Recently I went to a mixer put together by the narrative design group of the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain. As a guild member and someone in that group, I was invited to go, and it was only about forty minutes away by Tube. I was originally excited to go, but then I had a long day of “emergent work” (which is a really nice way of saying I had to work on things I didn’t plan to work on that day). I got really anxious about going, but after dinner and a bit of a sit down, I decided to go.
And I was reminded that writers are all a bunch of anxiety monsters.
"Anxiety" by Mari Z. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Overall, I had a good time. It was a bit too loud, and after a couple of hours I was exhausted in a different way, but I got to see some familiar colleagues face-to-face, as well as meeting some new-to-me people in my field. And yeah, a common thread was anxiety: about the future of our industry, about the world, about being in the basement of a loud pub, what have you.
I also unearthed a long-slumbering anxiety for me: microfame. See, I don’t consider myself famous by any reasonable metric, but within a small subsection of people, I am. Meeting a whole lot of new people, who of them said some form of “holy shit, you worked on Vampire: The Masquerade?” One person said “holy shit you’re that Eddy Webb?” It’s obviously flattering to be recognized, particularly by colleagues, but it also gets my head spinning. Is it good that I’ve been recognized? (It was.) Do they remember me and my work fondly? (They did.) Do they think I can do something for them? (They didn’t.)
Despite the anxiety and noise and microfame, I did managed to once again hit my definition of success for any business mixer: Find one person and have a cool conversation with them. In this case, it was a discussion about Japanese mystery novel structure and how it relates to video game design. Yes, I did give out a few business cards and shake a few hands and talk about what I’m working on, and I did have a few other conversation that were more interesting than the usual mixer chit-chat (including a story about a British Museum heist to steal a giant toe), but as an introvert my goal is always find one person and make a real connection. Time and again, it’s worked out well for me, and it helps me approach these social events with less (but not no) stress.
It’s one area that online meetups never quite replicate, as the effects of the pandemic ease up and more in-person events come back to life. There’s a connection that face-to-face creates which is hard (but not impossible) to duplicate online. If there’s one piece of advice I have for people who want to wade into these waters with me, it’s that networking events (both casual and structured) are valuable, if you approach them with the right expectations.
News Roundup
Realms of Pugmire continues apace. The art notes are done for the core rulebook, so the art team should be ready to jump on all that once they have a chance. Threats & Curs is over to Onyx Path for approval, and we’re talking about art direction for that as well, along with some mild reorganization. And I’m deep in redlines for Curious Cats of Mau, which is looking (DARE I SAY IT) purrfect. Okay, not actually perfect, but already quite good. My codeveloper, Lauren Roy, is doing a fantastic job keeping this herd of cats wrangled!
Speaking of Pugmire, there’s now an official theme song! I was approached by George Bromley, who does music for trailers on things like Jurassic World: Dominion and Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon. You’ll hear George’s work in upcoming Pugmire projects, so keep an ear out!
I also worked on the Storypath Ultra Preview that came out a few months ago — I had so much other news to talk about that it slipped my mind! The idea was to offer people a glimpse at the upcoming Storypath Ultra system we’ve been working on at Onyx Path. On the one hand, it’s not as exciting as developing a new game or anything, but on the other hand we tried a lot of new things out on this brochure, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s a free PDF to download, so check it out!
My Media
I had plans to talk about a few things I’ve been poking at, like the ElfQuest comics and my rabbit hole of books at Obverse Books, but this month marks the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, so of course that’s what I’m into right now. In particular, I was surprised by the release of a new show, Tales of the Tardis.
The idea, it seems, is fairly simple: Despite the fact that the BBC now has streaming rights to (nearly) every episode of classic Doctor Who, that’s still a lot of television to wade into. So Tales of the Tardis takes six stories from the classic series, edits them into movie-length “omnibus” editions, and has an intro and outro featuring actors from the original show. Which, on the surface, isn’t different from any other “best of” retrospective show. But there are two interesting things about this.
The first, and it’s more for me than most other people, is the editing. See, I grew up as a classic Doctor Who fan in America, so watching the show in 90-minute chunks is how I remember the show. Over the decades I’ve come to internalize the 25-minute episodes as the “proper” format, but there’s a part of me that fondly remembers getting a movie every week featuring my favorite time traveler. It’s a nod back to a very specific and peculiar nostalgia.
More broadly interesting, though, are the facts that the intro and outros are in-character, canonical, and (I am led to believe) tell a bit of a story. The idea is that these characters are plucked out of time to appear in a “remembered Tardis,” which is fueled by stories. But it gives opportunities to actually give a little depth to ill-suited characters and fill in some backstory. For example, in the first episode of “Earthshock,” the Fifth Doctor and Tegan actually deal with their grief of Adric’s death in a way they never did (or could) on the show itself.
So it works both as a great introduction to the classic series, and as a good way to rewatch the episodes for old fans. I’ve been watching it in chunks for the past week or so, and I really love it. I think it’s only in the UK right now, but it’s part of the whole “Whoniverse” brand of spin-off shows, so I suspect it’ll be out with the other Doctor Who shows in future.
Anyhow, this Powerpoint presentation won’t edit itself, so I need to get back to it. See you next month!