Another part of it is I feel like I’ve got to get it all done, see it all, play it all, before…what? Before I die? Before I’m in a relationship? I don’t know. So, unconsciously, I was becoming very results oriented, wanting to get to the end as quickly as possible. I really need to relax and enjoy the process of whatever I’m doing.

I’ve been learning some new software so I can create illustrations of the characters for the Dune game. Learning digital tools is like learning new spells. I want to be able to summon the floating palace right away, but first I need to learn how to push little stone blocks around. My mind cracks open with the possibilities and then is daunted by all there is to learn. There’s already so much information in my head.

Ugh, even finishing this post is getting to be a struggle. Sleepy sleepy…

The home page is a rotating gateway to each site. The sites can also be accessed from the main menu. You will also note a link called “The Latest”. That’s where I will display my most recently completed projects (stories, games, videos, etc.). Social media hooks are in full effect with the tweetbox on the right and a “Follow Me” tab displaying numerous online destinations to satisfy your cyber-stalking pleasure.

On to the individual sites:

First Time Flowing – My blog. No doubt you are familiar with this one.

DreamPunk Productions – This is my “game and story-shaped design” studio, home of The Stork and House of Whack. Speaking of which, those each have their own site.

In Between – This is a wiki I made to keep track of all the worlds and characters I have created over the years. Managing several universes is a challenging task.

There is another somewhat hidden site, which can be discovered by the person looking for me.

And there we are, back at the start!

The Stork – It looks like the payments got processed sooner than expected, so I can potentially have the book printed several weeks sooner. I’ve completed the special Kickstarter edition of the book. I’ll give it another once over before sending it to the printer. I will be setting up a more involved web site for The Stork (and probably revamping all of my existing sites as well).

Dune – I discovered that there are typos that have been present since the original Avalon Hill edition of the game. I have updated the board with the “real” locations on Arrakis (Old Gap instead of OH Gap, Plaster Basin instead of Plastic Basin).

Talisman Revised rules – The play test session went really well and the new rules made the game more fun. Even though it made the game play faster turn by turn, it still took the usual 3 hours to finish the game.

House Mods/Redecorating – I now have a nice leather-looking storage ottoman to prop my feet up on as well as store Rock Band peripherals. Also, I had a small fire in the kitchen which caused some smoke damage. There is now a bright cobalt comic book-like BLAM shape painted over the ceiling and wall. I also added some more to the House of Whack mural thing I have going on in the kitchen.

Girlfriend – No measurable progress. I met a really fantastic woman with a fantastic life and house. No idea if she is into me or not. I spent a lot of time over-thinking it.

I had never been a vendor at a convention, so I didn’t know what to expect. Chris warned me that STAPLE! kind of spoils vendors for other conventions because it is such a cool experience. He was not wrong. My vague plan was to roll in there with copies of House of Whack and The Stork and see what happened.

Before I left home, I created a little hand drawn sign which had the prices on it. Under The Stork I thought about adding the phrase “It Will Alter Your Life”, but then thought it was silly and hyperbolic. But, of course, that was the Cuckoo trying to thwart me. So I went ahead and wrote it in red. I think it made all the difference because I ended up selling 30 copies.

I didn’t have a fancy sign like a lot of the other vendors. I didn’t even have a table cloth. Apparently that didn’t matter in the end. I set up a demo of House of Whack and a pile of The Stork and my little sign. To my left was Big Head Press with graphic novels endorsed by Alan Moore. To my right was David McGuire, the soft spoken creator of the Grastrophobia web comic.

I wasn’t really sure I could suddenly become a marketing guy who sat at a booth all day, trying to get people to buy my stuff. But I engaged most of the people who walked by, starting conversations with them, giving the elevator pitch for both products. A guy bought House of Whack just because I started talking to him about board games in general. The Stork was the easiest sell of anything I’ve ever done. For one, it was $1. Secondly, when people grokked what it was about, they bought it, sometimes before I could even finish describing it.

I met all kinds of cool people and made potential contacts. I wasn’t even trying to network with anyone, but people would just hand me their card and tell me who to talk to in order to get House of Whack in their store.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience.

So I think it might be helpful to recollect the things I have achieved. Not in a boastful, resting on my laurels sort of way. But to remind myself that I am the same person who did all of those things. Try it yourself when you are feeling somewhat less than.

Here are some of the things I have accomplished so far:

