From Book to Table: Creating a 5e Supplement or Campaign

When your hippy typewriter breaks.

I’ve been a little light on the employment of late. Having just graduated with a Masters in English and Rhetoric from JAXState, my daily dose of applications have kept my nose down and hopes up. While I work to find work, on the other hand, I’ve been watching up on the veritable explosion of third party modules and campaigns found both within the 5e setting and without. While I’m not currently able or willing to put time or energy into developing my own TTRPG–whuff–I have the solid foundation for creating my own content. My own module.

Here’s how I’m going to do it.

From Book to Table: Converting a Novel to a Tabletop Game

iStock photo *Cuz I’m a poor English Boy Without a Ko-Fi

I haven’t been here much in the recent past; partially because I’ve been novel-writing, and partially because the long COVID season (2+ years?) has left me a little breathless and overwhelmed. Finally, I picked up a Masters in English during my downtime. Woot? I’ll post something about my current projects soon.

So. One of the Massive projects I recently undertook was the conversion of a favorite novel to a D&D campaign, as I felt inspired by an amazing friend group who play legendary campaigns. For those who don’t know, Dungeons and Dragons is a highly successful (and highly controversial) gaming system that evolved out of 1980’s tabletop. It’s currently in its 5th edition, with a 6th soon to be out (2024). It’s rife with backgrounds, lore, deities, character classes, subclasses, “races” (or ancestries), and all manner of creative freedoms. For the purpose of this post, I’ll use D&D as the Tabletop Role Playing Game (TTRPG) of choice.

But like a lot of new D&D players (and Pathfinder, for that matter), there’s an overwhelming amount of world (and multiverse/multiplane)-building involved. I don’t have time, energy, OR ability to memorize and study all of this information. Like many who came before me (Critical Role anyone?), I chose to build my own path and convert my beautiful, wild world of Lorcalon to fit the narrative needs of a group gameplay campaign.

The question is! How?

For all those who recently got into it–or those who have played for years but want to know more about how others do it–this post is for you.

Pitmad: What is it? Is it worth it?

P

Pitmad, MotherF**ker. Do you speak it?

Editors are Myriad, and I Overlooked Some.

Loves me those tacos.

I’m Creating a Critique Group… Are You?

Sometimes all it takes to find a critique group is asking: Hey! Wanna swap?

Projects Update. Now With Script!

Tis me, eating Birria Tacos at a local taco joint.

Life in quarantine has been a trip. A TRIP. Since June 1 of last year, when I officially locked myself down and separated myself from the unwashed masses (to do my duty/due diligence) I finished the apoc spec fic novel Corpus Paradisum, edited it, started and finished the portal scifi novel Cirrus Kingfisher, and also edited it, the sequel portal scifi novel Stratus House, and wrote two short stories (scifi Interlinkt and horror Red Fruit, Black Root). If I were a professional novelist, with a life of writing novels for my income, I’d be doing just fine. It’s a blast. I love it. I’m gearing up to jump into my hard edit of Stratus House.

If anyone is interested in what I’m writing nowadays, I have the website set up to show my writing wares, as it is, but still no agent/publication. Fingers are crossed, though, as Red Fruit, Black Root has been on submission for over a month and a half with no rejection. You might see it in print soon!

The Avenging Angel Motif in Writing

Yeah. Totally new topic. This hasn’t been discussed for, like, six thousand years already.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
Revenge is sweet.
Living well is the best revenge.

None of these are always the case. And none of these directly deal with what I’m writing about.

There is a difference between Revenge and Avenge.

Avenge is a word broadly concerned with inflicting a punishment or penalty in the pursuit of justice.

Revenge is a word broadly concerned with inflicting harm or punishment for personal retaliation.

There is an overlap, but one is not always the other, and the other is not always one. Avenge is usually the elevated purpose–placing importance on an ideal or perspective–which is why “Angel” is attached to it for my blog purpose, while Revenge is considered far more animalistic–placing importance on the self, and selfish goals–and therefore considered base and self-destructive. Identifying this difference is very important. For example, Akira was vengeful. Not avenging. And he burned himself out.

