Usherwood Inspiration

[Chainsaw]

Hey Kramer, we love your work here, but even super fucking hardass dudes like bryce0lynch like your shit, so I was wondering, what's your inspiration and thought process? How do you approach adventure design? Any tips?

[Kramer]

Hey Kramer, we love your work here, but even super fucking hardass dudes like bryce0lynch like your shit, so I was wondering, what's your inspiration and thought process? How do you approach adventure design? Any tips?

Yeah, Bryce can be a hard-ass all-righty. I will give you that. However, he is one of the few not trying to win friends with favorable reviews.

And I always try to keep in mind, the Mythbusters proved that, yes, you can in fact polish a turd. So, everything I write has potential.

Outlines

"Outlines? We don't need steenking outlines, Señor."

I say sometimes that I have this or that "outlined." I think that's a generous statement for how I write. My outlines are usually something like this; "The players start Here, and they go There. They need to find/rescue/slay The Other." End outline.

Working Outside the Script

Any GM who has ever GM'd knows; pain in the ass players do not always want to go where you want them to go. So, I try to think like a pain in the ass player. Players love side-treks. While I don't sand-box in the traditional sense, I try to provide at least seeds of adventures to lead the party astray, and trust that the GM will know where to take them when I have not completely envisioned the path ahead of them.

General Approach

Let me address this by calling attention to the Fellowship go the Ring DVD commentary. I have come to realize that I approach my adventure writing very similarly to how it is stated in the aforementioned DVD commentary that Professor Tolkein approached writing FotR. I start with a kernel of an idea. I get about five pages into the manuscript before coming to a road block. So, what do I do? I start all over. Then I get to about page 10, come to another road block, and then I start all over. I usually keep nothing (or very little) from what happened before.

What complicates this further, is that I am a very non-linear writer. I'll be working in "The Journey" way up in the front, and think of an event or encounter that happens way near the end. And I get so eager to get my thoughts down on paper (pixels?), that I drop the whole front section for weeks or months at a time while I address this "cool thing" that happens near the end. Which, of course, may (and probably will) completely change how "The Journey" needs to happen. And during all this back-and-forth I am working on maps that change as the adventure is written and change how the adventure is written.

And that's the way I go throughout the entire write-up; writing small sections at a time, jumping forwards and back and forwards again, rewriting sections multiple times and developing maps until I've completely lost myself in the details, and drop the project for a month or two while I start work on something else. Then, when I grow weary of that project, I can go back to the first project. (Anyone looking for The Caravans of Blood Pass? Yeah, me too. But it'll be epic when it's done!)

And that explains why I spend 6 months, 12 months, 24 months (and longer!) developing a project.

Encounters

I've stated elsewhere that I like every encounter to have a very specific purpose that drives the story forward and to have a causality to other encounters; either in the same adventure, the same campaign, or else in some other campaign not even realized yet. I would direct your attention to In the Halls of the Mage-King, encounter Sub-level 3m. Des objets étranges which directs the GM to see The Door of Infinite Portals, which I will point out, was not even (re-)written at the time! And even then, I needed to write Revolvers & Wizardry before I could even address The Door of Infinite Portals! Damn, I make things harder on myself than I have to. That little note in Mage-King was completely superfluous and didn't even need to be there, but I thought it would be a cool tease for Door.

There's (usually) always an easier way

Who puts an Ekivu demon in an adventure measured for 4th and 5th level characters? Well, it seemed like an appropriate encounter in that specific situation and under those specific circumstances; and it was. So I did. But that is not to say the players must attempt to engage the demon. That would just be stupid. However, we all know at least one player who cannot resist the challenge and rationale that, if it's there, it must be overcome. Sometimes the better part of valor (and gaming) is to simply run away.

I do not like no-win encounters, or traps-of-certain-death(TM). I mean, who does. So, I always try to allow some reasonable alternative.

Measure of Quality

This is how I measure my success. Are you ready? I write games to satisfy my own need to create. Period.

The fact that a small cross-section of gamers appear to like Usherwood is great and I appreciate the good reviews and all (I even met a young man on the train during my morning commute not long ago that I can only describe as a fan-boy), but really, it's for my own shits-and-grins. I never thought to make any money with this stuff when I set out on this journey.

Now don't get me wrong, I value reviews and seek them eagerly. My very first review for the very first version of Yrchyn, the tyrant was justifiably brutal. I mean, that first edit of Yrchyn sucked a hill giant's hairy ball-sack and bad. But I listened. I learned. I responded, and hopefully got closer to the target the second time around.

Above all else, I try not to take it too seriously. It's fun diversion and self-funding hobby to me. And that takes off some of the pressure.

[gizmomathboy]

SNIP
Measure of Quality

This is how I measure my success. Are you ready? I write games to satisfy my own need to create. Period.
SNIP

Not to cut out Kramer's great exposition but I think this here is the heart and core of "great art" (well created/creative work/activities).

When a creator makes something that satisfies them then they had succeeded.

Do I need to like it? Fuck no.

The next hardest part is to get a creator to fucking release that shit to the world (as I stare at Francisca). Some people think what they make is trite or obvious or whatever. Doesn't matter, share it with the world and give no fucks what they say. You might not make a living but some other person might be inspired or awed by what you made.

