I started writing fiction when I was 14, starting with a very melodramatic novella. My juvenalia, while decidedly not something I would be happy to publish today, definitely was done with a mix of love, fun, joy, and a mixture of I’ll show them and I’ll prove myself.

This YouTube video describes the differences between the questions:

“Why do you make art?”

“Why do you really make art?”

That soup of motivations and 15 years working in the publishing industry has colored my approach to the arts in my teens and twenties and thirties.

Recently I didn’t write fiction for a year. I was discouraged by the querying process and wondering whether I actually wanted to write at all. Was I only doing it for that second purpose, of proving that I could do it? Was this just a stranger’s dream now, a teenager long gone?

In the meantime, I continued TTRPG writing: prepping for game sessions, writing adventures, playtesting, etc. Within the past few months, I have been preparing a hacked Cairn 2e Open Table campaign with a megadungeon and overworld. I’m about 120 rooms through and I have finished the overworld map. It’s a lot.

And I’ve done this before (just the Open Table campaign idea, not the megadungeon) and it fizzled out quickly. This was discouraging, and it made me feel like I have before with writing, with art, with any creative pursuit:

I should be doing something productive with my time instead.

I had this doubt reaching to pull me out of the megadungeon. I took a break. And I read a blog post. This one: A Sicko’s Guide to Prepping D&D by Valeria Loves.

Whenever you’re doing any artistic pursuit and that voice creeps into your head, just remind yourself that you’re a gosh darn sicko.

It’s fun to write a story, it’s fun to draw a bird that no one is going to see, it’s fun to build a 200-room dungeon that might not ever even get played. It’s not even just that it’s practice or honing the tools or preparing you for something better. The act itself is fun.

Perhaps this is something that people know already or whatever, but it’s been my experience that the more times you come across an idea, the more times it coalesces in your head. Consider this another marketing touchpoint from the sicko coalition.

Coming from the publishing industry, I have found the DIY TTRPG space refreshingly collaborative, open, and generous. I teach a class and one of the lectures I do is on TTRPGs and the history of D&D and how so many innovations in game design have come from fans and enthusiasts just doing it for the love of the game.

I am writing again.

Here’s another Cairn 2e background. I scavenged some parts from when I had dwarves in my campaign to make this background.

Stone-Worker

Ever risking disturbing the Thousand Thousand Sleepers slumber, those of the Order of the Stone-Workers, a religious order/trade union, are among the bravest of Otani hillfolk. The Metal-Spoolers inducted you and inlaid your skin with metal threads. The earth speaks to you and allows you to mold, forge, and craft through it.

• 3d6 sp, imperial minted coins
• Rations (3 uses)
• Candle Helmet (+1A, dim, 6 uses)
• Rope (30 feet)
• Hammer (d6)
• Metal bucket

What is your skin inlaid with?

1. Gold. Minersight: You can always see gold, silver, and gemstones in vivid colors.
2. Copper. Tremorsense: By taking 1 Fatigue, you can sense movements through the ground for as long as you concentrate on them.
3. Tin. Stonemeld: By taking 1 Fatigue, you can melt into stone surfaces.
4. Tungsten. Forge-hand: By taking 1 Fatigue, your off-hand can heat up to forge-hot temperatures (d6 damage). Must be quenched to be extinguished.
5. Iron. Magnetic Sense: By taking 1 Fatigue, you can align yourself to a piece of metal you have previously designated. You know which direction that object is.
6. Silver. Silverspool: By taking 1 Fatigue, you may extract strands of silver from your inlays. The strands are long enough to wrap around a weapon, as strong as wire, and as fine as hair. They disintegrate after a watch when separated from your skin.

What was your role in the depths?

1. Miner. Take a pickaxe (d6) and a fume-rat, a rat that glows green whenever exposed to toxins. It is immune to toxins. Name your rat.
2. Apprentice Metal-Spooler. Take fine metal-working tools and a sheet of the metal inlaid in your skin.
3. Blacksmith. Take a small anvil (bulky) and tongs.
4. Tinker. Take metal shears (d6) and a tube of liquid patching metal (3 uses).
5. Death-Urn Maker. Take the urn meant for you. Destroying it inflicts a generational curse: The cursed person physically deteriorates over the span of 2d20 months.
6. Union Rep. Take black powder bombs (d10, blast, 3 uses) and a crowbar (d6).