to think about it, the characters are kind of creepy. (although, the rabid fans are more so)

I don't think I ever got around to watching the movies. I used to have a friend that had seen the first movie and read the first couple of books (I haven't seen her since the first movie came out) at least a dozen times each... then! Some people were way too into it.

[Sister Sonya]

Well, but the same thing could be said about anything hyped by popular media: reality shows, the Kardashians, Idol, now Hunger Games...

You just have to tune stuff out. There are only 24 hours in a day!

[Black Jack Rackham]

Alright, back on topic, the Adventure-a-Week adventure rough draft is finished (tenatively entitled "Happiness in Slavery" if you're curious and play that kind of thing). Starting this week in earnest to finish up "Lower 9" my CoC adventure. (I even came up with two more ideas for CoC which I may just write up for the heck of it).

The book is coming along swimmingly ever since I dedicated every friday to its completion.

Dave has already come up with the PA event so that's off my plate, and all the backgrounds I have write-ups for have been completed.

When all my photocopying came back from the printer I went ahead and separated everything already so no game prep (other than packing) to do.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Did a truckload of work on Lower 9. First scene is finished and half way through the second. Also gave rough outlines for both of the other CoC adventures I had.

Because of life events I hadn't written my book for two fridays in a row, so I added up the amount of words minimum I needed to get back on track and one Friday later, I'm back on schedule!

Left Happiness in Slavery to sit for a couple of days before I start editing so all is looking good there. I also did a little bit of work outlining two more adventures for A-a-W (both sequels to HiS).

[spizio]

"Every day you don't write that novel you have in your head is another day that Stephanie Meyers is better than you."

That is the most epic quote ever! I must share that with my G+ writer friends!

[Black Jack Rackham]

heh heh heh

[Black Jack Rackham]

More updates, Finished the second and third scenes for Lower 9, only four more scenes to go and its finished. Unfortunately, I realized after finishing scene 3 that I will also need to do character write-ups before it'll be ready, so I've added them into my to-do list.

Also got a request for a couple of updates/edits for Happiness in Slavery so those are going onto the list.

And today is Book Writin day!

But never fear, I've been thinking about Episodes 07 and 08. I have a general idea what I want to have happen, but sometimes I have to mentally chew on it a bit before I know more specifics.

Before those, however, I have to edit Episode 05 and do the rough draft of 06 (so my playtesters can get their grubby mitts on it after Origins).

[Dr. Miguel Contreras]

Will 05 and 06 premier at GenCon?

[salamanca]

5 and 6 will start next year. 2 events every year plus PA sessions at the 3 main cons we are doing.

Mark just likes to work very far ahead.

[Black Jack Rackham]

That way I can tweak things for the previous year's adventures before you ever see them. I love putting foreshadowing and other easter eggs into adventures.

You have J. Michael Straczynski to thank for that.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Lower 9 Scene 4 is finished! Took a break from that to try and get a rough draft of Episode 6 done before Origins. And guess what? Nearly half finished! Now don't get me wrong, the outline I have for it is 11 pages long and 5.5K words so I would have no problem running it from that. I'd just like a bit more firming up of details before we play.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Would love to tell you about the progress I made today but there wasn't any. I've written an adventure for Adventure-a-Week that was finished almost a month ago. Since that time, it's come back to me 4 times now (1st was formatting issues I hadn't been told about because they didn't have a list of formatting they wanted me to use when I asked about it before I started writing. 2nd was stating some of the monsters differently because they'd changed the way they wanted the monsters statted since I asked about it before I started writing. 3rd was the one I deserved because I apparently forgot to stat 3 of the monsters so they asked me to add them. And Finally, just today, two days before its due to be published, they mentioned that they'd forgotten that Pathfinders TOS explicitly states there is to be no violence (or implied violence) toward children. That is, of course, the central theme of this adventure, children are captured and must be rescued. So to bypass this asininity, I had to go back and change the words Child and Children to Teens, Youths, Prisoners, etc. I probably wouldn't be so irked if AaW hadn't already run afoul of this line of the TOS previously... grumble)

But in their defence they've been very apologetic about it.

[salamanca]

You do realize that AEG had a stricter version of that rule thatextended to women as well, right?. And that is nothing compared to the storm I stirred up when I suggested the Tiakhar pirates had fed a certain R&C knight his own legs after capture. That's why Giovanni never catches his wife, he is not allowed to.

[Orianna]

Are these TOS for Pathfinder and AEG only for officially published adventures, or any game run using the system? (Not sure how they can have rules for home campaigns... and for that matter, there are several instances of violence toward women and children in the 7th Sea books—I'm looking at you, Vodacce nation book!)

[Black Jack Rackham]

The TOS is for OG Licensing. Adventure-a-Week has a license to publish 3.5 and Pathfinder games. To do that, AaW cannot have violence or implied violence against children. Sorry threw me for a loop cause I've mostly written for Shadowrun (where anything, including re-killing the ghosts of the Jews to steal a rusty magic scalpel from the basement of Auschwitz is considered perfectly acceptable*)

Mark

*check out the SR book War! p. 120 under the section entitled "Work Brings Freedom" (oh how I wish I was making this all up).

[Orianna]

Showing my noob-ness here, but... what's OG Licensing?

[Black Jack Rackham]

Open Gaming Licence. Basically AaW pays Paizo for the privilege of being able to slap the Pathfinder logo onto their adventures. Wikipedia has a much more indepth description.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Game_License

[salamanca]

Talk to me in person about this next week. While my disclosure is over, it's still something I would rather not post about.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Just because Origins is fast approaching doesn't mean I've given up writing. Today I finished off the rough draft of Episode 6: The Balance of Profit. So now it's all ready for playtest. Looking forward to it!

[Black Jack Rackham]

Well, what'dya know about that... AaW got my adventure up and for sale (you can find it at http://paizo.com/products/btpy8ssz?B2-Happiness-in-Slavery) and someone took the time to review it. 4.5 stars out of 5, not too shabby. And the one complaint was something I thought of but didn't add because I was trying to stay within the 10k word limit.

AaW's asked about the sequels. I'm on the fence since the original fiasco but mostly because of those idiotic changes paizo insisted upon. They'll really require me to rethink the major bad guy in this scenario.

And only other topics, Lower 9 is one scene away from completion as I've just finished up scene 6. 5 was the real holdup since so much happened, I kind of felt bogged down. But then I just sat down on Thurs and wrote the whole thing in one fell swoop.

Gonna sit on the changes for 6 for a little time (I usually start back into in in Sept) and at some point I need to get a thorough outline for 7 and 8. But that's pretty far off...

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Yeah!!
It even has your NAME on it too! WOW!
Good going Mark!

[Black Jack Rackham]

Lower 9 is now a completed rough draft (still need to edit though, 17k words) doing a short bit of introduction to the characters, then maybe some research for pics/music/video/etc.

On the HoA front, I started outlining 07 and 08 in earnest. Unfortunately, I have two different ways 07 can go and I can't decide which I like better...

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Well, you can discuss it with Eric and I at your house this Sunday, so you can at least get an idea. Or you could make it end the 2 seperate ways, depending on how the people play it.

The question are, what ending will work better for your whole storyline? Do they both work, or will one work better than the other?
Which one do you think will cause us the most problems, or give you the most fun?
Will using 2 different endings cause you too much problems in the end to use them?
Will either ending effect anything that any of the players have got themselves involved in, storyline wise?