Ari Marmell is a novelist and freelance RPG writer who would be even more productive if he could stop writing multi-hundred-word replies to threads on EN World. A gamer since 1983 (the Red Box, of course), he studied creative writing at the University of Houston and began writing professionally in early 2001. He’s written RPG materials for numerous companies, including Paizo, Green Ronin, Necromancer, EN Publishing, White Wolf, and Wizards of the Coast. His fiction credits include, among others, Agents of Artifice for the Magic: The Gathering line, and The Conqueror’s Shadow (forthcoming from Bantam Spectra).
Ari currently lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife George, two cats, and a litter of neuroses.
Ari currently lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife George, two cats, and a litter of neuroses.
Not All Fun and Games
Posted 5th November 2009 at 08:15 PM by Mouseferatu
You know, if I keep starting my columns with confessions and admissions, Morrus is going to start charging me for therapy. Still...
I can't run games the way I used to.
For most of my gaming life, DMing was far and away my priority, and my favorite role to take on. And I started that life early--got the good ol' Red Box as a gift in 1983, and never once looked back.
Of course, to be fair, what I was doing when I was nine years old was "DMing" in much the same way that going into the back yard to piss on a tree is "gardening." At that age, I so completely misunderstood some fundamental aspects of the game that, the first time I tried to run a friend through a module (Keep on the Borderlands, naturally), I handed him the map as a visual prop and just had him encounter every room or area in the order they were written in the book.
Yeah, I had me some learning to do.
But the point is, I started out running. My very first D&D game was me as the DM, and my dad as the one and only player. (Poor guy.) Even as I and my gaming style matured (the latter more than the former), even as I progressed through the editions, even as my ideas of what made for a good game changed, I was the DM most of the time. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that, from 1983 to 2004 or thereabouts, my DMing-to-playing ratio was around 4:1.
(Or, if you'd prefer, rolling a 5 or higher on a d20.)
From late high school/early college on, planning and running my campaigns was one of the highlights of my week. I loved crafting aspects of the world. I meticulously created hints and clues to drop that would help steer the campaign on to future plot points. I cackled internally--sometimes not so internally--when I came up with really devious twists or intricate story ideas. I had specific storylines/plot points that took six months to a year, real time, to resolve. I had campaigns where a relatively minor event that occurred in the first session proved instrumental in the last one.
(I'll sit back now and wait for someone who knows nothing about my DMing style to shout "Railroad!" To which I will roll my eyes. For a DM who knows his players, knows what he's doing, and--most importantly--knows how to be flexible and roll with the unexpected, there's a huge difference between "railroading" and "plotting." But that's a topic for a different column.)
The point--if I haven't already taken too long to make it--is that I DMed all the time, I loved DMing, I looked forward to DMing, and I couldn't see myself not DMing.
Then, round about 2004, my writing career shifted from "mostly World of Darkness with some D20 work" to "Mostly D&D work." And I found not only my urge to DM, but my ability to DM, beginning to wane.
I still love playing D&D--in fact, I'm having serious DTs these days, because I'm not getting to play nearly enough--but the key word there is "playing." Between late 2004 and today, I've run only a single mid-length campaign through from beginning to end. (It was a 3.5 campaign that I think it took about, oh, seven or eight months, and ended with the party about 15th level.) I've started two or three others that, I'm ashamed to say, I dropped. (Some of them were based on some really cool ideas, too.)
You see, DMing had become too much like--gasp!--work. I thought, the first time it happened, that it was just about me being really swamped, that as soon as my workload lightened a bit, I could go back to running like I had. But nope; even when I wasn't drowning under deadlines, the fact remained.
(And I suddenly realize that this is starting to sound like I'm talking about something else. "Don't feel bad, sweetie, this happens to everyone. Don't worry about DMing. We can just cuddle.")
