Hmm... I have some interesting ideas for this submission, but can an Engineer be an author of fantasy literature? Technical manuals? Yes!(read: encounters!) The fluff that makes an adventure great? Who knows...
Who said Engineers can't be multiclassed?
We tend to specialize. Har. Har. :)
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Hmm... I have some interesting ideas for this submission, but can an Engineer be an author of fantasy literature? Technical manuals? Yes!(read: encounters!) The fluff that makes an adventure great? Who knows...
Game fiction is one of the few mediums where you use both the left and right sides of your brain, both logic and creativity. I agree with Josh (Josh calls the shots, he knows what makes a good senario) while you can teach someone rules, writing is a talent. Either you have it or you do not. What I feel is often overlooked though is the value of understanding what makes a balanced and challenging encounter. Someone who understands numbers, tactics and scale has talents that a writer alone would not. Keep the technical "manual style" writing within the stat blocks though. Test your combat senarios with a local group or even make encounter workflows to help your design and look for logical flaws. I wish you luck.
The worst thing that can happen is Josh says "no".
Creative Director
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Yeah... writing adventures and game content is a strange beast. While the skills that make a novelist or fiction writer good can certainly help you in writing an adventure, the concept that those are the ONLY skills you need is false. You also need a good head for mechanics. You need to know the rules, how they work, and what implications that story elements you create have on those rules. You need to be able to describe things in your text in a way that's evocative and well-written, but you also need to be able to create locations with your maps that make sense and are fun to look at and use in play. You need to be able to come up with cool villains, but you need to be able to supplement your creative design by making that villain fit the rules of the game.
Adventure writers GREATLY benefit from having training and skills beyond writing, is what I'm saying. But if your writing is poor or filled with errors or confusing, we'll never know how good you are at engineering or architecture or anthropology or biology or music or kung fu or whatever.
You need a mix of talents as a result. Often, if one talent is great, the others have merely to be good. And if one of the required talents or skills is not up to par or just downright non-existent, that can ruin your chances even if you're a genius in the other categories.
It's a tough gig, in other words! But at the same time, it's one that requires so many different skillsets that it's impossible to say that someone is or isn't up to the task until they try. So yeah; fire up a proposal and send it in to Josh! As someone else mentioned, the worst that can happen is he'll say no, and then you can try again on the next open call.
The BEST advice, in fact, that I can give someone who hopes to break in to adventure writing, is to not get discouraged by rejections. Every writer has more rejections than acceptances; it's part of the job, after all. And each time you put in a submission, your chances of getting an acceptance increase simply because you keep at it!
Thanks James! For the writing noobs, is 750 words the min, max, or absolute? Hard or soft limit?
750 is the max. Hard limit.
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d. A brief summary of each encounter—minimum six encounters with one encounter detailed as optional
Perhaps this is something I would know if I had played one of the Season 1 scenarios already, but is this new? An optional encounter could come in handy for both stretching a scenario (My table finished five encounters in 2 hours, uh oh...) and adjusting the threat level (The optional encounter could be at the "high" end of the sub-tier).
Well, I'll order the PFCS and I'll get to play Season 1 mods at Fields of Honor, so maybe I'll answer my own questions. I don't want to spoil any adventures for myself, though, so if anyone has tips regarding my Setting Spoiler, I would welcome them.
Thanks!
Several stories have actually popped up in Falcon's Hollow. Reference materials include: The Campaign setting under the Andoran section, The "D" series (Hollow's last hope, Crown of the Kobold King, Revenge of the Kobold King) E1 Carnival of Tears, and the Guide to Darkmoon Vale, I am sure if you purchased one or more of these it would greatly increase your knowledge of the area. In fact, D0 and D1,5 are free downloads! Kudos Paizo! Falcon's Hollow has quite a lot written about it and its surrounding environs indeed!
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Several stories have actually popped up in Falcon's Hollow. Reference materials include: The Campaign setting under the Andoran section, The "D" series (Hollow's last hope, Crown of the Kobold King, Revenge of the Kobold King) E1 Carnival of Tears, and the Guide to Darkmoon Vale, I am sure if you purchased one or more of these it would greatly increase your knowledge of the area. In fact, D0 and D1,5 are free downloads! Kudos Paizo! Falcon's Hollow has quite a lot written about it and its surrounding environs indeed!
Thanks! I thought as much but posted my query in case I missed anything.
stuff about a placeThanks!+1 on those thanks, Larcifer. Jason also did a post about that spot:
** spoiler omitted **
Also The Wiki page on the town is a decent size. It's not fully finished yet (see the red links to articles not done yet) but it is a free resource, and is getting completed more and more every day!