This is a dream come true .
Once, I had time, ideas, I could type pretty fast, and, to tell the truth, you are one of my favorite authors.
Sadly, that is no longer true, as my failure to get anything going in my "Before the Order" thread clearly illustrates : I tire quickly, can only type with one hand, and don't have much energy anyway.
But I've got 2 things going for me:
I don't want to be paid ( actually, I'd probably pay to make this hapen )
Once I've got an idea I can chew on(1) before sleeping ( See myquasi-OSR rules for Ars Magica ), I can manage something. That's when I do most of my thinking
So, if I understand, I just need to write up something (which may take an awful lot of time ), and send it to gamesfromfolktales@gmail.com?
Hum.... What about porting Ars Magica to Cortex? would you like this? I already have rough ideas .
(1) I actually said to my boss I'm like her attack dog: If she gives me something to chew on, I work on it and stuff, until it's done. My nickname comes from this: My old GM asked me for house rules and fixes, and I delivered. Ask me HR for something, please!
In regard to Cortex, I don't know the system at all, so I would have no idea if what you've written is any good. Try to focus on things which save the time of Ars Magica players and storyguides wanting to run a session or saga.
I'm sorry you are having trouble typing. Sometimes I record podcast episodes then run them through speech to text, then go through an replace the mistakes it makes on game terms. The one I use is Audio to Text - TinyWow
Remember the minimum article length is 500 words: you don't need to write long to write well. Also, you doen't need to push the very boundaries of what people have done with Ars Magica. You can do that if you like, but some good pieces are just really solid takes for new players on good choices for their first character, Tom's piece on Personal Vis sources, for example, is 500 words of "Hey, new player: check this out." and that's great.
I'm not taking subscriptions, because I'm not sure it's viable. So I don't want people to pay for four issues and hope for the best. It'll be on DriveThruRPG and itch.
Having done a subscription before, I can also say that working out auto-payments is a big hurdle. I'd suggest keeping a mailing list, though, so you can direct interested folks to sign up now, and then tell them about each issue when they come out. MailChimp has a free plan that would probably suit you just fine, but it gets expensive at higher levels, which is when we switched to MooSend. I hope that helps!
Just wanted to highlight Tim’s latest podcast/blog entry, which includes lots of great advice on writing adventures.
In particular, I want to highlight something I see a lot, and have done myself, and that’s writing to create suspense in the reader, when your reader is a GM.
Let’s say you’re writing an adventure that seems to be about a legendary archmage who’s seemingly returned from the grave. All the evidence points to a Magic ghost but, in fact, the “ghost” is actually a faerie impersonating the archmage. Where do you put this information?
Many writers make the mistake of putting it at the end of the adventure, when the characters finally encounter the “archmage.” This is not correct. It should be in the first paragraph of the adventure, so the GM knows what’s going on from the get go.
Many adventure authors are frustrated novelists (I am confessing here) and try to make their manuscripts suspenseful and filled with mystery and tension. That is not what an adventure is for. An adventure is for giving the facts clearly to a GM who may be reading it for the first time, while trying to run it for players at the table.
Tim has lots of other great advice in this issue. Check it out.
Given the timing, it feels like this might be the editor's reaction to reading these issues repeatedly in the submitted material. I hope that i am not the guiltiest...
It's not a matter of guilt. It's just a technique issue we all face eventually. The analogy I use in the post is a cookbook. You don't get to the end and find out if it's a cake or a kebab. Similarly, the GM needs to know what's happening right at the top of the story.
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: I tire quickly, can only type with one hand, and don't have much energy anyway.
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), and send it to gamesfromfolktales@gmail.com?
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