6 cups of apples slices and pealed
2 pears pealed and sliced
1/4 cup of lemon juice
½ cup of granulated sugar
½ c. brown sugar
1 1/2 table spoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon curry powder
¼ teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon apple pie spice
¾ cup of butter
2/3 cup half and half
Hot sauce to taste

mix spices, butter, brown sugar, and half and half
together in a large pot on medium heat. Once mixed
together add hot sauce to taste. If you add too much
hot sauce add more half and half.
Pour lemon juice and granulated sugar on apples
and let sit for 5 minutes add apples to pot.
let simmer until the mixture reduced to half. strain over bowl put the luces back on the pot, let reduce until the mixute is thickend up to a sauce.

Note: I never measure anything I approximate as such
these figures are approximated, cook to your own
personal taste.

Crust

2 flour tortillas
½ cup cheddar cheese

Grease your pie pan and lightly sprinkle it with
granulated sugar place a tortilla in the greased
pan sprinkle the cheddar cheese over top in a
thin layer top with other tortilla bake in a
450 degree oven for 4-6 minutes or until cheese
is melty and the tortilla is golden in spots.
Pour in apple filling and serve.

Having a snack during game is not a new thing. But instead of filling up on Cheetos and mountain dew why not having something bit more substantial then well to put it bluntly crap. Both the recipes today are both simple and easy to make they are also not very pricy and can feed anywhere from 4 to 40.

Leek and Potato Soup
Leeks are kind of like onions but have a much milder flavor if you are unsure of what a leek is, it is the vegetable Farfetched holds in Pokémon. For this recipe the ratio I prefer is 1 leek to two potatoes. When prepping the leek you want to cut them up the middle then cut them in to small rings, then wash the rings thoroughly making sure to get all of the soil out between the layers. If you think they are clean wash them again just in case. If you do not there is still a little bit of soil in the leeks then your soup will be gritty and no one wants sandy soup.

Ingredients
6 Russet potatoes washed peeled and cubed
3 leeks cut and washed
3 cups of vegetable stock
1 tsp. pepper
1 tbs. salt
1 stick of butter
1 cup of milk
3 cups of water

place potatoes, leeks, stock and water in to a large soup pot. Season with salt and pepper bring to a boil. Let the soup simmer until the potatoes start to fall apart. Mash with a potato masher if you would like a thicker chunkier consistency. If you want a thinner smooth soup put the soup in a blender until smooth and creamy. Place back in pot and stir in butter and milk serve while warm.

Chicken Pita Pizzas
1 Package of whole wheat pitas
3 chopped chicken breasts
½ package of spinach thawed
1 package of mozzarella cheese
3 tbs olive oil
2 tsp chopped garlic
3 tsp Italian seasoning

place pitas on a baking sheet, in a bowl place the olive oil, Italian seasoning, and garlic. Mix well then brush on the top of the pitas. In a clean kitchen towel drain the spinach until it is dry. Arrange on pitas arrange pieces of chicken on the pitas as well. Sprinkle the top of the pitas with cheese back at 350 for 10 to 15 minutes until the cheese is melted, enjoy!

Now where did I leave that BoVD . . .

Here’s an issue I’ve been trying to get a hold on for a while now. The issue of media. Is it better to have a nice hardcover volume, a lightweight softcover volume, or a PDF. 

My biggest complaint against digital books is you don’t feel like you own anything. It feels like just another file on your computer, that just so happens to contain the same items as the book you bought. Whenever someone asks if I own a book, and I have it in pdf, I almost always respond with an ashamed lowering of the voice.

Which it’s really not fair. All books nowadays start out as a PDF or some other digital file, before they go to print. Which brings me to another issue I have with PDF’s – price. The cost of the PDF should not be anywhere close to the print copy. Some publishers have this down, other’s suck at it.

