Next stop: A mountaintop with a storm giant on it
Lair of the Storm Giant, and other things
There’s no getting around it, the last couple of weeks have been frustrating. After a certain point in my life — I’m pretty sure it was when Daylight Savings Time was expanded so that we sprang forward earlier in the year and fell back later — I realized that the time change really disrupts my eating and sleeping patterns, causing me to feel tired and out of sorts pretty much throughout the day. It can take me weeks to adjust, and during that time I just don’t feel that I’m at my best and most productive.
Even so, I managed to get a good start on our next Places by the Way/Found by the Way module, Lair of the Storm Giant. Normally, I start slow when writing a location module. I tend to circle around it, like a boxer looking for an opening. That’s probably because my plan for the module isn’t fully formed yet; there’s always stuff that comes to me as I write and the more of those details accumulate the easier it becomes to finish the rest of it. This time, however, I seem to be off to a stronger start.
For one thing, I had plenty of time to think ahead to what I wanted to do with this, our 14th location module, while I waited to finish shipping out the Kickstarter rewards for module #13, The Hobgoblin’s Fortress. I’ve known for a while that I want to create the title character as a philosopher-hermit, someone who is brilliant and learned, but also a bit daft from living in isolation on top of a mountain. From her point of view, she just wants a handyman who will help her clean out her basement — a network of caverns carved into the mountain beneath her home — and maybe do a bit of vermin control while they’re at it. However, she has forgotten much of what she keeps down there, like the flesh golems that she received as a gift, but left neglected so that their stitching is starting to come loose. Also, a basilisk in her basement might seem like an annoyance, but a typical party of adventurers would have to take them more seriously.
Fortunately, this creates a narrative structure that is pretty simple, so I don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking about contingencies. Your party finishes clearing out one room, then they report back to the storm giant, who asks them to deal with another room. The natural progression will take them from the highest level of the basement to the deepest. As a twist at the end, they discover that a chromatic dragon and its duergar allies are burrowing up from below the basement, wanting to steal the really valuable stuff on the deepest level. But because the progression is so natural, I don’t expect that I’ll have to write a Chapter 2 and 3 to explain what happens after your party has checked out all of the most relevant locations.
I hope to make good progress on Lair of the Storm Giant this weekend and next week, but I also have to get ready for WonderCon in Anaheim next weekend. I’m very much looking forward to it on the assumption that it can’t go any worse than last year’s WonderCon, when the weather and other factors beat down attendance and, by extension, sales. If you’re at the show, be sure to stop by table SP-19 (Small Press 19, that is) for a friendly greeting and a bit of chat.
At the very least, it looks like we’ll have dry weather. I know for a fact that the intense and highly unusual rain that we had at this time last year depressed attendance; it was good for the water table but miserable for those of us above ground. I stayed at a hotel about a mile from the convention center on the assumption that walking back and forth would be no problem. That way, I could save myself from paying $30 per day for convention center parking when I was already paying $15 per day for hotel parking. It rained intensely overnight Friday to Saturday and even though the rain mostly stopped by the time I set out from my hotel Saturday morning, the ground was so thoroughly sodden that everything protecting my feet was soaked through by the time I arrived. Not only did I slip and take a header in the convention center lobby, but after I got to my table I stripped off my shoes and socks and went barefoot most of the day, lest I develop trench foot. Ah, good times.
All the same, I enjoy the convention circuit and I look forward to riding it harder this year than I have in the past. I mentioned in my last post that Ramen Sandwich Press had secured at spot at RAGE Con in Reno at the end of June. Now, we can add to my itinerary that I’ll be selling at Salt CON Summer in Salt Lake City early in June. If you’re at either show (or both, what the heck), look for our table and I’ll see you there!