1. Learned to program in BASIC when I was 8 years old
2. Wrote a computer game when I was 10 and sold one copy
3. Learned to ride a bike
4. Learned to play the trombone
5. Wrote and directed Welcome to the Real World during my senior year of high school
6. Wrote and performed skits and monologues in front of hundreds of people
7. Learned to drive a stick shift
8. Was class Treasurer and class Chaplain
9. Was a National Merit Scholar
10. Read the entire Bible
11. Graduated high school
12. Won best supporting actor for my performance in Off Kennedy’s Yacht
13. Won best playwright for All We See and Seem
14. Helped make the short film K
15. Wrote a thesis on Interactive Fiction
16. Ran a massively multiplayer interactive fiction game as my senior writing project in college
17. Saw Pink Floyd in concert
18. Drove across the U.S. both East to West and North to South
19. Learned how to build my own computer
20. Filmed, directed and edited the documentary Goodbye, Hello
21. Graduated college
22. Survived six car accidents, unscathed
23. Convinced someone to marry me
24. Created presentations for the biggest company on earth
25. Owned a house
26. Survived a divorce
27. Taught myself Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Poser, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects
28. Won a short fiction contest with my story The Numbers Game
29. Published a chapbook of poetry called Poem-Shaped Lies
30. Solved Myst III without any hints
31. Adapted The Warlock of Firetop Mountain into a module for Neverwinter Nights. It won a contest created by the publishers of the book. (The British) Steve Jackson played it and wrote me a letter of congratulations.
32. Checked in to a mental institution
33. Checked out of a mental institution
34. Made love to beautiful women
35. Stood naked on top of a volcano
36. Adopted a pregnant cat
37. Won a Telly award for my piece on the New Mexico Jazz Workshop
38. Had a crisis of faith
39. Learned how to break up with girls
40. Dual-wielded .45mm pistols
41. Published another chapbook of poetry called From the Ashes of Puppets
42. Won a fiction contest with my story My Strychnine Valentine
43. Sued the DEA and won
44. Learned how to make friends in a new city
45. Lived in at least 9 different cities
46. Performed slam poetry in five major cities
47. Created and published a board game called House of Whack
48. Created a web comic called Dream Job
49. Held my own with John Hodgman
50. Was a guest columnist for Secure Immaturity
51. Created and organized a film festival for women filmmakers called Something Real
52. Learned how to practice authenticity and integrity
53. Helped create a bumper for Fantastic Fest called Lollipop
54. Created a board game and beer meetup called Boards ‘N Brews
55. Performed improv comedy
56. Had an existential crisis
57. Beat Mischa in Wiz-War
58. Published The Stork
59. Filed my taxes in January
60. Saw the last night launch of a space shuttle
61. Designed hundreds of web sites
62. Avoided ever breaking any bones in my body
63. Have, at one time or another, lost everything I thought I needed to survive
64. Did what was right instead of what was easy

Jeff pulled ahead of everyone on the score track and took home a copy of the game. Good times!

I received an email today that just sent me over the edge of bewilderment and anger. It was from someone I hadn’t heard from in over a year. The message simply said “Can you afford to begin paying for my contributions to our game yet?” And he’s talking about House of Whack.

Just to contextualize, I had started working on the game a few years before I met this guy. He was really interested in it and helped playtest it extensively. We talked about ideas for the game, some of his ideas found their way into the game, most did not. He contributed a few pieces of art for 3 or so cards, which he was credited for. But at no point was there ever an agreement that he would be financially compensated for playtesting. In fact, he explicitly said he just wanted to help out and wasn’t interested in money. There was no contract or legally binding agreement stating he had any stake or co-ownership of the game. I am very grateful for his support and enthusiasm for the game and I say as much in the credits of the manual.

But it was never “our” game and that’s what infuriates me about his email. It was my idea. I made every single prototype card (hundreds and hundreds of them) through every iteration of the game. I did all of the graphic design and 99% of the original artwork. I created the game mechanics. I wrote and re-wrote the rules countless times. I put thousands of dollars of my own money into the production of the game. I put years of life into making House of Whack happen.

How much time and resources did he contribute to the artwork? Virtually none. He contributed pre-existing photos which I then incorporated into the card design. He did not invent any game mechanics, he wrote no rules, he invested no money. He did come up with some ideas for cards. Yet he feels that in comparison to my contribution to the game, that he can go ahead and refer to it as “our” game and ask for compensation.

Here’s a real example of how this collaboration worked. One day he said, “It would be cool if there were a labyrinth in the game.” I agreed. So I thought about a way to create that. I designed graphics for the rooms, mocked up the cards, came up with game mechanics and playtested them. This ended up becoming the Hedge Maze in the game. I then showed him the finished product. He said, “That was a really cool collaboration we just had.” In his mind, his making a statement about a labyrinth was somehow equivalent to all the work I did to make it a reality.

He had zero game design sense, no conception of balancing mechanics, and would come up with utterly impractical and nonsensical ideas, even for House of Whack. Once we were tossing around ideas for a play variant involving ghosts. I wanted to call the ghosts “revenants” as they were seeking vengeance. He wanted to call them “detectives”. I suggested that the word “detectives” might be confusing as people generally have a particular idea of what a detective is and they won’t necessarily associate “detective” with “ghost”. His response was that, since it was the House of Whack, things are not as they seem, and, in this world, “detective” was synonymous with “ghost”. His idea was that when a player got killed they would come back as a ghost and have to solve the mystery of who killed them. I said it would be kind of obvious as the player was right there when it happened. He said the player would have to pretend they didn’t know who the killer was and conduct an investigation. That’s fucking nonsense.

And so is this “our game” bullshit. I had LOTS of people help with the game and I feel like I have acknowledged them all appropriately. But none of them would ever suggest that they put enough work into it to call it their own creation, much less ask me to retroactively pay them for volunteering.

Support independent game design at Indie Press Revolution.

Additionally, I have upgraded the House of Whack forums to the latest version of phpBB, an open source forum.

What I need to do next is learn how to make custom templates for both of these packages. Give it that personal touch.