Author: Dave Sokolowski

Bohemian Rapsody Isn’t Good But Go See It Anyway

So, the Queen movie.

When I was nine (in 1980), I visited my grandmother in Michigan and on the first day she would take us down to the Ben Franklin store (that she and my grandfather used to own) and buy me a treat for my visit, usually somewhere around $10. Before that summer of 1980, I had always wanted Legos or Star Wars figures. But not that summer. For my birthday I had received a cassette player and had been looking to branch out into something other than a few tapes my parents owned (for instance, Peter, Paul and Mary’s Greatest hits because the 70s). I remember standing in front of a huge rack of tapes, all priced for $5.99 or some nonsense, and seeing the grey colored cover for Queen’s The Game. I had been hearing this really groovy song on the radio, Another One Bites the Dust, and I thought that if a band could play a song like that, then I wanted in on whatever else they were doing.

For my first music purchase, then, I chose The Game, which is a pretty solid choice for my nascent musical snobbery. The Game has it all: rocking riffs, huge melodies and harmonies, a swingy, jangly song about love and riding motorcycles, a song about suicide (!) and why not to try it, and of course the Chic-inspired/stolen bass line of Another One Bites the Dust. That album opened me to a whole world of possibilities and I was forever changed by that album and that band.

The movie Bohemian Rhapsody is not a great biopic of Freddy Mercury, nor is it even a good one. All the music critics are correct when they say the movie hedges its bets continuously, not really knowing what made Mercury and his band so special; they’re also correct when they complain that it’s really a by-the-numbers biopic that provides a very vanilla take on one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. For being about a band that was so adventurous, the movie takes very little chances. It’s a very non-Queen story about Queen.

But what the critics miss is truly the wonder of Queen, and how powerful they are and were. Yes, it’s not a deep or meaningful dive into Mercury’s life or what makes Queen so special, but it really doesn’t need to be for you to sing along and be reminded how seminal those Queen songs were and still are. That the movie doesn’t quite know how to deal with Mercury’s special talent for mixing the fun and bizarre, for taking chances that only now seem so obvious, for loving music so much that he becomes the voice of a generation of rock and rollers, eventually performing what is recognized as the greatest rock performance of all time — the movie has no idea what do to with these or why they matter, and that’s really alright.

Because music is art and art is mystery and mystery is what keeps us coming back for more, and goddam isn’t Queen an incredible band with so many songs that are fundamental to how we listen to rock and roll that it’s actually better that we don’t know exactly what makes them so special? So no, Bohemian Rhapsody is not a well made biopic that shrewdly cuts into Mercury’s or Queen’s personality to help us see them more clearly.

But it *does* provide us a rough outline of the story of Queen, with all its ups and downs, eventually ending in the super high of their once-in-a-lifetime Live Aid performance crashing into the bottoming out of Mercury’s death by AIDS, all the while reminding us, via their songs, that Queen was a truly special one of a kind band that wrote and performed like their lives depended on it, because, as it turns out, they did.

Do you like serious biopic films that cut and dive and explore personalities? Then maybe this isn’t for you. But if you like Queen (and really, who doesn’t?), then go see and thoroughly enjoy Bohemian Rhapsody. Go and relive the wonder and glee and just pure joy of a man and his band as they make true rock and roll, bringing joy to people across the world, just like nine year old me.

Go see it now.

What is a Blog Good for Anyway?

You can see from the number of updates that I don’t blog much these days. Not that I ever really did, but 2018 has really seen a slowdown of my writing on multiple fronts. For the first half of the year I focused on getting Sun Spots across the finish line; then, when it was done, I just collapsed in a heap that I’ve been slow to rise from. Frankly, I don’t write as much as I want to, whether on fiction or gaming, and my blog always seems to be de-prioritized no matter how hard I work.

Sadly, though, my writing overall seems to be de-prioritized in my life in general, and this year I’ve already said no to a couple projects that I would have like to have worked on, just because I knew I couldn’t follow through. I am currently working on two Cthulhu gaming projects (one is a post-apocalyptic scenario for Cthulhu Reborn; the other is, of course, The Advocacy), both of which I’m running behind on. I’m glad for the work, and will be spending the rest of the year on both of these. But I’m really not sure how to make it all work.

A friend recently said something like “you’re doing all the work you can do already,” which to me meant that things like this blog and all the other projects I want to do (hello podcasting!) just are not possible at this point in my life. For whatever my writing goals are, I have this whole other real life with a family, job, and everything else that takes most of my time. I have to regularly remind myself that I have chosen security over freedom, insomuch as that I have a great day job and overall career that pays well and helps feed, clothe, and educate my family. To keep all of that together, my writing just falls to the bottom of the list, regularly; it’s just how it is.

