WoAdWriMo?

Gameblog reader rcade asks the simple question that is the title to this post.

The short answer is No. I'm superthrilled with all the great modules (still available here, thanks to James at Age of Fable) that resulted from the two WoAdWriMo outings, but I don't plan to attempt to organize another Worldwide Adventure Writing Month. The reason I'm not continuing the project is twofold:

1) The two WoAdWriMos have made it abundantly clear to me that one of my personal strengths is not Organizing the Fans. That takes a special combination of limitless enthusiasm, abiding patience, technical know-how and general smarts that I can't quite muster. I don't regret trying, but my talents lie elsewhere.

2) Someone else has improved on the formula and WoAdWriMo is in many ways redundant now. I speak, of course, of the One Page Dungeon Contest. It's not the same as WoAdWriMo, but it's got a rip smart format. Format was one of the things I struggled with and the One Page Dungeon just effin' nails it. Look to the future for the One Page City, the One Page Encounter, the One Page Secret Society, the One Page Kingdom, the One Page Tavern, etc, etc.

So no WoAdWriMo. HOWEVER, don't let me hold you back. There's still need in the hobby for new materials for GMs trying to keep their campaigns running. July may not be Worldwide Adventure Writing Month, but there's nothing stopping it from being [Your Name Here] Adventure Writing Month. And if you want a cheerleader to Ra! Ra! you on, or just someone to talk about the module writing process don't hesitate to leave a comment on my blog or send me an email (jrients AT gmail DOT com). Or call me, I'm in the book. It always amuses my wife when someone on the phone asks for "Jeff of Jeff's Gameblog".

ADDENDUM: I should probably also note that if someone else wanted to take the reins of this project, that would be totally cool with me.

WoAdWriMo update!

It's half a year late, but the official Worldwide Adventure Writing Month downloadable archive is up and running. Click here to check it out! Big thanks to James Hutchings of Age of Fable for agreeing to host the WoAdWriMo adventures! My apologies to all the contributors and other interested parties for the horrible delay.

WoAdWriMo site is up!

The all-new, all-different woadwrimo.org is up and running! Please check it out, stop by the forum and maybe start a new thread or something! Big thanks to Kyle of AnimalBall Games for doing all the hard stuff and to Gameblog reader Lori Johnsen for the new WoAdWriMo logo.

July is Worldwide Adventure Writing Month

Just a quick public service note that WoAdWriMo '08 will be in July instead of June. For details why, please pick any one reason from the handy list below:

• D&D 4e's release partway through the month would be too disruptive to the WoAdWriMo schedule.
• I let May get away from me and am totally not ready to fly this crate.

Once again, this year's WoAdWriMo will feature no pagecount goal. Too many people took my arbitrary goalpost way too seriously. Just write the adventure in a way that leaves you satisfied you gave it your best effort.

Help! WoAdWriMo!

Next month I'd like to do Worldwide Adventure Writing Month again, but since Martin put Treasure Tables on hibernation I need a new host. I had hopes that theRPGsite would be the new home of WoAdWriMo, but the present server crisis and need for better software makes that a no-go.

I'll make a new Yahoo Group if I need to, but does anyone have any other ideas for a place that can host the finished adventures and maybe a discussion forum? The forum was relatively low-key last time, but the download section needs to be able to handle at least a couple thousand 5 or 10 MB downloads over the course of a week.

Incidentally, the WoAdWriMo challenge will change in one regard this year. I had originally called for people to try to write adventures of 32 pages in length. In retrospect, I think that parameter discouraged more people than it motivated. So I'm removing that limit entirely. If you want to contribute a single brief encounter to the WoAdWriMo effort, we'll take it. Anything you want to submit that might help a GM where the dice hit the table is welcome.

"No Time To Blog" Lightning Round

Last night was the last session Beyond Vinland, Season One. Too bad it ended with a Total Party Kill. The party waltzed into the lair of a couple of Yuan Ti abominations and ended up getting sliced, diced, mutilated, and poisoned. While it was kind of a buzzkill, everybody is still pretty enthused about the upcoming Star Wars game.

Also, they did finally catch up with and killerfy that duergar chieftain that had given them so much trouble. In my mind the PCs and the chieftain are all in Valhalla, drinking mead together and having a good laugh over this whole mess.

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Not only am I late hopping on the meme bandwagon, but I'm referencing an obscure old SNL sketch.

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Just a couple more days left to get the snazzy print edition of my Encounter Critical module, Asteroid 1618. Click on over to the Cumberland Games & Diversions Lulu.com storefront and slide down to the bottom of the page to order your copy. While you're there do yourself a favor and order one of S. John Ross's great works. Again, no one but Lulu is making any money off of the print version of my book. S. John and I want the price as low as possible. Of course the free PDF version is even cheaper (still available at WoAdWriMo central and the EC yahoo group), but that version doesn't come with staples!

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Here's a first look at the PC's starship in the new campaign:Green Thirteen (the Space Winnebago below the Y-Wing) is an old prototype of a Y-Wing variant that never made it into production. Based upon the slightly more successful 5-person courier variant of the Y-Wing, the BTL-D2 Y-Wing was an attempt to turn a non-frontline modification of the Y-Wing back into a fighting vessel. It didn't quite work out. But beggars can't be choosers, and the Alliance needs every ship it can muster.

I'm done!

