Forum etiquette

That difficult project you finished isn't why I asked you. I knew you were the guy for...um, a certain subject we can't talk about, and I thought you, Ben and I seem to have a similar sort of writing style, and so it would be fun to see how that worked in a project. Mark can (and has) written just about anything, so he's just a natural pick.

I agree. The next two bits I'm writing for my blog are based on a documentary about the Ancient Olympics (Mystery cult which explains what the Tytalus are doing with the Normandy Tournaments), and a Wikipedia article about the chemical properties of water (which Hank Green covers in a far more succinct and useful way here: youtu.be/HVT3Y3_gHGg) which is based on the idea that if you are just emphasising one of the odd properties of water, then that's only "slightly unnatural liquid" even if, over time, it has big effects. This is "The Patient Art" which I've been telling people I've been thinking about on my blog for ever. This year I really will do it. I got sidetracked and put the cultist part of it in the vanilla covenant I just wrote up, so actually it is part done.

My point here is: random stuff can lead to good articles once you have prepared yourself by reading. Two of my published chapters are based on a little bit of plastic that was stuck in the side of a plant at a local nursery. The most recent one is based on a rectangle on the edge of a map I saw once. The reading just gets your mind ready so that when someone says "This bridge has a chapel on it!" your brain goes "There's a story there." and clicks other ideas onto it. The weirdest object that has led to a chapter is a the spring on the end of a tetherball set. I saw it and thought "Ah-ha: post-Empedoclean cosmology! Criamon!" Now, before I said that, I'd been reading a lot about Helleno-Buddhism...

So, you really don't need to love C13th history to write stuff. Just find stuff you like and work it in. (Ask me about Ars Magica : Leverage sometime.)

I got into Ars Magica writing because I sent a letter to White Wolf (air mail, from the UK to the US, because this was 1992 and there was, for practical purposes, no internet), and Mark Rein-Hagen wrote back asking me to write for White Wolf magazine. I wrote an article for ArM2, then ArM3 came out and I wrote a lot of the original Wizards' Grimoire, and then I happened to be online at the moment WotC announced that it was abandoning Ars Magica. That led to my involvement in ArM4, which led to becoming Line Editor for ArM5.

I run Open Calls and pick people up from the fanzines because there is far too much luck involved in that story. There should be routes in that don't involve sending unsolicited letters in 8-point type pointing out an error in published material and working Dante Alighieri into the mythology of Vampire: the Masquerade. Largely because that breaks just about every rule I've ever seen for how to do an initial query letter.

We aren't currently taking unsolicited proposals, but there are ways to get into the writer pool. Open Calls are the most reliable, because I get to see your draft and work with you, but a record in the fanzines can also work.

I would echo the advice about reading a lot and writing a lot. This is perhaps the only point that all writers agree on when it comes to "how to become a writer". If you read over a wide range, you will find yourself breaking out of conventions without even thinking about it.

You also need to find the game inspiring. If you don't, write for a different game. :wink:

If pointing out errors was a way to get into writing for you, I think I'd already have a contract :wink: As would the rest of the group I playtest with.

Another thing, BlackLiger, is because you post under an alias, I have no idea who you are or what your contribution under your own name has been. I've always posted as myself because I find it keeps me from getting into as many pointless arguments as I used to when I had an alias, because I'm accountable for anything I say that's a bit toolish. The upside is that when you hit any of my work, it has the same label on it. You don't need to work out I'm Sir Dinadan or AmberGM(whatevernumberit was) or whoever.

Ditto.

This would cover me as well then :wink:

Are you the same Tellus that had a Google Chat with CJ and I, because if so...then not so much. You've broken cover!

...and shares a saga with Christian, yeah. That's me. :wink:

I tend to avoid telling people my real name online, mostly because I have too much time spent training as an IT and network technician to disregard web safety. :slight_smile:

Even so, it fragments your profile as a participant in the game's community.

On the other hand, I've got several jobs, including the opportunity to present a television program, because I use my real name online.

You need to gather anecdotes from both sides.

Eh.

I guess my name is common enough that outside of the AM5 community, tracking down who the hell I was would be hard work.

Christopher Barrett. CJ knows what I look like, so if it turns out I was murdered shortly after this, he's your prime suspect :stuck_out_tongue: (So does Brutus, but since he's not murdered me yet, eh)

And what was your address? :laughing:

CJ is more likely to be responsible for getting you on TV, to be honest... :smiley:

...and I've even convinced CJ he's not dangerous, IRL.

