Filed under: Games, Life, thoughts | Tags: design notes, thoughts, writers, writing
Zachary Houghton asks a intriguing question: “what’s your Appendix N? What fiction has influenced your campaigns, play styles, and writings?”
The question is one that really makes me think. Here is my list:
Alexander, Lloyd.
Anonymous. Song of Roland.
Bradbury, Ray. Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Bullfinch, Thomas. The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne (aka Bullfinch’s Mythology)
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass.
Feist, Raymond.
Heimingway, Ernest.
Howard, Robert E.
Irving, Washington.
Lewis, C.S. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Leiber, Fritz. “Lankhmar” series.
Lovecraft, H.P.
Malory, Thomas. Le Morte d’Arthur.
Moorcock, Micheal.
Moore, Alan.
Poe, Edgar Allen.
Rosenberg, Joel.
Stoker, Bram.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit; The Lord of the Rings.
Looking at this list, I now understand why some of my games are the way they are.
Back in 2002 I was contracted to write the history chapter for the Empire City Source book that Guardians of Order was to release for their Silver Age Sentinels rpg.
For those who remember SAS this was a super hero RPG, set in a world that was like ours, but slightly difference. The big change was that New York City, was renamed Empire City.
Still, that is besides the point. I took the contract because I really enjoy writing history (as if Colonial Gothic is not proof of that), and I enjoy fitting real world history into a believable game setting history. Sadly, the book was canceled, and all the work I did to make Empire City believable, was put in the Wish It Worked Out File.
There is some good stuff in there. I created a few heroes and villains that predated the game’s main heroes. I weaved in the game’s heroes, and set up a believable progression of how the game’s setting got to where it was when the game came out. Hell, I even weaved in the famous New York Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
Empire City, seemed real.
Yet, all this great work just sits in the Wish It Worked Out File mocking me. Still, I figured, it was time to release this back into the world. It also keeps off something I plan to do regularly, clean out the folders of things that will never see the light of day regularly.
So why is this chapter so important? It taught me how to work with real world history and set it logically in a game. This is something I continue to do with Colonial Gothic
This was posted by Dan Lyons, but this is just too good not to share. I give you the greatest thing every written about Walt Whitman.
I would so pay to read this biography about Whitman
