Or maybe just old…

… old enough to do nearly all my preliminary and initial writing on actual paper with ink pens. Technically speaking, I almost exclusively use engineering graph paper and various styles and colors of pens. I love to color-code! This is not a Luddite tirade against technology. More than once I’ve made a living installing, building, using and fixing computers. It’s about familiarity with the tools used in my process of writing.

I wasn’t introduced to computers until I entered college. Fortunately my introduction was just after the punch card machine had been removed. There may not be that many who remember the tech that old. It’s more detail than I want to go into here, so I leave it as a Google exercise for the student. The only personal (i.e. non-mainframe) computers were community use machines in the library and the engineering department. They were for students to use for specific exercises, not for programming. So my college years were spent using paper, not electrons. Drafting paper, engineering grid paper, three-ring binders, and spiral notebooks were the tools the students used. Even word-processing done on the library computers were printed and turned in on paper, not digitally. Hard to believe, I know.

New-fangledness

Enter a new century and computers are ubiquitous, relatively cheap, and with programming that is just shy of magical to someone who didn’t own a personal computer until 3 years after graduating college.

I’ll let you contemplate that for a moment.

Nowadays there are three different computers within sight of my writing desk, including a laptop that likely has more processing capability than the mainframe I first worked on. Not only that, they aren’t monochrome monitors like my first work computer used. No, that’s not a joke. So with all this amazing technology, why in the world do I use paper? Primarily because, discounting the mylar I used for architectural/engineering purposes, good ink on good paper is the most durable and longest-lasting medium storage medium.

I’ll wait until you stop laughing.

I have perfectly usable books that were published more than 60 years ago. They are far from rare first-editions; most of them are mass market. I can’t even access the data or the storage medium that was used in computers even 20 years ago. And in another 20 years, I’ll be using something that I can’t imagine that won’t even resemble what I use today. Nor will it be able to use the same hardware as 20 years previously.

But my paper books will still be there far more than 20 years. As a matter of fact, barring disaster they’ll be used quite a bit beyond my lifetime. They’ll still work without requiring electricity (unless Amazon decides to finish conquering the world) and I know exactly where to find the information that I’m looking for. I will still have paper copies of what I wrote 20 or 30 years ago that I’ll only need hands and eyes to use.

Computers are so prevalent now that I’m sure very little that happens in my daily routine doesn’t involve one somewhere along the way. There’s one in my water heater for crying out loud. I use them everyday, such as writing what you’re reading, but I use a lot of paper. Paper (and books especially) involve more senses than computers require. I find it easier to remember which shelf a specific book lives on than which directory and sub-folder holds a poem I wrote 5 years ago. As for writing, I learned long ago that the physical act of writing something down ingrained the information in a way that computers can’t. But I use computers every single day.

Computers are invaluable aids. Computers let me change what I’ve done MUCH faster than I can rewrite. They let me reference and integrate material that would take me days to do manually. They let me research and codify information that just 75 years ago would literally have take lifetimes to accomplish. I love having the world at my fingertips. I can literally carry a library’s worth of reference material in one hand. I can change fonts, spacing, formatting, margins and a hundred other things that previously would have taken days to hours if not days to complete. Computers check grammar and spelling and help my writing in many other ways, such as being able to reach out to you in this blog.

But while a computer can check my spelling, it will happily let me use the wrong word as long as it’s spelled correctly. So, I still have my copies of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. I still read books. I still print online material so I can file it into my own system. Perhaps one day a computer will write stories and comics indistinguishable from those created by people. For now, though, it’s still much easier for me to grab a red pen than figure out which combination of clicks and keys will turn just four words out of one sentence to red. I’m getting much better at it, though. For now, though, something things like color-coding are easier for me to do manually.

And I really like to color-code.

DDW

 

Computerized Character Generators AKA Chargen…

… have saved me from an old age spent building characters with pen and pencil and calculator. I’ve never been one for min/max’ing a character design to ensure I get absolutely the most possible “stuff” for my points. Some systems are more forgiving than others with combinations and permutations galore which, one one hand, makes them perfect springboards for out of the ordinary designs. On the other hand, it’s easy to get lost in the minutia.

I am exceedingly grateful for those folks that take the time and effort to program a character generator for any system, much less build one for a system like Pathfinder or Shadowrun where there are just short of a gazillion available options from innumerable possible sourcebooks with unlimited potential.

