It shouldn’t be a big surprise that I frequent game stores. I like all types of game stores from the ubiquitous video games stores to the personal favorite RPG stores. We have a local store nearby, The Days of Knights, in which I have spent much of my formative years in. I have seen it in no fewer than four locations in my time on this Earth, and while I don’t get the opportunity (or disposable income) frequently enough to go as regular as I once did, I find myself there on occasion still to commune with my fellow gamers.
On my last trip in, I was in the back of the store and I overheard a conversation starting and could not help but listen in with the acuity of Sawmise Gamgee. The conversation was between a middle aged fellow and his tweenage daughter. It went something like this:
Daughter: These are the games?
Father: Yes, these are the games.
Daughter: Dad… you know… these are books.
Father: Yes. The books are the games.
Daughter: [silence] How…?
Father: You have the games in the books. You just have to go through them and, you know, make them.
Daughter: And you said you played them?
Father: Yes, I used to all the time.
Daughter: [first sign of real interest] With who?
Father: Lots of people.
Daughter: When?
Father: A long time ago.
I was touched. I was getting to see something happen between a parent and child that is sacred, at least to me personally. I’m a second generation gamer – my dad taught me the basics via Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. He taught me how to GM. I still bounce stories off of him when I develop plots as he so infrequently can manage to show at the table regularly these days. So I felt kind of privileged to be hearing it, at least at first.
There was a brief period of time here where my attention flagged (cause you know, I’m in a game store and I found something shiny), and then I hear something that kind of made me step back for a second and question whether or not this father might be the best person to explain RPGs to this youngster. They cross my path again and I hear this exchange:
Father: You could be a fighter, or a knight, or a wizard –
Daughter: [Hopeful] Or a unicorn?
Father: [Exasperated] You’re not getting it.
I dunno… she might be getting it.
On the face of it, it’s funny, but on the other hand I found a part of my inner gamer a little bit cross. While on the father’s side in my own terms of gaming, who says that his daughter couldn’t play a unicorn if she really wanted to? In the age of FATE and My Little Pony, I’m thinking that somewhere there’s a niche roleplaying community and market for second gen gamers to play unicorns to their heart’s content. Her dad might not be able to provide that for her (nor could I really), but someone else could. Since gamers are communal in nature, it’s entirely possible there’s someone her dad would trust that could do that for her, or at least he could incorporate a unicorn into the game as a companion animal. Roleplaying Games aren’t really meant to be constrained – people play the things they want to play. That’s why there are so many. Creativity can grow out of it, and limitations on it can stifle the imagination in those wonderful younger years of gaming.
Ultimately though, the dad was trying to share something he loved with his children – and I suppose that’s good enough. I just hope the girl can go off and find a game where she can be a unicorn all she wants.
UPDATE 11/28/14: Apparently, there’s even a Pathfinder supplement for the guy’s daughter: Ponyfinder.
Click through the image if you dare.
Brainstorming is a big part of coming up with good stories, ideas, characters and places. However, there’s precious little time to do it by most folks’ standards. We have jobs, families, obligations, friends, hobbies, and interests. Carving time out to just think is challenging enough without working out the kinks for writing fiction.
However, take heart. Brainstorming isn’t something you need to cloister yourself away for. The best way I’ve found to brainstorm is Hamster Time.
It doesn’t actually involve a hamster, but it does involve the hamster wheel, metaphorically speaking.
I’m a big, fat Diabetic guy. In order for me to keep things in control, I have to keep my body in working order or things go to hell. What this typically means is that I have to find a way to get my butt moving, and the best way to do that is to go to the gym. When I first started, I didn’t like it. Every part of my being was aware that my body was on fire and that it just wanted the exertion to end. But, after a while, it got bearable. I realized that without a whole lot of effort, I could keep the body moving on the treadmill or elliptical machine (my hamster wheel of choice) while allowing my mind to wander. After a while, I picked up on something pretty cool – when I worked out, it left me a hell of a lot of time to think.
Putting this time in my day accomplishes a two-fer: I keep my body in better working order and I can take the time to muse on any particular aspect of a story that I might have in mind. Sometimes it’s pure idea creation, other times its working out an existing idea until I get it’s inner logic worked out. Sometimes it’s building a character or even a confrontation. I love listening to instrumental pieces in these cases – especially if I’m working out a battle. It’s like transcribing kung fu movies with their own soundtracks.
Given my lack of gym time recently, it’s not surprising that the creative fires banked (and my ass got fatter) a bit in the past year. But with a little luck, I’ll get that hamster wheel rolling, get my Diabetes back under control, and start outputting more (and better) work.
I recently had a discussion between three of my friends. Part of this conversation drew out one of the reasons I write. I love to create things. New things. When given a blank piece of paper, I enjoy that what gets put on it is something that perhaps only I could have created. Sure, I could draw a picture of a flower. Lots of people have drawn flowers. But this flower could be wholly imaginary. The flower can become my flower.
