In the spirit of the recent facelifting I’ve been doing to some badly outdated portions of the site, I’ve re-designed the Bibliography page to be a little bit snazzier and a little bit more useful. Perhaps most notable, however, are the cover shots for all of the books I’ve written or contributed to:
 City Supplement 1: Dweredell June 8th, 2007 Buy! |
 City Supplement 2: Aerie July 1st, 2007 Buy! |
 City Supplement 3: Anyoc October 20th, 2008 Buy! |
There will probably be another revision of the Bibliography coming at some point down the road: The links to the Pyramid articles no longer work since Steve Jackson Games stopped hosting the old weekly version of the magazine; and at some point I really do need to get around to hosting my old RPGNet reviews on the Reviews page.
But I honestly have no idea when any of that will be resolved.
As I reviewed some of the older material while prepping this revision, I realized that some of it feels like a bit of a tease. 
For example, I wish that the adventures I wrote for Fantasy Flight’s Legends & Lairs were still available. But they are apparently almost impossible to track down. I’ve received several e-mails in the past asking me if I had any extra copies, and unfortunately, no, I don’t.
These were among my earliest published work, and although I still cringe occasionally when I read some of the prose in them, I’m still quite proud of them. The only one I really regret is The Wreyland Serpent, on which I blew my word count by producing something like 150% of the maximum content, which subsequently resulted in most of the really nice detail work I’d included being (rightfully) cut. Basically a complete meltdown by a neophyte freelancer. I frequently feel the urge to call Greg Benage (my editor on the project) and apologize all over again for the mess.
How does something like that happen? Basically you let your eyes get bigger than your stomach. You start with a nifty (but probably too complicated) concept:
The legendary exploits of the Wreyland Serpent have long passed from mouth to mouth, the stories finding their way from one mountain village to the next before finally filtering from there into the lowlands beyond. The dragon described in these legends, however, possesses a double-edge: In many accounts, the Serpent is vindicative, petty, and tyrannical – a terror to those who encounter him. In others, the Serpent is kind, helpful, and forgiving – a boon to those who cross his path.
In truth, the apparent duality of the Wreyland Serpent is due to the confused conflation of two separate dragons – Sul’tara’ha’berthur (the Serpent of Terror) and Al’aereyan’serul’il’taran (the Serpent of Peace) – into a single dragon.
Sul’tara’ha’berthur is a black dragon, born among the foothills of the Tuggorth Mountains five hundred years ago. His parents ruled their domain with an iron fist, and as Sul’tara grew older he also grew jealous of their power. When he was little more than a young adult, he attempted to overthrow and murder them. As a reward for his failure, he was nearly hunted down himself by his parents minions before fleeing west to the Wreyland Mountains a century ago.
Al’aereyan’serul’il’taran, on the other hand, is a gold dragon from the lands of the Talundin Estuary. Nearly three centuries ago, Al’aereyan earned the enmity of a Dragon Witch through actions which have been forgotten by all but the oldest of creatures. As a punishment, the Witch placed a curse upon him – causing his golden scales to tarnish. (Although the result does not make Al’aereyan appear as a true black dragon, the result is close enough that the two dragons can easily be confused for each by those with little experience in the manner.) Shortly after receiving the curse, Al’aereyan left Talundin, and journeyed to the western mountains – where he has spent the past three hundred years atoning for whatever misdeeds he may have committed in his untempered youth.
And then you try to flesh it out with details on the local protectorate; a princess in distress; warring colonies of living silver and gold; details on a mining village; and two separate dungeon complexes…
Which is right around the time that you remember that you can’t actually do all of that in 15 pages, no matter how much you might pride yourself on squeezing a maximum amount of content into a minimum amount of space. But it’s too late now because everything you’ve written depends on all the other parts of the adventure’s structure, and there’s probably a way to cut it and rewrite it, but your deadline is looming and–
Kaboom.
Freelance writing: Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes its a car crash. Not infrequently, it’s both.
