Question: Is the Fiction section a work of already selected writers? Or is there a chance for a Scion Narrator to propose a new story for a new character? Just asking, anyway the whole blog is a magnificent work of art, man.
Thanks a lot, dude. :)
The Fiction section on the site is entirely written by me (Anne), with the exception of the excellent story Bayou Boys, which was written by Marcus James' player and is probably the most awesome thing we host. Most of our players prefer to just give us outlines of what their characters' stories and goals entail and let us get them written out.
Because the fiction on our site is all inter-connected and relates to the giant, overarching plot that has been written between all the different players and characters, for the moment we aren't adding anyone new who isn't part of the story (unless our players start new PCs, of course). I'd be open to the idea of hosting a big old dump of Scion fiction from different games someday, but we're probably not going to reconfigure the whole thing at the moment unless there's a lot of interest. It currently mostly serves our players and their characters (though we do love it when you guys read and comment on it, so thanks for that!).
I'd be open to suggestions for new fiction about characters that are part of our games, though; much of the plot has already been written and/or already happened, but if people had general requests - "I'd like to see more about what X was doing during X time!", for example, or "I want to see more stories about character Y!" - I'd be happy to try to accommodate them if I have the time and inspiration. Unfortunately, I can't promise that I could do them all, or do them quickly, since we're trying to make sure that the great Ragnarok shuffle gets written up before the sun goes down on too much of 2013, but I'd definitely put them on my list and see what I could do. Some of my favorite stories have come out of a player saying, "Hey, what was Z doing when all this was happening?" Pretty much anyone who's turned up in our games, whether PC, NPC or mentioned in fiction, is fair game (I do have a giant list of all of them, but it takes a spreadsheet just to keep them organized).
I would, of course, always be willing to write stories about anybody's character for any game for a comission fee. But the adventures of the various bands of Scions of our games will march on as quickly as I can manage them regardless!
Yeah, I can understand this. With most of the games I've been in, there are not many people who want to write stories, they give general ideas, except for one GM who tells us to make some effort and some barely do it. I try not to, mostly cause I love writing, but the daily ins and outs of life sometimes stop me from doing it.
ReplyDeleteThough right now I seem to have the time and inclination to write about the 6 months down time. With your stories Anne, how much research do you put in your stories? Like not just the mythos, but real world situations.
An example that I used in a story was the Order of Divine Glory with a major player in the Organization being a war criminal from Iraq. Setting was Saudi Arabia and a valley in Afghanistan. The mythos dealt with an old buddhist tale of four brothers and why this valley was so fertile and rich in minerals.
Then working on another, longer story then the last one.
It's understandable - not everybody is a writer, either because it doesn't interest them or that's not where their talents lie, so while I can understand STs offering rewards for doing it, it's not something you can reasonably expect all your players to do. God knows I'm a terrible artist, and I'd be sad if an ST told me I needed to draw art to show I was "making an effort" - it'd just be bad, and that'd just be disheartening. Writing's the same kind of thing.
DeleteI try to do as much research as possible when the Scions are interacting with real-life things; I notice details that aren't quite right when I'm reading and they annoy me, so I try to keep myself from doing that too much. For example, when writing Sangria's backstory I spent some time researching the Mexican Special Forces and their recent history to give at least a semi-accurate picture of what she might have been doing there; when working on the fairy court stories for Aurora's band, I spent some time with a topographial map of Ireland trying to make sure I knew where they were going and what that meant in terms of travel time and climate. It's just little stuff, but it makes me feel better to be somewhat on top of it.
I'm working on a backed up story for Sophia at the moment, but I have at least one for pretty much everybody in my queue.
Its not necessarily a reward, it just allows the players to write out what the characters did during down time and for us to write down fate bindings, instead of it being done by him and his dice. Which we aptly call player killers, cause they always roll high for NPC's and PC's get nothing.
DeleteI'm an artist, just not a classically trained one. I do scenery, landscape, worlds, architecture, etc. I do them very well, but humans, animals and things of this nature I am bad at. Though I am working on 9 pieces of art with both background and characters to try and relearn how to do humans.
Then, with writing its clear that when people like me write like 4-5 pages of story and others do like a page or two, mostly so they get it done and do not get their legend wiped out.
I can understand research can be frustrating when trying to use it for writing, it took a couple of ideas to get what I wrote down, but in the end its worth it. Good luck on the rest of your writing.