Free For All Invitations - The Stealthy Straw Man

Oh isn't it wonderful! Harper Voyager are accepting full manuscript unagented submissions for the first two weeks in October. They made the announcement in a press release on the 12th September. How amazing! That'll show the traditional publishing industry is ready to take risks and run the gauntlet! Yes, it will!

No.

It won't.

Let me tell you what would be a risk. Innovation. I've seen this particular dog and pony show at least twice before and it's just a bunch of disingenuous rubbish or blatant incompetence on the part of the organising publishing house. Why? Simple. If you announce this with two weeks to spare before the actual event then you will not be receiving new material you will be receiving material people are already sitting on. Either material that is currently in need of a good polish (and four weeks to polish with the aid of my manuscript tool would be pushing it, without polishing properly it is a nearly impossible task) or material which the author considers to be 'good to go' already.

The massive problem with the latter category is that this material isn't already with an agent for one of three reasons, 1. has already been rejected by dozens of agents, 2. was just about to go to an agent but author saw press release and decided to skip the middle man 3. just isn't. Only manuscripts in category 2 or 3 stand a chance of actually being decent and then only the same chance as that submitted to an agent i.e. apparently not much.

So Harper Voyager are proposing to allow the filth gates to groan open for two weeks and then to send some lowly peons to scrub through the fetid literary detritus and report back if they find the Hope Diamond in amongst the slurry. The peons, of course, probably won't. Then Harper Voyager can say: "See, agents are the only way". Or, if the Hope Diamond appears they can say: "Great, a sucker to bilk on a publishing deal because they're not represented by an agent".

I have also seen a scheme run by another publishing house in which they turned the preparation of 30k of opening into a six month event and delivered a full, tight requirements list for the type of material they would consider. Now, that's a plan.

This, this is just a meaningless and mean-spirited publicity stunt engineered by people who are either cynical or ignorant and are probably both. To attempt to save everybody a little bit of time and trouble: if you have just finished and you have an agent in mind, submit to the agent, if you have been rejected a number of times already there is probably a reason why. This is just a cruel chimera and you should direct your energies elsewhere.

The Happy Writer

Way back in the mists of time (2006 actually) I wrote a pithy series of writing tutorials aimed at getting a chunk of writing just... you know... done. Hang the quality, hang the need for editing, hang everything, just get it done.

The series was, of course, occasioned by the advent of that year's Nanowrimo. People seemed, continue to seem, to view the production of 50k words of novel something of a burden and a trial. For myself it's only a burden and a trial if my other life commitments physically prevent me from partaking. The actual production of 50k words is a matter of sitting down and opening the floodgates until they're all finished. This year I had a bit of a sudden sprint to the finish slapping down 15k last Sunday to fall panting and exhausted at the finish line with something like a reasonable rough draft. I had another book to proof and put the final touches on, events to host and a regular life to live around this. Probably why I found it quite such a trial.

The point is that I at no point found the actual writing difficult. As I get older getting through the writing is the least difficult part in the production of work. I see questions from aspiring writers on Q&A sites like this asking which bell and whistle laden "writer's word processor" to use to keep track of what's going on. I use notepad. Just me and the words, baby, locked in a continual stream.

The use of notepad to draft a novel is, in some ways, the most hardcore possible way to write with a keyboard, or indeed in any way. You see a sheet of paper can only be so large, a dedicated word processor document quickly becomes unwieldy, with a text editor you just keep on writing, until you're done. No muss, no fuss. If you never find yourself in a position where you're not "in the groove" then any faffing around with notes and formatting and saving chapter files and so on and so forth is just time wasted.

Yet, curiously, in all the world I seem to be alone in this. I do not know of one other writer in the world who can just turn it on and write. Possibly my father, he always kept impeccable office hours and wrote everything in LocoScript which is quite a lot like a text editor. He never discussed how he wrote with us, he just did.

