A sapient missile is granted a new human body, a new friend and a new purpose and life.
Saturday, March 3, 2018
Thursday, March 1, 2018
It All Started with a Halbard - Support the Noble Armada Kickstarter
TC here. This is about my Gamer life, rather than my writing which doesn't require banishing part of my soul and replacing it with some other guy instead of me to keep writing ;)
This is about my experience with Holistic Design. When I first got to Atlanta, I didn't have a lot of friends. I wanted to find a gaming group and looked on a local site and found out about an Empire of the Petal Throne's game since I liked the email game I'd originally played several years before. Turned out the system was so complex I didn't really understand it but I made a fighter called Huff who maxed his skill out with a Habbard and hit things when the party told him too. The rest was more of a reading experience but an awesome one.
Only it turned out I didn't get an EPT game, I got a Fading Suns game, by the games who invented the thing, but I didn't know any of that when I went to the game. Two sessions of roleplaying as the weird noble / engineer Helix Justinian and I was invited to game night. For the next ten years, I made friends with the lot of them, and friends of those friends became my friends until about 60 percent of my entire social circle in Atlanta became people from that single positive experience.
It was, literally the adventure of a life time and despite losing so much of my life and time to the LDS church, I still look back in fondness to those years because of the many fantastic experiences I've had as a result including a secondary introduction to the amazing Mythic Journey's/Mythic Imagination institute. There were good times and bad times at Holistic, but one of the 'it almost could have beens' was Noble Armada, a game that was a sequel to their best selling Empire of the Fading Suns, that they owned, that they controlled and now ironically if they were making it today could do it on steam.
It's funny you should say that because...well, they are. I pledged $50 for it, not just because it looks like a cool game and they are my friends but because this is full circle on a Quixotian level quest to try by hook or by crook or any means necessary to make the thing happen, and this is the closest they've ever come to doing just that. I highly recommend checking it out.
At one of the darker times, I wanted to help by any means necessary which ultimately led to me working with them to write four RLR books, including one of which I did the majority by myself D20 FBI. It was long before I'd done my self published novels, and quite frankly I really loved how they came together. It also later led me to do my own Fate of Inglemia supplment. In my thinking, because of how much time was stolen from me, I try to live not one life but seven, and thanks to the RLR books and the Fate of Inglemia, I feel one of them is completed. My "Gamer' life as it were. I'm 'retired' not that I don't game but I have done what I consider potentially worthy of at least "A life" of accomplishment, it's my own arbitrary standard, with writing the seven novels being the second one. Working on #7 now.
As you can guess, with a name like Tossing Grenades at Windmills, I'm all about lost causes, but this is a cause that is no longer lost! The amount they are asking for is very small for a very worthy product and they're already half way there!
This is about my experience with Holistic Design. When I first got to Atlanta, I didn't have a lot of friends. I wanted to find a gaming group and looked on a local site and found out about an Empire of the Petal Throne's game since I liked the email game I'd originally played several years before. Turned out the system was so complex I didn't really understand it but I made a fighter called Huff who maxed his skill out with a Habbard and hit things when the party told him too. The rest was more of a reading experience but an awesome one.
Only it turned out I didn't get an EPT game, I got a Fading Suns game, by the games who invented the thing, but I didn't know any of that when I went to the game. Two sessions of roleplaying as the weird noble / engineer Helix Justinian and I was invited to game night. For the next ten years, I made friends with the lot of them, and friends of those friends became my friends until about 60 percent of my entire social circle in Atlanta became people from that single positive experience.
It was, literally the adventure of a life time and despite losing so much of my life and time to the LDS church, I still look back in fondness to those years because of the many fantastic experiences I've had as a result including a secondary introduction to the amazing Mythic Journey's/Mythic Imagination institute. There were good times and bad times at Holistic, but one of the 'it almost could have beens' was Noble Armada, a game that was a sequel to their best selling Empire of the Fading Suns, that they owned, that they controlled and now ironically if they were making it today could do it on steam.
It's funny you should say that because...well, they are. I pledged $50 for it, not just because it looks like a cool game and they are my friends but because this is full circle on a Quixotian level quest to try by hook or by crook or any means necessary to make the thing happen, and this is the closest they've ever come to doing just that. I highly recommend checking it out.