Physical copies aren’t without their issues either. There is a space requirement needed for them. I know this is counter what I said about the pdf’s – but you now have that physical item – so you need to put it somewhere. Pocket dimensions aren’t on the horizon just yet, so there’s no options but to put it somewhere, on something else, when it’s not in use. Even the cover causes issues. Hard covers stand up nice, don’t get bent, but come with a higher cost, and usually bigger storage issue and weight. Soft covers are easy to bend and show the wear over time greater then hard covers, but are light, cheap, and go into a backpack easy.

So what should we have? Well, there’s a lot of tech savy GM’s out there that would say “Get a tablet and put your digital books on there”. And they’re not wrong, they’re just not right. Studies are showing that more and more the eBook is falling in popularity, mostly due to the extra that’s added – why read a book when you can be on facebook. “Now MrWonx – if I may call you that”, you might be saying, “, when I game, I’m not on facebook or anything else. So why is this relevant?” Ah, my made-up friend, I’m glad you asked. The issue comes down to the general populous. If eBook goes away due to the normal joe back-lashing against it, you won’t have it any more. Digital files like PDF’s will live on, but if that tablet looses it’s eReader edge and becomes a social media piece – eventually, there will be no need to include an eReader piece. Technology will become outdated, and in 5 years, you’re iPad 3 will stop working, and the iPad 6 will look at your old pdf’s and go “What do you want me to do with these?” But that’s only if the current trend of eBook retraction continues. If tablet makers can curve some of that – it may still be a viable tool. But it still doesn’t replace that book in your hand. A book  is as big as it’s creators intended. And unless they where really dumb, it’s not awkward to hold. A tablet is as big as it needs to be to do what it does. a 7inch tablet with a 8.5×11 pdf on it gets weird, zooming, shrinking, etc. Tablets much bigger then 7 inches tend to get awkward to hold, carry, and store. Especially over prolonged reading.

Then you have the purists who think only books, all the time. Build this vast library that you haul with you every game. If someone comes to the table with a piece of technology, they are cut open and dragged by their entrails out of the house (Never been in a group like that? Obviously, you never played with the people I’ve played with). Heaven forbid that you ever play outside your own house – cause then it becomes a mass parade of stuff to the vehicle. Unless you don’t have a car, then you instantly become “that guy” on the city bus.

I think every game company out there needs to come to grips with the fact that buying a hardcover books means you own a copy of that content, and give you the digital file. This allows you to do all your research  in the confines of your own library, gives you a physical copy, and lets you take that PDF and put it on a laptop, eReader, etc, and bring it to game. Paizo does this, but only if you do a subscription for all of a certain product. When I was subscribed, I found it to be invaluable. But it also meant I was guaranteed to spend that money once the book came out, hurting my financial planning, and inevitably meaning I had to stop doing it. But it should almost be like music and movie’s now – buy a book, get a code to go to the site, get a free digital copy.

My little rant for today. I’m not a physical book elitist - I’m just a guy that likes my books, and my technology, and I know it can be done better.

"Did I say you could rest, maggot! 533, 534, 535 . . . "

I know it was Sunday, and I thought about it Sunday, but what I forgot was that I have an online blog to say something about it. So here’s a belated happy GM’s day to all of you.

I’m also using it as a means to nudge Idwraiths ugly mug a little farther down the page so I’m not scared of my own site. So here’s a cute duck picture.

I’ve been working on stuff of my own to  DM again. Been taking my sweet time doing it, because I want to be ready this time, and I’m also setting out to teach people a new system, even to me. Add into that my health issues as of late, and I’m pretty booked. But classes have let up for two weeks, so hopefully I’ll have time to get things done on that front, while preparing for classes come March 19th. Which is the same day I have teeth extracted . . .

That wasn't fun, that wasn't fun AT ALL!

At some point in your gaming career, you’re going to experience Gamer Funk. It’s a state of mind where you REALLY want to game, but you’re just not having fun when you are actually doing it. The drive and passion are there, until you sit down at the table.