Now, unless I'm some kind of superhuman mutant I can't see why it would be that I can discipline myself to write "on tap" and no one else could. If  I were going to look for obvious differences between me and almost every other living person who considers themselves to be some kind of writer I can see a few that may contribute:

• Absence of illusions. I'm not doing what I'm doing to woo big publishers or to make the Times Bestseller List. I'm doing it because it's what I do.
• Sense of fun. Because I have no illusions the business of writing stories and story games has become a fun hobby, I know of no other hobbyist writers, all writers I have ever encountered are limbering up for an encounter with the big leagues that likely will never come.
• Lack of social pressure or cultural targets. Because I am purely in this to have a bit of fun I am not constrained to squash novels into a commercially viable length, or to worry about whether the thing I'm writing fits under a generic banner in a massive bookstore. I don't need to think about whether there's too much emotional content in an action story, or too much action in a love story. I tell the story the way I think it should be told and hang everyone else's opinion.

To summarise, I just don't actually care about the concerns others may have about whether my stuff "works". Hell if I could, should I put my mind to it, breeze through over half a million words in a year and still live a completely other life that has nothing to do with writing then it's not really much of a loss if something doesn't come off the way I planned. This year alone I've written two role playing systems and a novel.

One of the role playing systems is typeset and ready to roll Monday of next week in time for Christmas. The potential number of productions I could roll out next year is mind-boggling. I am creatively fecund, prolific and master of my own destiny thanks to POD services.

From a typesetting point of view, production of the role playing systems has proven so challenging that the idea of publishing a novel now seems like something I would undertake in a weekend. For me personally, the act of writing and producing works of fiction this way has been so immensely rewarding and personally satisfying I can't imagine having done things any other way.

If I have one complaint it is the common one that the world has not, thus far, seen fit to shower me with sufficient personal largesse for my efforts to dedicate my life to these projects full time. On the other hand, how many people discover the same things through the bitterly frustrating and unfair process of the traditional publishing markets? How many people are left twisted and broken in the ruins of their dreams and ambitions because they can't just let it go? Hey I haven't gained a bank balance that could buy me my own personal island, but I don't hate the thought of warming up the word processor (or notepad) and bashing out a couple of thousand words either.

If you are a writer, look at what you do and ask. Am I having fun? Is this really what I wanted? Am I pleasing myself or some impossible commercial dream state? What do I really want to get out of writing? How many people need to engage with my work before I am happy?

You may find that the answers to those questions lead you down a different path to the one you imagined. One with far fewer riches and launch parties but one with a great deal of personal achievement and a pleasant feeling of stability unattainable by many other methods.

The Avatar Effect

Crikey, two comments, on topic on one of my posts. It must have been my crack about having no readers!

So in answer to the comments. Yeah, it was very pretty. But I'm one of those people who says "mmmm, pretty, but what does it *do*?" Also, while we're on the topic most reviews that swiftly descend into pontification on nature vs. tech begin by drooling verbally all over the visuals. It's pretty, I get it. But it's like someone blew umpteen million dollars on a script written by a pissy, horny, morbid fifteen year old boy. I'm sorry but that just starts to look like a waste of time from where I'm sitting.

I'm having yet another Mugatu moment as people debate the politics of this movie as if the whole thing weren't utterly ridiculous. What really burns me is that people have the nerve to criticise the story. As many have pointed out the story is an old one. That means that it should work, I think Cameron probably chose to do a rendition of this "Dances With Wolves" type story for precisely that reason.

When you get down to it the execution of the story was so ham-fisted it reached George Lucas levels of error. At one point I was actually wanting to get hold of a copy of the DVD when it comes out just to do a commentary that goes toe to toe with all the ridiculous BS in the script. That way at least you could get an attractive slide show to accompany a deconstruction of why the film suckety suck sucked.

Aside: Went to see Holmes despite reservations both grave and deep (in the end it was RD Jnr's current renaissance that convinced me) and it was awesome. The action sequences were far less obtrusive than I'd feared, the script was actually very... er... Sherlock Holmes-y to such an extent that it's one of the few films for which genuine spoilers exist so I'll shut up now.

Back to Avatar. If truth be told I really enjoyed the movie up to the moment where Colonel McScarryHead approached Mr. Avatar to propose a little military style double dealing.

For a lover of the narrative arts many movies are like slowly expiring disappointments. If the film gets off to a good start it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get all the way to the finish line without breaking its ankle in a plot-hole pothole.

