The Year in Review

It's been a while since I've posted anything, so I wanted to post a note addressing that a little.

What a strange, strange year it's been.
There have been blessings and there have been misadventures. Triumphs and tragedies. Here's the rundown:

January: Began the year working on The Siege of Gardmore Abbey, a rewarding project where I was able to experiment more with character motivations and inter-party dynamics in a published adventure, as well as color in the lines I'd drawn the previous year in Madness at Gardmore Abbey. The plan was for it to be released publicly after the PAX Prime convention, but sadly this never came to pass.

February-March: I wrote my adaptation of the Beyond the Crystal Cave season for D&D Encounters, a massive effort that tied in with my work on Heroes of the Feywild. What began as a paint by numbers approach to adventure design (i.e. set up one encounter per week) became an ambitious, all encompassing project where I tried to push the envelope as far as I could in order to make the most involved Encounters season of all time. Too ambitious, perhaps. But I put my heart and soul into it.

April-June: I visited Wizards of the Coast. There was a possibility of a position there, though whether for the short or long term I'll never know. In the end, the budget didn't work out. Perhaps strangely, I wasn't too bothered about that, if at all. At least at this point in my life I enjoy freelancing and having some distance from D&D. I can focus intensely on it for 6 months at a time, but after that I need some distance or I start going crazy. This was the third time I'd been passed over for a WotC job, and I took that as a sign. Instead, I stayed in Chicago and decided to become a homeowner. After 14 years in the city, I finally decided that I liked it well enough to stick around. While I was engaged in the home buying process, everything that could go wrong went wrong. It sucked up all my time and energy, and I turned down a freelance assignment for the first time. My workplace moved to a new location as well, changing up the way I went to work, the places I shopped, etc. The depression that encompassed me during this period so entirely consumed me that I could hardly focus. Fortunately, I found a coping mechanism in electronic games. I don't usually play electronic games anymore, but they were a godsend during this period, as they helped me to externalize the problems and focus on something else. Namely God of War 3, Uncharted 1 and 2, and Mass Effect 1 and 2. Also, tequila. I won't go into detail about the troubles of the period, but suffice it to say that at the time it seemed as though everything I had attempted in 2011 had utterly failed. One bright moment was the release of Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, a product I'm extremely proud of. Hell, I think it's the best monster product that Dungeons & Dragons has ever released. Sure, I wish it was a hardcover or the boxed set it was slated to be, but it's still a damn good product jam packed with story seeds, interesting mechanics, cool maps, and way cool monsters. The team that put that one together (Brian R. James, Matt James, Sterling Hershey, and Myself, working under Chris Perkins) was awesome.

July: I wrote the Ecology of the Banderhobb article and did some columns for Bart Carroll. At the very end of June I went to the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH, and hung out with my old friends from high school and college. I was working at a leisurely pace, which was necessary for the home-buying drama going on in the background. Our first deal had fallen apart and cost us some money. The second was proving equally as challenging, and when it began to fall apart, it imploded with as much fervor as the first one. However, I've learned that whenever you wish to plot a new course in life, the universe will throw up obstacles just to see how badly you want it. It always comes at some cost. Fortunately, at the end of July, the deal miraculously came through despite all detractors, and we had a home. Three days later we went to Gen Con.

August: Went to Gen Con. Had a great time. If you were there, you know how it is: a crazy buzz of gamers, schedules, merchandise, and good times. If you haven't been there, you just need to experience it. Around this time, I was invited into a group that played indie games. I began hosting at our new place. At the end of the month, my adventure The Siege of Gardmore Abbey was played at PAX Prime, and the reviews were favorable. Most of all, I was happy to hear how well the players had embraced the characters and motivations I'd set up for the adventure. For many years I'd wanted to have a hand in influencing D&D, making it a game about good storytelling as well as exciting battles and strange adventures. The reception that Monster Manual 3 and Demonomicon had received the previous year hinted that the D&D audience would be receptive to that. The stuff I'd worked on for 2010 was proving it, at least as far as I could tell.

September: Madness at Gardmore Abbey was released, and people seemed to enjoy it. Another product I'm extremely pleased to have had a hand in, another crack design team consisting of James Wyatt, Creighton Broadhurst, and myself. Those guys were a joy to work with. I restarted my D&D campaign after a long hiatus, but I only planned it for 5 sessions since my players are tough to nail down for an extended period of time. As soon as the game started, our elf ranger (Shad Kunkle) was promoted to the Second City Mainstage, one of the most prestigious honors in comedy theatre. Fortunately, we were able to get our 5 sessions in and bring a satisfactory conclusion to the adventure before he went off into awesomeness.

