Selling books is like a game, okay? There are rules. And you better learn those rules because it’s no game!
There are forums up at rpg.net that are literally filled with thousands of nerds of every variety. I usually don’t visit the forums because it’s overwhelming and I don’t have the time. But over the weekend, because of a new project I’m working on, I revisited the forums. While I was there I did a quick vanity search on Spaceship Zero and found a thread about TPKs (Total Party Kills for the uninitiated, in which no player character survives an encounter. This happens with John Dawes more than any other GM I know, but that’s a different story). Gamers were trading their stories about TPKs and one person added a post that made me smile.
“My SPACESHIP ZERO game… an incident with a shrink ray and a nearsighted robot lead to a total party kill.”
Anyway, my weekend was one of drawing, and walking downtown to Elfsar, and playing D&D. As a DM, running your players in a town is a lot harder than running them through a dungeon, so take note, future DMs. It was a good weekend, and I’ll miss it when it’s gone.
My work week was…I guess I would say better than usual, despite the fact that I have a cold. In one sense I could legitimately call in sick to work. This actually only led to me working the last 3 days of the week instead of my usual first 3. This week was inventory week at Brainghost Hooks, which meant a lot of empty, unfocussed pep talks from our boss (that’s fine) and lunches provided (that’s good!) and all of the upstairs office staff coming down for a 2 day taste of slogging away in what I affectionately call “The Pit.” Hopefully now the people upstairs will take pity on my charming, charismatic self and whisk me away from a fate worse than death.
On Friday there was a huge lull at the end of the day because we finished the first (of two, possibly three, recounts) earlier than expected, and we couldn’t start the next recount until the computer processed some information. This left we troglodytes idly sitting on our hands and basking in the glowers of our ‘superiors’ in doing so. Even the joyful revelation of finally getting 9 bucks an hour doing nothing wasn’t enough to staunch the boredom, however, so I put pen to packing paper and started drawing. One of the guys in receiving (P) asked me if I’d draw him, so I made an attempt. It ended up resembling what he might look like if a computer program projected he’d look like 10 years later, but P was very pleased with it nonetheless. One of his buddies however, kept saying throughout the drawing process “that doesn’t look like him!” and when it was finally done and in P’s hand, the dolt snatched the paper from P and ran down the warehouse like a bully in grade 10. I didn’t care about the drawing (and his criticisms about my drawing ability rolled off my back because a) I agreed with him to some extent and b) his opinion means s.d.a. to me) but I felt bad for poor P who said to him “why are you being so stupid?” But P got the drawing back and thanked me, and that was nice. While I was doing the drawing I became the center of attention, which is at once loathesome and embarrassing and exciting. I always try to shrug off that kind of attention, and sometimes it even bothers me, both of which are unfortunate because the artists who make the most money know how to draw (haha) attention, milk it, and spin it to further their careers, whereas I just want to make a living without too much of a fuss.