For me, that was the moment. You see, to identify with the protagonist in a movie I tend to listen to what the characters around him are saying and wonder if I'd ever react the same way. I was down with the Avatar right up until McScarryHead made his pitch because nothing I'd seen so far backed up the main character's reaction to the offer. The Colonel had never acted like he might not be a looney, Mr. Avatar had shown a love for legs but had never been given a reason to trust that McScarryHead could, in good faith, arrange an incredibly expensive spinal operation to restore the use of Mr. Avatar's legs.

I mean sure it was possible but I didn't feel it was any more probable than any of the other characters being able to wangle him a new set of knees. If we're going on pure spending power the Acme Corporate Greaseball character seemed to be the best connected for such purposes.

From there onwards I lost sympathy and it became a firework display.

Anyhow. I've been blogging more regularly for a month now. I think I'm hitting my stride. I think two or three a week might be the happy medium I've been striving for. I think staying away from X Factor and committing to the geek-athon might also be appropriate as people are commenting on the latter but seem not to care about the former (even though I get quite geeky about X Factor).

This blog, like all blog's exists to be a dialogue. That's my aim for it in 2010. See you all next year!

The Campbell Effect

It's going to be an old-fashioned story post today mostly inspired by news that Neill Blomkamp isn't the only filmmaker from a country not traditionally known for its film industry who can attract the Hollywood buck with a showreel. The BBC carries an item about a Uruguayan filmmaker, Fede Alvarez, who has been courted by Hollywood after posting his SF short Ataque de Pánico! (Panic Attack!) on YouTube.

What's got my story senses tingling is not so much the news that the internet is putting people in touch with one another in ways hitherto unimaginable; after all Blomkamp's story tells us that. What's baking my noodle today is the number of people who've been complaining about its lack of a story.

It would be easy to rant about how this is a filmmaker's technical reel, not a story-based submission and in fact many have on YouTube and also on snarker's paradise Slashdot. However such a swift rebuttal fails to account for one important thing. People are showing, in a mystic, hippie, "wisdom of crowds" kind of a way that they're becoming fed up to the back teeth with hollow spectacle or narrative pretensions. They want the two combined.

The basic reason the two often fail to go hand in hand is that the more money goes into making a film the less experimental the producers feel like being with the story. Also, it seems, if a director is tagged as an "effects" director then a decent enough story and/or dialogue is seen as a bonus rather than something to shoot for.

The holy trinity of narrative, dialogue and effects rarely come together to the extent that when they do, such as in feature films like the original Matrix, it changes the way people even view the art of cinema. The best reviewers routinely look at the three together. Even movies like Pulp Fiction change the landscape because what I've lazily classified as "effects" really adds up to "visual language" which may or may not require the addition of special effects.

The sad fact is that examples of movies like Pulp Fiction and The Matrix are too few and far between and even then they always leave something to be desired. Some people find Pulp Fiction's dialogue to be too mannered. Some people find The Matrix's dialogue too much like a sophomoric philosophy essay. One thing seems to be agreed upon: Narrative can survive a lack of visual language or top notch dialogue for many but without coherent and satisfying narrative the other two elements are left out in the cold.

The big problem here for Hollywood is something I'm going to dub the Campbell effect, which I only wish was a reference to Bruce Campbell. The Campbell effect refers to anthropologist Joseph Campbell's Monomyth, the basis for all movies since Star Wars changed the game in the 70s.

What defeated conventional wisdom then was that Star Wars came across to someone with an ear for dialogue like a generic firework display, yet it captured the imagination of a generation. Harrison Ford was not alone in feeling Lucas could write dialogue, but it might be best not to subsequently attempt to perform that dialogue as speech spoken by a coherent sentient being. The surprise success of Star Wars in spite of hideous dialogue made Alec Guiness bitter and has been a constant irritation to writers of natural language from that day until The Phantom Menace nose-dived in the popular imagination and labelled the Star Wars saga a disappointment that had once held much promise.

So what's the issue? I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that question. Only two or three people on the planet have ever experienced my best narrative work to date and it isn't even finished yet. I think it's really good, not in an egotistical way, I'm surprised I wrote such a great narrative myself. I don't know that it's great, though. The writing needs more work and then, once finished I need people to read it and love it in order to know that I've hit the nail on the head.

