It’s been quiet so far on the home front here at my blog. And that’s probably because it got mighty busy around the holiday season. Graduate school final projects are no joke and then the holidays hit, which included my birthday and New Years as it does every year. In between all of that, of course, I’ve been tackling the amazing project I’ve been doing for Fate Core – my setting in psychological horror, No Exit.
The process of creating No Exit has been a learning curve and an eye-opening process for me. Not only am I organizing a lot of thoughts about the basics of psychological horror, I’ve been learning quite a lot about how much to show an audience in a gaming book. Coming from a fiction and screen writing background, writing for games is a whole new ballgame that requires a different way of thinking. Thankfully I’ve got a great editor, John Adamus, mentoring me through the process. His comments on my first draft made me cringe, then laugh, then cringe again. Then crack up a heck of a lot in retrospect. A handy tip: whenever your editor hands you a note, always consider it carefully and decide whether you agree or not before you start making changes. Unless it’s about grammar or layout, in which case you’re probably terribly wrong and should fix it immediately.
My favorite part of creating No Exit so far has been messing with the mechanics. I’ve enjoyed finding out the best way to fight an environment in a game and what would be the best way to do things like, oh, attack an apartment building. What fascinated me was the idea that you could do these things with Fate Core easily – need a new mechanic? Hack in there and create what was needed. Don’t have a skill that exactly fits what you need? Make it work yourself. The sky really is the limit. I’ve had a lovely time finding a way to turn people’s memories into weapons and creating a mechanic for it.
Speaking of new things I’m excited to see – the other stretch goal settings and scenarios for Fate Core have me excited to give them a chance. I really want to play White Picket Witches by Filamena Young and Camelot Trigger by Rob Wieland because small town witches and futuristic Camelot just sounds like fun. And it only goes to show what you can do with Fate Core – which, as far as I can tell, is pretty much anything.
I’ve also been delving into some other inspirations for No Exit recently. Here’s some things I’ve been listening to and watching to keep me in the mindset of this setting:
Songs:
“Amen” by Leonard Cohen, “Seven Exodus” by Tub Ring, “No Light” by Florence + The Machine
Television:
“Lost”, “Twin Peaks”
Movies:
“Identity”, “Jacob’s Ladder”
Today I hope to complete draft two and send it on it’s way. A change of scene is hard when you’re trying to write scary and you’re sitting in the bright sunny SoCal sun!