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "Poor me" moment. I love what I do, and I consider myself damned lucky to be able to do it. But it may shock you to learn that the life of an RPG writer isn't all lazing about in our silk bathrobes, with Playmates on each arm, sipping cognac and dining on chocolate-covered caviar. (Ew.) I may love my work, but it's still work. I still have to sit down at the keyboard and produce, daily, for hours. There's still a lot of mental effort that goes into it. I can't just decide "I'm not in the mood" or "I'm not inspired." (Try that second one with your boss next time you don't feel like coming in. Maybe throw the back of your wrist against your forehead, just for that added sense of verisimilitude.) And at the end of the day, I still want to unwind by doing something that's not work, just like anyone else.
I know lots of RPG writers who spend much of their free time DMing, and I honestly don't know how they do it. I can't. Oh, I'll get the urge to run a campaign, I'll get all sorts of ideas that I think are really cool--and then, after running anywhere from one to five sessions, I'll need a break. Because this is exactly what I do, day in and day out, and no matter how much I like it, it's using the exact same creative muscles as the job. I need the chance to do something else.
If any of you reading this are also RPG writers, I'd love to hear how you manage it. How do you put together a game without it feeling like you're doing more of the same? How--for you--is running D&D (or whatever game) different from writing D&D (or whatever game)?
Thing is, it's more than just the fact that prepping to run a game feels just like planning to write a section of a book. Part of it is my work ethic. (Not sure where it came from. I never had a work ethic in school--in fact, most of my D&D playing was happening when I should've been doing homework--and I still have no discipline when it comes to anything else. If I did, I'd be a lot lighter than I am now, for one thing. But work ethic I have, to neurotic levels.) All the time and energy I spend on putting together a game, I feel like I should be spending on material to be published. Like I'm wasting time or good ideas. Sure, intellectually I know that's silly, but the feeling's there, regardless.
And ultimately, it's always harder to enjoy the magic show when you've had a peek behind the curtain. I find it very hard to turn off my "writer brain" when I'm gaming, and there are times I wish I didn't grok the rules quite so completely. Whether DMing or playing, I have to make a concerted effort to go with the flow, not to analyze every little thing--but at least, when I'm a player, there's someone with the authority to tell me "You're lawyering again, shut up!"
(I actually do that with novels, too. I frequently find myself rewriting sentences in my head as I'm reading. Not all the time, by any means, but often enough.)
Yes, I know. Cry me a river, play me the world's smallest violin. As I said above, I love what I do. And if being unable to run a game the way I want to, or the way I used to, is the price for me being able to work in the field, it's a price I'll happily pay. Heck, I'd sacrifice your ability to run a game, too, if I had to. Just so you know.
But it doesn't mean it's not occasionally a disappointment--especially because I still have lots of cool ideas for campaigns that I'd love to run. (And despite what some people want to believe, a good idea for a game, or a campaign, or an adventure for one group does not automatically translate into a good idea for a published supplement.)
I could run published adventures, I suppose. (I might even use the maps properly, this time.) That certainly cuts down on the prep. But the problem is, it also cuts out the part of DMing that I used to love, and that I still miss. It's coming up with the world, the NPCs, the clues, the plot twists--you know, all the "writerly" stuff--that makes (or made) DMing fun for me.
Ah, well. There's always playing. Anyone want to run a game for me? Or two?
Or six?
I can't run games the way I used to.
For most of my gaming life, DMing was far and away my priority, and my favorite role to take on. And I started that life early--got the good ol' Red Box as a gift in 1983, and never once looked back.
Of course, to be fair, what I was doing when I was nine years old was "DMing" in much the same way that going into the back yard to piss on a tree is "gardening." At that age, I so completely misunderstood some fundamental aspects of the game that, the first time I tried to run a friend through a module (Keep on the Borderlands, naturally), I handed him the map as a visual prop and just had him encounter every room or area in the order they were written in the book.
Yeah, I had me some learning to do.
But the point is, I started out running. My very first D&D game was me as the DM, and my dad as the one and only player. (Poor guy.) Even as I and my gaming style matured (the latter more than the former), even as I progressed through the editions, even as my ideas of what made for a good game changed, I was the DM most of the time. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that, from 1983 to 2004 or thereabouts, my DMing-to-playing ratio was around 4:1.
(Or, if you'd prefer, rolling a 5 or higher on a d20.)
