Diary of a Wannabe Freelancer

Superadventure: Again!

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:30:14 GMT

So the supermodule I wrote about last time is in the can. I looked at the concept and realized it was crap and the ideas were basically cookie cutter stuff that stroked my ego and my geek fetishes in gaming (not sexual at all, I swear. Serious). But I posted a little something about it here:Paizo's Site and here:Sinister Adventures: Nick Logue's Gaming Company.. The document itself can be found through google docs on here: Rupture of the Tower of Valneeth.

This thing is, as the last, to be done with the PFRPG, however it is much smaller. Around 50,000 words is the current plan. Also unlike the last one, I fully intend to finish this damnable thing in the next year if it kills me. I'll hire editors, top scale artists and God knows what else before this thing is done, but by GenCon 2010, I expect to have a manuscript ready for editing or, if I'm really lucky, layout!

And that, as they say, is that.

Once Again, I Take Too Long

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:52:48 GMT

Mm-hmm, again there's a big delay between posts. I don't like it, but I hope it gets better soon. Somehow I doubt it, but we'll see. I'm doing more writing nowadays, I think, so things could look up here in the future. More after the cut.

First, I've had nothing published since my last post, since the big company, Goodman Games, has a completely stacked schedule and the little PDF that is my submission is on the back burners until Gen Con and a little after. Hopefully.

Secondly, Ilvanix has gone absolutely nowhere. This is principally caused by an overdose of video games that kept creeping into my head like an addiction. I did anything for an excuse to play that game, from "I want to real bad!" to "Today sucked. Let's play Team Fortress 2!" Furthermore, the creative drive dropped like a stone last month, and every single one of my projects went on an unneeded hiatus. I have plans to finish Ilvanix in the next two years. I also want to order the art and do the layout myself, which of course, costs a whole lot of money. The folks might have more time and I can partner with them in this venture. I hope too that some more free time comes my way.

On a related note, I got absolutely nothing done on the module. I hates it, but that's the way it is, I guess..

As for school, that starts in a bout a month and a week, and I'm taking more English classes this term. So yay for that! Too much science and not enough writing makes for an unhappy twenty year old. Yeah, I'm not a teen anymore. Thank you Lord. Thank you so.

Finally, I guess I should say something about the Ennies, seeing as that's the biggest award show the gaming world has asside from perhaps the Origins awards. Oh, and if that's not so, don't hesitate to tell me. Those are just the two that spring to mind. I know Open Design is nomiated for five awards, two projects and some Kobold Quarterly stuff. Paizo also has some nominations this year, though not the raging torrent it was last year, which is okay, I guess, since they took home like, I don't know, 11 Ennies last year? That was insane in the membrane (cheese off).

Oh, and here's the final thing, for real. The Pathfinder RPG is coming out at GenCon, which is awesome sauce. 4e's fun to design for and play with, but it's still way to rigid for my tastes. I'm a 3.x fan, myself, so this is what I need. Plus, know I have an excuse for the kids at Games Camp next year not to use 4e. More power to Paizo, I say! Mwah ha ha!

Ahem.
That's all for today folks. G'NIGHT!

Quick Catch-Up

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:56:27 GMT

Well, it's been way too long, I think. Jeez. Still, life hasn't been bad. School and grades aren't fun, but the the freelancing really picked up not long after my last, too long ago post.

I got a contract, wrote a manuscript and sent it in. This manuscript, however, goes to a larger audience. Not to belittle the mag that published me last time, WereDragon, 'cause they're great and you should totally check 'em out, its just that this company, who I don't know if I can say who they are or not yet, is much bigger with a bigger name.

On the side design on Ilvanix, however, I can't really deliver good news. The stuff I did for the big company took complete precedence, and also hit just when finals were ramping up, and then took most of my time, not including video games, which take a whole lot of time too. So I'm stuck with about 4000 words on a setting and 3500 on a superadventure that I plan on working on here in a couple weeks if the big company doesn't okay my next proposal. Fear not, for I do intend on getting both projects done, I just don't know how or when yet. Summer should tell the tale. Of that I'm sure.