I claim writer’s privilege for the hyperbole, but the idea is still sound.

Sourceforge is a nice resource for anyone with a complete lack of programming ability to take advantage of their more talented brethren. With a little searching, automated character sheets can be found that range from a “simple” digital version that can be modified without buying twenty-five erasers, to those that calculate derived statistics or qualities from the data you put into them. And don’t require twenty-five erasers…

 

Heroes from Another World

Another great thing about character generators is that you can quickly build characters that can be used for utterly different purposes than intended. For myself, everything goes back to the stories that are trying to find a way from my brain onto paper (yes, I use paper; more on that in a later post).

Need a psychic for a superhero campaign? Try building a character using the Mage ruleset. Need a semi-mystical martial artist for a street-level campaign? Try designing an adept in one of the versions of Shadowrun. Need a nearly invincible armored biowarrior for a cyberpunk setting? See what happens if you create one from a Warhammer 40K system.

They’re going to need translating and won’t fit perfectly, but that’s where the craft and imagination of writing can take over. It may provide a spark of creativity to create a character that’s a little off-the-wall and many times those are the most memorable characters: the ones that don’t quite fit.

For use within a specific framework of pen and paper gaming or computer RPGs, those details and calculations are critical to ensure fair treatment. Fiction, my fiction anyway, is rarely going to be based around fair treatment of the characters, however. Mixing and matching different systems brings fresh perspective and generates new ways of looking at the staid (or even stale) concepts. As a writer, this is a very precious resource for me.

DDW

Sourcebooks Anyone?

I love Role-Playing Game sourcebooks. I enjoy reading them, generally more for the “fluff” of background and character details than the “crunch” of game mechanics and probability. To me, RPGs have always been about creating a setting and characters within the overall system and sharing their stories with friends. There are many examples of pen and paper RPGs being turned into novels, screenplays, and computer games. There are just as many that reverse the pattern and have rule sets created from literature and movies to inspire people to craft their own adventures that extend and expand upon them in their own personal way.

Generally speaking, I prefer focused systems (e.g. Champions) over metasystems (e.g. the HERO System), although I have used both. Typically there is a specific edition that “talks” to me. Therefore, with no disrespect to other systems and editions, and in no particular order, my personal Top 3 are:

• HERO/Champions 4^th Edition
• Shadowrun 2^nd / 3^rd Edition (some sourcebooks worked in both or either)
• Dungeons and Dragons 3^rd Edition (with a nod to the Forgotten Realms setting)

I hope to build up a library of sourcebook-style material for different Story Worlds to place on the site; the “fluff” kind, not the “crunch” kind. I hope you enjoy them.

 

DDW

In the beginning

I starting working in libraries in elementary school. I loved it. I loved the order and organization. I loved that there was always something new to discover, even among the shelves that I thought I had memorized. I worked in the school library in junior high school and then at the community library during high school. I loved helping people find what they were looking for, and sometimes showing them something they didn’t know to look for. I loved the smell and the texture of books: hardcover and leather and softcover had their own distinct combinations. The slickness of illustration pages in encyclopedias, the smooth finish of the paper in new books, and, of course, the feel of the pulps and superhero comic books.

To a young man, well before the existence of the World Wide Web and far before Amazon, librarians were alchemists. They combined esoteric formulae (also known as a card catalog and the Dewey decimal system) and apparently limitless familiarity with their esoteric tomes to guide querents in quests for enjoyment or knowledge. The best of them combined the two into an intrinsic whole and opened the path to entirely new experiences.

Yes, that’s a very fanciful description, but that was the magic I felt in libraries. To a large extent, I still do.

Used book stores were buried treasure vaults even when there was time and money to plumb the commercial book stores. Some of my fondest memories of my parents are the times spent exploring library and bookstore aisles, not to mention searching every spinning wire rack that held the most fantastic stories decorated with full-color artwork.

I’m sure that last bit horrified the comic collectors in the audience, but that’s where it all started for me.

My own stories may never have the opportunity to grace those shelves. All too soon those shelves may not exist in any meaningful form and that’s okay. Everything has a time and place. A huge part of my time and place will always be sitting in the aisle at the neighborhood bookstore, reaching out time after time to discover new worlds, new thoughts, and new adventures.

DDW