Plans vs Reality

Journal 69 26 Sept-2 Oct, 2022

This week started out well with a decent word count and plans for a lot of things to happen. And all of those things got sidelined for a blown tire, a tow bill, a missed day of work, and other problems.

Though, while sitting in the mechanics, I did work on some character ideas and some background material. I’ve been toying with the idea of running D&D again (I retired from running all games around 2007 and didn’t start running again until Torg Eternity at the end of 2018… and then I stopped running because of the Pandemic).

Point being. I want to run D&D again, and I have a chance to run a couple one-shots and shorts over the next few months. But I want to start a new campaign, at the table, bunch of friends.

But let’s talk about running games and using our storytelling after we dispense with writing numbers and novel talk.

Words

I managed a single day of writing… my other two main writing days were filled running around and fixing problems.

But I did finally manage to end chapter 20… It has been years since it took me multiple sessions to finish a chapter. I usually do a chapter in a single sitting or two, rarely in three. But chapter 20 has the distinction of 4 sessions to complete. The last time I did 4 sessions for a chapter was chapter 12 in my thesis novel over two years ago.

Just a weird number/statistic that popped into my head.

Luckily it was a good day of writing. 2982 new words added to the manuscript. Bringing it to a total of 109,802 total words.

Thoughts on 20

Chapter 20 was meant to be a little background leading to some worldbuilding with an action sequence taking up the later half of the chapter. But it leaned heavier into the exposition and world building and I kind of feel the “action sequence” was short and hurried. Maybe a little sparse as it leapt from character to character.

I’m still having issues with my pov… whether to place the “camera” inside a character or to pull it back and float in third person. I tend to write all the chapters in a singular character, but then it feels like the rest of the characters are neglected.

So, I want to pull the camera around and show what the heck is going on all over the scene. I think I need to work on writing some shorter pieces with very strict control over the pov. So, the same scene with just the characters eyes, then do the scene with a camera overhead.

But I’m waxing back to my constant complaints. Second guessing myself and wishing I had more feedback.

Running Games

Not much of a segue I’m afraid.

But I don’t want to sit here whining about the process. I want to talk about gaming. About worldbuilding, storytelling, and the Table Top RPG. Many of my skills for storytelling were honed, and perfected, by running games and enthralling my friends with villains, worlds, and funny characters. Never underestimate the ability to make people laugh with a high-pitched animal voice or a strange accent coming out of a visually incongruous character.

I want to run again. But then we have the problem of time management. More specifically, working on a different story than my novel. How do I justify taking time away from the keyboard when I’m already having trouble just making my 3 sessions a week?

How to answer that?

Well, the world I write in was the world I used to run in, only now I have altered, evolved and codified it all into a more cohesive whole. Instead of making a new kingdom and saying it existed in the world, I have mapped it all out. I have worked on the history and where (when) those previous games took place.

Further, the novels I’m writing are based on some aspects of previous games. Many of the characters are the characters my friends and brothers either played, or encountered over the years. Which kind of gives me two options for running games.

First, I could run my novels, and place a new group of characters through the events that are already happening in my current novels. This has the drawback of putting my players through a third version of a game that most of them have already had twice before. And worse it has them interacting with versions of their own characters.

Second, I could run parallel stories, or past stories that inform on what I’m currently writing or what I will be writing further down the road. This one appeals a lot more. Though it has the problem that it requires me to sacrifice more time to other stories.

What’s the answer?

Second Choice.

I don’t think I want to run the Shadow Elf Invasion for a third time. Though keeping it in the background is probably still going to happen.

The second option is the best. I have a ton of story ideas that pop in my head and just get jotted down in my notes. I always planned to write a series of novels in this world. Starting with the Shadow Invasion and then writing a story in the past, then another post-invasion, then way back in time, then a story during but from a different crew of people.

I planned to jump around in the far and near past. Showcase events that are mentioned in passing but not explored or fully studied.

Forbidden Valley—Vaesra

This is a good example. In the current novel I have two groups of people converging on a haunted and destroyed valley. A kingdom that was destroyed centuries ago.

Now the first novel I wrote with many of these characters was back in the early 2000’s and that novel was “trunked” but the characters and a lot of the setting was established in that novel. And I have always written this valley as dead, cursed, and horrific.

But recently I had to ask myself what it was like while it was alive. And I wrote pages and pages about the country that existed BEFORE the fall. Vaesra. And now I have this write up and the beginning of a map, and a lineage of kings, events, and stories.