This can happen with both players and dungeon masters, from all walks of life and game boards. It has a number of causes. Sometimes it’s burnout. If you’ve got a stressful life and you use game as your primary means of escapism, but you’re using it a LOT, you can actually do too much of it and it’ll end up feeling like work. I know one fellow with a stressful job who got to the point where he was gaming three session a weekend (all about 4-5 hours long) every weekend. He’d start yelling at me whenever I mentioned game. Yet when I asked him why he played since he wasn’t enjoying himself, he looked confused and horrified. Burnout.

It got to a point where my group literally had to cancel all our planned games, do some board games for a while and talk about what we wanted. We tried a couple of different tactics. Swapped who was DMing, tried new characters. Eventually what seemed to help us out was actually alternating what system we were playing. We had mostly been a D&D/Pathfinder group and we switched to playing a regular, every other weekend, Exalted game. It’s done well for us and now we’re adding a Vampire: Requiem game on the alternating weekends. It’s not that we don’t like D&D anymore, it’s just that after playing it regularly for many years, it was starting to lose some of the magic and sense of wonder that should accompany being in a game. When you lose that sense of joy, your hero stops feeling like a HERO and just ends up being kind of, eh. Eh, will kill a game.

Not that Gamer Funk is always caused by needing a new system. Sometimes it’s caused by having a problem between players that nobody is willing to address. If one player is constantly being favored or causing tension then the game can start losing its charm for the other people at the table. While it’s nominally the DM’s job to curtail this sort of problem, it’s not always his fault. Sometimes the players have stuff that has nothing to do with game going on between them that they’re not leaving at the door. This starts to affect their in game treatment of each other’s characters and suddenly what was a happy party, now has a bizarre strife in it that makes no sense in game. Two players who have always gotten along suddenly start nagging each other or sniping and you’ve got no idea why. In some ways it can be worse if there is out of game romance involved. Some of my best games have been with lovers and partners, and some of the worst games I’ve seen involved married couples. All depends on people’s ability to leave the real world outside the table.

So what do you do when your group is experiencing Gamer Funk? How do you cure this dread disease? Sadly, scrolls of Cure Player are hard to come by. Your best bet is to sit down, calmly, and talk about how you feel about the game. What you like, what you don’t like, and try to figure out how to emphasize the good while minimizing the bad. This doesn’t mean it’s the storyteller’s job to give in on every issue the players have. It means you’re all adults and you can choose to act like it. If you need to make a big change, new system, new game, new character, new venue, do it. While you may love the old style and not want to give it up, you’ll never know if you’ll love the new unless you give it a spin.

The sixteen year old boy stared at the golden glow that held his hand to the iron box. It didn’t hurt but his slim hand was stuck tight. This was a larger problem because the box was nearly as large as he was and much too heavy for him to lift. Strength wasn’t one of his greatest attributes. He was a slim boy, years of living on the street had denied him a large frame. Narrow hips and shoulders made most people assume he was years younger, or worse, a girl. The box was three feet across, two feet wide and almost a foot deep, and it was solid iron as far as he could tell. He took a deep breath to steady himself and cocked his head, something tickling his ears.

“Alright, finish the spell. Bring the cave down so no one can find it. The Prefect will never abuse the relics now.”

Renwyn’s eyes widened as he realized what he just heard. He opened his mouth to yell for help when the sudden horrendous sound of a Shrieker came screaming down the tunnel. The horrid wailing drowned out everything. Renwyn’s mind felt like a hundred daggers were stabbing into it. Blood began to seep from his nose and ears as the vibration shook the stones. Then the roar of falling rock downed out the horrible noise. Choking on the dust Renwyn didn’t even realize at first that he hadn’t been crushed, the pain in his skull and the agony in his lungs blinding him to all else. It wasn’t until he was digging his hands into his chest that awareness returned. His hand was free, and he wasn’t dead. His dark brown eyes tried to see around him, but everything was blackness. Crawling on his hands and knees he felt around, trying to find a tunnel, but there was nothing. He was trapped in a dome of fallen rock barely as wide as his 5’3 frame was tall. Terror, fear at the weight of crushing rock was consuming him. He clawed at the walls, whimpering and begging to get out. Then a thought crossed his mind. The Relics, maybe one of them could help him.