So my opinion remains that of a consumer rather than a producer of content, and it is simply this: I think that in order to write an effective narrative you need more than a basic understanding of some 12 step plan for making "every great story ever written". What you need  is an emotional depth enough to recognise what it is that qualifies as a sympathetic fulfilment of each of those steps in turn.

It's not enough to produce the convincing facade of a battle with the guardian of the threshhold between the known and the unknown. You need to understand the emotional landscape of your protagonist enough to tease out the true antagonist who stands at the threshhold of their internal landscape. You need to make the encounter happen in terms pregnant with meaning for that character. You need to make all parts of the story parts of the story's protagonist on an essential level.

That's not an easy job. It's the product of years of writing practice and not stylistic practice at that, it's a discipline of structural practice that is often suggested but rarely attempted. It also requires that the teacher of such practices has the emotional depth to recognise when a writer has missed that most vital of points. A reader can be such a teacher, I am proud enough to believe that the Mrs is actually such a reader, such an analyst of story that she can home in on emotional dithering and falsity and hold it to account. She would never claim to be a writer but she is the nemesis of the lazy storyteller.

That's why, to be truthful, I am so proud of Starfall. It's because she loves it so and she loves very few narratives to that degree. Her analysis always has the ring of truth and yet, after the fact, always seems so obvious.

In other news Rage are losing ground to Robojoe in such an elegantly narrated fashion that it shows up the publicity stunt that this whole staged "battle" really has been.

Until Monday make mine a robot destroying Uruguay whilst consuming a delicious Sunday roast with all the trimmings, all, of course, smothered in delicious chocolate.

P.S. Tweeter  ElPared says Avatar "was like a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain!!!" best commentary evar!

Yikes!

So RoboJoe stole the show... *sigh* worst X Factor winner Evar! (relatively speaking, Leon Jackson was a massive anti-climax but he wasn't up against talent like Olly, Danyl and Stacey, he also wasn't following talent like Alexandra and JLS).

I've been creating a wiki for No Dice. This will replace the soon to be extinct No Dice Forums. Have a look around. There's already a bunch of stuff in System Hacks.

Also Random Encounters is out! The ideal Chrimbo gift! Buy one now! ;)

Have a good Monday!

Travesties and Turnips

Well, of course, the travesty came to pass and Danyl (sorry about the previous misspelling) was booted in favour of RoboJoe (I decided it was too confusing to call RoboJoe Oliver because of there being a talented Olly in the competition). The Mrs engaged in much hand wringing during the X Factor semi because of RoboJoe's technically impressive, though bland, performance. I pointed out that if technical perfection in the face of blandness was all we had to go on then Lucie Jones would never have left the competition.

I can't, on the other hand, fault the performance skills of any of the others. Penguin Girl - the nickname in this case is affectionate - Stacey is as game as anyone stepping on chairs in high heels in a display of unnecessary theatrics. If RoboJoe appeared in high heels it might make him less bland, he wouldn't even have to work everywhere.

Like Mugatu I feel a bit like I'm taking crazy pills with regards to RoboJoe. Can I be the only one who's noticed that his comments on every one of his performances is that he's taking on board the judge's comments and he will strive to be better on his next performance? He may as well have a string with a ring attached dangling from his back.

The reason the show is called The X Factor is because it is supposed to find personalities who have talent and are interesting. In an unusual, though not unexpected, move Louis Walsh has staked his claim for Jedward and if that doesn't show that personality means more than actual talent in some cases I don't know what does. Looking for my own favourites, just on the grounds of fresh originality and an edgier sound, Miss Frank on Google makes it look like the nascent girl band just about died when they lost to Danyl in week three of the X Factor. It was the first and last time I ever voted for an act the week they went out. From then on I've been helping out my favourite acts by staying out of it entirely.

The fact that they went out to someone who later turned out to be a semi-finalist counts for nothing. Personally I think the X Factor should be more like the Eurovision Song Contest with G. Public voting for the top three. People would, no doubt, argue that such a system would be "too complicated" for the chimps those in the know believe the X Factor audience to be but the current system doesn't seem to be too effective at wheat from chaff separation.

