Lucky for me, I go ahead and sign up to run five different and original events for GenCon 2007 in the name of Peryton Gamers. And I am not being sarcastic. But for some reason I like deadlines. Not self-imposed deadlines, as I have stated before I am through with those. But doing projects for up-coming events, like conventions and or projects with friends I stay fairly focused on getting the "product" together. The product of course requires some editing afterwards, but there is a product and a little sense of accomplishment that makes up for aggravation elsewhere in writing.
My latest "five tales" are even somewhat less selfish than my usual work. Though I have wrapped my mind around around my own TAG system of rules, only two out of the five pieces are for TAG. Two are for Ken St. Andre's Tunnels and Trolls 7th edition, and a piece is Peryton's D20, err OGL, err D&D variant the Peryton RPG. My selfish two bits are for my space opera setting Rocket-Men Versus the Saucers. Leaving me to highlight my RuinCrawls FRPG stuff hopefully this October at Con on the Cobb, with some gratuitous amount of All-Out Armbruster sword and sorcery artwork.
There is Trollwood, which will be printed later as Die Wald. A scenario where I add many of the characters from Trollhalla into my going staple of fantasy characters. Hopefully seeing players play them at GenCon will give me some inspiration for them as characters in fictional shorts and novellas over the next year. We'll see though, considering the bad speculative fiction I have seen from Jim Shipman concerning Peryton's and my love life in his HoHo mag then how my friend Paul in Philadelphia can never seem to finish his RPG gang's recounting, I suspect I'll need to keep some perspective on this. That said, I have a couple "Boozer" stories to write for sure.
Before I went overboard with thinking too much like a fan fiction writer, I broke the pace with a more traditional "tunnel hack" piece Flame and Frost. This will be later printed as Escape from Loki Mountain, hopefully getting Diego G- to do the majority of the illustrations. His stuff is as rich in atmosphere as a good sword and sandals movie from the late 40's through early 60's. In fact, I hope to have him illustrate Die Wald and Trolls Below (from last year) also.
Tranter-Man is almost as much a creative influence on Rocket-Men Versus the Saucers as I am. Not only is he doing the covers to each of the various episodes, he's designing specific things that I hadn't even thought of like, the emblem of my serial adventures' space cadets, the Oort Corps. And of course I wouldn't have my favorite Spacer's scenario to date The Straits of Sub-Light to preview a bit at the convention without the incredibly brilliant, and fast, Captain Moulun.
My "Who-Dunnit in space" Trouble at SOHO Station, had me exploring all sorts of S-F themes. While writing it, I kept thinking of Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 and Samuel Delaney's Babel-17 for reasons I can't even begin to imagine. Sometimes, one just has to go with the flow of the subconscious. It makes the writing more fun. Definitely is going to need the Tranter Cover and Capt. Moulun's touches later though.
The Dark Cave for the Peryton RPG, is a brief little cave crawl. But if one is not paying attention, it can be quite painful. I think she'll actually approve of it. And she's one tough cookie to please.
On top of finishing these works, Peryton went out of her way to get together two pieces as prizes for GenCon. Imp Hollow and the preview of The Straits of Sub-Light, though she will only lay claim to the Hollow because the Straits is still in very rough form.At times like these, it is good to be writing. I'll let you know how GenCon went when we get back.
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