The thief pawed around until he found the chest, not even questioning why his hands weren’t sticking this time. He managed to find the sword and shield emblem that marked the latch. Nimble fingers twisted the symbols and he managed to open the heavy lid. Agony exploded through him as a brilliant golden light filled the tiny cavern. Curling into a ball Renwyn tried to protect his lean body. He felt as though he were trapped inside the sun itself. A voice whispered in his mind, cold and violent.

“Do you think yourself worthy of these treasures?”

Renwyn couldn’t answer. He shook before the light. Too much had happened to him. His first test from the Guild and suddenly he was buried alive and confronted with a divine voice. Shock and blackness scrabbled at the corners of his mind, but the light was unrelenting.

“Do you think yourself worthy of these treasures?”

“No!” Renwyn gasped out, his eyes clenched tight.

“Then why have you come?”

“I’m trapped. I’m going to die. They buried you! I was just hoping to find something to keep me alive!” Renwyn wasn’t sure who he was talking too, he still didn’t know what was inside the chest, but he had seen enough of the magic of the Gods to know he was dealing with something Holy, or Un.

The voice was silent, the light dimmed, not much, just enough that Renwyn could open his eyes. Painfully he managed to twist and look into the chest. Four objects sat upon a bed of garnet silk, the color of fresh blood. A golden apple, a crystal vial filled with dark blue fluid, a shimmering cloak and a statue of a small dog carved in granite. The gray stone dog stared up at Renwyn with eyes of onyx. It’s head was over large, as were its paws. Renwyn was SURE the voice came from the statue.

“Please, help me. I don’t want to die.” His voice was soft, despair and madness threatening to take away what little composure he had left.

“If I aid you, you will have to become worthy of the gifts. You will owe your soul to the service of the Gods. These gifts are not given lightly, once given, they cannot be returned or removed. Do you accept this bargain?”

Renwyn was desperate, he’d have accepted any terms. He didn’t hesitate to agree. The golden light flared again but this time Renwyn could see through it. Scribbling crimson light began to rise from the dog and float through the air, circling the boy.

“Take the vial and drink.”

Obediently the thief lifted the crystal flask and pulled the stopper. A scent filled the air, old stones and blood. Closing his eyes he tilted his head back and drained the cobalt elixir. The taste was strange, like he had cut his lips while sucking on mint. Swallowing he felt numbness spread down his mouth and out across his chest.

“Quickly, drape the silk across your body.”

Shaking the boy grabbed the cloth and spread it out, wrapping it around his shoulders as he was bid. The fabric felt cold and wet, almost like he was being bathed. It stuck to his skin. An itching sensation spread and he realized the fabric was spreading to cover his entire body.

“Now, before it covers your face, eat the apple.”

The numbness was spreading and it was hard to move his hand but he managed to dig the apple out and bring it to his mouth. It was small enough that he could get it all in so he just sucked it into his mouth and started chewing. The flavor was, bizarre. Cinnamon mixed with clove, smoke and a salty tang, like meat. He chewed as fast as he could as the silk crept up over his face. Panic shot through him when he tried to breath in and couldn’t. It was smothering him. The voice roared into his head.

“Swallow!”

He couldn’t. He was terrified. It bellowed again, demanding he swallow. Renwyn convulsively managed to swallow the chunks of apple, his numb hands flapping uselessly as he tried to claw at his throat and face, to breathe in. Then it was like he exploded into flames. Every muscle in his body seemed to burst into flaming agony at once. His bones felt as though they were shaking apart. His mind flinched at the pain, the sensation rising to such extremes that he stopped comprehending it as pain. His mind spun into blackness.

“You have been given three gifts. The Apple of Life, because of its flesh you shall not age, your wounds shall heal quickly. It does not make you immortal, merely protects you from the ravages of time. You can still be killed. The Shroud, its magic has seeped into your flesh. No mortal blade can cut you or pierce your skin. It does not make you invulnerable, merely protects you from ordinary harm. The Potion of Might; it is an elixir which increases your strength many times above that of mortal men and hardens your body to endure the strains of that strength. You have been made into a being above normal mortals. Now you will serve us, proving your worth.”