If you were to go on subsequent success and generation of "buzz" you'd believe JLS beat Alexandra last year. Weirdly the samples of Alexandra's album sound more like what I'd expect JLS's album would sound like whereas JLS's sound is far poppier than I thought it should from what I've heard. I will reserve judgement for a little sit down with spotify before I say for certain.

This week's Danyl disaster just goes to show that the first past the post system is too blunt a tool because flavour of the month one-hit wonders make it at the expense of class acts with a prospect of longetivity. Not all the time but often this is the case. Who, for example, gives two hoots about Leon Jackson at this stage? Or Shayne Ward? Despite enormous popularity Leona Lewis gives every indication that her pop career is a chore.

Anyway, turns out that Danyl is planning to gig in Reading. I lived in Reading for many years and I can't imagine that they have a venue large enough to hold the legions of fans who are likely to turn up should this event take place. I think everyone is making the mistake of underestimating this year's X Factor has-beens including the entrants themselves. It's gone unsaid that the field was unusually rich with talent and potential this year; most of the acts, given a fair wind and a different year, may even have won in previous years. Even in the final auditions some incredibly talented people were sent home without ceremony. All of this with the sole exception of Jedward who seem to have been overrated beyond all belief.

*Sigh*

The only other thing of interest to catch my eye this grimy Monday is The Turnip Prize; this seems like a worthwhile award in the world of modern art definitely deserving of more coverage, maybe even televising.

2009: The Year Of Impotent Rage

Not my impotent rage, if anything I have been less rage-filled in 2009 than any year since approximately 2002. So that's good. But just as "9" is just and upside down "6" so 2009 reverses the fortune of the 60s in a very weak attempt to make something out of the fact that two numbers look like each other upside down.

For "we" are no longer sticking it to "the man" and "the man" has responded by shafting us like good 'uns. From throwing a hissy fit about not scamming a bunch of undeserved dosh off the working stiff to proving that administrative incompetence was ongoing in sensitive situations to the trivial but still ridiculous nickel and diming to death in online games. Right across the spectrum of government and commerce wherever there could be said to be "the man" (not to be confused with Nicolas Cage who was the man for very different reasons on Tuesday) he was sticking it to "us" unashamedly and without consequence.

However the BBC might want to put a positive spin on it the infosphere continues to belt us in the face with a tirade of liberties taken by those in power and it turns out our response is "meh".

Of course Harold MacMillan could continue to tell us that "we've never had it so good" to this day. We might all be poor but in the last recession we the general kind of poverty didn't come with games consoles, the internet and TV on demand. We might have been robbed blind, offended by government incompetence and forced to pay for virtual grenades but there are still plenty more ways to remain distracted and anaesthetised.

Hmmm, starting to sound a bit ranty? Yes, probably.

I'm not ranting, because ranting implies angry and I'm just as apathetic as the rest of you. I know the government are corrupt incompetents and businessmen are greedy sociopaths and that there aint no such thing as a free MMO but I don't care to do anything about it.

Media provides us with any number of enterprising journos from the Mark Thomas school of publicised activism who will stage revealing prank after revealing prank but the media will also tell us, nothing gets done as a result. If people with the public ear, viewing figures in the millions and, in some cases, their own fan clubs can do nothing then why should we?

Exactly.

I could point out what I think Electronic Arts should have done to milk money out of punters in a clever and non-irritating way. I could make any number of suggestions about what needs to change in banking. I could harp on and on about how I would restructure the House of Commons. In the end so could you, everyone reading this has access to browsers, Google and Blogger.

But what we've learned is that a simple plea for Friends, Romans and Countrymen to lend their ears is drowned out in a sea of attention grabbers. Gil Scott-Heron was right, the revolution will not be televised but only because we'll be too busy playing Wii Sports to fit one in.

I was going to pontificate about whether to theme the blog for a bit nominating a "Star" of the week or some such inconsequential nonsense but I've already dripped on for long enough.

Don't be thoroughly depressed, it's nearly the weekend... I shall be relentlessly upbeat tomorrow, I promise.

How You Can Tell When Nothing Is Happening...

