ATTENTION: Story Hour in Print? (Authors and Readers, come in!)

[Sagiro]

Great!

So who's pretending that?

(Not to mention that I dispute the premise that most SH's focus extensively on the combat...)


Wulf

Based on what I've read, I would stand by a claim that a vast majority of Story Hours have a significantly higher percentage of battle-description per page, or at least a higher number of battles per page, than a vast majority of published fantasy fiction.

I accept your premise, though, that we're not talking about novels, but about a new genre of gaming-table stories. And because of that, most of the comments from my previous post become sort of moot, as long as readers have the right set of expectations going in.

There's still the matter of editorial quality, of course. On the one hand, if we're talking an honest-to-goodness paperback that someone's going to sit down and spend several hours reading, it's going to be competing with professionally-edited novels, at least for anyone who doesn't have unlimited time to read. As such, these gaming-table stories should be able to hold their own against a reader's alternatives.

On the other hand (and I admit I'm just guessing here), most Story Hour writers probably don't spend lots of time editing their work. I mean, I'll read mine through a few times for typos and misspellings before I post, but it's not like I have a professional editor warning about my overuse of commas, or my grating repetition of certain words, or my dangling participles.

Wulf, you said earlier in this thread that you expect each author to give his or her own work at least one editing pass before handing it over. Will that be enough? Maybe for Sepulchrave and jonrog, but not for me, that's for sure. How much editing and consulting are you prepared to do at your end?

Anyway, just so you don't think I'm only being negative here, there are some stories on this board that I'd pay $8 for right now, as posted, just to have a hard-copy that I could read more at my leisure. And I'm still overall positive on the idea, even if just from a "cool vanity press" point of view.

-Sagiro

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Based on what I've read, I would stand by a claim that a vast majority of Story Hours have a significantly higher percentage of battle-description per page, or at least a higher number of battles per page, than a vast majority of published fantasy fiction.

Ok, ok. But I think "fantasy fiction" is an awfully wide spectrum, into which many SH's can easily find a place, despite their focus on "action." I've previously staked out a portion of that spectrum. (I might also mention comic books here-- though they are a visual representation, rather than literary, they are stories that focus very heavily on action and don't suffer for it.)

I accept your premise, though, that we're not talking about novels, but about a new genre of gaming-table stories. And because of that, most of the comments from my previous post become sort of moot, as long as readers have the right set of expectations going in.

I think this alone is going to force certain decisions. In my own mind, at least, I've never been convinced that anything we might do should compete against novels, or fantasy fiction, or necessarily appeal to non-gamers. (Though I think some of the stories here could do so, it wouldn't be my line of attack.)

There's still the matter of editorial quality, of course. On the one hand, if we're talking an honest-to-goodness paperback that someone's going to sit down and spend several hours reading, it's going to be competing with professionally-edited novels, at least for anyone who doesn't have unlimited time to read. As such, these gaming-table stories should be able to hold their own against a reader's alternatives.

Well, yessssss... but there are an awful lot of alternatives, not just books. Even assuming we're targeting the right folks-- our fellow gamers-- we have an awful lot of alternatives on our Palette of Geeky Goodness. I can't worry about alternatives-- which is not to say that I would want to have anything to do with sub-par work.

Wulf, you said earlier in this thread that you expect each author to give his or her own work at least one editing pass before handing it over. Will that be enough? Maybe for Sepulchrave and jonrog, but not for me, that's for sure. How much editing and consulting are you prepared to do at your end?

The text I receive should be free of spelling mistakes and major grammatical errors. I can read a piece of text once and scour it clean of enough remaining errors that it will, even at that point, be at a higher level of quality and professionalism than many RPG publications.

And then I'd have at least one more pair of eyes look at it.

I might suggest, if we move with an Anthology of some sort, that every author is responsible for reading and editing the work of at least one of his colleagues.

I might further suggest that every author read the work of every other-- but I don't want to talk crazy or nothin'.

And I'm still overall positive on the idea, even if just from a "cool vanity press" point of view.

The "neato" factor is pretty high in my book, too!

Wulf

 

[ledded]

Ah . . . there's nothing that warms a Peck's heart like riling up Wulf .