At one of the darker times, I wanted to help by any means necessary which ultimately led to me working with them to write four RLR books, including one of which I did the majority by myself D20 FBI. It was long before I'd done my self published novels, and quite frankly I really loved how they came together. It also later led me to do my own Fate of Inglemia supplment. In my thinking, because of how much time was stolen from me, I try to live not one life but seven, and thanks to the RLR books and the Fate of Inglemia, I feel one of them is completed. My "Gamer' life as it were. I'm 'retired' not that I don't game but I have done what I consider potentially worthy of at least "A life" of accomplishment, it's my own arbitrary standard, with writing the seven novels being the second one. Working on #7 now.
As you can guess, with a name like Tossing Grenades at Windmills, I'm all about lost causes, but this is a cause that is no longer lost! The amount they are asking for is very small for a very worthy product and they're already half way there!
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Friday, February 16, 2018
Pantser vs Planner
I wrote 5 of my 7 novels as a "Panterser" which in National Novel Writing Month terminology means writing by the seat of my pants. In all cases, I had elaborate rules on the SETTING as well as who the characters were, and it helped me as a writer immensely. I learned to make strong characters, to see things from their perspective, and to let the plot go where it may.
But I am really a Planner. And I should have admitted that from the beginning. My inner accountant can become an inner architect to provide structure for my inner poet. It's like in the drawing I'm slowly teaching myself the difference between using 'broad angles' to define contour and just....well a Picasso painting without the Picasso. ( I am not and never will be Picasso.)
I've written about this before as the Stephen King vs JRR Tolkien style of writing. I like reading King more; as do most people but Tolkien invented a new genre. And especially now that I am mostly writing for myself, and my desire to improve my quality, I need to embrace my mechanical side so that my artistic side can run wild within those boundaries.
I thank "The Fantasy Fiction Formula" for helping me really figure out how to do this, first with a character profile questionnaire, and second with a series of exercises that ultimately became an outline for the plot. I just had to if I was going to answer all the questions she was wanting me to ask.
And at this point, I'm realizing where novels 2 and even 5 went wrong. Have Name Will Travel sat on a shelf for two years before I released it and finally just chopped off 20K words at the end. It ends where it should have ended, even if that is a major cliff hanger; and that dangling participle of plot would not have happened if I hadn't just sort of meandered once I brought my 5 protagonists back together.
To put this in perspective, I firmly believe that this outline alone will result in a quality differnce in Fruitloop and Frankenstein between Robocop and Robocop 2.
And as far as the much hidden "Heir of Sunfire" I'm editing the hell out of it. The ending needs another 15-20K words, but there is something to be said to writing it or Grenademan vs Zombies all in one sitting. Grenademan Vs the Zombies ended up working because the end was already written...in a Zombie movie there really is only one way it can go; and the only question is whether anyone survives at all.
Good times.
But I am really a Planner. And I should have admitted that from the beginning. My inner accountant can become an inner architect to provide structure for my inner poet. It's like in the drawing I'm slowly teaching myself the difference between using 'broad angles' to define contour and just....well a Picasso painting without the Picasso. ( I am not and never will be Picasso.)
I've written about this before as the Stephen King vs JRR Tolkien style of writing. I like reading King more; as do most people but Tolkien invented a new genre. And especially now that I am mostly writing for myself, and my desire to improve my quality, I need to embrace my mechanical side so that my artistic side can run wild within those boundaries.
I thank "The Fantasy Fiction Formula" for helping me really figure out how to do this, first with a character profile questionnaire, and second with a series of exercises that ultimately became an outline for the plot. I just had to if I was going to answer all the questions she was wanting me to ask.
And at this point, I'm realizing where novels 2 and even 5 went wrong. Have Name Will Travel sat on a shelf for two years before I released it and finally just chopped off 20K words at the end. It ends where it should have ended, even if that is a major cliff hanger; and that dangling participle of plot would not have happened if I hadn't just sort of meandered once I brought my 5 protagonists back together.
To put this in perspective, I firmly believe that this outline alone will result in a quality differnce in Fruitloop and Frankenstein between Robocop and Robocop 2.
And as far as the much hidden "Heir of Sunfire" I'm editing the hell out of it. The ending needs another 15-20K words, but there is something to be said to writing it or Grenademan vs Zombies all in one sitting. Grenademan Vs the Zombies ended up working because the end was already written...in a Zombie movie there really is only one way it can go; and the only question is whether anyone survives at all.
Good times.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
State of the Four Worlds 2018
Brief News Cast of the Four Worlds and the Declaration on Human Rights
Avoid Face Melt off!
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