The front page of the BBC website reserves significant space for Lily Allen's announcement that she's going to stop recording pop singles for a bit.

Is it just me or is she a prime example of unremarkable mediocrity? Not saying that I'm not but really, I don't expect people to care what I'm doing next with my career. I suppose if people didn't think she was, in some way, remarkable the BBC wouldn't put her onto the front page but I can't see it personally.

So I guess I'm asking if I'm missing something. She just seems like some upper middle class bint of no particular note to me. And let's get this straight I'm not asking if everybody else likes her, I don't care about that. I just can't understand why she's famous except that her dad is.

Gamer Fatigue?

I find myself wondering about the phenomenon known as "Gamer Fatigue". This is where some person in your gaming community announces that they are "taking a break from RP" and withdraws, mysteriously, into seclusion. To me this seems a bit like "taking a break from Movies" or "taking a break from TV". Gaming, to me, is a form of entertainment, not a chore.

I can understand when people say they're going to "take a break from the gym to concentrate on swimming". I guess I just never really regarded gaming as such an intensive pastime. This points the way to a further set of concepts within gaming I hadn't really thought about before. When I find a television drama, a novel or a computer game compelling it's often on the point of it giving me new ideas or insight into the construction of stories for others. Weirdly this means I often don't like playing in games as I can't really just rip off another Host. Gaming is virgin territory for many gimmicks.

This leads to two further notes. One, that I know other people take their gaming very seriously and look upon the opportunity to play a role as an actual creative enterprise. Some people, myself included, look on their character as a way to interact with the story environment, they are contributing a performance within the rules in order to keep the game going. The other note is that role playing games haven't yet progressed to the point where there is a startling bloom of innovation.

To deal with these points in reverse order. It seems that all the RP that has gone on since D&D has been much after the fashion of people taking pictures of moving objects with early movie cameras. Unlike the former activity, however, because it is not enormously expensive and doesn't have much in the way of toys people have largely ignored this innovation in entertainment (did I mention it also has few military applications). RP's not good for much except as a really cool form of entertainment. The problem is that innovation in the field has been restricted to new methods for number-juggling.

I love RP so much that when my partner didn't want to play I changed the hobby to make it suit her more, now I love it even more myself.

But this is weighty stuff. It also leads back to the former point.

I know a lot of people get "RP Burnout" at present. This is like the reverse of "cinema frustration" in which there are too few movies you want to see out when you fancy a visit to the pictures. RP Burnout is where you've role played so much you just can't take it any more. I think I experienced something similar with console games a while back. I'd just played so many of the damnable things I couldn't play any more or it felt like my brain would fall out. Also console games achieve nothing for the player whereas the benefits of socialisation and group interaction at least give RP a social dimension.

I imagine if you did anything enough then it would lead to a similar situation, if they did release enough movies that you could go all day every day for a month you would probably get sick of going to the movies (in fact at film festivals I believe this is what happens to some). However we roleplay once a week and occasional weekends. At the moment we're doing a little more because we're playtesting new adventures. I'd actually like to adopt a slightly less intensive posture after this testing phase.

But what I'm left with after considering these points is even more clarification of what players want out of the RP experience. I know that Mrs Monkey has been finding some of the experiences very hard of late. I think at the point where you feel guilty because you should have done more is precisely the time that you should start to do more.

I think what I need to get across to people that the RP is an entertainment. Levercastle tends to be treated as such. I think what also needs to happen is not only that the players say what they expect out of the experience but the Host needs to say what he can see happening bearing in mind the characters as presented. If people know what's coming up in a vague sense of the word then they can prepare accordingly.

I think that's actually mentioned in the Core Book but the fine tuning of the concept still seems to be a little off. Ho hum. Back to tinkering.

The Joker In The Pack

No sooner do I lament the complete lack of anything that makes for a substantial post than KA-BLAM! something amazing socks me in the face; almost literally in this case.

When I was compiling the Core Book I tried to include everything I could think of at the time to make a sourcebook for the budding No Dicer. It is inevitable that things should be missed. Almost everything that's coming in the Random Encounters series is intended to be filled with examples of powerful things that you can do with No Dice principles. So in each adventure we're kind of expanding the toolkit of the prospective Host and also giving a concrete example of potential play.