From late high school/early college on, planning and running my campaigns was one of the highlights of my week. I loved crafting aspects of the world. I meticulously created hints and clues to drop that would help steer the campaign on to future plot points. I cackled internally--sometimes not so internally--when I came up with really devious twists or intricate story ideas. I had specific storylines/plot points that took six months to a year, real time, to resolve. I had campaigns where a relatively minor event that occurred in the first session proved instrumental in the last one.
(I'll sit back now and wait for someone who knows nothing about my DMing style to shout "Railroad!" To which I will roll my eyes. For a DM who knows his players, knows what he's doing, and--most importantly--knows how to be flexible and roll with the unexpected, there's a huge difference between "railroading" and "plotting." But that's a topic for a different column.)
The point--if I haven't already taken too long to make it--is that I DMed all the time, I loved DMing, I looked forward to DMing, and I couldn't see myself not DMing.
Then, round about 2004, my writing career shifted from "mostly World of Darkness with some D20 work" to "Mostly D&D work." And I found not only my urge to DM, but my ability to DM, beginning to wane.
I still love playing D&D--in fact, I'm having serious DTs these days, because I'm not getting to play nearly enough--but the key word there is "playing." Between late 2004 and today, I've run only a single mid-length campaign through from beginning to end. (It was a 3.5 campaign that I think it took about, oh, seven or eight months, and ended with the party about 15th level.) I've started two or three others that, I'm ashamed to say, I dropped. (Some of them were based on some really cool ideas, too.)
You see, DMing had become too much like--gasp!--work. I thought, the first time it happened, that it was just about me being really swamped, that as soon as my workload lightened a bit, I could go back to running like I had. But nope; even when I wasn't drowning under deadlines, the fact remained.
(And I suddenly realize that this is starting to sound like I'm talking about something else. "Don't feel bad, sweetie, this happens to everyone. Don't worry about DMing. We can just cuddle.")
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "Poor me" moment. I love what I do, and I consider myself damned lucky to be able to do it. But it may shock you to learn that the life of an RPG writer isn't all lazing about in our silk bathrobes, with Playmates on each arm, sipping cognac and dining on chocolate-covered caviar. (Ew.) I may love my work, but it's still work. I still have to sit down at the keyboard and produce, daily, for hours. There's still a lot of mental effort that goes into it. I can't just decide "I'm not in the mood" or "I'm not inspired." (Try that second one with your boss next time you don't feel like coming in. Maybe throw the back of your wrist against your forehead, just for that added sense of verisimilitude.) And at the end of the day, I still want to unwind by doing something that's not work, just like anyone else.
I know lots of RPG writers who spend much of their free time DMing, and I honestly don't know how they do it. I can't. Oh, I'll get the urge to run a campaign, I'll get all sorts of ideas that I think are really cool--and then, after running anywhere from one to five sessions, I'll need a break. Because this is exactly what I do, day in and day out, and no matter how much I like it, it's using the exact same creative muscles as the job. I need the chance to do something else.
If any of you reading this are also RPG writers, I'd love to hear how you manage it. How do you put together a game without it feeling like you're doing more of the same? How--for you--is running D&D (or whatever game) different from writing D&D (or whatever game)?
Thing is, it's more than just the fact that prepping to run a game feels just like planning to write a section of a book. Part of it is my work ethic. (Not sure where it came from. I never had a work ethic in school--in fact, most of my D&D playing was happening when I should've been doing homework--and I still have no discipline when it comes to anything else. If I did, I'd be a lot lighter than I am now, for one thing. But work ethic I have, to neurotic levels.) All the time and energy I spend on putting together a game, I feel like I should be spending on material to be published. Like I'm wasting time or good ideas. Sure, intellectually I know that's silly, but the feeling's there, regardless.
And ultimately, it's always harder to enjoy the magic show when you've had a peek behind the curtain. I find it very hard to turn off my "writer brain" when I'm gaming, and there are times I wish I didn't grok the rules quite so completely. Whether DMing or playing, I have to make a concerted effort to go with the flow, not to analyze every little thing--but at least, when I'm a player, there's someone with the authority to tell me "You're lawyering again, shut up!"
