State of the Geek

I've become a lot more creatively active in the last year or so, despite the birth of my daughter last summer. Or, really, perhaps because of it. I haven't been very satisfied with my job, which is rather dead-end and low-paying, so I've been doing a fair bit of freelancing on the side to both make money and also flex my creative muscles.

I haven't been too great about posting about what I've been doing here though. And since I'm getting to the point where I want to increase my online artistic presence so I can start pursuing larger and more ambitious projects, I figure it's time to get diligent about what I've been up to in the last few months, and what's coming in the near future. So in the next week, expect several posts (I've been a busy bee) detailing what I've been up to. I'm excited to share it with you.

First Thing's First:

The Indiegogo for Thou Art But A Warrior was a success, raising $3602 - which was 400% of my initial funding goal. I'm very pleased to have gotten so much support for what I have always seen as a niche game. More importantly, I'm very pleased to have been able to finally realize my vision of an updated and properly produced book:

It's very nice to finally have this off my list of things I want to do after three years of wanting to do it. And my new printer, 360 Digital, was excellent. Printers are generally loathesome and awful, but they did a great job and their service was wonderful.

What else have I been up to?

I've been doing a lot of writing. I was lucky enough to have the chance to write a campaign setting for the English language release of Tenra Bansho Zero called Ruined Empires. I blogged about the thought process that went into writing a feminist-friendly setting full of exciting material and grabby plot hooks over on Gaming as Women if you'd like to read more about it. There's also some projects I'm working on that I can't talk about yet, but I'll be very excited to post here when I can. And of course, work continues on turning Go Make Me a Sandwich into a book. I'm almost finished writing the last bonus chapter, but there's still an awful lot of layout work and editing to be done.

I've also been doing a lot of artwork. I finished the mural in my daughter's room - a year long project. I've also been doing some illustrations, including a geeky baby alphabet that I'm quite proud of. And lastly, I've been revamping my website - a huge undertaking in and of itself since I had, through some rather complicated circumstances, lost control of it for a while. But it's back now, and I hope to be selling artwork through my website before the end of the year.

More later, but for now I'll leave you with this as a teaser.

New Cover by Claudia is finished!

I've been meaning to blog about the progress of the campaign sooner; with 23 days left to go we're at $2340 - just $60 shy of the last stretch goal of $2400. I'm very, very pleased to have gotten this level of support with the crowdfunding, because I'm glad to have gotten the chance to really make backing this campaign worthwhile.

I'm also very pleased to have gotten a chance to work with the amazing Claudia Cangini. She pulled out all the stops in producing a new cover:

Art by Claudia Cangini, CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW

She worked very hard to include reflect so many of the setting details in the cover. I love the rich patterning and colors. And I'm really happy with how the knight on the front cover turned out; it was very important to me that the cover feature a heroic-looking POC that didn't just look like "angry black dude". It would be easy to fall into stereotypical ways of depicting these characters, and that would just be the worst.

Wow! Time for a second stretch goal!

I'm thrilled to have met the first stretch goal as of today! Claudia Cangini does amazing work and I absolutely can't wait to see what she will come up with. I've already started working with her and I hope to be able to showcase something before the campaign ends.

I'll admit that it's been decidedly strange hiring an artist to do an illustration for me, as usually the shoe is on the other foot. However, I'll admit that full color work is something of a weakness of mine - which is one of the big reasons why I chose to illustrate the new edition of Thou Art But A Warrior in black and white pencils. And stylistically, I think that Claudia's work will fit very well with the illustrations already done for the interior. So this is yet another reason to be grateful for this crowdfunding campaign; I wouldn't have been able to afford an artist of Claudia's caliber without it.

Of course, since the first stretch goal has been met, it's time to introduce a new stretch goal:

$1800: Set of 4 illustrated post cards with key phrase reference

Polaris is a bit of a weird system in that you don't have your character sheet sitting in front of you, like you would with most games. Rather, it sits in the middle of the table for everyone to reference. And the beauty of the system is that it works pretty well, as there aren't a lot of things to look at on the character sheets - since they're more to define relationships between characters than anything else.

What I have found, however, is that it's very useful for each player to have a reference of what the key phrases that drive play are and when they can use them. I've played games where there has been one sheet sitting in the middle of the table, and it always involves a lot of passing things around. So I thought a neat incentive would be a set of 4 (the optimal number of players) cards with illustrations from the new edition on one side and a reference on the other:

I'm a big fan of crowdfunding models where stretch goals mean that everybody gets additional goodies! And with personal budgets a bit tighter because of the new baby, none of this would be possible without the support of campaign backers, so I really want to make this as awesome as possible for people who contribute to the campaign. Call it a thank you to people who are stepping up to contribute.

Campaign funded, 1st stretch goal announced!

It's hard to believe how quickly we met the initial funding goal. After talking about publishing a second edition for several years, I wasn't too anxious about raising enough money to fund printing a second edition - but I certainly didn't expect to meet my initial goal in just over twelve hours! I am immensely grateful to everyone who has helped me reach this point, and to everyone who has backed the campaign already.

But we've still got 44 days to go, so I thought I'd make things more exciting with a few stretch goals. The first of which being:

$1500: New full-color cover by Claudia Cangini

Claudia Cangini is an amazingly talented artist who does absolutely beautiful work:

Artwork used with permission, click for larger view

If this campaign reaches the first stretch goal, I'm very excited to announce that Claudia will be doing a new cover for the new edition. Additionally, backers at the Caliph level will receive full-color prints of Claudia's new artwork. Please help meet this goal, as Fred Hick's gorgeous layout deserves an equally gorgeous cover!