The voice was the last thing Renwyn heard before the blackness claimed him.

Got my game face on..

Getting started as a Dungeon Master of any type can be a complicated process. How do I know? I’ve been attempting it since I was 18. I’ve had a couple of successfully run games and a couple that crashed and burned horribly. Expect this. While it may not be true for everyone, or even most people, I’ve found that 50% of games will die or end before everyone is satisfied. In my case that means with the story ended while far from being resolved. There are a number of reasons why games crash and I’ll discuss Gamme Killers in another essay. Right now I’m going to just focus on stumbling blocks that I, as a DM, have come across.

One of the biggest problems I’ve found is that when I first started gaming I put too much work into a huge world and not enough work into the minutiae. The little gritty NPC’s that can make the difference between a captivating game world and a boring one are pretty important. My first couple campaigns I designed a half dozen cities separated by climates and terrains requiring fantastic transportation to travel to. I worked up the statistics for how many guards, thieves, random monsters each city would have, I worked up the maps for each ship etc. I was planned for random adventures. Then someone in the party asked me what a deckhands name was and I didn’t have a clue. In my youth I hadn’t realized how the game can revolve more around the personalities that the gamer. That game, despite having a great plot and an epic feel, failed. The players weren’t interested in just doing the numbers and it lacked a hook to make it all personal for them.

I took a different approach when I created my Saltwater’s Weep game. I focused on just one city. I designed the history of the city as if it had been founded by adventurers and basically made up people on all the levels of power. One of the most popular NPC’s is a dwarf named Shlub who’s been magically cursed to live inside a barrel. He’s a fixture at the Iron Stallion tavern. His legs stick out the bottom and he waddles around. People pour beer and liquor inside the barrel so he’s perpetually drunk. But sailors believe that rubbing his barrel is good luck. What did Shlub have to do with the greater story? Nothing at all, he was a throw away joke I tossed in to give the tavern some atmosphere. The players got a kick out of him and started going to that tavern exclusively, just to enjoy Shlub’s drunken stumbling among the tables.

The other thing I did differently in Saltwater’s Weep, was running a short campaign. I’ve used the setting 3 times. Each time I updated it to a new gaming rule set. The first time was 3.0 to 3.5 the second was 3.5 to Pathfinder. The first time I ran it the game crashed because some of the players had massive personality issues and they blew up over other shit. The second time pretty much went the same way. The last time though I was a bit gun shy so I only planned for a 6 session run. Because we gamed every week it went by fast, but the players had a blast. They accomplished a story-arc and we left it there. We’ll pick it up again when I’m ready. But I realized that because I wasn’t trying to force a story that would last for years of gaming, I gave the area they were in a bit more life and power. It was a more captivating setting. So, there is nothing wrong with thinking small, both in setting and story. That’s a problem a lot of new Storyteller’s run into. They try to create the grand epic right outside the gate and instead they should just look for creating a small fun story. They can always use it as a launching point later.

It’s semi old news, but I’m used to being a week behind.

The guys and gals over at Palladium Books need our help. With the economy where it is, and with how their motto seams to be “Well, we made that book over 20 years ago – we’re still going to print it so you all can get a copy of it” (which, by the way, makes them awesome), they’re strapped for cash to actually put their new book, Rifts World Book 32 – Lemuria – out.

So they’re giving us an opportunity to help and get some nice free stuff out of the mix. The basic $5 will get your name in the book as a donator, or for the same $5 you can put a memoriam in it. For $20, you get a better spot in the book, and a PDF version. $50 gets you a limited, only available now Hard Cover version to go along with that, $75 gets you the leatherette, cooler looking hard cover version, and then they combine all the above in one way or form until you get up to $500 for all 3, a list as a benefactor, then a ton of signatures, free unique art, the owner of the comapny will call you and ask your opinions, etc. etc. etc.

So check it out here if you want to look and help out. I’ve been looking into the whole crowdsourcing thing recently, and am surprised that more companies don’t use it.