I’m sure there’s a revenging demon motif. Not sure about other overlaps; revenging angel? Avenging demon? Who knows. I don’t know why I’m using so much Christian vocabulary.

We’re all in love with superheroes. The X-Men and Wonder Woman. Watchmen and Batman and Nicholas Cage in The Rock and Pacific Rim. They wake a little secret part of ourselves that have been around for a long time, perhaps part of a shared childhood ideal of swooping in and handling a situation with your own two hands.

Book Review: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

 

Note the cream bedsheets; yes, I read it with class. Not pictured: infuser with sexy lavender oil.

I haven’t sat down and read an entire novel, in one sitting, in a really, really long time. I’m thinking since Peter Watts’s Starfish, back in 2005.

Autonomous took that prize.

I’ll give a non-spoiler version, and then after the read more tag, I’ll go quite a bit more in-depth with what I loved about this book. Also a few spoilers. BECAUSE HOLY SHIT. #professional

Quick overview: Autonomous takes place roughly 150 years from now, and centers on two groups of people: a drug pirate named Jack and her associates Threezed, Krish, Med, and those at Free Lab, and the IPC (Intellectual Property Commission? I think) duo of Eliasz and Paladin–an indentured robot–along with their support infrastructure.

A Big Pharma company creates a work efficiency drug that is intended to be marketed only to the wealthy. Jack reverse engineers it to be sold to the less fortunate, finds out it is highly addictive and damaging, and the pharma company wants to keep it under wraps. In turn, it sends its personal police to hunt down the terrorist (Jack) and keep the information secret/safe/profitable.

Overclocked with tech evolution, smart characters and smarter digital communications, and relationships that melded into the complexity of the story with clarity and power, Autonomous was just as interesting to read for the story as it was for the insight and depth of understanding for tech.

It covers themes of humanity, personhood, gender relations, technology relations, the complex nature of AI, patent law, Big Pharma, lawful vs. moral vs. ethical, security, and community (along with, I’m certain, lots I overlooked in the meantime).

I could be wrong, but I know of nobody else writing like this. And it is beautiful. If I had to give number score out of ten, I’d give it 9/10. It’s really, really, really that good. If you’re a tech nerd, if you’re a gamer, if you’re a digital humanities person, if you love science fiction, if you want a great read, get this book. It is a harmony of stories.

I’m getting a second copy just to share with a friend. 

Sex (and my) Fantasy (novel)

Intimate relationships catalyze stories in ways other actions do not. I believe that if I could write all the emotions that go into a really satisfying poop, I’d approach a similar feeling. But then, unless the character involved was a part of a really intimate relationship, this character would be alone after the poop as well.

Person-to-person connection is a fundamental part of life. The past few novels I have worked on has seen little of the sexual side. A novel I essentially finished in 2009 has the few sexy scenes of a budding relationship. It’s great. I got hot writing it. I get hot reading it.

I want more of it.

Writing to Scare Yourself

Reading Simmons on the beach.

(Still love this pic. Wish I was still there)

 

I have one finalized and unpublished novel, four finished rough novels, forty eight unfinished projects, seventeen research files, and countless lost projects. My titles are, from my first novel project in 7th grade to now (including fanfic): Dinotopia!, Elementals, Lucky Sevens, Spark, the Mindgames Trilogy, Inhabitability, Infallibility, The Willow and the Sycamore, the seven Reverberant high fantasy novels that followed, the four planned Littrell sequels, Symbiosis, Of Salt and Wine and the six sequels planned, The Acorn King and sequel, David and His Shade and four sequels planned, Pris(m), Alexandrea, Nautilus, and Corpus Paradiso (my NaNo project).

I started my writing life piggybacking off other writers and other worlds, learning my basics by simply parroting. My parents told me my writing work was great. I won second place in 7th grade and first place in 8th for a pair of short stories written across two pages. When I was young and learning to write I was afraid just to put a word down. Words written meant you owned them. They meant you had an idea and you put it out there for others to read.