Passing 40k

Haven't made a post here in a while, so I thought I'd just recap what I've been up to since April.

I've written and released an Micro RPG (Role Playing Game).  It's a background, game rules, and scenario that prints onto a single side of A4 and folds into a little booklet.  The game is called "Shikishima Heroes" and is set in an alternate 1902.  Follow the link to read more.

It was a fun experience trying to write an entire game in what is actual fact, eight tiny tiny pages. You have to pare back your use of words and get the most meaning out of every sentence. Game rules are terribly difficult to write at the best of times, but squeezing it into just those few pages is especially interesting. Some might try flash fiction or even the odd Drabble as an exercise, but rules writing is a strong challenge!

Writing that game was so much fun, I decided to write another.  The next one is called "Acrobats vs Mobsters"  I think the title gives away what the game is about. It was actually easier to write the second one having had the experience of the first. I knew what to put in and what sort of thing to leave out.

So with those out of the way... I wrote a third called "Trench Full of Heroes". That's not out yet. It's a role playing game set during the First World War, my hope is that I've teased the setting so that players will not limit their play to the mud and blood of the trenches.

All three of the games have different rule systems, and that has been half the fun.  Letting my half sleepy alpha brain search for mechanics and fit them together.

I've also written a "scenario" for Dungeons and Dragons (1st Edition) which I'll talk about in a future post.

Finally to cap this little list, I've also been adding the odd word or two to my novel. Tonight I broke the 40k barrier during a forty minute splurge. HUZZAR!

One step closer to some actual writing

Last post, I was moaning about the non-writing things I have to do. Well one of the jobs at leas,t is now out of the way.

The ePUB version of Cthulhu and How I Found Livingstone is now available. After much swearing and angrified typing, the ePUB was finally completed and uploaded.

I pushed it up to LuLu, they also submit the eBooks to Nook and iBookstore so over time it will make its way onto their digital shelves too. Tomorrow I hope up upload to a couple more places, including the Kindle store.

I am constantly amazed just how much non-writing work there is in writing! The formatting for the various stores is hours and hours of dull boring work.

Cthulhu and How I Found Livingstone

My "annotation" project is complete.  What was it you ask? You've probably been asking every time I mentioned it.  I didn't want to speak plainly about until it was done, in case someone else stole the idea and got theirs out first. Now it is complete and the first version released for public consumption...oh... what is it?

It's called "Cthulhu and How I found Livingstone". What I've done here, is take the public domain text of Henry  Stanley's book "How I found Livingstone", and have annotated it for readers who role-play.

The original book tells how Stanley carried out an expedition to relieve an explorer called Livingstone, and you must have heard the famous words "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", well this text is that story told in the words of the man who did it.

The expedition was a genuine darkest-Africa adventure, and I've added a series of graphics and over seventy footnotes to the book. Each footnote looks at the people, the locations or the events and explains how the role-player could take that incident and turn it into an exciting plot element for a horror role playing session as part of an entire gaming campaign.

If the term "role play" or the phrase "campaign" mean nothing to you then this book is not for you!  Anyone who runs a game of "Call of Cthulhu" or a similar role playing game might well find it interesting.

The job of annotating was a long one. The book was four hundred odd pages which I had to carefully read and then consider, determining if any incident/person/place was worthy of a footnote, and indeed what that footnote would say.

This is actually the second book I've done this to.  The first was called "Cthulhu and the River of Doubt", which followed Teddy Roosevelt along an uncharted river in Brazil. That too was a long project. In both cases it's not the writing that takes so long, its the reading, re-reading and time spent pondering. Unlike straight fiction writing, where I follow an outline, I had no outline to follow, and had to spend more time thinking than actually writing. The exact reverse of my usual writing process!

I've added details to the Books page and it's available to buy as a P.O.D. paperback. ePUB, Kindle, Nook etc will follow over the coming weeks.