Building a Playable World

            This week, I managed to get my nose to the grindstone working on a big project I started back in June. This is a campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons.

            Back when I was in the planning stages for the D&D marathon for Cystic Fibrosis, I was talking with the Dungeon Master of the weekly game I play in and the idea was floated that I could eventually start running a second game at the board game cafe. I liked the idea, but at the same time I prefer to be a player rather than a DM. At the same time, I knew that there was a waiting list and it would be great for the gaming community.

            So, naturally, I began thinking about the possibilities for games I could run. What did I want to see in a game? What would be fun for me to run, and fun for players to play? And that’s when a seed took root in my mind.

            One of the things that makes D&D such a great game is its versatility. You can do absolutely anything with it. Even in the most complex video game, there is a limit to the decisions a player can make – they can be given a great amount of freedom, and still be chained down by the limited options. In D&D, there are no limitations – yet the games frequently take on the same shape of “Here is your quest”, go to the dungeon, get the reward. There’s often plotlines and political situations woven in, but it doesn’t take advantage of D&D’s true ability to do anything. I feel that this is largely due to the players, having been trained by video games and society’s expectations, don’t necessarily understand how much freedom they have – and they don’t necessarily understand the depth of the world they’ve been thrown into.

            And so, I came up with an idea for a world that will (hopefully) open the players’ minds to all they can do: a world where the players are colonizing a “new world”. So, rather than being thrown into a world where there are kingdoms and empires and complex political structures that they know nothing about, the players will be put into a world that is as strange to the non-player-characters around them as it is to them. This puts the players at the centre of everything as a new society is established, and it gives them the freedom to do absolutely whatever they want. Do they want to help establish a settlement? Do they want to go off and explore the new world? The world is entirely open for them to choose what to do.

            Now, obviously, from a DM’s perspective, a world like that is a bit challenging to run. There needs to be plots to keep the players engaged, and in a world so free and open, it is hard to know what to prepare for the game. So, I started writing up the campaign setting – which is, essentially, a description of the world, everything in it, and guidelines for making the world easier for the DM to run. It is an immense task, but hey – I’m part of the Alliance of Worldbuilders; building worlds is what we do.

            So far, it is coming along well. I’ve outlined the world, its history, and the basics for how the game functions. The functions need a lot of work, but I’ll get them done eventually.

            This week, however, I was focusing on a very fun task: monsters. Even though this world lacks civilization (and, largely, because of that), this world is crawling with monsters. So, I combed through D&D’s monster manual and cherry picked monsters to have established societies in this world. Then I created those societies and figured out what politics they had, both within themselves and with all the others.

            It was so much fun and, let me tell you, I can’t wait until I’ve completed this setting and I get to see it in action. Who knows? I may even decide it’s good enough to publish through the Dungeon Masters’ Guild.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Unstoppable Creativity

            You’d think I would have learned by now. Because I haven’t, I’ve now broken my cardinal rule. That’s right, I’m working on more than one book at a time.

            It may not seem like such an important rule. Loads of people work on more than one book at once, so why is it such a big problem? Well, it’s a problem because it gives the writer an excuse to not finish a project. The Dark Lord of the Alliance of Worldbuilders is a prime example – he’d written 100,000 words or more in a single month (wow!) and yet, to my knowledge, he had never completed a book (we all give him a hard time about it).

            Now, in my case, I couldn’t help starting a second project. As I mentioned a few blogs back, I’m currently working on rewriting a project. Apparently, after seven years of writing every day, rewriting isn’t enough of a creative outlet for my brain. After a while, an idea surfaced that I couldn’t resist – so now, here I am, splitting my writing time between two projects when I should be focusing on one.

            It just goes to show that creativity is a habit. Once you get into it, you just have to keep going.

            Feel free to take that as encouragement to build a creative habit – or a warning to avoid doing so. Whichever suits you best.

            Either way, know that you can’t stop the creativity. Creators must create.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Faraway Friends

            One of the great opportunities we have in our modern society is the simplicity of communicating through the internet. We take it for granted now, but just a couple generations ago, it didn’t even exist. If you wanted to talk to someone on the other side of the world, you either wrote a letter (and waited forever for the response to return) or made an expensive phone call (although, if you go back just a little further, even that wasn’t available).

            Now we just pop open the internet and within moments we’re having conversations with people all over the world. Marginalized groups, who previously felt alone in the world, have a way to discover they aren’t as alone as they thought.  People who otherwise would never have met become fast friends.

            Having spent much of my younger life playing online games, I’ve been lucky to have many such friends. More recently, though, my online friends have come in the form of my writing support group, the Alliance of Worldbuilders. We started out as a group focused on giving constructive criticism on each others’ writing, but grew into something much more – a group of good friends from around the world. We even published an anthology of short stories together.

            This week I had the great opportunity to meet one of those friends in person – she was on vacation nearby and she suggested we could get together (last month she had met up with a number of the others in the group who, like her, live in England and previously had met a number of others around the world as well). Opportunities like this rarely arise, so even though it meant leaving my house (blech!) and driving to and in one of the largest cities in the country (blargleblech!!!), Colleen and I decided to go meet her.

            After arriving late because I’d only planned for half the bad traffic we encountered, we the three of us hit it off fantastically. I think we actually got along better in person than online. I had expected that we’d visit for maybe an hour, but we ended up chatting for over three hours an everything from writing to social issues to plotting global domination (forget I said that last one). My first meeting with an online friend was a huge success.