Last night we play tested the Monster Action Thriller "The Creature of Black Lake" and got off to a rocky start. Basically an incident mentioned in the notes that's supposed to just happen resulted in the death of a player's character before the adventure had even started.

This was notable for several reasons but not least because that's really not supposed to happen. I know that people have been keen to discuss the idea of abitrary character death recently but this basically put someone out of the game in the first forty minutes.

Not only that but I experienced an incident of Host meltdown, a brief autopsy of the situation lead to the conclusion that the wires of communication were badly crossed and for a while there it all looked grim. You see, the whole point of No Dice is that it's supposed to help you sidestep these issues and keep going. If an adventure has a serious hole that relies on a certain series of incidents not happening then it's just not working.

A workable suggestion was put forward by Justin who suggested that when you hit the blind alley you as Host rewind the action to just before everything went pear and then re-explained the situation giving the player an out.

Like I say, this is workable but it's not really all that neat. It means that a player could take a one way trip up diarrhea drive and then like the Prince of Persia just rewind and do it again.

It was Sue who hit on the real answer. Which in a discussion that followed broadened out from a specific instance in that adventure to become a general principle that Core Book is sorely missing. Oh well, for the second edition I suppose.

But for those of you who don't want to wait n years for the 2nd ed here's the idea right now. Treasure this one, it's golden:

Creating NPCs is always a problem. 95% of NPCs are just cyphers of course. They are barkeeps, random wandering citizens and other reasonably easy to scope functionaries.

That other 5% are the important ones. Many of these, probably just over half, are villains and again there isn't really a problem with them. It's that last 2% that can leave the Host scratching their head.

These are the "major friendly NPCs". Don't be fooled, just because they're marked "friendly" doesn't mean they're always happy to see the players, it more or less just means they won't just try to kill the players on sight.

In the Core Book I got as far as advising people to avoid "infoblaster" NPCs who just know everything. And I also advised against making NPCs as powerful or more powerful than the player characters who were supposedly their allies.

Aside from that I just recommended a Host create "real" characters using the Player's Guide notes to make a fully rounded and realised character.

In some cases this might be fine. But in reality players don't really spend all that much time talking to NPCs just for fun. So a lot of the Host's fine character creation work goes by the wall.

Besides, once you've stopped the NPCs being more powerful when they're too friendly you've kind of left yourself in a bit of a bind.

The problem is sometimes you want characters to move the plot on. They are supposed to arrive, do something dramatic and then leave the players to deal with the fall out.

So how does one do this without making them villainous or too powerful? After all a constant parade of utter villainy keeps things busking along but really in a story based RP you want other types of encounter.

This was exactly the problem in Creature. I had an NPC who needed to rather aggressively insert himself into the party and provide useful plot information, in a guarded manner, for the remainder of the adventure (or at least until he died). I had written up notes for this character which were pretty light. I wanted to introduce him and then, in the playtest, develop him in some way into a fully realised character.

So when he came in to the action I kept him neutral. The only problem with this is that he was neutrally holding up the party's boat with AK47s. As I quickly discovered this kind of thing can be misinterpreted as open aggression. Funnily enough, had he gone in with open aggression the accidental adventure ruining bloodbath that resulted from my weak characterisation would have been averted. Then, of course, the players would have had to just follow along on rails.

On rails is not a good place for adventures to be.

So I needed to, rather than render the character neutral and hence weak, render him a little bit charming and crazy and hence allow characters to interact with him even though he was, technically, a bad dude.

This is a really exciting dramatic position, the guy's holding you hostage but he's quite willing to have a conversation with you about begonias (or whatever). As a player you feel you might be able to negotiate or something.

At the same time the Host has someone who can nudge the characters back on task if they look like they're about to commit suicide or whatever.

This guy's a great NPC, not too overpowering but not too floppy either. He's not going to interfere unless you need him too. He's a joy to have involved.

And hence was born the Joker.

You see Creature is not alone in needing a character like this. Every role play session could do with having a Joker to interact with the players, nudging, testing, exploring their characters.

