Life Is Too Short
My last few commissioned works have all been gaming modules. A few months ago I promised myself that I was going to take some time off from d20 work and devote myself to writing straight fiction – no source books, no module work. Straight fiction for fiction’s sake.

Last night I received an email calling for a 100+thousand word d20 product --- essentially a book length gaming project.

So much for abstinence.

Contracts aren’t signed yet, so nothing is set in stone. But the chance to work on something of this magnitude is a powerful lure. It will mean putting down the fiction pen for another 7 months or so … but when I find myself worrying about it, I just think back to another example of game designers-turn-authors: Hickman and Weiss.

The truth is, I’m lucky just to have the opportunity to write d20 adventures. This was never anything I thought that I would get the chance to do, and I certainly never thought I might get paid for it. (And all it took was one rogue submission. If any gamers are reading this, I heartily encourage you to query your favorite publisher --- it’s easy, fun, and there are few things better than getting paid to write games.)

In a moment that gets quoted far more than it deserves, I once said to a friend, “Life is too short to not be a hypocrite.”

This wasn’t meant to inspire a moral free-for-all. What I meant was that clinging to a principle simply for the sake of it being a principle is silly. If the situation changes, and your judgment doesn’t hold true, maybe it is time to change your judgment.

A week ago I was determined to limit myself to writing fiction. Now it looks like I’ll be writing gaming material for a bit longer.

Lousy hypocrite. :)