Perception, Reality, and Writing RPGs

December 3, 2008 No comments

The theme of this month’s RPG Blog Carnival (hosted by Critical Hits) is Transitions and Transformations. It’s a pretty wide-open topic that suggests many different things to me, so I may write multiple posts on the topic over the course of the month. Today I want to talk about something that’s been a recurring theme here at UncleBear: transforming “hobby” into “work” or, more to the point, “fun” into “not fun”.

I blame George R.R. Martin, really. Martin, and Melinda Snodgrass, and Lew Shiner, and John J. Miller, and a whole raft of others. You see, back in the day these folks put together a campaign using Chaosium’s Superworld, and had a wonderful time doing it. Like any great campaign, it was filled with compelling characters and gripping storylines and comedy and drama and all sorts of creative goodness. And like many players in great campaigns, they found it eating up a lot of their time, to the point that they weren’t getting anything else done. So to remedy this, they decided to transform their game into another media and publish their work. And that’s how the Wild Cards shared universe anthologies and novels were born.

When I first read about this, it put a terrible, terrible thought into my head. It got me to thinking that I could somehow take all of these ideas in my head and somehow turn them into cash, that all this worldbuilding and campaign design I was doing for fun was something that I could do for a living. That my hobby could realistically be transformed into a career.

If you’re not laughing already, you should be. Go ahead. Today, you’re not laughing at me, you’re laughing with me. We’re all laughing at my naive younger self, that poor sap.

The main difference between me and the Wild Cards crew was that they were, for the most part, established writers. They’d paid their dues, learned the business, published other things, gained reputations with readers and editors and publishers. They knew what they were doing. What their campaign was taking them away from was the business of writing, so it was a logical step to write about their game world. I was working in a hospital at the time, and hadn’t published a word at that point; the leap for me was a little bit larger.

It’s been at least 20 years since I read the first Wild Cards book and got that wild hair, and of course I still have this dream of publishing my game stuff, but that dream has transformed and been tempered by reality as well. I write because it’s fun, and it’s a way to participate in and support the hobby that I love. Even if I manage to make a little bit of money, I don’t expect to make a living at it. I’ve tilted at that windmill more than a few times over the years, though, and have done a little bit of professional work. What’s held me back has been more than a lack of talent, however. It’s that what’s required to work professionally in this hobby sucks all of the fun out of it for me. The compromise, the pandering, the marketing… ugh. I’d rather write something that I love and have three people in the world enjoy it than toil through writing something the masses will love for the sake of a buck. It took me a long time to figure that out. Transformation.

The other things that’s changed over the years is my level of appreciation for the people that are doing this for a living. The trap I fell into is that the Wild Cards crew made it look easy, so I assumed it was. Silly me. While I’m sure it does come easy to some people, this stuff is hard for most of us, even most of the folks who are good at it. I’m sure most of these folks could make better money doing something else, and that’s where my real appreciation comes in.