NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maggan" data-source="post: 310417" data-attributes="member: 6616">I get few opportunities like this...It's not often someone asks about what I've done... so I thought I might as well chime in. And answer a question. BTW, I'm a newbie to the boards, but I came to ENWorld from Eric Noah's excellent site, when it closed down. So I've been in lurker mode for years.1. What I did in my younger yearsNo d20-stuff. At all. Working on it, but haven't got enough time to complete anything.Before d20 came along I co-wrote and co-designed the Mutant Chronicles RPG (did sort of all the writing except the combat system. It was a kick to be part of that design team). Rewrote and edited the second Swedish edition of Kult (which later was re-edited and turned into 2nd edition american Kult), wrote a short scenario for Kult called His Last Hope which ended up in White Wolf Magazine, wrote two scenarios for the EuroTour campaign for Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2020, wrote som stuff for the Gondor books from ICE, and about a million (or maybe just 10) different scenarios for some Swedish RPGs (Mutant, Drakar och Demoner and Kult), and some monsters for some monster books.That's the paid stuff, although I might be forgetting something... ah, yeah there's a really rad Wild West RPG in Sweden, called Western, that I've written a bunch of scenarios and a campaign for (in swedish unfortunately). And a Viking Fantasy supplement for a now defunct Viking-RPG called... Viking. Apart from that I do what everyone else is doing, writing crap that's just used in my own D&D 3e campaigns.2. What does it take and how did I get started?Someone asked what people did to get started. There's only one  answer to that, really.You have to write. Write. Write.Bull**** talks, writing walks. There are so many people talking about their next great thing... talking... talking... talking... talking.So, if you want to get started, write something. Anything. Write, write, write. Second step, learn to write good. Or at least acceptable. Remember that there are so many people out there submitting stuff, badly written stuff gets bombed immediately. Run a spell-checker. Then read the damn thing yourself. Then let someone else read it. Then run a spell checker again. And remember, never trust the spell checker! Read again. Playtest!Third, learn to stop writing. A perfect text never released will not make you a published roleplaying writer. A good text that is actually released will. And even a bad text will make you a published writer if you manage to get someone to publish it. I can't enough stress the importance of this step. Learn to stop writing. Meet deadlines. Learn to deliver.And then put it up for everyone to read, or send it to a company. And be prepared for a rejection slip. A rejection slip does not mean you're a bad writer, or that the idea was bad, or that the company decided to steal your idea. It just means they can't use your material. Sometimes you'll get feedback (from Dungeon for example, very professional feedback), and sometimes you won't. Learn to live with it.And remember. Don't ever set out to write RPG stuff for the huge amounts of money involved. It might, if your lucky AND good, and fast and reliable, pay the rent, but that's about it.There has never been a more easy time to get into RPG writing. The Internet ensures that anyone (well, almost anyone) can read your stuff. And if it's any good, people will read it.And then there's d20. No longer do you have to write your own game to get into the... well... game... you just have to write good stuff that'll plug into the d20 system. Put these two together, and hey presto, a potential target group of millions of gamers.Well, any comments on that from any other people here?Oh, how did I get started. Well, I wrote a rules compendium for Cyberpunk on my Mac Plus, sent a printout to R.Talsorian, and ended up on their playtest list for Cyberpunk 2020. Then  I kept sending them ideas and propsals for a while and then they asked me to write two short scenarios for EuroTour. And that's how I got started... btw the way, thanks Derek Quintanar for giving me the opportunity way back.CheersMaggan</blockquote>

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