A Walk In The Woods

I went for a walk yesterday around a pond in my neighborhood, and started snapping pictures as I was going. This was Army Ants brain food. I could see this as their version of the 'Nam. For thirty years, the Army Ants stories have taken place in a version of the back yard of the house I grew up in... but THIS? This is a massive place. A ten-acre pond. A half a mile of trail (which I might round off to 1 km for convenience sake). The Thousand Meter Path sounds pretty cool. I have tried to define the ants and their environment by natural boundaries - the fence, the line of trees, the creek. These things have hemmed their world in (in my imagination at least). This is... different. The world centers on the pond, and the immediate area around it. Once you move more than maybe 5 meters away from the water's edge, you are into the borderlands. The wilds. The Untamed Lands. We don't know much about that. But the Thousand Meter Path? Oh, yeah, that's our stomping grounds. That's what we seek to control. 

That's where the war is taking place. 

Seymour and Sadness

First of all, no apologies necessary if you don't keep up with my blog. I post like once a month, so I kind of bring it on myself. I am not going to say I have writer's block or a lack of ideas or any of those sorts of things - I have a lack of passion for a project. I will work on something for a bit, tinker and noodle and sketch, rough out a few pages of ideas in a Google Doc, and then run out of enthusiasm. I haven't found anything that grabs me. So I post nothing, because there's no significant progress to report on.

And to be honest, I have fiercely avoided autobiography on this blog for a long time. I wanted my creative self to be presented in a certain way, and for the rest of me to remain tucked beneath the ocean all nice and cold and icebergy. But maybe that is the thing that is actually putting a limit on my potential. I don't know.

I thought maybe I'd work through it with you.

I was talking with another member of my department this week (at the school where we have both been teaching high school English for 20 years), and we were talking about creativity and enthusiasm and where art comes from. I quoted something I had heard attributed to Lorne Michaels - comedy cannot come from anger. I have been sort of simmering in anger for some time now over a few issues in my professional life. I'll just summarize it this way - I have been on 35 interviews for school leadership positions, and I have 20 years' experience and a doctorate (along with two master's degrees), pristine qualifications, and sterling recommendations. I should have landed the first position I applied for. I almost never make it past the first interview.

But I also have a hole in my head from brain cancer. And it scares people. Not give them nightmares scares them, but it makes them... uneasy. They try not to look at it. They politely avert their gaze. And then they send me an aloof letter saying they are 'going in another direction' or 'found someone better suited to the position'. 

Sorry, but no. Those are all code for 'someone who doesn't have a hole in their head'. My friends have all argued that it cannot be that. Maybe I just said a wrong word in my interview. Maybe I should be more professional. Okay, maybe less professional. Okay, maybe talk less about myself. Okay, maybe talk more about myself. Okay, maybe name drop. Okay, maybe don't name drop. 

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Maybe don't have a hole in my head.

And I have anger. I see less capable people beat me out. Over, and over, and over again. I know that I'm not the first person to face this (I assume that this has been the story of pretty much everyone who is not a white male in the history of the Western world) - but it's frustrating nonetheless.

And the worst part is that it has made me assume I cannot make creative stuff well. I have too much anger and frustration right now to make art. I need to wait until I'm in a happy place, where I have peace in my soul and a song in my heart.

And then I started the Little Prince (also on the recommendation of the same colleague). I'm doing the airplane in the air approach and reading it for the first time with my honors classes - I'm not reading ahead, so I genuinely am not sure what's going to happen, and I'm sharing in the class discussion as we try to build meaning in the text together. It's fun and challenging to have no secret insight that the students don't have. Teachers always stack the deck in their favor. I generally know the answer to the question before I ask it. Not this time.

The text is innocent and angry and sad and scared.  I don't think it's going to end well. I like stories that don't end well. I like stories with messy endings. The Lord of the Rings - there's peace, but there's a huge cost, too. You have to earn your peace.

And I read a smidge about the author. He was a combat pilot. He died in combat. His marriage was a mess. This was not a happy guy writing art from a position of rainbows and unicorns. He was frustrated and scared and trying to work through it.

The last time I was this unsure of myself in general was when I created Seymour. I was in high school, and had no idea who I was or what I wanted to become. And he kind of helped me. He got me through some stuff. 

I doodled him today. I think he might be offering to help me again. I might take him up on it. 

Have You Ever?

You know that feeling when you get inspired to write/create/forge something? You get all amped up, and start to put ideas on paper, float things amongst your friends, and even step into a bookstore (or comparable online locale) and you feel that inspiration swell to near overwhelming heights…

And then you start to thumb through works comparable to your own vision… it could be a set of RPGs, or a novel section, or magazines racks, or comics collections, or whatever. And then it hits you. You’ll never be this productive; you’ll never be this good; what you want to do has already been done, and probably been done better than you can do it. You’ve had a reality check. Welcome to my world.

Let me tell you about the three ideas that keep pulling at me, and the ‘reality checks’ that keep kicking me in the gut.

As for fantasy gaming, this is where my heart is. It’s the thing I end up thinking about all the time; it’s where I want to spend my imaginary time the most. It encompasses the worlds that I feel most drawn to. It’s what got me into gaming, and it’s what keeps bringing me back. However, there are several reality checks here. In fact, there are probably dozens of them. Here are the two big ones: many great games have already been written and (even more damaging) there is a TON of FREE content that is as good as my best stuff. As I look at what’s being published just among the OSR group, I find the depth and quality of content staggering. As a fantasy gamer with a game I like, I can’t imagine anything that would propel me to change game systems now. There are virtually no new people coming into the hobby, and almost everyone has their fantasy game of choice already; new games that come into the market and are competitive have a license and production values that bring a market (Lord of the Rings, Dragon Age). I cannot challenge either of these.

Supers gaming is probably second; I like it (and sometimes love it), but I end up feeling like the genre itself is too limited, and ultimately becomes self-referential. I know it doesn’t have to, but it feels stale to me. Maybe that’s because I haven’t followed comics seriously since 1993, so I don’t have many fresh ideas about it. There are fewer systems that have nailed supers gaming, although (as with fantasy gaming) most supers gamers now have their go-to system. I was struck particularly last year when I released Resolute Supers 2E within 8 weeks of Icons, BASH Ultimate Edition, and another 2-3 systems that, although different from my game, endeavored to do the same thing: give you a rules-lite, fast and intuitive system for supers gaming. I felt behind the eight ball from the outset. I still feel that way: what can Resolute offer that ICONS cannot? I don’t know… I haven’t actually read ICONS (yeah, bad on me I guess), but the vibe I get from the game and its supplements is a similar vibe to what I was going for with Resolute Supers… so, what to do about that?

Army Ants has always run in third place. Even though I’ve re-invented Army Ants gaming and comics several times over the last 20 years, I’ve never followed through with support for the game. However, Army Ants doesn’t have the reality checks in terms of other systems and games; no one is producing something quite like Army Ants, especially done right. Honestly, I’ve never even done it right; it’s never found the perfect fit of system with setting with writing. The comics have a certain vibe about them that I haven’t quite been able to replicate in a game system; the most recent incarnation (although lightly structured) is closer. It really needs a full treatment.

Sales numbers don’t help me at all. Both Resolute supers systems sold over 100 copies, whereas nothing Army Ants has ever sold more than 30 copies, and most fantasy stuff I released sells in the neighborhood of 30 to 70 copies; however, that’s for core rules. Once I look at supplements, regardless of the system, I rarely sell more than 15 copies of anything that’s a sourcebook or adventure.

I’ll stew on this for a while, but next time I’ll get into some of my thoughts on more of the reasons why…