I don’t usually talk about my non-gaming life on this blog, but in the Fall of last year, my job changed significantly thanks to some big reorganizations at my company. For the past six months, I’ve been waking up at 3:30am to be on European calls when home and have increased my travel exponentially. Since December, I’ve been to Amsterdam twice, São Paolo, Lisbon, Cape Town, and Istanbul for work, plus New Orleans for a friend’s milestone birthday, Los Angeles to visit my son, and St. Paul to visit my daughter. As a result, my life has been a haze of jet lag, sleep deprivation, and spikes of stress. Add everything going on in the world (and U.S. specifically) politically plus some other personal events, and it’s been… a lot.

I had the foresight to begin this writing journey with a few installments already completed. But, as work and travel consumed my hours, I started falling behind on writing. These past two weeks, I’ve written all the way up until my (self-imposed) Saturday publication date, Issue 4b finished and sent from a hotel in Istanbul and Issue 4c through jet-lagged yawns and bleary eyes finally back at home after weeks away. I’m writing this Reflections post right up until my deadline, still bone weary.

At several points, I thought that I probably should pause this Age of Wonders project. It’s not like a large and teeming audience is waiting breathlessly… this is a solo-gaming and writing hobby for me, for my own enjoyment. I’ve done almost nothing to publicize or broadcast the story, in part because I don’t want the pressure of writing for others (so why publish it all? because some pressure helps keep me going). Ultimately, however, it’s been more fun than a burden to carry Emah, Kami, Maly, and Destiny around the world with me, and I’m still curious about what’s going to happen next.

Anyway, I’m quite proud of Issue 4. I don’t think my writing quality has suffered significantly despite my duress, and I haven’t cut corners in my process – indeed, this past installment with the game notes is the single longest post to date! If you go all the way back to when I first started tinkering with the idea of a homebrewed world using solo-rpg gaming to write serial fiction, I’ve written more than 30 installments of Age of Wonders. When I think about the barriers personally and logistically over that time, it’s pretty cool that I haven’t missed a week of publication.

Thankfully, I’m stepping away from this job that’s consumed me so consistently for the past 6+ months. We’ve hired my backfill, based in Amsterdam, and I’m spending the next few weeks helping onboard her. Then I’ll take some much-needed time off, sleep for days and days, and figure out what to do next vocationally. Hopefully—he says brimming with optimism—this reclaiming of my time will mean only good things for my writing generally and this blog specifically. Fingers crossed.

Why the Kami Cut-Scene?

If I had been writing weeks ahead, I would have likely swapped Issue 4c with 4b so that they could roughly be in chronological order. As it is, the scene with Kami and Inspector Calenta jumps us back in time a bit, filling in Kami’s activities while Emah recovers from her injuries. Why did I choose to write a cut-scene like that one, especially given the cliffhanger or 4b? Why didn’t I just jump back into the action, especially since I’ve spent so much time talking about how Crusaders is a game meant primarily as a comic-book action simulator?

Through all my travel and general fatigue, I was feeling like I’d lost the plot with Kami. She is a character stoked with vengeance against the man who disfigured her, and decided at the outset of our story to enact that vengeance with her newfound power. Yet along the way she fell into the wider changes happening across Oakton, including an incursion by underground ratfolk no one knew existed before. She’s now contracted by the City Watch, pulled away from her management of the Golden Heron brothel, and feeling manipulated by the Watch Inspector who contracted her. In addition, she’s the only protagonist directly transformed by the Wyrding, so there are questions about recent events that only she can answer. That’s a lot of tangled motivations and story arcs, and I found each third Issue installment from Kami’s perspective increasingly confusing to write.

Voila… a scene with Kami and Inspector Calenta that helps me fill in some gaps, explore motivations and past events, and helps me “locate” her as a character. When I’m writing longform fiction, I sometimes take breaks to write solo scenes like this one. Sometimes those scenes make it into the final form of the text, sometimes not. I’m someone who has never really experienced writer’s block, but I do occasionally lose my way in the flow of the story. Scenes like Issue 4c help me reorient.

Marching Towards Issues 5 & 6

The other decision I made in Issue 4 is to take a break from ratfolk antagonists. Though I’m happy to have discovered Tatter and the underground warrens from my organic gameplay, I’m beginning to feel both a) another fight with ratfolk lieutenants and mobs is boring… I want to have more supers-on-supers action, and b) now that we know the ratfolk are being manipulated by Tatter, rampantly killing them is more problematic than before (to be clear, it was always somewhat problematic, but this is the gray area of TTRPG nonhumanoid antagonists, especially if they don’t speak the same language as the protagonists).  

At the end of installment 4b, I set up the next action sequence without saying who was screaming or why. I didn’t even know the answer to those questions when I wrote it, figuring I would discover it later. The game-notes version of 4c provides the answers, and I’m truly excited by the fireworks about the be set off in Issue 5.

That said, assuming Issue 5 deals primarily with the battle and aftermath (which should be relationally quite complicated), am I on track to resolve the ratfolk plot by the end of Issue 6? Recall that I’d wanted each 6-issue arc to be somewhat contained in a “trade paperback” story, like the comics, creating two TPBs per year. I have a couple of ideas on how I might get from here to there, but I’m finding this story just unpredictable enough to be difficult to direct. For me, this is a feature and not a bug… the emergent storytelling is great fun, and why I’m playing a game in the background with dice rather than just plotting and writing fiction. But it does make my idea of 6-Issue story arcs challenging.

So, let’s see what happens. Hopefully I can find a way to tie a bow on the ratfolk stuff by end of Issue 6 without it feeling forced. If not, maybe I’ll extend the ratfolk plot over 12 Issues and find a different plot to tie up in the first TPB. Or, if all else fails, I’ll just plow through and not worry overly much about the TPB structure. It’s my writing experiment, right? I’ll give myself some grace, if possible.