Hot damn! Asteroid 1618 is now available for download over at the Worldwide Adventure Writing Month's module archive. It will also be available at the Encounter Critical mailing list as soon as I can get yahoo to cooperate. Now that this WoAdWriMo thing is wrapping up, expect some new stuff soon here at the ol' Gameblog. I need to update you all on the Beyond Vinland campaign and I told Dr. Rotwang that I would do an article soon about Ken St. Andre's Starfaring, a crazy pre-Traveller sci-fi adventure game. And I still need to finish part 2 of my old Paladin article.

So close I can taste it

To avoid boring everyone to tears, this will be my last post here about Worldwide Adventure Writing Month until my module is ready for presentation. I finished the body of Asteroid 1618 last night. I still need to scan some things finish the table of contents, put together the out-of-character afterword/credits and maybe write a crazy index. And I might re-work the cover.

I am truly astounded by the number of totally awesome illos provided by the supercool people on the Encounter Critical mailing list. S. John Ross, Christian Conkle (a.k.a. Evil Schemer), and Stephen Henderson-Grady (who I don't even really know, but is obviously awesome) all provided some great stuff. And just this morning I got 6 new pieces of art from Doc Rotwang! and his wife!

Early this morning I started laying out my various files as a single document and it turns out I wrote a lot more than the 32 pages I was shooting for. The Vanishing Pyramid, the dungeon that serves as the centerpiece of the module (though not necessarily in the physical center of the text) doesn't even begin until page 43. Wow. This puppy might turn out closer to 64 pages rather than 32.

In my last post on this topic jinnetics asked "What are you using to make your PDFs?" When I got my latest home computer I bought a program from Adobe. It's not the fullsized Acrobat, but it will take most standard filetypes and convert them to a basic, no-frills PDF. I can't remember the name of the thing right now, but it was only like 20 bucks or so. I've used it for a couple of one or two page documents with pretty good results.

I can see the finish line

The deadline for Worldwide Adventure Writing Month is Saturday. And it looks like I'm going to make it. I have four or five pages of actual adventure to write, plus items like the table of contents and out-of-character afterword. Then I need to glue all my files together and drop in my artwork. I've received some very cool pieces from S. John Ross and another member of the Encounter Critical mailing list. And I've done about 4 illos of my own. Theoretically, turning my wordprocessor file into a PDf ought to be a snap, but I've discovered that such a transformation isn't quite as WYSIWYG as I'd like. I may end up with little snafus like an illo that belongs at the bottom of page 20 gets pushed to the top of page 21 when converted. I can see fiddlying around with the software becoming a big pain in the ass. Still, if I keep my nose to the grindstone I should have a complete Encounter Critical module done by Saturday.

WoAdWriMo update

I've gotten a lot of great work done on Asteroid 1618, the Encounter Critical adventure I'm working on for Worldwide Adventure Writing Month. I've saved everything in multiple files, so I don't know exactly how much I've written, but I think if I stitched it all together right now I'd be over the 32 page goal. But I'm not done. Here's my to-do list:

Absolutely Necessary
introduction
table of contents
finish Domed City key - Done!
Shattered Dome key
finish sample abandoned town - Done!
finish wandering monster charts - Done!
wilderness key
scan wilderness maps
sample PCs
finish Additional Rules section - Done!
new equipment (oxymasks and such) - Done!
out-of-character afterword

If I Get The Time
new equipment (other) - Done!
new weapons - Done!
Haunted Mine map and key
additional art - cool pieces coming in from the EC Mailing list gang!
adventure hooks page
generic NPC stats
index, insane

Wow, that's a lot of stuff. I better go work on something.

Ah, hell yeah!

I am super-thrilled to announce that someone has successfully completed the Worldwide Adventure Writing Month challenge! Hot damn tamales! TheRPGsite member Abyssal Maw has written The Maze of Cherno, a 3.5 adventure for characters level 1 to 5. It's so nice to see this WoAdWriMo thing actually lead to inspiring someone to complete a module. Hat's off to Abyssal Maw!

You know what I like?

Stocking crazy ass graph paper dungeons. I've been hitting the WoAdWriMo thing really hard but only yesterday did I start work on the heart of my adventure, the Vanishing Pyramid. And I am having a helluva good time putting together my level maps and filling it with goofy shit for players to interact with and GMs to riff off.

Asteroid 1618

Today I thought I'd tell you about my own personal Worldwide Adventure Writing Month project. Asteroid 1618 is planned as an old style map-and-key type of adventure for S. John Ross's Retro Stupid classic Encounter Critical. Damn, that game is a lot of fun.

The asteroid in question is the last fragment of planet Aldaria, which was blown up a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Most of the survivors of this catastrophe live in two domed cities, as elsewhere the atmosphere is thin and getting thinner. Monsters and mutants roam the land between the domes and lurk in the towns that are falling to ruin for lack of their own atmo-generators. A few brave folk live outside the city, working hard to retain the biosphere of their planetary shard.

I envision the whole thing as one of those toolkit adventures that don't try to tell a story, but equip the playgroup with many different avenues for adventure. My models for this approach are things like The Village of Hommlet and the old Judge's Guild book Verbosh. Those adventures offer themes, a prior history of the region, and a snapshot of the present. Everything else is left up to the iniative of the players and the inventiveness of the GM.

I've got several pages of notes that I've been working on since December of last year. So far I've actually written a little over four pages of complete text and finished one map. I've still got a long way to go to reach the 32 page goal, but if I get around to writing up everything scrawled in my notes I shouldn't be wanting for material. At this point time is a scarcer resource than crazy stupid ideas.