Claudia has done some amazing artwork for some high-profile indie titles in the last few years, including the new edition of Meguey Baker's 1001 Nights and the Italian translation of Dogs In the Vineyard.  While I had fun doing the interior illustrations, full-color work has always been something I have struggled with, and it's important to me to have as beautiful a book as possible. It's also important to me to help support other women working in the gaming industry.

I can't wait to meet this goal to see what she comes up with!

Thou Art But A Warrior: Help support a new 2nd edition!

After nearly three years of working on it off and on, the new revised edition of Thou Art But A Warrior is finished and ready to be published! And thanks to the generosity of Ben Lehman, the new edition contains not only the expansion rules, but also the core Polaris system rules. It also contains the new illustrations that I blogged about previously. (Um, very, very previously.)

The Indiegogo campaign to fund a print run for the new book has now gone live.I'll be blogging here about the new edition, as well as progress toward the campaign goal and any stretch goals I might wind up putting forward. Please consider throwing a few dollars my way in order to help make this happen and to keep costs low for everyone.

Go Make Me A Sandwich

It occurred to me I hadn't posted this over here yet. I've started a new blog about sexism in gaming called Go Make Me A Sandwich. You can check it out over here.

Sexism in Gaming: A list of links

At GenCon this year, Simon Rogers asked if I was interested in writing an article about sexism in gaming for a new issue of See Page XX. Sexism in gaming is a pretty huge topic, and I wound up taking a pretty narrow focus for the article. Initially, however, while I was trying to determine what direction to take the article, I amassed a pretty impressive list of links that I wanted to organize and make public.

So! Keep your eyes peeled for the new issue of See Page XX. But in the mean time, here's some food for thought:

Detailed Analysis of 300ish Covers of Dragon Magazine

Part One of Seven (links to subsequent posts)

Response from Editor of Dragon Magazine


The Infamous Quote By Jonathan Tweet About Evolutionary Psychology and Gaming

John Kim's LiveJournal entry with the offending paragraph (the original post has been removed)

A scientifically-minded response to Tweet that blows him out of the water: Gaming is Not a Genetic Trait, Part 1 and Part 2


Holy Shit, What the F*ck is Gamecrush.com??

GameCrush.com: Find a play date

Explanation of GameCrush.com's business model

Gallery of Porn-tacular GameCrush profile pics (now with horrid comments!)


Sexual Harassment in Gaming (I can't believe this needs sub-headings)

Jade Raymond (Assassin's Creed) v. Something Awful

Detailed explanation of chronology of harassment of Jade Raymond

Ubisoft's legal response and SA's response

Horrific "she had it coming" response

Another awful "she had it coming"

Another "she had it coming" with actual comic excerpt (NSFW)

The full comic (NSFW. Warning: It's pretty horrific.)

Completely remorseless response by the comic's creator

"Where's Jade?" forum thread afterward


StarCraft II forum harassment

Summary of harassment incident on Team Liquid's StarCraft II forum

The actual thread (you have to be logged in to view)


EA Fail: Sexual harassment as a promotion

EA puts a sexual bounty on its booth babes' heads

Good critique of dangers of this promotion

"She had it coming" and rebuttal

Guy who won a prize and declined it

EA's "apology" - since retracted

EA Fail link roundup


Sexism in World of Warcraft

Awesome, awesome, awesome article about sexism in WoW

WoW Lore breakdown

Claims of "reverse sexism" and forum comments by female anti-feminist

"Deal with it or don't play WoW"

Trying (and failing) to have a conversation about sexism in gaming


Sexism in Game Ads

Video games as women that beat you

Discover the luscious hills and valleys of Rappelz (and here, and here)(Maybe NSFW)

Awesome chronology of Evony ads

Evony sues blogger for defamation over criticism of ads

Amazing Evony ad spoofs

Most sexist game ads


Relevant Forum Threads

StoryGames: Is Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress sexist or not?

StoryGames: Sex with chainsaws? Not sexist? Really? (start with post #4)

StoryGames: Racism (and sexism to a lesser extent) in the 4E PHB (turns into a bit of a shoutfest)

StoryGames: Gender and gaming

StoryGames: Why don't women play roleplaying games? (actually quite positive)

StoryGames: What do you want to know about minorities in roleplaying games? (not all that useful)

StoryGames: Maid RPG (quickly devolves into uselessness)

D&D: Gender violence in gaming (absolutely horrific)


Statistics

Nick Yee: WoW demographics - 2005

Men v. women in app gaming

Women outnumber men in online games

EQII demographics

Numbers of women in gaming


Women in game development

Sexism in game development

Facebook gets women into game development

100 most influential women in game development


Miscellaneous Articles

BBC: Female Everquest avatars sell for less than male avatars

Female characters in video games are designed to appeal to men

Sexism at E3

Excellent Breakdown of the fiasco at the PAX East Women in Gaming panel

Collectible porn cards in The Witcher

Frag Dolls

How D&D started a forum FOR women in gaming, closed it, and started another one to talk ABOUT women in gaming.

Female apologist for sexism and rebuttal

Derailing for Dummies

The One Girl in RPG comics

Are D&D encounters sexist?

Sex scenes in games

Terrible article, but good photoset

Converting chainmail bikinis to fully-clothed avatars that are still sexy

Careers for girls