I doodled a few weirdos in masks a couple of years ago and applied the name "Mask Ragers". I knew it had to become an RPG but it took me a while to get back around to it. For some reason it came around again pretty hard Friday and now I have a game system and premise on my hands. I guess I'll have to make a game, dammit.
Which is, honestly, really fucking cool. I mean, if I can sum up my entire creative plan in life in a single sentence: I want to make a lot of cool books that inspire other people to make cool stuff too.
As the great George Carlin once said: "I got a lot of good ideas. Trouble is most of 'em suck."
Story of my life.
I was inspired to start drawing by your stuff. After a couple of months, I realized why I'd gotten into writing and NOT drawing. Lol. But I learned enough to show my nieces the ropes, learn who Andrew Loomis is, inking basics, draw some decent maps, etc...and the Black Pudding content got me back into Old Skool D&D n a huge way. I dug out my Red Box, started cutting walls out of styrofoam, testing my own home system, etc...
ReplyDeleteI already knew how to put together books for publication, Scifi mostly, but didn't think about doing an RPG before checking out the OSR scene through this blog, and Questing Beast's.
I'm Joseph Bradshire on Amazon if that's interesting to you. I don't pimp my books really.
Cool beans. I'm happy I did something that fired you up! Cool that you publish your books and have yourself out there. I respect that.
DeleteWell DIY is kinda the way it's done anymore, in my opinion. Most of the interesting stuff going on is people doing their own thing. The cool youtubers are indie. The cool writers. The Martian by Andy Weir is a good example. My online social circle are all indie publishers, self publishers. Mostly novels and a smattering of non-fic.
DeleteWe trade around editing, layout help, cover help, etc...I'm a retired attorney so I get plenty of calls on that front.
I've always wrote little boardgames and such, some hobby level roguelike video games, but never thought about that as an indie publishing route, because board games tend to take a lot of graphic skill, construction, etc...and my programming skills are amateur level at best, and I lack the focus to see a computer game project through the years it takes to create a half decent release.
But then I saw people indie pubbing TTRPG's and I'm like, oh fuck yes I can do that. If I can do novels, I can do that. My layouts won't be as fun as yours, and my art won't be up to Lamentations standards, but my creative content is solid so I'm all go.
And like you were saying, maybe you only hit a few people, maybe you aren't some smash hit in the market, but even a few dozen would be cool. I've sold a few thousand fiction books, that shit gets me up in the morning. Which is important because I had to retire early, so motivation is a key life issue.
When I get Caves and Candles all together, I'll send you a .pdf. You'll note a few things lifted from Black Pudding. Like the Pro Wrestling character class. FUCK YES to that!
Nice. I look forward to it.
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