Tales of the Arabian Nights Board Game Impressions

Over the weekend, my wife and I played a couple games of Tales of the Arabian Nights. This week, I want to talk about why I think it’s my favorite board game ever.

Brief overview: Tales of the Arabian Nights is a story-based board game where players travel around a world inspired by the tales of 1001 Arabian Nights, earning points along the way. Players encounter thematically-appropriate characters, locations, and situations every turn, and choose how to interact with them based on a list of possible actions. This leads to a certain paragraph-length scene that fleshes out how the encounter went before awarding any relevant points or rewards.

That’s the bare-bones description of how it works, but today I want to share why I like it so much.

At its heart, Tales of the Arabian Nights is about stories. You could completely strip away the game mechanics, and it would still work as a neverending episodic adventure following a group of travelers figuring their way through strange and exciting encounters that grow increasingly bizarre. For example, at the end of one game my character had become a large serpent serving as a vizier with no control over his body — but still somehow commanded respect from everyone. I lost, but it was so fun it didn’t matter.

The board is kind of incidental to gameplay, mainly serving to provide some sense of movement and physical goals. Gameplay itself begins with encounters, which present players with a range of things to interact with (such as minor treasures, people like beggars or wizards, or house fires). Players then must choose an action from a provided matrix, listing interactions such as examine, fight, buy, follow, drink, etc. From there, you’re directed to a numbered paragraph in the game’s enormous Book of Tales.

This is where the story element of the game largely comes into the play. Players are also given quests that usually provide a reason to travel around the game board, but the short scenes that play out during encounters are what bring the characters to life.

It’s during these encounters that you learn exactly how the action you chose creates a story with the situation you stumbled across. Sometimes it’ll play out exactly the way you imagined. Other times, you’ll learn that the designers had something different in mind. It’s fun, maddening, and occasionally hilarious.

I particularly like the fact that these scenes’ outcomes don’t usually rely on a dice roll. Success or failure often depends on whether or not you have particular skills (like storytelling, weapon use, or courtly graces) that you choose at the beginning of the game or learn along the way. Even the bad outcomes are easier to swallow when they’re the result of simply not having the right ability, as opposed to punishing you for rolling a 2 instead of a 6.

At this point, the game may start to sound like a role-playing game — which it definitely isn’t. I think of it more as an elaborate choose-your-own-adventure, with more intricate paths that can shift based on how you shape your character. There’s always the option to roleplay your character, but there isn’t much room to customize the story just the way you want.

Another element that differentiates it from RPGs and is also another reason I enjoy it is the limited interaction with other players. Mechanically, the game boils down racing to get the most points the fastest. And there aren’t many ways for other players to get in the way. Some negative effects that can impact your character include giving other players control over your movement or which actions to take, but generally speaking the game doesn’t lend itself to competition. I’m a big fan of this gameplay choice because I think it allows everyone to best enjoy the stories being told.   

But it gets even better — this isn’t the only way to play the game. On the official website, publisher Z-Man games provides three free rule variants (scroll down to the Downloads section). There’s a PvP variant, which adds rules about interacting with other players and making it a little more competitive. There’s a Storytelling variant, which encourages players to use their imaginations and embellish the story part of the game even more. And there’s even a Solitaire variant making it possible for people to play it by themselves, tweaking gameplay and victory conditions to make it more satisfying to play alone.

These variants speak to just how customizable the game is. (We’ve already instituted a couple house rules to suit our style.) Even if the story scenes remain the game’s driving force, the other components like character traits and skills lend a level of flexibility that gives players a fun range of material to create the game — and stories — they want to experience.

And really, that’s what stories are supposed to be: personal and unique. Tales of the Arabian Nights revels in that truth, giving players a new experience to play and stories to create every game. It relieves some of the pressure players might feel playing an RPG, while providing enough of a mold to tell a fun story in a world of fantasy and magic. I’d strongly recommend it to gamers looking for something more story-driven, or writers and readers interested in exploring what today’s board games are capable of accomplishing.

Sound like something up your alley? Check out its official website or get it on Amazon today!

The Motivation of (External) Deadlines

If there’s one thing that my writing journey over the past year has taught me, it’s that deadlines are extremely useful. I think the only reason I’ve been able to finish writing ten stories in that timeframe is because they each had a submission deadline every month or so. Even most of the posts on this blog (including this one) can chalk up their publication to the fact that I’ve given myself a Wednesday deadline every week.