I don’t have to stop with the visual. The flower, in addition to looking unique, could have properties purely fantastical for use in any narrative. It’s pollen could induce blind hysteria. Eating it’s seeds could let you see extraplanar beings that aren’t phased in with our reality.
The possibilities are limitless. With the tool of imagination, I can make anyone, anyplace, or anything I choose.
Worldbuilding is usually where I start though.
Start with the clouds first. ‘Cause clouds are cool.
I guess I’m big on the nurture side of the nature/nurture environment. Where you live and how that place treats its people you is going to tell you a lot about any people and cultures that come from those places. So when I want to tell a story, I usually need to know where it is. So, last night, I started to work out the world in which the characters in the new collaborative project I’m working on are going to come from.
I had a loose story – one of revenge – only loosely planned out. The characters weren’t coming to me though beyond my two protagonists. I needed something to help me bring more lives out, so I started with their environment and worked my way out. Before I knew it, I had a city in mind, as well as the non-human entities that lived there. I started to imagine what life there would be like. It would easily kill any but the most cautious of humans, but the spiritual, non-human residents were attuned to it. They’d be similar to us in a lot of ways though.
I pushed further. Who were their neighbors? How did they interact? What was the rhyme and reason for their cosmology? How do they feel about humans and their strange home called Earth? How did they interact? And after asking these questions, I felt the supporting cast crop up like seeds planted in good earth. Now I had a mentor for my two protagonists. Soon I had an enemy. Then others who would make life interesting for friend and foe alike. And before I knew it, the story was starting to find itself.
If only it wrote itself – that’d be a trick!
But this is a part of the process for me. Sometimes to work out the little details I have to start big and not be afraid to step into that large world I’ve just created.
So I’m making the world as big as I want. The more the merrier.
Part of the idea I had for the webcomic involves a car. This is that car’s (very) rough sketch, complete with misplaced headlights:
Cowcatcher and horns come standard.
Ifrit V8 Hell Raiser is native to the elemental plane of fire, and is the chosen car of the comic’s protagonists. Other car models may show up in the series, though the cars aren’t the focus. I just wanted to draw it because it was cool. Mea culpa.
More roughs as things progress.
So, this weekend was a pretty good one. It started with Friday Night Jambalaya and ended with a potential collaborative project.
A couple of friends of mine are following this little blog of mine fairly regularly and they noted in my projects list that I would like to work on a webcomic – I just never had the direction or the focus. One of them came forward and pushed pretty hard in that direction. So yesterday we sat down and just shot the shit for a couple of hours, and I think in the process we got something in the works for a web comic.
Keep posted here at the site – it’s likely I’ll be interviewing the characters for the series here to start getting an idea of who populates the story.
Disneyland is for suckers. I have my own Magic Kingdom.
It’s in my head. I go there frequently and I try to write down everything I remember from it. I even keep a dream journal for this purpose. For instance in a dream last night, I ran into Abed from Community in my childhood home’s kitchen, and he was dressed in costume and makeup like Tim Curry in Legend. that’s one for the books. But I digress.
THERE’S NO BEER IN THIS FRIDGE!!!
I like being in my own head. It informs what I want to write about (though I’d sooner not write Community Fan Fiction). I meet new people there and fish for ideas. But what I almost always come back with are my own little kingdoms. I have a thing for places and histories. I’ve created a couple different settings and worlds in the back of my mind, and I almost always treasure these – more so than the players that move through them.
It should be no surprise that I read stories that present settings almost as their own characters. The Maxx was my first love in this regard. The Outback presented by Sam Kieth inspired me to create an Outback of my own, for which this blog is named. There was also Perdido Street Station’s New Crobuzon, set against the larger backdrop of Bas-Lag. There were the sprawls of Gibson, much like our own but strewn with more random lethality, urban decay, and high-tech low-life. Tolkien of course gave me Middle Earth – even though I didn’t grow up with it. As of late I’ve been introduced to King City as well by Brandon Graham and have fallen in love with it’s off-the wall ethos and integration of puns into its very structure.
I like to dive into those little details in my mind when I read about these places. And when I write I try to do likewise. Ossua is peppered with various races and peoples, it has a mythos all its own, and mysteries and secrets. Jah’bran, city of commerce has a personality, both supplicant and taskmaster, and is filled with teeming thousands expressing the dirty yet opulent city’s avarice and ostentation. I even have my own take on the underworld mapped out from the work I’ve done, taking from Greek mythology and the spiraling dens of madness we know as the modern office place.
Places seem to matter to me just as much as characters. Interesting characters moving through the familiar doesn’t seem to engage me as well. In my mind, for a proper escapist experience to flourish, you need not just your heroes, but a new place, new peoples, to move through.
It’s a lot of work to put in, but it’s satisfying work to be sure.