Now, on a more positive note, I recently joined Monte Cook's newest gaming venture, Dungeon-a-Day.com. It is AwEsOmE! I was a little too slow on the draw to get a charter membership, but got a yearly anyway. With twenty levels of dungeon, eighteen of which aren't even detailed yet, this will be a long and drawn out look into the mind of the co-creator of 3rd Edition D&D. What's more, he reads the posts every night and comments. Heck, your changed could even take place by the end of the week if they seem pertinent and the community wants them. It's absolutely phenomenal. Monte even takes a litte time out of his day to write a blog and even do a podcast, which reminds me on one level of FDR's fireside chats, though much more gaming related and not to cheer someone up.

The dungeon updates everday. GIve it a look. The first six rooms are open to all for a preview, and there's at three day grace period if you don't want to stay on for good.

So yeah, lifes good, and since I put the address to this blog up on the forums there, maybe, just maybe, I'll update here more often.

Well, Here I Am in the Published World

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:49:45 GMT

Yep, I've been officially published. I'm blazing a trail into infinity, or at least cracking a door into a larger world. I've got a couple other things going at the same time, and I hope they'll be published too. Regardless, it's a great feeling, one I've not felt before.

So where can you find my work? It's called WereDragon magazine, accessable through weredragonmag.com. My little (well, its the biggest thing in there, but small by industry standards) ditty is called Into the Puppet's Heart: The Otanshu Legacy. It's about puppets and their master, who himself is not really a puppet. He is, however, awesome. I've yet to actually give him stats, since he's the end boss along with a giant guy that can rip apart planar boundries.

The art is pretty kickass too. Right after the introduction, some of the best stuff I've looked at comes staring you in the face, and a god I created came to life. He looked nothing like that in my head, and boy am I glad he didn't. He is way too cool, and I hope to have more of this artist's work in the mag in the future.

Whether you like the adventure or not (I really hope you do), adventures in this continuing story arc won't come every quarter. I want it to be semiannual, if only to make my life a little easier. I've got other writing to do, and right now there's a ton of it. But enough about me.

The mag itself features some great stuff from great authors. Even Joel Flank, one of the top 32 in the RPG Superstar(tm) contest that Paizo Publishing LLC held, has an article in their about multiclassing, there's a couple other adventures, articles on gaming and GenCon and other stuff I can't recall. Oh yeah, the comics in there are cool, and there's stuff in there that might come in handy to a DM someday.

So check it out! It doesn't cost much and you get more than your money's worth. It also helps an up and coming magazine do its very best to bring in great authors to the world.

John Steven R. Schutt
Freelance/Setting Writer

Ah, Isn't College Wonderful?

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:49:54 GMT

Well, I hate to say it, but I haven't written one iota of new Ilvanix information since last Saturday, and I'm not really happy about that. I want to get the thing written by the end of next year, but at this pace, I'll be lucky to get half that.

The whole "college" dynamic seems to suck all the creative juices from my bones. Too much free time and no imminent deadlines means no work done. And then, of course, there's the Internet. Jeez, that thing finds ways to steal your time and run it through a paper shredder. I hate it, but that's the way I am. I'm working dilligently one minute, the next two hours I spend just sitting, clicking away from one site to another.

Oh, and then there's the homework. Yeah, I don't really have that much yet, but what I do have takes up more time than I'd like. Still, I'm enjoying the experience overall, so that's good, right?

On a lighter note, I do have some ideas for the Ilvanix setting I can put down. The first real chapter is about classes, and since the gods are such an active part of the world, the simple cleric just wouldn't do. So I'm thinking of calling this new class the "Attuned," and it will have some extra-special powers given by the few godly avatars that they are closely linked to. If it was a god of death, maybe an ability could be an overall death sensing ability, but more focused, almost like a death radar. The character can track down one of those he sees with the sense and put an end to him for good. Or if the god is patron of plague, there could be something like a harmless miasma that surrounds the character at all times, increasing in deadliness as he gains power. Or... Lots of other "or's."