Of course, it’s not like deadlines were a foreign concept before last year. They’ve been a part of my day-to-day writing job as long as I’ve had one. And they’ve been super useful! But for better or worse, I find them considerably easier to meet than implement.

Part of the reason this is on my mind is because I’ve been working on a flash fiction story. I started writing about six weeks ago … and stalled soon afterward. But with the deadline approaching this Friday, I suddenly find myself with renewed inspiration.

Suffice it to say, the story is practically finished. But the situation paints other 2018 goals in a new light. I’m realizing the need to establish deadlines for the goals that don’t currently have them. But there are two issues standing in the way: 1) I don’t know what realistic deadlines would look like and 2) I’m not sure how I’d set them up as “external” deadlines.

I could pick an arbitrary date and post it here, but I question whether that’d be effective. So in lieu of establishing a deadline that way, I’m going to try to use the stories that have deadlines as deadlines themselves. In other words, the plan is to divide the short story/game (not sure which one first) development into segments and set a goal of completing those segments before submitting flash fiction pieces throughout the year.

Will it work? Maybe. At the very least it’s a plan and offers a similar sense of structure to what deadlines provide. I’ll try to keep you posted in these posts, including short updates in addition to the main content of each. So stay tuned and let’s see how this deadlines once-removed experiment works.

Interpreting Story Prompts

Happy New Year, reader! Yes, you! I hope your end-of-the-year festivities were great, however you personally define the word. Mine would best be described as unexpectedly tiring followed by pleasantly relaxing. But now, on to the post.

As you’ve may have noticed by reading past stories of mine, I’ve mostly been writing flash fiction based on prompts. When that’s the case, it means those stories are necessarily being read at the same time as others that share at least a few similarities.

Stories generally begin as some sort of idea. It could be a character, a plot, a setting, a scene, or countless other concepts, but there’s generally some seed of an idea that grows and/or combines with other ideas to develop into a complete story.

When I first began writing stories based on prompts, I interpreted those prompts as this core idea. The stories I wrote were often the first ones that came to mind based on the prompt. And I think that was a perfectly serviceable way to write, and was pleased enough with those stories even though they weren’t being selected for publication.

Then I received a comment on one story that helped me rethink these prompts. In this case, the prompt (how many times am I going to say that word in this post?) was to take a classic story and reimagine it in a different setting. I wrote a scene from To Kill a Mockingbird, placing it on an alien planet and casting the Tom Robinson character as an “otherworlder” (Scout was also called Cadet).

It didn’t get selected, but I did get solid feedback on it. And one comment in particular stood out to me: “Unfortunately we received a lot of sci-fi retellings and only had room for a few.”

Getting that note helped me view my story a different way. I figured my story was written decently enough that it wasn’t rejected outright, but still wasn’t strong enough to compare with other sci-fi retellings. In my head, it wasn’t being compared to all the submissions, but primarily other sci-fi stories written for this prompt.

This totally reframed the way I wrote most of my following submissions. From that point forward, I tried to think of the least likely interpretation of a prompt, and craft a story around that premise. For example, an ancient history romance prompt led to a story taking place in the Maya civilization. A mythical clash featured creatures battling with wits instead of brawn.

You haven’t read those stories … but hopefully you’ve read a couple others that grew out of that thought process. When I imagined a prompt about medieval characters would lead to a bunch of stories set in Europe, I thought about Marco Polo and wrote “The Journal of Wonders.” When one prompt asked writers to combine several holidays, I figured Chinese New Year would be an uncommon choice and wrote “Lunar Eclipse.” I like to think they were selected for more reasons than simply being different, but I’m sure that helped!

I want to acknowledge that none of this is new. Writers have been putting unique spins on concepts for centuries (and doing it a lot better than me). We’re supposed to transform the normal into the unexpected. That said, getting that specific feedback on my To Kill a Mockingbird retelling helped me consciously reframe prompts not as the seed for a story, but rather a seed for how to start thinking about a story. A subtle difference, but one that I’m trying to keep in mind with future submissions.