I’m thinking I might want to run a game in Vaesra, 300 years before my current novel, when the country was still vibrant and alive. Create characters who were formed by such a place and then see how they deal with the destruction of their homeland.

Adjacent Stories

So many “adjacent stories” keep popping into my head and it would be interesting to see how characters react. Which leads back to the Shadow Elf Invasion. The first time I ran it it was happening in the background but quickly got into my character’s faces. They ignored it for a bit but they had to keep fighting.

The second time I ran it the characters were the “biggest heroes in the world” and they tried to thwart a world-wide invasion themselves. Realizing they couldn’t just run around the entire world fighting wars, they went to the Shadow Plane and killed the ruler of the Invasion.

Both of those are interesting stories, but I think I want to run stories that are more personal to the characters. I don’t want to force my players to think they are responsible for the ENTIRE PLANET, when I just recently mapped out the thing and its HUGE!

I want to tell stories that interact with what’s happening in the world, but that also stay relatively local, or just multinational… not international. (or do I mean country adjacent? Smaller scale is what I’m saying).

Time Management

I can hear you asking again, “Time?”

The way I see it, fleshing out more of the world only helps the future storytelling. It refreshes my old ideas (a lot of the world was made when I was a teenager, hence why we have fantasy Egypt in my world). It forces me to create greater details of smaller sections of the world and allows me to explore smaller nooks and crannies.

I have time while at work, while waiting for things, to pull out a notebook and work on notes, storytelling, characters, etc. I already do it all the time. Whether those notes are specifically for the novel currently under way, or contribute to the next, in any case the work needs doing.

The time issue comes down to the scheduling of the game and working on maps, encounters, and other such.

If anything, I don’t need to lose novel time I need to stop watching forty movies a month and slow down on all my Korean Dramas and Japanese Toku. Those are the things that eat into my time the most.

Movies, Hobby, Other Crap

Speaking of Toku I started Kamen Rider Revice and really like it a lot. I think I mentioned a bunch about it last week, so check there for that.

This is October so I will be spending every day with at least one horror movie on… perhaps I can count some of my Cthulhu Actual plays as horror movies and make that work?

I started a new K-drama, I haven’t watched one of those in months and months. I tried to get into Bulgasal back in March or April. You think a show about a vampiric creature would have held my attention but I was kind of meh with it for some reason. Now I’m watching a rom-com about a neat freak and the messy girl he falls for. That works. Weird.

Podcasts

My DnD Actual plays have been continuing at a fair pace (though I have several I fell behind on)… luckily a few ended for the season so that opened a little space. Critical Role Mighty Nein is on episode 82 and in Dimension20 I started the Unsleeping City Chapter 2. I’m 4 episodes into that one.

On the Cthulhu side of things I have been watching 2 Glass Cannon shows, Get in the Trunk Season 4 (AMAZING) all episodes. (I really want to watch the other seasons but I can’t find the damn episodes, even though people online mention the playing lists. I think they got moved behind a Patreon wall). Also, their run of Masks of Nyarlathotep is great… it is a little odd and happening a bit differently then any of the others I have listened to. But the cast is just amazing so I’m going to stick with it all the way.

Gaming

Two things here and then we’re done this week. This was an extra long one to make up for my lack of other writing last week.

I’m in three weekly games, two of which got shuffled around. So, yeah.

My Tuesday game which I loved a lot is on hold, and I worry we won’t get back to it. I really wanted to explore the character more. So, I think I will be upset if I don’t get to play him. However, we have one of other friends taking over the slot and running a game for the first time in years. The first game went well and its an interesting crew.

My Thursday game had me swap characters and one of my friends DMed his first ever game! He did well, a few rough edges to deal with but considering the group and how much he bite off for a first time run, it went well.

My Saturday game, which was a revolving 2 weeks this, 2 weeks that, is now just THIS. I fear that will lead to DM burnout for the DM being forced back to running every week. Part of me wants to take over the alternate weeks, or just take over the night entire. But I don’t want to run on roll20 and I kind of want a couple more players when I do my own thing.

In all cases this switch up of games has led to a very weird thing where I am now playing clerics in all three games. And I kind of hate myself for it. We’ll see how it goes.

And that’s over two-thousand words. So Let’s say good bye for now. Thanks for reading this far.