And, also, it bears mentioning that physical health is now just a thing I have to keep in mind. Right now (Sept 3, 2018 *already*), I’m nursing both a sprained knee and strained rotater cuff, both on my left side, both from trying to be physical and engaged and healthy in my life. Instead I just hurt myself. Suddenly I’m this somewhat fragile middle-aged man who not only needs to get and stay healthy, but who has to be really, REALLY careful in how he does it. Luckily both of these injuries were mild overall, but whew, hobbling around in a knee brace for the last few weeks really puts things in perspective.

All of this takes energy — energy that used to get me up at 5:30 am when I was writing and energized and really working hard at my fulfilling my creative goals. When my dad died last year, I really wanted to bounce back and use that moment to take on the world. But, instead, I’m just having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, getting all my work and chores and active attention-giving done that my life demands of me. I have a good, wonderful life, but my god is it exhausting.

So this blog sits and waits, a slowly festering pool of my un-attended writing dreams and efforts. I have so many great ideas for this blog, but it’s not going to happen any time soon. I’ll try to keep this place updated with my current projects, and look to continue using it as the overall home for my writing. But this blog will see just irregular updates for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, I need to go clean the kitchen.

Sun Spots Kickstarter is Finished

Well, it’s been a long haul, but the Sun Spots Kickstarter has finally delivered all its materials to all of its backers. I’ll need to do a debrief of the overall project at some point, but in short I think it went well overall and I was very happy and encouraged by the responses of my backers. They were all great people and very supportive and encouraging. I think Doc would be proud.

If you have yet to purchase Sun Spots, it is, of course, up on DTRPG and you can find it here. You can also find the GM Kit here, which offers some digital props to accent your running of the game. The book is definitely large and has a TON of illustrations, especially by Reuben Dodd, who worked his ass off to create a great vibe of the town Red Valley and its residents. But really everyone worked their asses off and the book really shows it. I’m quite proud of it.

As for the future, I already have a number of projects lined up of which I’ll be talking about at length soon enough. Thanks again for checking out my blog, which has been a bit neglected lately. Or maybe it was always neglected. Either way, check back and I’ll let you know what’s going on.

Maybe We Don’t Need Anymore Star Wars Movies

I saw the teaser trailer for the new Star Wars movie Solo last week and it has me nervous for the Star Wars universe. I’m a big believer in Kathleen Kennedy and what she’s done for the Star Wars universe. And while the new movies have been a bit uneven, they’re way more consistent than what Lucas ever did for us.

But one of the most amazing things about the SW universe is all the questions we have about it and all the little crevasses it holds for storytelling. The first movie, and the original trilogy, created this amazing universe that let our imaginations run wild. What is the Kessel run and how long does it normally take to run it? What happens if you fall into a Sarlac pit? What is the real history between Han and Lando? In our minds, all of these little questions help us create the larger and larger universe that is needed to fill in the details. Imagination is a powerful tool and letting your readers/viewers fill in gaps in your world with these question is a powerful tool to get them to keep coming back.

I’ve always been torn about everything in the Star Wars universe that came after the original trilogy, and part of me wishes it never existed. Because I remember what it was like to only have the OT, before the books and video games and Jar Jar Fucking Binks ruined everything. We had created a new world in our minds, full of possibilities that could never be matched. I liked the Clone Wars well before we knew what they really were — they were way more interesting as a question than an answer.

There is a lot of talk about how Hollywood these days is just full of reboots and franchises, and Star Wars is probably the worst offender. At a movie a year, the Disney-owned Lucasfilm is leaving no money on the table. We need to squeeze every possible dollar out of these universes and leave no pocket unexplored. A far cry from the maverick that Lucas started out as, his movie franchise now shows us how a sustainable creative endeavor can continue to provide coin with the right level of interest and investment, even if it means leaving no question unanswered.

It’s the same reason why sequels are usually so unfulfilling. We love a story for all of the possibilities it brings, and then a sequel (or, ugh, sequels) goes about answering all those questions and basically taking away all the mystery and interest that brought us to the story in the first place. Having mystery and unfulfilled potential in stories is actually a good thing, but Hollywood and Americans in general have little impulse control, and the impulse usually leads to revealing as much as possible. Because money.

My inner 12 year old, as usual, is torn. There is so much good geekiness available now, and Star Wars really leads the way. But when we over-explain and over-answer the universes that give us delights, then we steal their magic and turn them into commodities, something rote and known, without any mystery. I want Solo to be good, but part of me would rather have it not exist at all. Then I could just make up the stories in my head, which are way better than anything on the screen anyway.