This takes a little more brainstorming time (at least in my experience). And while I’m in the midst of it, I still find myself fighting the urge to default to a certain interpretation. Plus, I’m still concerned that one day I’m going to bend the prompt so far that it breaks, rendering the story out of scope for a particular theme. And I’m already struggling with situations dealing with more generic prompts like sci-fi or dystopia (especially with tight word counts).

Needless to say, different prompts will lend themselves to this train of thought to varying degrees. Theoretically speaking/typing, there’s ways to play with things like genre conventions, the writing itself, or other elements of the story. I don’t know if those can be defined as creative choices directly inspired by a prompt, but it’s an intriguing exercise to think about.

I’m sure that plenty of other writers who’ve submitted stories based on prompts have considered this. Nevertheless, it was the topic that came to me this week, and it seemed like a nice way to begin 2018. Plus I’m glad to be starting the year with a longer post. Hopefully there’ll be even more to come. And let me know if you have any thoughts on this, or prompts in general!

2017 Year in Review

We’re just a few short days away from a new year, which is always a good time to reflect on the past year. So settle in for my 2017 Year in Review.

About 14 months ago, I resolved to take my writing more seriously. I began writing flash fiction and submitting to Splickety, using their prompts and deadlines as motivation to actually write and finish some stories. And I’m happy to say that looking back on 2017, there’s been some great results.

Even though the main focus of this post looks at my writing/reading through a quantitative lens, I know that writing should ultimately be judged on quality. But that doesn’t detract from the satisfaction of attaching a number to these somewhat arbitrary-yet-related data points and using that to measure my commitment over the past year.

And with that caveat, here are the numbers:

  • Words written (stories, blog posts, and book reviews): 15,301*
  • Stories written: 9
  • Stories submitted: 8
  • Stories published(!): 2
  • Blog posts published: 16 (counting this one)
  • Books read: 17

*As a marketing writer, I’ve certainly written more than this, but this number just measures words related to creative writing.

There you have it — my creative writing stats from 2017! Probably the craziest surprise of the year was being super blessed and humbled to see two stories published by Splickety. (I almost feel like that’s a bonus stat since it’s not something I have total control over.) If you haven’t yet, do check out “Journal of Wonders” on their website and “Lunar Eclipse” in their October issue (also on Amazon)!

Even starting this blog has been a great experience, both in terms of motivating me to write something (however small) every week and tinkering around with building a website. I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to evolve in 2018 — as long as it takes a backseat to actual writing.

It’s been quite a year of change, and I hope it’s just the beginning of a long, fun journey. So many friends (and especially my loving, long-suffering wife) have encouraged me in this, and I’m honored and grateful to have received so much support. And of course, I want to you thank YOU for reading this blog post as I continue to figure all this out. 2018 looks like it’s going to be pretty interesting.

See you then!

Impressions of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Just to be clear up front, yes, I’m going to take this opportunity to write about a game that came out five years ago. That game is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I’d been playing it on and off for three years and finally completed the final quest recently — and enjoyed nearly every moment of it. And as this blog is still in its early stages, I’m going to take a break from my writing journey to talk about this.

I remember first learning about this game when they were talking about the creative leads on it: Ken Rolston (game designer), R.A. Salvatore (author), and Todd McFarlane (artist), all well respected in their fields. While I don’t recall a ton about the marketing, I remember downloading the demo as soon as it became available, and seeing a rather expensive limited edition pre-order with a map, deck of game-relevant cards, and a small statue.

It got decent reviews, but didn’t seem to make a big splash in the gaming landscape (that is, until its lack of a big splash effectively put its developer out of business, at which point it made a big splash in the news). I think that’s a shame because it does some cool things like requiring you to read inventory descriptions to progress in quests, leaving surprises for exploring the entire map, or allowing non-social-interaction skills to be usable in conversations. I really enjoyed how this encouraged me to try new things as a player and discover what else the game could be hiding.

The story of the game begins your character coming back to life after dying in battle. In the world of the game, this means that you’re no longer bound by fate, but have the ability to shape your own destiny — and therefore the destiny of everyone/thing else, too. With this new power, it falls on you to turn the tide of war as dark elves invade your land. Of course, this is just your main quest. The game has 250+ (!) side and faction quests, with a variety of lengths. It’s enormous.

