No Distractions!

I sure hope this web site isn’t your only stop for entertainment, because I haven’t been providing much lately. Trust me, I’m getting some great writing done, but with a deadline looming I’ve felt less call to do any writing HERE.

When I’m deep in the final stages of a writing project I’m usually not reading anything but reference books. Heaven forbid I start some great novel or even short story and get sucked in to reading it through to the end. It’s happened once or twice while I was in deadline crunch and I vowed never to make that mistake again.

Still, there is a little downtime, and one of the things I often do to relax at this stage in a novel project is leaf through role-playing  books. (There isn’t the same kind of unstoppable narrative hook in a game manual that you find in a novel, even in a great one.) I mentioned the d30 Sandbox Companion the other day. Well, I picked it up, and it’s just an excellent source for planning an overland campaign, and I think a secondary source of inspiration for writers. It’s  an amazing value. The web site of its creator is chock full of samples from the work and lots and lots of free tables for generating all kinds of cool stuff to enliven your game — or story. You can find it here.

I’ve been a big fan of Kevin Crawford’s gaming work ever since I was introduced to it by James Maliszewski. I just picked up Crawford’s Scarlet Heroes and Spears of the Dawn and love what I’ve seen of both. Scarlet Heroes is  a game system set in Kevin’s fascinating Red Tides world, but the rules can be used separately from that to enhance play between a GM and a single player in all kinds of creative ways. It also includes a means of solo gaming that reads brilliantly, though I’ve yet to try it out. Spears of the Dawn is hands down one of the coolest settings I’ve ever read, and IS the coolest African campaign setting I’ve ever read.

I hope to got into more detail about all of these products in the coming weeks. When I’m not, you know, racing to finish my book.