I had a rant all written up about the attack on the hobby I use as a writing vehicle. After thinking about it and reading more from people who are more informed than I am about the legal aspects of Big Business Evil GuyTM (BBEG) trying to dump on the independent creators, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself and my gaming group. If you’re interested in hearing my opinion, drop a comment, and I’ll consider sharing. Otherwise, I left a list of reference articles and YouTube videos for you to peruse to get a sense of the community outrage.
Because of the brouhaha surrounding the release of the new content grab disguised as a “new and improved” Open Game License, or OGL, I’ve been talking with my fellow gamers at the table. I’ve been trying to figure out ways to tease as much official Dungeons & Dragons language from my stories as possible. I am re-imagining the “halfling” (they’re called Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings and Kender in the Dragonlance stories) to start. I already have ideas on a few of the changes I want to make, beginning with the origin of my version of “halflings.”
In addition, I’ll begin introducing characters and location descriptions from the novel I wrote for National Novel Writing Month (https://nanowrimo.org/) last November, the working title of which is “Meegan’s Quest.” I’ll share my hand-drawn map of the Adaran continent and the Western Wood (someday, I’ll get it professionally rendered) and begin drawing a regional map where the story takes place. At some point, I will have improved and edited my novel as far as /I/ am able. After that, it will be time to call in someone with more story development experience than I have to go through and check for even MORE inconsistencies and grammatical errors.
In the meantime, I’m in the midst of the Round 1 edits to Meegan’s story. I will be looking for additional Alpha readers soon. I have some feedback from the closest of my readers, notably First Reader, but I will need more once I filter through what I’ve already received. In the meantime, I’m about halfway through my first read-through of the first draft. I’m making a few grammatical corrections, changing words I’ve overused, strengthening as many verbs as possible, and adding scenes to enhance character personalities. I also ensure I stay in the limited third-person point of view (PoV).
Stay tuned. It’s gonna be a ride.
REFERENCES:
D&D: WotC Announces Big Changes For The Open Gaming License In Upcoming OGL 1.1
Dungeons & Dragons’ New License Tightens Its Grip on Competition
J.J. Shaun 