But I think the best thing about writing a setting like mine is that I don't have to rush it, and I don't have to look at rejection letters over and over again, except of course if they're from me. I don't know how much other writing I'll be doing, but still, I've got a lot of work I have to do otherwise.
Overall, the week's been alright. Grades are fine and I've been thinking about these things, so it's not a total loss.

I'll post more when there's more to say.
--John S. R. Schutt
Freelance/Setting Writer

Finding a Ground

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:40:24 GMT

Well, I made the leap. I decided that I'm making my own campaign setting, a place called Ilvanix. I don't know who it's going to be for, where it's going or if I'll ever even finish the damnable thing. But I've started it, and for the foreseeable future, it'll be something I plan to work on.

And lucky you, my 1.35 readers (maybe), I plan on sharing my design choices with you. I'll be posting them here intermittently with other stuff I find funny or useless, so here goes.

When I started to think up the ideas for Ilvanix, I considered each of the other campaign settings I'd seen throughout my RPG career. There is the Pathfinder Chronicles (tm) Campaign setting, Midnight by Fantasy Flight Games, Dawnforge by Fantasy Flight, The Blood Throne by Reality Deviant Publishing, the Greyhawk setting, Forgotten Realms, and dozens of other fantasy worlds I've read or heard about. Every one of them had a pantheon of gods, all powerful beings that drew worshipers from all sides. And these gods were revered, yet rarely, if ever, seen by even one mortal eye.

And so for Ilvanix, I wanted a radical departure from this norm. I wanted my gods to be a part of the mortal world, not just going down every ten thousand years or sending a herald or powerful messenger. No, I wanted my gods to take part in the doldrums of everyday life. I wanted them to know what their subject's lives were like. The gods, in essence, were citizens on the planet just as the mortals were.

I regret to say that the gods, in all their divine glory, are not present on the world itself. That would unbalance the entire game in a way I did not want. Therefore, I gave the gods spirit avatars, extensions of themselves that had their own minds and were available to the populace at large: the common man.

On the more physical side of things, I wanted there to be an entire planet in the setting, but when I thought about it, I knew that I'd run into a major wordcount issue. I'd have to write more than half a million words to get everything I wanted into this thing, and that's a Ptolus size book, and as someone I met once said, "Only a guy with a name like Monte Cook could get a publisher to do something that big." Wise words, and as much as I'd like to get something that size out in the world, I know that with a name like mine (that has no merit in the industry yet, and will probably never be Monte Cook), I'd never get that kind of deal. So I settled with Ilvanix being a pair of continents with two dozen different nations, empires and theocracies.

And I didn't want all of those nations to be on land either. I wanted an Atlantian empire of humans or human like beings, powered by a black crystal substance I've yet to come up with a name for. All the same, I think there will be some research required for that place. Or not. I've not gotten that far yet.

And last, I need new mechanics. I've thought up three new races for my world, the axans, the kensar and the senran those in that underwater empire. The axans are my magical race, not the elves, this time. The kensar are that weird race that nobody trusts or understands and the senran will, more likely than not, not be able to breathe water. They'll live under the ocean in contained cities and use vehicles made of that black stone.

Oh, and that stone? It's not just underwater. It's just more abundant there.

It's going to be a wild ride, and I hope that anyone who reads this gets some sort of cool stuff out of it. I'll post more when I have more to say, but right now, I'm going to go write that thing!

--John S. R. Schutt
Freelance/Setting Writer

Now I Can Work

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:19:08 GMT

Well, sort of. I don't have an official deadline, nor will I have one I don't think. But I now have an impetus to actually do something rather than sit and play video games (which I love, don't get me wrong).

On comes the rant!

I got back from Hawaii yesterday, and as much as I loved it, I got nothing done. All I did was send in that project I was talking about as a final draft. Now I sit and hope. It's scary, actually. I won't get a whole lot out of the deal, but it was a great experience, and I've got an idea in the works, nothing written, but an idea, for my next project with them. It's connected to the one I turned in, and if I can narrow it a little bit I might be able to get that done too.

So, about the new thing. This is something I've wanted to do for a while, and it's something I'm really passionate about, though, being new in the industry, I don't know how much I can say, so I'll leave it at that. I had submitted a different thing to the same company on demiplanes, but, suffice it to say, it didn't fit their plans, but that's okay. As a newbie, my expectations for acceptance are pretty low, but my confidence got a huge boost recently, which is my next topic.