Another Great Cover

Finally, thanks again to Roland Brown for a vivid and compelling cover. For some reason I particularly like Issue 4’s cover… maybe it’s the contrast with the black background, or the cool light-border effects, or finally envisioning the box I had only vaguely described. It’s amazing to have found an artist who is willing to collaborate with me month after month, and I’m very grateful.

And that’s it! No rules reflections this time, as I feel like I’m in my groove with Crusaders. Now it’s all story and balancing encounters to be fun!

If you’re enjoying the story or have suggestions, drop me a comment below or feel free to email me at jaycms@yahoo.com.

Next: Things Get Tangled! [with game notes]

This is insane, Maly thought, eyes wide, as she pushed her way through startled and confused ratfolk. Their fur was faintly oily and left an unpleasant residue on her skin. Her hands, arms, shoulders, and thighs all felt unclean and, she was sure, stank of the same animal musk and trash odor that filled her nostrils. Yet she had no time to linger upon the press of small, furred bodies pushing against her from all sides, nor the wave of chittering squeals of surprise. Maly ducked and wove deftly through the crowd’s backs, as though swimming upstream through a river of bodies. She hoped the shock of her presence would delay and confuse the ratfolk mob enough that her own back was free of claws and stabbing weapons. So far, it had worked. Just keeping moving, she goaded herself forward. Be gone before they register you’re there.

Get the box! a savage voice roared over her thoughts. Destiny the panther had never, in their short time together, sounded so feral and filled with battle lust.

But why!? Maly answered desperately, shoving a particularly big ratfolk out of the way and stepping into the resulting open space. She ducked forward through the press. “What’s the plan?” she said aloud, knowing the panther could somehow hear her.

Just do it!

“You’re not a very good guardian,” Maly muttered. “You’ve gotten me in far more danger than before I met you.”

I’ve never been your guardian, child, the voice grated in her skull. Is that what you thought?

“What are you then?” she panted.

Vengeance! Always vengeance.

Maly ground her teeth. What did a jeweled box have to do with vengeance? She’d made it deep into the crowd and could, from her ducked position, catch glimpses of the robed figure atop the dais. It had stopped chanting and was pointing a finger to the back of the room, where Maly’s companions, she assumed, still stood.

No time for questions. With a grunt she redoubled her efforts.

Something clamped upon Maly’s bicep and spun her around. She gasped as she faced one of the hulking rat-creatures, like the one that had tackled her outside of the jail. It stood as tall as her, with broadly muscled shoulders, long and wiry furred arms ending in frightening black claws. In her brief battle with the other brute, those claws had torn through her leather armor. Maly jerked her arm free reflexively and pulled a dagger from its sheathe. The rat creature squealed hideously.

She was dimly aware that the mob all around her had turned in unison, their backs now to the nearby dais. An unseen wave rippled through the crowd, and they began chittering wildly. As a living tide, they swarmed past Maly towards the back of the room, even as she faced off against the large, primal ratfolk in front of her. The thing’s black eyes gleamed in torchlight as it lunged at her.

Maly sidestepped and swiped with her dagger, but the thing was as fast as it was vicious. Her blade struck only air, and she danced backwards to stay out of its reach.

Meanwhile, the mob of ratfolk had surged past the two combatants, ignoring them to rush the back of the room where Emah, Destiny, and Kami had been when Maly had begun this madcap plan. In shockingly little time, she found herself alone on the hard-packed dirt floor, she and the hulking ratfolk circling one another.

A flash of light drew Maly’s attention. The four robed creatures that had been nearest the dais now stood with their backs to her, behind the roiling mass of ratfolk. As they raised their arms, sickly green energy pulsed around their clawed hands. They lobbed glowing balls, like snowballs made of ooze, over the crowd’s heads and to the back of the room. Maly had no idea what the attacks were, but she knew that her time had more than run out. She needed to deal with this brute in front of her, get the box, and get out of here.

As if on cue, the creature dove at her, snarling, hands outstretched. Maly rolled to one side and rose onto one knee.

From the dais, the ratfolk leader was chittering madly, its attention now focused on her. It pointed a clawed finger in her direction. She swallowed. This was not good.

Growling, Maly used the ratfolk brute’s tactics against it, launching herself with dagger outstretched. The creature hadn’t anticipated the move and thus was too slow to prevent Maly burying her weapon into the thing’s throat. Hot blood spurted as she rode the ratfolk’s body to the floor, then rolled forward to the edge of the dais.

Without conscious thought, Maly leapt nimbly upon the raised floor. She had never been tall for her age, but she towered over the robed leader in front of her. In one fluid motion she sheathed her dagger and scooped up the jeweled box in both arms, her legs pushing her as fast as possible to a side curtain, which she desperately hoped was an exit.

“I have the box!” she panted to the empty room.

From behind her, the robed ratfolk let out a high screech, and for a fleeting moment Maly heard the word STOP! in her mind, the voice that of a teenage, panicked girl. Maly’s steps faltered, and then Destiny’s voice bellowed, filling her every thought.

Go, child! GO!

Maly blinked, shaking her head to clear it. Golden jeweled box clutched to her torso, she vaulted from the dais like a cat. As she landed, her legs were already pumping, her eyes wide in the fading torchlight.

Maly dove through the curtain in front of her, heedless as to what might be on the other side. As she tore through the hanging barrier, she could hear the fearful, urgent chittering of the ratfolk leader, alone at the foot of the rat-god statue.

Then the sound was gone and she was hurtling through darkness, panting and stumbling forward.

Next: Ruuuun!