In college, it wasn’t unusual to get involved in discussions about how important “author’s intent” was to a work. My “fondest” memory was of a professor who was convinced that it didn’t matter that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein on a dare; what mattered is that she was supposedly influenced by obstetrics manuals of the period. […]
Year: 2008
Hobby Games: The 100 Best is an Origins Award Nominee
In Hobby Games: The 100 Best, the top designers, authors and publishers in the hobby games field write about the most enjoyable and cleverly designed games of the last 50 years. Their essays cover the spectrum of the hobby market, from role-playing games to collectible card games, miniatures games to wargames to board games, with […]
Oh Hai…Reading this Blog?
After dodging sunbeams and causing a rain of words to fall on my black umbrella… I’m sorry to report that my blogging may be a bit sporadic over the next two weeks because I started getting some edits back on the first part of the novella I’m working on for Aletheia. While this is not […]
The Difference between Game Design and Writing Games is…
Okay, so now that we’ve spent a whole week talking about writing game-related fiction, I’d like to round out this week o’ gaming by talking about the fundamental differences between game design and writing games. This is an often hotly-contested topic in many gaming companies, but really comes down to a very, simply idea and […]
Gaming Fiction Day Four: Inferred Plot and Metaplot
Game fiction can sometimes have an “inferred” plot because of its popularity like many popular movies. Most people know Darth Vader is a bad guy. Writing about the rebels running from Darth Vader may seem like plot to you but really? That’s just a standard detail nowadays. Instead, those same rebels might be running from […]