On Providing Choice to the PCs

I started my 5th Edition D&D campaign last week and am very excited for it. It’s been a while (well, two years) since I started a new campaign, but, more importantly, I’ve invited a bunch of close friends to join me weekly on Roll20, with shorter hours (more on this later), which will make it very easy to keep going on a regular basis. With a consistent gaming schedule, I find I can focus my efforts on prepping and running the game instead of worrying about whether enough players will show.

But for me, running a campaign isn’t just about gaming. It’s about taking an opportunity to flex my storytelling muscles at the same time I’m having fun in a game. I can’t help but use the opportunity for running a game to find the story components and engage with those as much as possible. And it’s even more important in a game like D&D, where the story elements aren’t as pronounced as, say, in a Dungeon World, Fiasco, or FATE game (which are more rooted in story out of the gate).

So if I’m taking the effort to learn and explore storytelling in my 5th edition game, there’s no better place to start than at the beginning. And having just begun my game, I want to identify all the places I can get the team working on these elements, and it starts with PC introductions. But it’s not enough just to make the PCs’ various histories important to the game’s present — you need to make it matter with choice. Choice is one of the fundamental aspects of storytelling in that it fundamentally creates characters — when characters make a choice, they show their true colors and instincts. And the harder the choice, the more interesting the story. Does Luke join Darth? Does Frodo keep the Ring? Does Neo take the red or blue pill? Without choice, story is nothing.

For the first session, I came up with a list of choices for each PC (one each) to make that will inform their own personalities and loyalties. Each choice had something to do with the old world versus the new world. In the campaign introduction, the group has been recruited by Lord Silverhand of Waterdeep, but the PCs also have their own factions and other personal allegiances — will they turn their back on their old world connections or move forward into their new futures? Will they accept their new responsibilities blindly or do they second guess why they’ve been hired? How will they approach this new mission in light of their personal backgrounds? These are all interesting choices that give color to characters.

The best games and campaigns are rooted in choice. One of the most classic RPG campaigns of all time — Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu — opens by giving the PCs multiple choices on how to approach the game with a large handful of clues and information. Out of the gate the PCs have agency to determine their own direction in the game and I believe this set of choices (which ultimately follows the group throughout the game) helps cement the campaign as one of the all-time greats.

As a game master, it’s your job to set the tone of your game — the earlier, the better. Yes, we’re playing out of the box 5th edition D&D, but we’re also playing in my game, and I like stories, the bigger, the better. I don’t want to just crawl through the dungeons or wilderness and not give opportunity to let the story be about the characters and their choices. Just giving the PCs these introductory choices — just one quick choice along with one scene bringing them into the world — set the tone and gave each player something to latch onto. I think it was a good start.

I’m interested in all the ways we can actively bring storytelling elements into our RPGs. What other ways can we allow players and PCs to make choices?

So that was NaNoWriMo

November, as you may know, is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for those of us in the know. It’s an organized effort to help people write a 50,000 word novel over 30 days, and I have been avoiding participating since its creation nearly 20 years ago. It should be a good fit — I am still working on becoming a novelist, after all, and this is a place where you can come for encouragement, methods, and overall support as you recklessly tried to wring 1600 words a day our of yourself for an entire month.

So when my key collaborator and friend Gregory said that he was doing NaNoWriMo this year and asked if I would do it with him, without overthinking it I said yes. I looked at all the positive aspects to sitting down and doing this, and chose a story that I’ve been sitting on for nearly 20 years myself, my SF amnesia thriller The Tunnel. I looked around and realized I had some solid starts on the outlining process and good notes on character for the book, and that I may very well have enough to carry me through to the end of it. And so on November 2nd, I started writing.

For the first half of the month, I did alright, until things got crazy and weird with November and Thanksgiving and school (as they always do) and I ran out of steam. You can view my work here, and see some of the stats behind my first try. For the first couple weeks it was a reasonable experience: I wrote, using Scrivener and my outline to follow along, and got my novel up and running; I wrote scenes I had outlined, I wrote scenes I had not; I shoved characters into each other to see what they would say; I wrote a scene that had been sitting in my head for at least ten years and it was a beautiful experience; and I tried my damnedist to get up at 5:45 am and write for an hour every day, no matter the day of the week or how tired I was.

My goals for NaNoWriMo were many: yes, write a 50k book in the allotted time, but also get my personal writing rhythm up and running after a very stressful and life-changing year; learn to use Scrivener better, both for outlining and actual novel writing; and get back in touch with the novelist side of me who has been dormant for many years. Oh, and not lose my mind along the way.