The situation where the Joker is a guy who has technically taken the Players as hostages, but in a polite way, is just one possible scenario. Characters who have vast reserves of information they are unwilling to share, characters who offer money, or professional services desired by the players all of these are ideal Joker characters.

The secret is to always lay on the unthreatening manner on thick. This was my vital mistake last night. Neutrality won't cut it if an NPC has some power over the players. The character has to maintain their power over the character while entertaining the player.

I'm not saying that making them will be easy but there is a way to make it easier. Sue loves poker and she quickly put me on to the old poker trope of trying to find the sucker at the table. Essentially when you come up with an adventure design your job is to try to identify the Joker(s) at the table and then make them around their role in the story.

Some stories, Con of the Dead, Revelation Point, don't really need a Joker character. Then we return to the poker trope: if after ten minutes searching for the Joker in the scenario you still can't find them, it's you.

Yes, in some adventures it is the Host himself who takes this gently tormentative role for the players. Horror splatter scenarios are the most likely to feature these.

So from now on when I'm dealing up a new scenario I will be sure to use a deck comprised of 53 cards. The joker's going to become one of the most powerful tools in my arsenal.

NB: That last sentence was a dramatic article closer. You don't need to actually draw a card to know when to make the Joker NPC, you just kind of look for them after you've finished your notes.

What Has Happened To Lulu?

Thanks go to Charles Causley for the title of this entry. How a man who died in 2003 knew that we would experience difficulties with a recalcitrant POD publisher 6 years before they started to manifest I don't know.

What I do know is that I foolishly assumed that self-publishing three novels through Lulu.com would prepare me for the day that I wanted to do something "proper". I hold my hands up that I wasn't entirely prepared for some of the issues that arise from having a book with illustrations, even black and white and grayscale ones.

These technical issues are almost entirely down to me and trying to keep as much information in Justin's images as humanly possible. I was unaware that 98% of that information was completely useless and, further, somewhat incompatible with high speed POD printing presses.

So, I have no beef with Lulu regarding that side of things.

Between myself and a couple of geeky friends we have taken in the new requirement, rendered the documents to that standard and reissued the PDF a fourth time. According to the initial problem report there is now no way the problem that dogged the first three versions can reoccur.

The problem I am having is that Lulu are not very communicative. All the fixes I have applied have been the result of assiduous Googling. I submitted two trouble tickets asking for help and have heard nothing regarding either of them. I also received an offer of a specific breakdown of the errors the printer had rendering the publication. I received this five working days after the first problem had occurred.

Although in five working days I had managed to work out from the gnomic communiques issued thus far what I thought would be the best solution and applied it. Still, I felt that it might be useful to take a look at that report and perhaps anticipate any future issues should such exist. Maybe dash out another version before another failed run.

So I said "yes please".

Apparently I am expecting a mail sometime before about 11PM tonight from some kind of POD case worker to chat this over. I'm not really sure what they could do for me. I know that they've had one working day to attempt to print the outstanding books and mail them out and they haven't bothered. Not that I feel that I deserve preferential treatment for fixing badly formatted manuscripts, but I have no indication at all when or even if they will try to print the latest, untested version of the file any time soon.

It's possible they already have tried to do this and it's failed for some other reason. I wouldn't know, they have no protocol for releasing this information to me. I am a little confused as to what the turnaround between an attempted print and the issue of the error message is. In fact once you have uploaded and paid for a "project" to be printed and delivered by Lulu the work enters a limbo of vague information. There is no one to talk to, there is no way to check what's going on, if something does go wrong you're lucky to receive a seven word explanation of what it is and as for finding a solution it's down to yourself and Google.

I've been a long, long, long time champion of Lulu. I used to feel that their service was the future, that it's production model was going to win out and it was only a matter of time.

Technically this may still be true. But their communication protocols remind me of the very worst of old school bureaucracies, they're worse than most UK banks and that's saying something.

At present I don't believe there is a better alternative to Lulu, Amazon's CreateSpace was just two bound up in legalese upfront to even get through the front door. But would I *recommend* people use Lulu? Not unless, like us, they have no alternative and they are trying to get something started.

I am deeply disappointed with Lulu and only a few more days of poor communication and abysmal service stand between disappointment and hate.