(I actually do that with novels, too. I frequently find myself rewriting sentences in my head as I'm reading. Not all the time, by any means, but often enough.)
Yes, I know. Cry me a river, play me the world's smallest violin. As I said above, I love what I do. And if being unable to run a game the way I want to, or the way I used to, is the price for me being able to work in the field, it's a price I'll happily pay. Heck, I'd sacrifice your ability to run a game, too, if I had to. Just so you know.
But it doesn't mean it's not occasionally a disappointment--especially because I still have lots of cool ideas for campaigns that I'd love to run. (And despite what some people want to believe, a good idea for a game, or a campaign, or an adventure for one group does not automatically translate into a good idea for a published supplement.)
I could run published adventures, I suppose. (I might even use the maps properly, this time.) That certainly cuts down on the prep. But the problem is, it also cuts out the part of DMing that I used to love, and that I still miss. It's coming up with the world, the NPCs, the clues, the plot twists--you know, all the "writerly" stuff--that makes (or made) DMing fun for me.
Ah, well. There's always playing. Anyone want to run a game for me? Or two?
Or six?
Total Comments 15
Comments
-
Also, I welcome any comments on this third formatting option--using parenthetical notations instead of footnotes, as I did on the past two columns.Posted 5th November 2009 at 10:20 PM by Mouseferatu
-
Parenthetical notations grok with how my brain works a little more so than footnotes (but footnotes obviously look more... professional).
Anyway, I suppose like the pro golfer who then plays a practice round with his mates, it's hard to know when to take the professional hat off and put the recreational one on. Doing the creativity dance with your muse can also be so random - and it would suck to come up with all these great ideas for your home game and be left feeling uninspired for the stuff that pays the bills. However, if you are feeling occasionally uninspired with your professional work there may be more issues at play, but heh thems the breaks I 'spose.
Anyway, keep doing what you do, I love reading the fruits of your significant labour.
Best Regards
Herremann the WisePosted 5th November 2009 at 11:01 PM by Herremann the Wise -
Oddly, prepping and running games just doesn't use the same part of my brain as writing rpg material does. As I have mentioned to many editors, coming up with adventure ideas is not a problem for me. Give me any 3 elements and I can have 12 adventure ideas in 15 minutes. That's not work, and neither is jotting down just info information I can run those adventures. (Ask Rodney Thompson about the pulp heroes game I ran for him and some of his friends at Gen Con one year. It had all of 10 minutes of prep time.)
But writing down all the details so someone ELSE can run those adventurers? That's work. Adventures are the hardest thing for me to do, though I've done a number of them and often have a great time. But it's real work to strike the right balance between enough information for a GM to be saved the time and effort of prepping her own game, and burying them in enough text to drown a marmot? That's effort.
Nothing else in my writing career really comes close to prepping a game. I may write custom PrCs, spells or items for my players, but never in the volume of a new book, so that doesn't feel like work. And a lot of things (like NPC descriptions and cities) I love writing so much that I do it for fun, even if it's not for an active campaign or a project I'll get paid for.
Which is not to say I'm always running the game. For twenty years now, I have been very close to a 50/50 split of GM time and PC time. Which is exactly how I like it. Currently I'm running two games and only playing in one, but it's been the reverse before. (And the games I am running are specifically linked to projects I'm writing, suggesting I actually prefer running and writing about the same worlds.)
I'm not sure I could write for a long time about a game I wasn't playing and running. My hats off to you that you can.Posted 6th November 2009 at 12:40 AM by OStephens - Well, like I said, I am playing it (even if not nearly as much as I'd like; we only meet once every three or four weeksQuote:I'm not sure I could write for a long time about a game I wasn't playing and running. My hats off to you that you can.