MegaVerse Insider Opportunities

Borrowed without permission from The Looney DM

This is more of a “how I’m doing it” little article. I’m just going over what’s been going on in my life, and how game fits into it.

For starters, let me set the scene –

I’m 28, married, no kids yet. I have a full time job, plus I do night classes two nights a week (not this semester, but that’s not relevant). Add to that my social responsibilities to my family and friends, and SWTOR and Skyrim. What would normally be something I could spend time in my evenings plotting out is now an after thought – a weekly planned get together that I only think of when it’s time to drive to it.

First thing to note about doing tabletop gaming – it’s meant to be fun. It can’t be treated as a necessity, or it just ruins it. So when I mention that it’s scheduled – that’s not to make it seem like it’s a set thing that even if I don’t feel like doing it, I’ve scheduled it, so I’m doing it. Much like myself, my friends all have stuff going on in their lives. So we’ve plotted out certain times every couple weeks where we all actually have a section of time we’re not busy.

1. Pick a time where you’re not busy to game

So that may seem like one of the stupidest points – but it’s easily forgotten. You’ve got a lot on your plate, you have a deadline next week, you’ve got a family member with some rare illness, your water just broke – all these things can pull you away from game (just a side note – if your water broke and you’re reading this – got to the hospital, you can always come back to this later. I promise not to delete it on you). You can physically be to game, but if you are not mentally there – you might as well not be there at all.

2. Game journals are your friends

The most dreaded question of the  distracted gamer is “What happened last time?”. You’ve pulled yourself to the game table, taken out your character sheet you’ve given no thought to over the past two weeks, and now you have to pull that knowledge up about what had happened, what you where trying to accomplish, what the NPC’s names where, and exactly who was out to kill you. They’ve actually made something to help you with that. It’s called a notebook – it’s a new thing, I’m told. Write down important things you want to remember at the end of the session, and the next time you sit down, you’ll have all that info you just had at your fingertips. Think of it as a kind of “50 First Dates” scenario – you have to remind yourself of what you should already know.

3. Eat healthy

Wow, that was so foreign to me, it took me 4 times trying to type it to spell it right.

You’re in a hurry, game starts in 15 minutes, you get off your exit, and there’s a McDonalds, quick, easy, and cheap. What you’ve now done is added grease and fat on top of stress, and you’re about to sit and do nothing for 4+ hours. You’re body is a machine, and as Gnome Stew points out, lack of exercise and poor diet takes whatever cred you get for playing a game involving math and imagination, and throws it out the door.

Personal experience time – I just found out that I have a severe Vitamin D deficiency, due mostly to a poor diet and aversion to sunlight. Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, run your metabolism, and the big thing – MEMORY. So it turns out that our geekish love for dark spaces indoors leads us to be forgetful and sickly. Which would explain some of the arguments I’ve witnessed at the game table.

4. Think about game

So all this time, I’ve been talking about going into game without a clue, but it doesn’t HAVE to be like that. It all depends on how busy your schedule actually is. Do you drive/walk to work? What about lunch hour? When you’re kids are around, are you watching them watch TV? Is there moment between issues at work where you need to find something to think about?

You don’t need a character sheet and dice in front of you to plan. The nice thing about playing a tabletop RPG is that your character is only part character sheet. The actual character and what drives him/her is in your head. So plot things out – think about what you’d like to happen in game. Then, jot them down in that new notebook you bought for #2. Not every one will be a winner, but every once and a while – one will stick, and you’ll be glad you did it.

5. Enjoy the game

The last thing I’ll touch on is that you should try to find joy in the game. I know I touched on this a little before, but you need to make sure that you’re leaving the game feeling like it’s still something you enjoy doing. Other issues that deserve their own article can hinder this – disruptive players, bad locations, system issues, bad dm’s/players, food poisoning – they all need to be addressed in order to truly have a good time playing. If you just go from session to session thinking “Boy, I wish Bob would stop pulling a knife on me every time I suggest that we take a break so we can use the bathroom – my wife is starting to get suspicious of how many times I “cut myself while shaving” . . . ”  - then it’s time you address the fundamental issues with Bob as a player, and get game to a much happier (and safer) place. It might mean Bob has to conference-call in his character from the local psych ward, but they have free wireless, so it’s a win win.

