To Forge a World
Or Thank Goodness for the Office Copier
Tonight I’m staring at – literally – several hundred pages of source material for my largest d20 project to date. The stacks are the sum of twenty-odd authors, each having their own vision of heroic fantasy. My job is to give it form, a structure and a cohesion, that will allow d20 players to traipse from one to the next.

J.L., who has also had experience working with d20 publishers, asked if I’m the sole author responsible for all 150,000 words. Thankfully the answer is “no,” but I will be the sole fool responsible for bringing the works together. The raw material, the ore of the imagination, is all before me – now I’m the lucky punk who gets to forge the parts into a believable whole.

This project has very little to do with actual writing. It is more of a GMing exercise – perhaps the GMing exercise, making the discordant and divergent appear to be part of a greater plan. That’s the GM’s cardinal lie: “No really, I planned this all from the start.”

And in a sense, it isn’t a lie … in every game I run, I do plan on fudging, faking, cheating and improvising from the start. Mike Wallace calls it “jazz” GMing, but I don’t want to give jazz a bad name. ;)

Tonight it begins: the reading, highlighting, dog-earing, and more reading. That, and the search for the mother of all expanding folders.

Good stuff. If I could meet the Harley of 20 years ago and tell him that he’d get to do this project, he’d never believe me. Of course, he’d secretly hope for the chance, anyway. He’s a shy sort of kid. :)

Anyhow, I haven’t had much chance to check in on my friends lately. I hope you are all doing well. Kam’s book is out, and should be shattering sales records. Eric’s book is up for pre-sale and should be doing the same. Ian sold a story, and Chrissy too. All in all, it is a good time to be a young writer.

Back to the pile. Write well tonight and let me know how your projects are coming along.