And to add a few comments on the other topics at hand here, I changed my user name here on the forum to my real name around the time Grogs came out - the first book I contributed to. For a lot of the same reasons Timothy Ferguson mentions. Except the maximum length of the user name could not encompass my middle name, although I rarely use it IRL. But my name is common as dirt here in Denmark, I often get other people's emails sent to me. Even sensetive stuff from lawyers, banks, and official places. I once got a permit to run a restaurant at a golf course. Not my thing though.

I wouldn't presume to be anything above rookie writer. Some time after jumping on a call for playtesters I took a chance and answered an Open Call some years back, for Grogs. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I think I managed. And this was a gateway to more writing. It was hard, challenging, a lot of fun and really rewarding. I have no education in the fields of writing, or medieval history, and english is a foreign language for me. Stricly speaking I'm not even an academic - I assume this requires you to have attended university.
Great help and input from a patient Line Editor and the more experienced and established authors takes you a long way. And I guess it helps to have played RPGs for almost 25 years, known the ArM system since 2nd ed, and played it a lot from 4th ed and up. And I read a lot.

I started doing freelancing for other RPGs as a playtester and contributor via Open Design/Kobold Quarterly/Kobold Press, and then made sure I had something in every issue of Sub Rosa for the first five issues--I've actually done something for every issue (but one was editing, and a different one had two articles). It seemed Timothy and I were stepping on each other's toes a bit, but I didn't know it. Then, one night, as I hammered away at the third shift, I received an email inviting me to join the authors' pool.

It was probably a good thing the building was mostly empty. :slight_smile: I was kind of loud.

Since then, I've kept at it. I still put pieces in Sub Rosa, I still freelance for Pathfinder projects, and I love my Ars projects. In fact, the people I work with on Pathfinder material know doing Ars material was pretty close to my brass ring, so they know I prioritize Ars projects first. That's part of why I'm not on the forums as much. My time is limited, and I can get consumed with some forum discussions...and that's the time I need to put into writing projects. :slight_smile:

(Speaking of which, I've got to finish some bits...I'm almost there...)

-Ben.
(Who, if he could, would change his forum handle to his name. Can we get aliases?)

I can't actually recall how I became involved now. I think it all started with a lot of posts to the Berklist, some of which were a little unusual, and just chronicled my attempts to analyse the Ars 4 mechanics in the face of deadly peril, and some of which looked at the incredible psychokinetic ability of my players when character generation was still dice based. The most popular posts were probably those on folklore though, but they may not be the ones those who were there remember.

How did I come to write for the line? As I say my memory is hazy, but I believe it involved a frantic call when a giant Gingerbread man that was somehow linked to an obscure Babylonian (was it Sumerian? I need to check Tobin's Spirit Guide) deity was spotted marauding through Cambridge, levelling all in its path, and David Chart finally agreeing that with his city faced with a disaster of Biblical proportions (Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!) I could turn up with my trusty team of fellow parapsychologists and save the day. Obviously the government hushed it up, as I can find no trace of it in the archives of the Cambridge Evening News, but I'm pretty sure it was something like that. To this day I can not view gingerbread with anything but disgust.

Because I could not entirely prove that our employment of unlicensed nuclear accelerators were the cause of the Gingerbread Man's demise, Neil who reputedly cast a successful Aegis over downtown Cambridge was also hired, and we collaborated on TMRE. The very short writing period coincided with me almost being finished off by a burning noose, concussion from a flying rabbit hutch, a collapsing seance table and in the same spirit of disasters I also got married and went on honeymoon. Despite these various disasters the book was completed -- and I went on to write on a number of other books, and have developed a few skills, but mainly the capacity to a) check what the word count is b) write to it and c) cut furiously when it transpires no one else did a or b :wink: So given my greatest asset to the line as an author has been the ability to sacrifice stuff I wrote so better stuff by other authors can make it in, I guess I'm not one to be taking advice from. I have however over the years had some very sound ideas on increasing the fan base, mainly involving trying to promote Ars Magica through the pages of Cosmopolitan as I recall... I did once wear a Grand Tribunal tee shirt on an episode of US cable show Ghost Adventures, I guess that might count. :wink:

If however you happen to be troubled by ghosts, well I'm your chap...

cj x

Your tribute to Ghost Busters is especially apropos, today. 8)