I've always been a poet, but never seriously or for anything more than my own and a few other's amusement. Now I am officially published. I'm going to be in a little ditty around August, a pair of books by Bards and Sages. The pay was alright for a the length of the poems, and they were very professional with the entire dealing.

I've yet to hear back on a couple of things, so I hope that information comes soon. I'd like to get started.

Finally, I've gotten 4th Edition, and just in time too. All three possible projects use it, and the rules, while easy to grasp and is in my opinion, well done, take some time to read.

That's all for now. There'll be more when I know more.

--For Writing

We're On Our Way

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:46:23 GMT

It's been some time since my last post, mostly because I haven't had any impetus to do so. But for some reason, now I do.

So let's begin the rant.

I'm in Hawaii on a great vacation. I'm on the island of Maui right now, and it's much quieter than Oahu (except for the baby screaming outside my window!).

My real reason for posting is my excitement at the submissions I've sent in over the past weeks, and how I wait on pins and needles for someone to clear a deadline. I need deadlines!

First, I've got a 50,000 word project that I'm awaiting clearance on, and I really love the concept. I can't say much, obviously, but it's something I really love, and it has to do with rocks. And things man was not meant to know and other stuff that just fills me with a sick glee.

Secondly, some 40,000 words has to be written for yet another publisher, and I don't have any idea when I'll hear more about that. This one, though, came to me just as I sat down to write the submission, and I immediately wanted to play it. I wanted to set the thing down and kill me some monsters. Oh, was it a feeling. The words just flowed out of me. It was something to see. God, I loved it.

Thirdly, I've got a project I've been waiting on conformation of for a little while, and this one will definitely take some doing. The company is incredibly choosy about who they hire so I'm really worried about what they say.

On a lighter note, I've gotten some really good feedback on that other project I was talking about last time. They didn't reject it outright, which is awesome, and the guys were really good and fast about how they operated. It's good to see an industry with those kind of people filling it.

Finally, I don't know how I'm going to write 90,000 words in time for their deadlines, if I get accepted at all. I'll have to chain myself to my typing chair and not eat, sleep or anything for a while so I can crank the blasted things out in time for my due dates. Oh, and if the third thing goes through, I'll get addicted to coffee for sure. That'll be fun. Oh what fun that will be...

Anywho, there's my rant for the day.
Aloha, my friends, and Good Night!

To Whom it May Concern

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:27:55 GMT

I've been writing for many years now, but it is only recently that I've entered the RPG freelancing industry. Now, this may be of little interest to anyone, but if I'm to make a name for myself (and some cash monies), then I have to get the word out.

I've got a single product in the works right now, though I can't talk much about it, having my mouth chained shut by the legal system. I hope to have the thing written in a bit, and published soon after. Just have to get the thing approved.

I've also sent a little ditty to another potential employer, and I'm waiting for a response on that (on pins and needles).

I've learned that those in the freelancing industry are both a creative and a hardworking lot, as all the writing I've been doing amounts to over 30,000 words, and let me tell you, that's no small sum.

On another note, I just purchased Wolfgang Baur's Empire of the Ghouls. What a tour de force. It's a beautiful piece of RPG goodness, and I've attained a respect for him and the Werecabbages I'd not had before. The thing is 160 pages long! Honestly, I didn't think I'd like it when I first saw it a while back, but when I started reading Mr. Baur's work, I grew to want it more and more. I think the crux came when I decided I wanted to write for Kobold Quarterly, seeing as I had to be a subscriber or a patron in order to do so. So I subscribed, and thought, "What the heck?" and became a patron for Blood of the Gorgon. That being done, I saw that I could acquire The Ghouls, and, knowing it was 160 pages long, I really wanted it, but still wasn't sure if I'd like it. Suffice it to say, I do.

It goes without saying that the life of a freelancer takes one heck of a lot of work, but if it's work you love (and I think Mr. Baur does), you'll devote so much time to it. I just hope I can be able to enter the industry with that love, and keep it going.