And you do a damn fine job describing the action in your SHs, no question, and you are one of my favorite SH authors because of it. And I've read plenty of Conan, Elric, Gemmel, Cook, and many more to make excellent examples of action writing. But even those examples don't spend as much time in detailed combat as a gaming group does -- and by extension most story hours. And that's why I think trying to pretend that a story hour is anything other than a gripping story from the gaming table is a mistake.

-rg

Let me say that you obviously have not read some of the better story hours on these boards, no offense . Seriously, there are quite a few that do character development, nice scene setting, non-gaming interactions, and spend a lot less time describing the combats than it took to do them in game.

I'm not trying to ruffle your feathers, but while many (heck, most), particularly D&D-based ones, do tend to be combat-centric (not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you) there are quite a few that achieve good levels of conflict without each turn of the page being accompanied by the sound of dice rattling.

Really, there are stories on here that are interesting because they are about a game, but they dont necessarily read like a game monologue (again, not that there is anything wrong with that). People have been responding with vague generalizations about story hours, when I personally see a good bit of variety in the story hours that I read on a regular basis. Maybe I'm nuts, or maybe folks need to break out of their genre and read a little bit of everything that there is to offer here.

I also have to second the idea that OldDrewId had above... don't try to make them anything other than what they are. Tales from the Gaming Table. I really, really like that idea. There is room in that for artwork, gaming stats, etc along with some really good stories, and by crossing genre's you could even reach a wider audience than with a singular focus. I could really get behind something like that.

 

[el-remmen]

On the other hand (and I admit I'm just guessing here), most Story Hour writers probably don't spend lots of time editing their work. I mean, I'll read mine through a few times for typos and misspellings before I post, but it's not like I have a professional editor warning about my overuse of commas, or my grating repetition of certain words, or my dangling participles.

As I mentioned in another thread, I have been slowly working on editing a master copy of my story hour (including re-doing and re-numbering all the footnotes) to give as a gift to all my players when the campaign is done - and there has been a lot of red ink on those pages

However, as any author is bound to tell you - one never edits their own work as well as someone else could b/c our minds tend to gloss over things that make sense to our way of thinking that might not be clear to others.

More that the ~$100 of getting it printed, the real investment for me would be in time editing it again to polish it some.

 

[Lazybones]

As an unpublished author with a nice tall stack of rejection letters from agents and publishers, naturally I think this would be a great idea.

I do think that WotC would have to give permission for this to work. I knew when I started writing these stories that I would never be able to sell any of them, since they are all set in a copyrighted setting. I don't think there's a single story hour that I've read here that could survive a lawsuit for copyright infringement even with the OGL, and if any of these actually made any money, I think that their lawyers would come sniffing around in a minute to put a stop to our fun. My tales are particularly vulnerable because one is set in the Realms, and another in the "Adventure Path" series of modules in Dungeon magazine.

I have worked as an editor and would be happy to donate some time in that function to the project.

My completed Travels comes in at 8 books totalling 460,000 words (so 2 volumes at least, I'd say). My "Shackled City" SH is currently at about 140,000 words, and I am nearly finished with Book 3 (i.e. the third module in the series).

 

[(contact)]

I could probably be pressed into service to supply some illustrations for any SH project, provided the working-window was long enough, and my jobbie-job wasn't pressing in on all my free time.

 

[Capellan]

I have a question / concern about the proposal: what are the legal implications of selling a story hour if it contains modules, NPCs or sites created by other authors? For example, Lazybones' Shackled City stories - I'd expect they couldn't be published without the consent of whomever owns the rights to the modules?

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Let me say that you obviously have not read some of the better story hours on these boards, no offense . Seriously, there are quite a few that do character development, nice scene setting, non-gaming interactions, and spend a lot less time describing the combats than it took to do them in game.

I'm not trying to ruffle your feathers, but while many (heck, most), particularly D&D-based ones, do tend to be combat-centric (not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you) there are quite a few that achieve good levels of conflict without each turn of the page being accompanied by the sound of dice rattling.

Heck, its friday afternoon, I'm not taking offense at anyone right now.