Even though the story itself is pretty linear, the game uses its emphasis on destiny to acknowledge your choices at key points. The coolest part of this is in a feature called “Twists of Fate” which mechanically give you different skills, but also serve as a record of the feats you accomplished and the choices you made. These, coupled with the “Destinies” you unlock (by leveling up and assigning points into Might, Finesse, and Sorcery abilities) help make your character feel very unique. And they all have really cool artwork.

There were a few issues like the occasionally uncooperative camera, irregularly occurring glitch, or a criminally small inventory for a game that throws so much loot at you, but overall I had a really fun time playing the game. Nowadays I imagine you can get it (and a couple DLCs) for pretty cheap on PC and the last generation of consoles. And if you like fun, somewhat experimental open-world RPGs (and don’t mind spreading a game over a long period of playtime), I recommend that you do.

Those are my main thoughts as a player, but as a writer/creator (to bring this back for a moment), what did I think? I still really liked it. Small things like granting experience points for finding new locations or interacting with bits of lore drove home the idea that this game is about more than combat. And that’s what I’d like to capture with any (interactive) fiction I create. I wouldn’t want to just reward the action, but the experience of exploring and discovering the world in a variety of ways. Easy to say, difficult to accomplish. But I think KoA:R offers a good example of how it can be done.

Goodreads Updates

It’s that time of year again … when Goodreads puts together its users’ Years in Books! Of course 2017 isn’t over just yet, and I think I’ll finish a few more before 2018 rolls around, but I’d thought now would be a good time to post the link to my 2017 Year in Books.

As you can see, it’s been a pretty solid year in terms of reading. I think there’s even been a few books that I forgot to track on Goodreads. The official count currently stands at 16 books, just shy of 6,000 pages. That’s about 500 pages a month! I’m pretty proud of that (even if about a third of these are graphic novels, haha).

In other Goodreads news, I’m moving closer to the point of posting “reviews” on books more consistently. (You may remember my mentioning this a few weeks ago.) But when I do, I expect they’ll look a little different than most (popular) Goodreads reviews.

For one, they’ll be shorter (two paragraphs, max). I also don’t think I’m going to include ratings In my opinion, ratings detract from the main content of review. I’m sure this perspective has been influenced by Kotaku’s video game review system. It’s also loosely similar to Brandon Sanderson’s Goodreads policy (which, like everything else he writes, is brilliantly thought-out and written).

I already have a loose system in place on Tumblr. First, I provide the title, authors, and date finished. The actual review begins with a description (really a sentence fragment) that I feel encapsulates the idea of the book. I then devote a few sentences to describing the plot without giving away too many details, almost treating it like copy from the back cover. Next I talk about some of the more metatextual elements like characterization, voice, or other aspects that stood out to me. Finally, I end with a “Recommended for…” sentence where I suggest what kinds of readers may be particularly interested in it. They may not be very in-depth reviews, but to their credit, they don’t take much more time to absorb than glancing at a rating. Plus, it’s the format I’ve used for years on Tumblr, so I don’t feel a strong sense to change them just yet

In the meantime, I’m still not sure whether reviews will make it to this blog in some fashion or another. I guess we’ll find out in 2018!

Goals for 2018

As we’re heading into a new year, I’ve started thinking about what I’d like to accomplish in terms of writing in 2018. I’ve never big been on resolutions, but I think these are good goals to pursue to help strengthen my writing. They’re loosely arranged in order of priority, but not necessarily in the order that I’ll tackle them.

  • Set aside a consistent weekly time to write. This is the basis for all the other goals. Right now, I don’t have a time of the week dedicated to (personal, creative) writing. Life gets — and will always be — busy, but if I want to take my writing more seriously, I feel like I need to give it the time and space it deserves.
  • Submit a flash fiction piece for every Splickety prompt. Already ⅙ of the way done! I didn’t quite achieve this over the past year, but it definitely got me writing on a much more regular basis. You can see the full list (getting a sneak peek at some potential stories!) here.
  • Publish a blog post every week. Depending on how things go, this could be the toughest goal. It won’t be enough to just write something every week — I’ll need to come up with some form of content that’ll work as a blog post. On my secret blog I would just do weekly status updates, but for this one, I want to write more posts of actual substance.
  • Submit one short story to another publication. Flash fiction is great, but this year I want to expand into slightly longer stories. I’ve done a little research into short fiction markets, but not nearly enough to say exactly which one I’m most interested in. I’m also not sure whether the better course of action is to pick a publication and write a story targeted to them or to write a story based on a preexisting idea, and then shop it around.
  • Complete a narrative-driven game. This one may be a stretch, but I really want to try my hand at writing a game! There’s actually a decent number of systems out there that make word-driven game writing quite accessible. The one I’m mostly to attempt is Twine (essentially a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure creator), but there’s also StoryNexus, InkleWriter, ChoiceScript, and probably plenty of others that I haven’t heard of yet.

