Mearls.com

Lame Update II

I hosed the link to my LiveJournal, but now it's fixed. Yip.

In other news, I am now an official journalist of sorts. I've been hired as a reviewer and, hopefully soon, columnist at Wireless Gaming Review. WGR is bundled with a few of the leading computer game magazines, and wireless gaming is a real hot spot in design. I have a front row seat to the Next Big Thing in Gaming. Not only that, I get to judge it! It's a nice break from RPG writing and design. I'm also working on getting some fiction published. My first short story is set to appear in a collection due out this summer.

Incredibly Lame Update

Hey all! What happens when I get sick? I update my web page! Actually, this is a very lame update. The first item of note is that my LiveJournal sees a lot more updates than this thing. Second, my Earthlink account is set to expire at the end of the month. I have a new email address, and since I'm sick of spam I'm going to try to be clever and foil all the spam-bots out there. Hopefully, I won't outwit anyone trying to email me. My email address = A + B where A = mike_mearls and B= yahoo.com. Slap an @ between them and you're good to go. Yes, it'd be easier to have a hyperlinked email address, but c'est la vie. Anyway, feel free to drop me a line. Seriously, just send me an email. I don't bite, unless you really want me to.

NEW CONTENT! Check out So You Wanna Design A Spell, a page that covers how to format spells in the d20 system.

MORE NEW CONTENT! Game stuff now available on the Cutting Room Floor, a section of my website containing rejected or orphaned work of mine.

Yes, I finally updated my web page. It's only been roughly five months since I last touched this site. Perhaps you are wondering, "Mearls, what could possibly be so important that you couldn't take the time to post more d20 material on this site for us to enjoy?"

Well, as it turns out my professional life has been pretty busy lately. GenCon was a complete blast, though walking into it expecting a relaxing vaction proved to be naivete of the first order. I finally feel like a real, bona fide game designer now that I've hobnobbed with publishers, editors, and finally talked about jen-u-wine Super Secret Stuff I Can't Talk About (TM). I'm booked very heavily over the next year, which is a tremendous relief given the vagaries of doing anything on a freelance basis.

It's funny, looking back over the past two years and how much my life has changed. There's an episode of the Simpsons where at the end of the show each of the characters mentions the moral lesson they learned. Homer, being Homer, says something like "And I finally learned to stop being a money-obsessed workaholic." I used to love that line. When I lived in NYC and the only thing I had to worry about was staying awake on the train ride home after a night of bar hopping, I'd think about that line. There I was, Mr. Ivy League graduate with a sysadmin job I could (and did) do in my sleep, a monstrous apartment I rented at half the market value, and more time than I knew what to do with. I'd sit up on my couch (I didn't own a bed back then; my room held a bureau, a desk, and a couch I slept on), pat my belly full of Gray's Papaya hot dogs and far too many beers for my own good, and just before passing out for the night I'd think "And today, I learned to stop being a money-obsessed workaholic."

And today, while I'm far from money-obsessed (though I am more mindful of cash now that I write for a living rather than code) I am definitely a workaholic. My college friends, oh, but if they could see me now! I've broken up with women because I wanted to spend more time writing on the weekends than dealing with a relationship. There are times I think the chemicals that are supposed to drive me to impregnate someone were swapped out with something that compels me to write, write, and write some more.

There's something beautiful about doing something you love for a living. You effectively stop working. Writing is hard, but it's not work. The next time a game designer complains about how little money he makes, remind him that he is paid to create lies about places that don't exist. There are far worse fates in life, and to be frank few better. At least, from where I'm standing.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, "Our hero has been very busy, but in a good way." If you want to chat or bug me about anything, drop me an email at the address described in quasi-algebraic terms above.

Oh, and about the title. I recently figured out that I've sold over a million words of fiction and game design work. So, the Gate of a Million Dreams. It's like a metaphor or something. If you really want to know, email me and ask. Otherwise, I'll someday post an explanation here.

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." - Dr. Johnson