October: I read the original Star Frontiers game and found a fantastic online community that still supports the game. I decided to finally run SF after decades wondering about it. The players created the world and the races in an ongoing group brainstorm, and the resulting game has been incredible. The rules are old, and more than a little wonky, but the beauty of those old games is that the rules are loose and flexible enough that they're easy to improvise and adapt. We love our beautifully intricate modern RPG systems, but playing these older, looser systems--and in some cases the modern indie games--feels incredibly freeing.

November: My dad collapsed on a jog, broke his nose and teeth the day before his last physical before he could return to flying (he'd been out of the air since his heart attack in 2010). We went home to see him in the hospital on the day that Heroes of the Feywild came out. I picked up a copy at the game store, hoping it would bring him some measure of pride, and take his mind off the fact that his dream of returning to the commercial airlines had been permanently shattered. The next week I was evicted from the indie group I hosted at my place over a difference of perspective over PvP. As the new guy in the group, I had a hard time being bullied and attacked in-game under the excuse "but that's what my character would do," and said so. Adults work these things out and move on, no harm done. Not so with this group. However, Heroes of the Feywild was released and people seemed to like it. To risk sounding like a broken record, I'm extremely proud of it. Rodney Thompson and Claudio Pozas were a dream to work with and I think it's a beautiful product. Finally, the Beyond the Crystal Cave Encounters season began in the game stores. My friends who adapted it did a nice job making it suitable for D&D Encounters, and from what I've read on the boards and elsewhere, people seem to enjoy the role-play, puzzles, and quirkiness that the season presents.

December: The year has come with its fair share of triumph and tragedy. It's been a roller coaster of a year to say the least. I was very sad to learn that Steve Winter and Rich Baker were laid off from WotC (and Bill Slavicsek and Stephen Schubert earlier this year). I see these guys as luminaries of the industry. I've worked with them personally over the past few years, and I've come to know them as incredible designers and as friends. I will say that when people who are far more talented designers than you are get laid off, the news comes with some serious perspective. What would I have done at WotC anyway, when guys like these are moving out the door? I felt the same way when Stephen Schubert was let go, and Rob Heinsoo, and Jonathan Tweet, and so on and so forth. One of the nice things about being a freelancer is that you don't really get fired. You can be quietly left behind and forgotten, but you're spared the humiliation of cleaning out your desk.

Changes
In December, I brought the Star Frontiers game to a good stopping point and went home for the holidays. My parents told us they were planning to sell our childhood home and move away. Reflecting on this over the break, I soon realized that there would be little reason to return to that little town, the stomping grounds of my youth, the place of so many (now ghostly) memories. It's a strange feeling, wrapping my mind around this kind of change. Especially in light of my turbulent 2011. As the New Year approaches, I feel that sense of impending change coming on like a storm. I'm uncertain what the future will bring, only that change will come with it.

There was a time when I was on tour in 2000, in San Antonio, Texas, after five nights of rain and canceled shows, that I sat in an outdoor hot tub surrounded by a garden buzzing with hummingbirds, across from a beautiful girl, and realized that the only constant I could embrace in life was change. As much as we want to hold on to the present, and the things we possess, these too shall pass from our grip no matter how hard we fasten ourselves to them. All we can do is our best, and so long as we follow that course we must satisfy ourselves with the results. Easier said than done, it's true. And yet, the doing is all. The practice of striving to accomplish one's best (for all my wistfulness over the first draft of Crystal Cave, it's hard to regret trying my best to make it the best possible experience I could). In improv, we used to quote, "If you're going to bomb, bomb at the top of your voice." Fail gloriously.

As we move into 2012 I reflect on 2011, keeping eyes and ears open and attentive to the change that's coming. For the moment I'm taking a break from RPGs, at least for a few weeks, and I think I'll go on hiatus from this blog for a bit. It began as a way to voice my thoughts about storytelling in gaming. I'm still committed to that (Star Frontiers is going very well in that regard), just need more time to reflect. Usually the best way for me to do that is to step away for a bit and observe from without. I need to fill the well and color my work with experiences removed from the constant flow of RPG content. I say all this, but of course I have a DDI article to work on in January and I plan to go to D&D XP, and I'm writing a piece for a friend's independent game, so all these words of stepping back sound a little hollow, even to me. Yet, I'm not quite the same person I was last year or the year before that. As our experiences shape us, the changes have shaped me, and I feel the winds of change only picking up, rather than calming down.

Let's see where these winds will blow us.