After 4 hours of memebase and no new ideas...

A lot of people who want to be dungeon masters or game writers experience a problem, a dread obstacle which faces any who engage in the literary arts. This hurdle is commonly known by the name of Writer’s Block. Tis a dastardly thing which strikes the minds and fingers of those who attempt to put word to page.

As many might imagine, once a person begins to suffer from writer’s block they come desperate to find a cure. They’ll do anything to relieve their mind of this dread clog and allow the words to flow free. Before you can really find a cure it’s probably important to figure out just why you’re experiencing the problem in the first place. This can be a pain in the rump. I have been going through quite a stretch of writer’s block so I can think of a number of things that cause the thoughts to jam up.

Stress. If you have a crap-tastic day and you sit down to write with all of the craziness running through your head, getting anything coherent out is going to be a bit of a problem. It’s hard to work out all the details of a fictional world if you can’t get all the problems of the real one to go away for a little while. Try organizing a space that distances you from your real problems and brings what you’re trying to bring about closer to you. Maybe put on the soundtrack to an appropriate genre movie in the background. If you’re writing fantasy, try the Lord of the Ring’s soundtrack, science fiction, Star Wars, etc. Those are generic examples. Maybe put up a couple posters or figurines of the right genre around your space, so you can look at them to keep your thoughts organized. Really bizarre one that most people don’t think about, but your sense of smell is pretty powerfully connected to your creative process. If you don’t feel like the visual and audible stimulus is working, try something that smells of the right genre to you. Gun oil, fresh grass, pine needles, there are a lot of possibilities. The point is to try and distance yourself away from what’s stressing you out. Not that stress is the only cause.

Sometimes the problem is that you’re starting too large. Myself, I’ve loved the idea of designing my own campaign setting for a long time. Been working on it for nearly 16 years…. And I’ve gotten not very far. The reason is simple. I’ve been starting too big. The thing about a lot of campaign settings is that they came about from DM’s who have run their system for years. Those DM’s might have started with a general idea, but they didn’t have the entire world pre-planned, it grew organically as part of the character’s journey. The DM was racing along, attempting to stay ahead of his party, making characters (sometimes on the fly) for them to interact with and then fleshing out the details afterword. So if you want to start your own campaign setting, start with a small area and then start spiraling out. Design a city or town, flesh it out, and give it a history. Its history will give you ideas for the area’s history, which expands your scope. Then you flush out the “present day” folk and groups in that surrounding area and allow the things to grow dynamically. As long as you keep alternating your focus on the microcosms and macrocosms back and forth, letting the ideas interact, you’ll keep from getting overwhelmed. But if you sit down and say “OK, I’m going to make a WORLD now” and then let the idea of hundreds of millions of people, thousands of kingdoms, different religions, economies and stuff all slam into your brain, you’re likely going to stall out. The most success I had was developing a lawful evil metropolis called Saltwater’s Weep and so far I’ve gotten some very good feedback. This leads to another problem that writers commonly face: isolation.

If you open up a novel you’ll generally see an acknowledgment section that the author has added. It lists a bunch of people that the writer is saying thank you to for a number of reasons. The basic thing is, you can’t do it all yourself. Feedback is pretty essential for a good writing experience. People tossing ideas around can be amazingly helpful, not to mention if you’re writing about a time and area and you’re trying to give it a real multicultural feel, ask people about other cultures. Other people’s expertise can save you a lot of time, headaches and stress. Not to mention, if you want people to really FEEL like characters have different lives and personalities, having a friend you rely on to make completely random decisions for some of the characters can really help you keep from sticking all your characters in a cookie cutter.

Truth is, writer’s block can suck. It’s worse than an Ogre Village at level 4, but planning and team work can defeat it for you. Just relax and have fun.