I have a confession to make. The week I received my first RPG assignment was the week I almost quit writing for games.
The company was in the middle of a few … growing pains, for lack of a better term. Due to various problems, most of which I cannot discuss because of NDA, authors were leaving the company and the fans were in an uproar. Rumors abounded about the truth of the situation. Most of them were wrong. Some of them had a kernel of truth, and I got caught right in the crosshairs. See, I had been hanging around as a soon-to-be writer on the Shadowrun freelancer forums for about a year, but hadn’t had a chance to strut my stuff yet. The two proposals I’d submitted were rejected because I wasn’t taking enough risks in my writing.
When a well-loved author quit in a firestorm of controversy, the line developer posted a need for a quick turn-around on a sourcebook chapter that was formerly to be written by the departing author. Seeing my chance, I pounced and won the opportunity to impress the line dev. He gave me the chapter theme and the deadline. The chapter was due in 1 week because the book in question was already laid out and days away from going to the printer.
Now the departing author and I had always gotten along. There was never any disrespect of him or his work intended when I raised my hand for the job. Someone was going to write the chapter and I’d finally gotten my foot in the gaming door, so I certainly wasn’t going to ignore a golden opportunity. Unfortunately for me, several serious fans decided I was a scab (that I hadn’t been around before this point) and poured on the hate through various fan-based gaming forums.
I could ignore that. I simply had to stop logging into the forums, take a deep breath, and concentrate on writing. Unfortunately, I was behind an entire edition of the game and needed to catch up plus produce 10,000 words in less than 7 days. To make sure I knew which events happened when, I posted a query on the freelancer forums about three or four older sourcebooks and what years they’d “happened” in. Not ten minutes later, one of the more experienced freelancers, who’d never had an issue with me before, yanked me through the ringer for not understanding how the dates and product codes worked, called me stupid and lazy for asking the question (instead of beating my head for two days against the wall on this issue), then declared to all that I shouldn’t be allowed to write for the game, ever.
The post sent me into tears. To top it off, said freelancer then posted to all the fan forums what an idiot I was, which only encouraged the fan hate.
This was the day I almost quit. I sat and considered my options. I hadn’t intended to cause controversy. I certainly hadn’t expected my fellow writers, who were getting their own share of flak over the situation, to dump on me. Not all of them did, mind. But few of them publicly supported me, preferring instead to keep silent for their own reasons. I managed, somehow, to keep it together long enough to write and submit my very first RPG work to the line dev.
The work got edited, laid out, and somehow – during the proofing process – a copy ended up in the former author’s hands. He went ballistic because a stat block he wrote up was still in the book, and he started posting about how his work had been plagiarized. That post I took offense to because I hadn’t even read his work before writing my own version of it. So I screamed back, at which point, he settled down a little and said it wasn’t me he was accusing of theft but the company. It turns out the layout program didn’t erase the last chapter so much as lay my chapter over it, which meant some of his old stuff bled through the white spaces in my chapter. (If you’ve ever used Adobe, you’ll know what I mean.)
But even though the author backed off, the fans did not. They were up in arms, offended in the way that only social media can give voice to, and nothing I could do would ever erase the bad reputation I’d earned by being a replacement. So again I seriously considered quitting. I wasn’t sure the beating was worth it.
But you know, I decided to continue. I enjoy RPG writing. I enjoy contributing to a game I played in my college days (and still have fond memories of). “Screw the loudmouths,” I thought to myself. I can deal with my writing not being liked as long as I’m getting paid for it. More importantly, if these people don’t like me as a person because of this drama, people who have never met me and never talked to me and know nothing about me, that’s Not My Problem. I have friends, a supportive family, and the line dev likes my work.
After that one incident on the freelance forums, during which the line dev promptly laid down the law about personal attacks, I haven’t had a single problem with my fellow freelancers. In fact, we’ve gotten rather chummy over the years. I’ve been accepted as part of the gang and simple questions (like my infamous timeline question) occasionally surface from all the freelancers. They get answered in reasonable tones without any of the drama of a few years back and we all play very nice with each other. Except when we’re discussing RL politics.
This subject comes up for several reasons. The first is the Geek Girl debate that has male gamers in such a tizzy. The second is because the past few days I’ve received several compliments from my fellow freelancers on my writing and my communication skills (a CUTE GIRL gamer, who CAN write, and has GOOD SOCIAL SKILLS? ACK! How do we deal?).
Game writing is difficult, and has its own slew of challenges. Some of them become personal. Some are just professional. But perseverance can be rewarded. It just takes one step at a time.