). Just not running much of it.Posted 6th November 2009 at 01:29 AM by Mouseferatu -
When I run a game, I do several thing that helps me separate the writer part of my brain from the GM part. First, I use very few house rules or unique designs. In fact, I've only recently conceded that making unique monsters and NPCs is sometimes a necessary evil. When I GM, I'm playing, not designing. Second, I tend to tap into the sniggering, sarcastic teenager part of my brain. Hence, my campaigns are full of hidden jokes, sly wordplays that takes several sessions to be identified by my annoyed players, blatant ripoffs of scenes from movies and video games, and above all... creative, psychological driven material aimed right at my players. For instance, I have a player who likes to play those Jedi/paladin types but who also likes to play wizards. Thus, I purposefully taunted him with the prize of robes of the archmagi, first as part of an illusionary disguise on an NPC, to give him the taste, then letting him come into contact with a set once his alignment had already slipped to Neutral. Writing stuff like, stuff that gets a very personal and unique reaction, is something impossible to do in published work, so it always feels fresh and worthwhile.
I also tend to run campaigns using different rules sets than whatever I am tinkering with currently. Live playtesting with my own rules always gets pushed back to the very last, since I know it's very little at all like play... it's art.Posted 6th November 2009 at 05:25 AM by pawsplay -
For me...Quote:If any of you reading this are also RPG writers, I'd love to hear how you manage it. How do you put together a game without it feeling like you're doing more of the same? How--for you--is running D&D (or whatever game) different from writing D&D (or whatever game)?
1. One part is keeping my homebrew and my assignment separate in my mind. This way, I can be excited about each of them for different reasons.
2. The biggest factor, I think, is in the (reduced) amount of time I spend on planning and the specific (minimal/improvised) way I plan games these days. I read once that in a short story "about three things happen." So when I plan a game session, I try to think of three cool elements (which naturally work themselves into beginning, middle, end), the mood I want to convey, and the PCs I'm throwing the focus on that week. I usually do this while taking a walk over lunch, or when I get home and start setting up for the game. I'm also doing skill challenges as retrospective elements of the game ("Oh, you succeeded at breaking in to so-and-so's compound with about ten skill checks and some smart decisions? That would have been a level x skill challenge; here's your xp for that"). And the Monster Builder makes it REALLY easy to adjust any creature to an appropriate level. And of course over the week new ideas develop as I'm working on other things. And I give the players a lot of freedom to explore characters and story--which can carve out a significant portion of a game session if one has those sorts of players; that's like hitting the autopilot button and letting things go. :-)
That said, despite the improvisational time savers that work for me, I have canceled a number of games when I just couldn't work it all in.Posted 6th November 2009 at 04:55 PM by Drammattex
Updated 6th November 2009 at 04:57 PM by Drammattex (clarity, dangit!) -
I'll run a game for you anytime, Mouse!
My solution to your DMing problem (let's call it DMiagra): Dungeon Delve.
No, not specifically the book (although it is a mighty fine starting point). But the structure of the book. One-night scenarios, no prep time required beyond adapting the story. No overarching concerns about metaplot or megatron (metatron? megaplot?).
Point is, if it feels like work, it IS work (and hey, you get someone to bounce ideas off for actual work). So aim for a game that is leisure first.
The point (if my addled brain can make one) is to use the game to unwind, not wind up more.
(And btw, I prefer parenthesis, in case you haven't noticed).Posted 6th November 2009 at 07:42 PM by Klaus -
I'm one of those people who thinks that if you don't run a game, your work suffers for it. I ran a 2 year Dragonlance campaign back when I was working on DL for Margaret Weis Productions, a 2 year Birthright one before that to keep me up to speed on conversion from AD&D to D&D3E, and before that I was running an Elizabethan/Cthulhu D&D game to try the (just released) 3.0 rules.
Right now, I'm running a weekly 4E campaign, but I don't have any 4E design work, so it feels a lot less like work. However, what I need to be doing is running and playtesting Cortex stuff, because that's where the magic happens for me. I could write an entire book but without trying some of it out on people I think the result is hollow.
Oddly enough, I have to say, running 4E feels just like running 3E, or any other game, just with different paperwork. I'm very much an improv GM, so most of the effort on testing ends up being in the hands of the players (and when I decide to do some prepwork ahead of time.) I wouldn't mind actually playing 4E one of these days...