See, I’ve always wondered why the hell they picked November for NaNoWriMo — what the hell were they thinking? I can think of 10 better months to pick, really any of them besides December would do, and with my family so closely tied to the school calendar, November is even busier now. To me, January seems like the ideal month, as it not only represents the clean, new start that we all need for an inspirational journey like writing a book, but after the 1st there are no major holidays, and life resumes very much in a day-to-day sort of way. November has one of the biggest, busiest holidays in the year, and with the stupid time change has too big affect on people’s abilities to keep their shit together (at least for me it is).

I don’t want to complain too much, but NaNoWriMo in November has never been for me, which maybe is even a self-fulfilling prophecy. I did write just over 20k words, and got some good materials down. I did get up most days before 6am and hit my computer whether I knew what I was writing or not. And I did force myself to not only better use Scrivener but go and see how much of a outliner I truly am.

Between 2002 to 2004 I wrote two and a half novels. Some day I might be able to turn them into something readable, but I always finished them with a feeling of regret and disappointment, not knowing why they didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I came to realize that I really need outlines and proper structure in place before I start writing. I noticed it in my word count every day — if I know what I’m writing when I sit down, I can crank out 1300 words/hour; if I have to figure all that along the way, it’s more like 800 words/hour. I can feel the difference in my mind too; being able to visualize scenes and confidently understand how characters are going to interact (because I’ve done all the background prep already) allows me to sit down and just write. But I really get mixed up if I don’t have those things. It’s been that way from the beginning.

I think NaNoWriMo is an amazing community and collaborative effort that helps people get novels written they would have otherwise just left in their minds. We need more books in the world, more writers, more creative people, and this effort is crazy amazing in what it tries to do. I’m so impressed with the overall community as well as the organizers and their support teams. As a whole, NaNoWriMo is amazing.

But I don’t think it’s for me. Yes, it was very important for me to do it this year — it got me out of bed, working on The Tunnel, and I now have the first 20k words in that book, which I will continue on early in 2018. But the pressure was nearly too much and I almost lost my mind. Another thing I have promised myself is to only work on one writing project at a time. I’m in the middle of writing a large RPG sourcebook (40k words is the goal) and am play-testing one of the scenarios here in early December. Plus Sun Spots is still on my plate as I work on getting the books printed and shipped out. So having this pressure of a daily word count, in November of all months (remember, tired and stressful), was not a healthy experience.

What I think it best taught me was that I am an outliner at heart, and that I really need a solid amount of work done before starting my novel. I’m glad for my 20k words and for the experience. But I think I might try it some other month.

Did you participate in NaNoWriMo? Did you finish your book? Is November as crazy for you as it is for me?

Sun Spots now Available in PDF

Sun Spots for Call of Cthulhu 7th edition is now available in PDF on DriveThruRPG.com. Funded via Kickstarter at nearly $16k with 533 backers, Sun Spots was originally written by Dave Sokolowski under the editorial guidance of Cthulhu-maestro Keith “Doc” Herber for an Old Ones book nearly ten years ago. With Herber’s untimely death in 2009, the book bounced between publishers before Dave finally decided to publish the book himself via Kickstarter and DTRPG.
 
Working with Chaosium to publish with the new 7th edition Call of Cthulhu rules, Dave has finished design and layout for Sun Spots, finally reaching the digital publishing milestone of PDF availability. While it wraps up its final hard-copy publication and delivery, you can read all about this new take on an old god in a 110-page PDF complete with three maps, index, and extensive list of interesting NPCs. Come see all the madness that’s brewing under the sun in a remote 1920s resort town. Pick up a copy now right here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/225259/Sun-Spots.

And… We’re Back

In brief, we have turned the corner passed all the craziness (well, most of it anyway), and am back into full creative mode. Two things of note:

  1. The PDF for my Call of Cthulhu scenario Sun Spots is now available on DrivethruRPG here. We’re working feverishly on the physical copies of the books and props.
  2. I am writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for those in the know). The idea is to write 50k in one month, and while I’m off to a slow start, progress is being made. I’m trying to post to both Facebook and Twitter on my progress, so you can follow there. The book I’m working on is called The Tunnel, and has been gestating for a long, long time. It’s exciting to finally be working on it.

Otherwise, per my efforts with The Tunnel and Sun Spots, I’m making a more concerted effort to keep this place updated not only with my efforts, but add some value by demonstrating the process of my attempts at self-publishing both RPGs and novels. So expect a lot more around that soon.

Onward!

Real Life + Real Work

Just a quick post to say that, no, this blog is not dead. I’m in a sort of mild hibernation, where I’m not only dealing with some pretty serious real-life issues, but also working on two large and important writing projects (one of which is Sun Spots, of course). Later this summer I’ll come out from hibernation and have all sorts of good stuff to talk about, but for now, I got other stuff to take care of.

More soon…