I haven't read all of the story hours that are out there -- I won't debate "better" with you, as that's just a matter of taste and opinion, although I'll admit that the ones I read most religiously are the high level D&D ones, because I'm usually looking for inspriation (read:stuff to steal) for my own high-level home game. But even those that I'm fond of, like Sept's, explore some fantastic non-combat stuff, and even the ones that I like that do a lot of combat also throw in a lot of good character interaction and banter and other sorts of fun.

So, I'm not going to argue with you. What I will say, though, is that it would take a very special story hour, based on a very special game played by a very special gaming group, to be a story hour that was as tight and cohesive as a novel should be (note that I'm not going to say novel is, because there's an amazing amount of crap out there).

The best Story Hours are art, in that they are labors of love and creativity, they take a great deal of committment, and fidelity, and passion. But the root of this whole debate (at least for me) was really whether there should be an sizeable appendix of game material in the story hour publication, or if it should just be presented as a narrative on its' own, and I'd STILL argue that what I would like to see most, and be most likely to pay higher than average scratch for, is a book that combined the story of the campaign with the game material used to run it, so that if I chose to I could meld it into my own game.

-rg

 

[ledded]

Heck, its friday afternoon, I'm not taking offense at anyone right now.

I haven't read all of the story hours that are out there -- I won't debate "better" with you, as that's just a matter of taste and opinion, although I'll admit that the ones I read most religiously are the high level D&D ones, because I'm usually looking for inspriation (read:stuff to steal) for my own high-level home game. But even those that I'm fond of, like Sept's, explore some fantastic non-combat stuff, and even the ones that I like that do a lot of combat also throw in a lot of good character interaction and banter and other sorts of fun.

So, I'm not going to argue with you. What I will say, though, is that it would take a very special story hour, based on a very special game played by a very special gaming group, to be a story hour that was as tight and cohesive as a novel should be (note that I'm not going to say novel is, because there's an amazing amount of crap out there).

The best Story Hours are art, in that they are labors of love and creativity, they take a great deal of committment, and fidelity, and passion. But the root of this whole debate (at least for me) was really whether there should be an sizeable appendix of game material in the story hour publication, or if it should just be presented as a narrative on its' own, and I'd STILL argue that what I would like to see most, and be most likely to pay higher than average scratch for, is a book that combined the story of the campaign with the game material used to run it, so that if I chose to I could meld it into my own game.

-rg

Agreed, which is why I like the "Tales from the Game Table" idea... you could put a little bit of everything in there, and if marketed well, even sell it to non-gamers for the stories.

I guess I'm just getting a bit punchy in this thread because some folks have been making broad assumptions based on the fact that they *seem* to me (probably incorrectly, mind you) to be reading mostly D&D Story Hours, and not giving non-D&D stuff a chance to really rock their socks off. While some of the better story hours are in fact D&D based (P-Kitty, Wulf, Sepulchrave), there are several authors that have incredible SH's that are not (Jonrog1 - Pulp Spycraft and Drunk Southern Girls, OldDrewId - Medallions, Heapthaumatergist to name a few), and if you havent read some of 'em, you may find your impression of story hour's changed a little bit by doing so.

Sure, there's plenty of action, but it's not all 'combat' ticking off round-by-round. Anyway, I agree with a lot you said, and with the general feel that to attempt a novelization of the average story hour, regardless of game system it used, would be a mistake for 95% of the SH's out there (there are a couple I'd not only like to see as a book but a movie as well ).

But an anthology, complete with artwork, maps, handouts from the game, and game info (especially homebrew stuff) would just be super-de-duper off-the-hook geeky coolness, IMHO, and also quite doable.

I'd volunteer some of my time to be involved in the process if it was ever needed, just because I think the whole idea is worth pursuing.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I have a question / concern about the proposal: what are the legal implications of selling a story hour if it contains modules, NPCs or sites created by other authors? For example, Lazybones' Shackled City stories - I'd expect they couldn't be published without the consent of whomever owns the rights to the modules?

It is a problem. Speaking for myself, I'd scrub my SH clean of Intellectual Property. Quick and easy, in my case, because the setting is not front and center in mine.

Others would have considerably more diffiulty, and yes, you'd have to find some kind of solution. I don't know what WOTC's stand would be, but I would imagine (since they have a novel division) your odds would not be good.


Wulf