            For me, it highlighted the wonderful opportunities afforded to us through the internet. It had the marvellous capability of bringing together people who, in a past age, could never have met. What’s so great about this? The discovery that all the people across the world aren’t all that different from ourselves. Previously, all we could go on for picturing people of other nations was derived from meeting a few here and there, maybe travelling, and hearing from other peoples’ descriptions of then. This, of course, all gets simplified down into the stereotypes that still survive today.

            Yet, now, those stereotypes are tempered by the ability to go online and talk to almost anyone. We can really meet and find out about each other; discover how similar we are. In spite of the people clinging to the past – insisting it’s us against them – cultures from around the world are being brought closer and closer together.

            What a wonderful potential this has for changing how we view the world.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

A World of Their Own

            It’s here! A World of Their Own was released last Friday and I now have some writing published! So, run on over to Amazon and buy a copy (Kindle or paperback – whichever you prefer).

            Now, I’m not just telling you to buy this book because my short stories are in it (we all know that’s reason enough), but there are short stories from a bunch of other amazingly talented authors, too! I haven’t finished reading all the stories yet (silly me, I put it off to long and as a slow reader didn’t give myself enough time to finish them all before writing this), but I have to tell you there are some great stories to be read. The best part about an anthology by a group of authors like this is that you get to sample lots of writing and if you love a writing style enough you can seek out more of their books. With so much variety, there's something for everyone.

            But wait, there’s more! All profits from every book sale go to the World LiteracyFoundation – so not only are you bringing wonderful stories into your own home, you’re helping to spread literacy around the world. How cool is that?

            I’ll leave you to it now – after all, I have some more reading to get done (and so do you).

            ... Okay seriously, brain, what’s with all the parentheses today? (I dunno. Seemed like a good idea at the time.) Stop that. People are staring. (Here, we’ll make up for our weirdness with some pretty artwork from the book.) Deal.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Alliance of Worldbuilders

            It is hard to believe I haven’t written a post about the Alliance of Worldbuilders yet. I’ve mentioned them once or twice, but it’s about time I actually told you who they are.

            It all started, amazingly enough, about four years ago. It was a year after I’d finished writing my first book and I was still extremely ignorant of the world of publishing. I had timidly stuck my toe out to test the waters with no results – usurping for me now, with all that I’ve learned. It was during this time that I discovered Authonomy.

            With all the trouble I was having writing query letters, this website seemed like the perfect opportunity for me. It allowed me to share my writing, get criticism and, if I got enough support from the other writers on the site, I would get a review from a Harper Collins editor and potentially a publishing offer. How could I pass that up?

            So, I signed up, uploaded my book and headed over to the forums to post a shameless plug. There, I was almost immediately recruited to the Alliance of Worldbuilders by Sam, the Vice Captain in charge of Cake.

            How to join? It was a simple matter of hopping over to the Alliance of Worldbuilders forum thread, eat the ceremonial virtual cake (that in no way had any mind-controlling drugs to bind us to the will of the Dark Lord TRM) and I was a member. I was even offered a title, which I chose to be Lord of the Wyrms (I felt, as a new member, Dragon Lord would be too pretentious – plus, I couldn’t pass up the play on Lord of the Flies).

            So, what is the Alliance? Well, it was started by Dark Lord TRM (along with his evil rabbit, Midnight) as a criticism group for fantasy writers and anyone else who built their own worlds for their writings. It grew into much more – a writing support group and a group of close friends from across the world, all dreaming of being published. There were probably over 100 people who joined, but there are about twenty of us who made up the core of the group.

            The group ended up talking about everything from writing through philosophy, real life issues and, of course, our plans for global domination. We soon became the thread with the most posts on the entire forum (the legendary battles between Vice Captain Sam and Ice Queen Lisa helped – come to think of it, neither of them returned the dragons I lent them...) Of course, the forum wasn’t built to handle that much traffic, so we were requested to start a new thread. Which we did, then brought it up to the top threads before starting a third.

            We all learned quickly enough that to get the editor review on Authonomy, we’d have to play the political game that had become rampant on the site. So, most of us didn’t bother. We gave each other reviews when we had time, chatted, supported each other and became a close-knit group.

            Thanks to this group, I was able to improve my writing substantially. More than that, though, I learned far more about the publishing world than I ever had before. Plus, I had fun.

            Then things changed a bit. Many of the group started getting published, some traditionally, some self-published, and there wasn’t quite as much chatting happening. Then Authonomy did an overhaul which we were disenchanted with, so we moved out headquarters over to Facebook. We’re still a close group, we just don’t chat or battle as much.

            So, why do I choose to tell you about this wonderful and talented group now? Why, because we’re about to release an anthology of short stories! On September 4^th, we will be releasing A World of Their Own in memory of our fallen comrade, Lindsey J Parsons, with all proceeds being donated to the World Literacy Foundation.

            This collection of short stories is extra exciting for me, as it will contain my first published works. It should also be exciting for you, because it’s an opportunity to discover new favourite authors from a very talented bunch.

            So, mark your calendars and join the Facebook release party. Invite your friends, too! While you’re waiting, you can even check out the group’s Facebook page, website, and scout out all the authors who will be in the anthology. Then you, too, can share in the wonderful imaginations of the Alliance of Worldbuilders.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.