FIN.

[Kramer]

The next hardest part is to get a creator to fucking release that shit to the world (as I stare at Francisca). Some people think what they make is trite or obvious or whatever. Doesn't matter, share it with the world and give no fucks what they say. You might not make a living but some other person might be inspired or awed by what you made.

true 'dat.

What's the point of creation if it never gets shared.

[francisca]

(as I stare at Francisca).

Not creepy. Not at all, dude.

LOL

What's the point of creation if it never gets shared.

gizmo has been gently and not so gently prodding me to get stuff published for a while now, and I haven't, for various reasons. The first of which is directly related to your comment: It actually does get shared, it just happens to be for a small audience of 4-16 at a time, at the table I happen to be running D&D at. That's plenty of sharing for me.

The second is, I'd really, really need to sit down and put in the work to get my stuff into a form which I would find acceptable to hand over to an editor. I just don't have that time, or really the inclination. The dirty secret, which is one all good DMs know, is that my "adventures" are a clusterfuck of quasi-related ideas, and 80% of what I do, gets crocked together in real time, at the table, and is dependent on the give and take with the players. That kind of lightning is hard to stuff between the covers of an adventure.

[bobjester]

The second is, I'd really, really need to sit down and put in the work to get my stuff into a form which I would find acceptable to hand over to an editor. I just don't have that time, or really the inclination. The dirty secret, which is one all good DMs know, is that my "adventures" are a clusterfuck of quasi-related ideas, and 80% of what I do, gets crocked together in real time, at the table, and is dependent on the give and take with the players. That kind of lightning is hard to stuff between the covers of an adventure.

Great minds clusterfuck alike. Sounds like most of my shit, along with the same reasons why I don't get the ol' turd polishing machine out of storage.

[gizmomathboy]

The second is, I'd really, really need to sit down and put in the work to get my stuff into a form which I would find acceptable to hand over to an editor. I just don't have that time, or really the inclination. The dirty secret, which is one all good DMs know, is that my "adventures" are a clusterfuck of quasi-related ideas, and 80% of what I do, gets crocked together in real time, at the table, and is dependent on the give and take with the players. That kind of lightning is hard to stuff between the covers of an adventure.

Great minds clusterfuck alike. Sounds like most of my shit, along with the same reasons why I don't get the ol' turd polishing machine out of storage.

Fucking grumpy grodnards

Your turds are way better than the polished coprolites you regularly condemn. Be the light and put goodness out into the world

[bobjester]

The second is, I'd really, really need to sit down and put in the work to get my stuff into a form which I would find acceptable to hand over to an editor. I just don't have that time, or really the inclination. The dirty secret, which is one all good DMs know, is that my "adventures" are a clusterfuck of quasi-related ideas, and 80% of what I do, gets crocked together in real time, at the table, and is dependent on the give and take with the players. That kind of lightning is hard to stuff between the covers of an adventure.

Great minds clusterfuck alike. Sounds like most of my shit, along with the same reasons why I don't get the ol' turd polishing machine out of storage.

Fucking grumpy grodnards

Your turds are way better than the polished coprolites you regularly condemn. Be the light and put goodness out into the world

I started putting out some of my homebrew campaign material at the Piazza, as forum posts. Its mostly system agnostic, but the current campaign is being played with 5e rules. (I know, I know...)

I have one kit-bashed set of house-rules (I refuse to call it a clone, coz its not) in PDF in my GoogleDocs called "Levels Beyond Basic".

It needs to be re-formatted badly, as I learn as I go, and what I've learned so far is so far away from the guidelines proposed in the Technical Writing of RPGs thread here as to be laughably amateurish. It really needs an editor (not me) as someone else with experience will be able to parse the bullshit and cut it down to the basics, and hopefully leaving some of my personal prose to show off.

Unfortunately, every time I send off the odt or converted doc/docx file to someone else, it comes out as gibberish, as if the ASCII isn't translating properly (or something, I dunno, I'm less comp-literate this year than I was even a year ago, but I suspect this is going to happen when your Linux OS hasn't crashed since first booting it up 7 years ago, and never having to replace it with a current incarnation, like most Windows users must do...).

Luckily, the PDFs seem to go online without a flaw, and that's something, but I have no idea what PDF reader/writer programs are available to open those PDFs & edit/reformat them.

Even then, most of my current campaign stuff is for 5e, so DM Guild might be interested, but they're really picky about writers sticking to their templates, which I hate; and the other alternative that I am aware of is drivethru or rpgnow sites, and I have no idea how I'd upload my shit there.

[francisca]

Your turds are way better than the polished coprolites you regularly condemn. Be the light and put goodness out into the world

Literally LOL

[gizmomathboy]

Your turds are way better than the polished coprolites you regularly condemn. Be the light and put goodness out into the world

Literally LOL

I totally fucked up the opportunity to use the "Be a beacon" line from Sneakers.

[francisca]

Your turds are way better than the polished coprolites you regularly condemn. Be the light and put goodness out into the world

Literally LOL

I totally fucked up the opportunity to use the "Be a beacon" line from Sneakers.

See, now you're just provoking me.