Project Ampersand

I've picked up an old project again: I'm un-writing a book.

This is something I started in the spring as a personal challenge and experiment to work on when I ran into blocks on other projects. I'm taking the fifth iteration of the world's best-marketed RPG and editing it for length and clarity. The goal is to see how much I can excise and still have the game feel like the original when you play. So far it turns out I can cut a whole lot. (Page 23 in my working document is the info that's on page 60 in the original text.)

My goals for the experiment are:

1) Determine how much of the 317-page original text is unnecessary padding that doesn't affect the underlying mechanics.

2) See how much of the original game's success comes from the rules and how much is what the players bring to the table with their creativity and enthusiasm. If the pared-down skeleton of the rules plays the same as the original, then the key ingredient is the players.

My process is:

1) Cut out all setting lore and fluff. Anything that's not rules text or something you'd reference while playing is gone.

2) Clean up the remaining text by rewriting it. Remove padding, passive voice, and awkward rule descriptions. Fix whatever's left to be as concise as possible.

Things that are important to maintaining the feel of the original game are exempt. The goal isn't to make the tiniest game I can, it's to make the tiniest game possible while still preserving the original's flavor. If that means it ends up being 100+ pages long, so be it. I'm trying to distill the game to liquor, not evaporate it completely.

I'll do several editing passes before the new game's ready to go. Right now I'm still hacking away at fluff and doing rough work. It's forcing me to take an in-depth look at the game and consider the rules more minutely than I have before. In the past I've always just flipped to the sections of the book I needed and only gave the rest a cursory skim. Going over the entire text line by line has made me realize that hot damn the writing is awful, but there actually are some very good bits buried in the word slog. I just need to dig them out and dust them off.

When I'm done I'm planning to release the distilled version as a free PDF. It'll likely be a way off because while this is an interesting project, it's also exceptionally tedious and time consuming. There'll absolutely be breaks for other writing.

Introducing the Tiny Coffins Challenge

I've been introspecting about the reason I've not posted as much (or at all) this year. It's mostly that my blog content is fueled by my in-person games and the material I make for them. Pandemic hiatuses cut that off and I moved to working on other things like zines and books instead. While I'm not going to force it, I am going to try and post more. Writing small bits and pieces along with the larger projects is probably good for me. I'm also going to start giving challenge prompts. That way even if I fail to write, others might be inspired to create.

Here's how it'll work:

It'll be an informal, open blog-writer's circle. Each month I'll post a prompt and some associations it brings up in my mind. Anyone who wants to can think about it and do something with it. It can be RPG related or not, just so long as you make something. Then over the course of the month everyone can share what they've done and compare where your minds went.

I'm not going to write for the prompts or be involved in any way beyond yelling them into the electronic void in an expression of Tiny Coffins. I may not even look at the results. (Though I likely will if you tell me you wrote something.)

We're too late for a prompt this month, so I'll post the first one in December. Hopefully it'll be fun and we'll see some cool things come from it.

Obviously and as always: Give content warnings as needed and no bigoted or -phobic content.

*If you want to share posts on twitter, maybe try using #TinyCoffinsChallenge. That hashtag doesn't seem to be used for anything.