I've taken two Very Long Walks over the last two days (9.25 and 7 miles, respectively).

I have needed these walks, quite a bit. Turns out that when you've been quarantined for two weeks, and then worked a week, then get four days off for reasons, you get jammed up.

I've mostly been thinking about Project Efficacy (my D&D 5e re-write), and listening to the I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats podcast.

That's been some very useful listening.

I have a hard time being analytical about my writing process.

Make no mistake, eight years into being a professional game designer, I do have a process.

I have a hard time seeing it, recognizing it, or directly addressing it.

Something about the combination of these walks and that listening material (wherein they discuss their [John Darnielle and Joseph Fink {and guests}] process) has shaken some stuff loose for me.

Namely, I need a specific set of circumstances to write a Big Project.

The longest things I've ever written have been Iron Edda-related (not counting Karthun, which was all setting stuff, and only half my project).

Those (Irons Edda) took on specific structures because they were married to the structures present in Fate.

This project?

This attempt to write What I Think a Major Fantasy RPG Should Be?

Turns out that there's not much of a pre-existing roadmap for that.

Makes sense, right? I'm re-writing the most commercially successful TTRPG in history. Of course there's no fucking roadmap.

So I've been foundering until tonight.

Post two Very Long Walks, I've realized that a couple of Very Important Things:

1. Writing a project like this means you have to break it down into manageable bits

2. I need something to playtest to figure out if these ideas even work

(Keep in mind, this is all Me Stuff. If you were to tackle something like this, it might look totally different).

Like, I basically tried to start writing a Player's Handbook, from the introduction.

I've got it outlined, sure. But damn. My brain doesn't work that way.

For the last two, three years? I've been focused on small games. Things where theme, mechanics, and structure are all intertwined, and I can write a whole game in hours, or days.

Totally different beast.

Tonight, something change.

The clarity I had after these walks allowed something to take shape.

Tonight I started to write In the Valley of the Serpent Queen.

In the Valley of the Serpent Queen is a blood and sand, sword and sorcery, Conan and Red Sonja, The City Stained Red, Mortal Tally, Gods Last Breath (thanks @SamSykesSwears), Swords Without Master (thanks, @Epidiah) ripper of a TTRPG.

Or at least, I want it to be that. It's obviously not done yet.

What it is already is a testing ground for the ideas that I want to see come through in Project Efficacy.

It's a proof-of-concept. If those ideas work here, then I can get them to work elsewhere.

If I can get them to work in enough elsewheres, that tells me that I've made something with legs, something that can stand as my own personal Ninety Five Theses nailed to the gates of TTRPG-dom.

That's a lofty thing, but isn't that what all game design is, at some level?

We don't all take on the 800lb behemonths in the room (nor should we, because there's a lot of game that isn't that)...

But every time a person makes a game, they're saying to someone else: "No, this is how I think this kind of story should be told."

And I think that's true even if the person they're speaking to never sees the game in question.

All art is a dialogue. We're speaking to out influences, to our past work, to things we hate, to things we love. But it's a conversation, nonetheless.

To that end...

In the Valley of the Serpent Queen is my own dialogue with a lot of different things.

D&D, the S&S genre, in general, my previously listed influences, and (because I've walked to their sounds recently), the works of @mountain_goats.

In the work of The Mountain Goats, there are songs that hint at another reality, another world that John Darnielle has or is creating.

I'm going through and making a playlist of those songs to listen to as I write this.

A *bunch* of those songs are on the most recent album? EP? that just dropped on Bandcamp.

But they're sprinkled throughout all the albums. I think most of them hit more recently, but I sadly haven't gone much later than Get Lonely. (aside from All Hail West Texas, my fave).

And with that, I untag the famous person whose own lamplight and work has proven to be a beacon for my own work, and I proceed to retire this thread.

As a takeaway, I recommend (as you are able):

- Long walks, or other things that clear the mind

- Listening to people talk about the process of creation

- Getting fed the fuck up with not being able to find a way into your own work such that you make one by fucking force