T w e n t y S i d e d

I thought I’d offer a chance for you readers to chime in with advice or strategy for the players. If you had a character in this campaign, what would you be doing right now? What would your goals be and what would you have done differently so far? This is your chance to shout advice to the characters on the screen in such a way that they will actually HEAR it. Just leave a comment below if you have any clever ideas.

I know this blog doesn’t have very high traffic. It’s certainly nothing compared to my other various projects, but I’d love to see if the story has captured anyone’s attention outside of our group.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I’ve been reading back through some of the past sessions and I’ve noticed they seem a bit flat. This is not Heather’s fault. She does a fine job of recording events, but once she’s done I have to turn the notes she takes (in real-time) and turn them into a narritive. Obviously the more detail I add, the better the post will be. I can just post her notes, and be done in 10 minutes, or I can spend days converting the play-by-play into a proper story. As I’ve fallen behind schedule, the posts have become more the former and less of the latter as I’ve tried to catch up.

I would like to point out that I’ve written a book. I know how to write. If I found a chapter of my book wasn’t working, I’d trash it and start over. If it was large and detailed, I’d spent a lot of time on it until it was done.

But now I’m working on material that arrives at a fixed rate. Sure, I can spend a week and a half writing the most recent session, but by the time I’m done I’ll have yet another session in the pipe and I’ll be even further behind. It’s like working on parts on a conveyor that travel at a fixed speed: Spending more time on one unit eats directly into the time I can spend on the next one.

The trip I took two weeks ago only made things worse. I got caught up a bit by skimping on session 6, and it shows. The session is a bit lifeless, lacking in color. Of course, it was fun and interesting for the players, but reading my narritive makes it sound dry and dull. Sorry about that.

So, what we’re faced with now is the fact that I’m working a full two sessions behind schedule. At the moment, I’m transcribing session 7, we just had session 8 last night, and I’m working on preparing to run session 9 for next sunday.

My point is that transcribing a D&D campaign is turning into a bigger challenge than I thought. I suppose if I was some sort of uber-writer I could churn out quality material at a steady pace, every day. But as it stands, the sessions happen just a little faster than I can handle them.

I hope you can enjoy the story anyway. Thanks for reading.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.