Cheers,
CamPosted 6th November 2009 at 07:57 PM by Cam Banks -
Running a Game
Ari wrote: Ah, well. There's always playing. Anyone want to run a game for me?
If you can get over to Chapel Hill or its nearby environs, I will gladly run a game for you.Posted 6th November 2009 at 09:18 PM by xvatka -
I can 100% relate to this post. While not as illustrious an author as Mouseferatu, I have delved very deeply into third party writing for both 4E and Pathfinder RPG products. DMing was once my life; and I can share similar stories about DMing at 9 years old. But writing now takes up the place where DMing was, and I am not sure I want to change that right now, despite the fact that I miss it. I fantasize about a distant future when I retire from full-time writing, and in between working on some hobby novel, I’m DMing for my kids and grandkids. A sort of return to my youth seems like the best time for my golden years. Then again, D&D might have been replaced by some high tech holodeck thing…in which case,…phooey.Posted 7th November 2009 at 05:29 AM by Emberion -
The parenthetical notations are a vast improvement for me.
Also, that column seems strangely familiar - although I'm not a writer, ever since I've started working full time it's become harder and harder to sustain a campaign for any length of time.Posted 7th November 2009 at 11:36 AM by delericho - For me, DMing gets worked in somewhere between raising kids (who play D&D), spending time with the wife (who doesn't play), grading papers, writing lesson plans, and writing my dissertation. Along the line there something has to give, which explains why my sons and their friends just wrapped up their first 1-30 lvls in 4e and I'm only on chapter 1 of the dissertation.
Posted 7th November 2009 at 01:09 PM by kevtar -
Same as Kevtar for me, marking papers and all. Would love to write more...I just keep writing for my own game & many settings thinking that one day this 'practise' will mean something when i find the time to share ideas and write.
Oh, no footnotes for me either.Posted 8th November 2009 at 01:43 AM by Connorsrpg -
Not the same industry, but when I heard about 4e, I bought the domain 4ednd.com and was hell bent on getting a sweet 4e site up, with forums, gaming rooms, reviews, blogs, custom 4e applications etc...
But I am a developer by trade and I build web-based applications all day long for my primary employer and as a consultant. Everytime I started coding and/or putting together an application framework for fun.... it felt like work. And I would rather be running a VTT game or prepping for my face-to-face game than programming (again.)
So yes, I feel your pain. Just not specifically as a writer of prose, but instead as a writer of code.Posted 8th November 2009 at 03:32 AM by catsclaw227 - Ari,
Not being a published author, I can't relate any authentic tricks of the trade regarding GMing for "pay" vs. "play"!
It seems like you're kind of in a rut, where there's too much crossover between your work and private material and thus a drain on your creativity. I recall a professor in University who expressed a degree of lament about a cabinet maker who, after quitting work for the day, went home only to make more cabinets on his own time. I feel there is a degree of parallel here, although I'm not saying you should give up on playing or running RPGs to unwind in your spare time.
Bearing in mind I don't quite have the same personal experience, allow me to make a few practical suggestions:
- Run a system you're not planning to write about professionally. Heck, even consider a system no longer in print or from companies that no exist.
- Consider running some "indie" games. This gets you out of your comfort zone in terms of rules, and these games can be quite creative in terms of mechanics, even what the games are about and the players and GM are supposed to accomplish. Worse comes to worse and you feel like you really want or need to write supporting material for some small-press game, you have the chance to break new ground and expand your expertise as a writer.
- Step outside your accustomed genres or games. If you have done mainly Fantasy/Horror (you've mentioned Cthulhu, WoD, D&D, no doubt many more!) then consider settings and genres that are different from what you are normally accustomed to. Far-Future SF, military-adventure (historical, modern, near-future), nior detectives and gang-busters (or criminals), superheroes, Science-Fantasy, post-apocalypse, etc. I'm sure you've probably done most or all these at one time or another, the point being do something other than what you're currently being paid for!
TonyPosted 9th November 2009 at 11:40 PM by helbent4
Updated 10th November 2009 at 10:48 AM by helbent4
Total Trackbacks 0
And yet another word from our sponsors