There you go — my goals for 2018. One thing that I’ve intentionally chosen with these is to not pick a goal that’s beyond my control, such as being published in a publication. After all, why create a goal that ultimately depends on other people? (The thought of setting a goal to grow my following/brand crossed my mind — and I’m sure there are steps I can take to do that — but it still feels beyond something that I can do on my own power.)

It feels really good to have these written down, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they drive the theme of future blog posts. But for now, they’re just here as a reminder to help me focus on a select few things and keep writing!

Filigree in Shadow

Last year I backed The Mysterious Package Company’s Filigree in Shadow project on Kickstarter. Even though it was the first time I’d heard of the company, I was immediately intrigued by their concept: telling stories through series of packages sent to your home. I recently received the last Filigree in Shadow package and thought it’d be fun to write up a (minimal-spoilery) post about the experience.

If you’re familiar with monthly subscription boxes, that offers a pretty good comparison for what this was like. The main difference was that this was limited to a series of five mailings, and instead of products, each mailing contained a collection of realistic documents and items that told a story together.

In terms of a meta-story for the packages, they were presented as items that were being sent by the executor of a will after a distant relative’s passing, which gave a nice rationale about why we were receiving these in the mail. Without giving too much away, the items largely composed of documents like letters and journals, with each set providing just enough info to piece together one installment of story. While most of the items were things to read, there was one particular package that required us to interact with it to piece that part of the story together.

This overarching story followed the history of an English estate as it passed through different owners’ hands. Each package introduced a new episode to the story and also gave a reason to look back at the previous items. I’d categorize the story in the mystery/suspense/pseudo-horror genre, which lent itself well to the piece-the-story-together-yourself element of receiving packages in the mail. I don’t mean to be too vague in describing this, but I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone that might stumble across this!

Overall I had a really fun time with the experience, and would recommend it for anyone interested in seeing how you can use a very unconventional medium to tell a story. They have about a dozen different experiences with a variety of themes (most of which seem to have a suspense angle just like Filigree). Alternatively, they also market themselves as a unique gift — basically signing up someone else to receive the packages as a surprise!

Intrigued? Check out their website!

On Social Media

For those of you who visit this website (as opposed to simply subscribing to the RSS feed), you may have noticed some snazzy-looking social media links in the right-side column. I’m by no means an expert in any of them (I’m downright irregular when it comes to the stuff), but as I chart this journey into writing, I thought it might be interesting to talk about how I’m approaching social media.

The biggest ones out there (… as far as I know) are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, and Pinterest. Since I’m focusing on writing, I don’t quite know what to do with the latter two (though other authors do use them!), and I’m also throwing Goodreads into the mix.

But having social media accounts and using them are two separate beasts. I’m still in the early stages of navigating all this, but I thought I’d share how I’m considering approaching each of these.

Facebook

Currently the biggest name in social media. I have both a profile (which I’ve had since college) and a DolanWrites page (which I created a short while ago, but is currently not published). I’m not super active (this will be a running theme), but I anticipate this would mostly be announcements of published stories/other projects. That said, given its user base, it’s probably the best place to actively try to engage people.

Twitter

As of this writing, Twitter just increased character counts to 280 characters. I’m not very active on Twitter either, but I usually use it to share cool links or the occasional witty thought. Going forward, I hope to be a little more active — especially because of the big social media sites, it’s the one that most lends itself to focusing on the writing.

You may also notice that I have a Twitter timeline along this blog’s sidebar. Having one that updates regularly will in turn make this site more attractive to search engines.

Instagram

Similar to Twitter, but with pictures. So this relies on me not just doing something cool, but something visually cool. Currently, I have it set up so that anything I post here automatically gets posted to my Twitter profile too.

The thing is, writing isn’t a very visually-interesting process. So I’m not sure if there’s a way to consistently create compelling pictures that are writing-focused. There is a #bookstagram subculture of Instagram, but it isn’t something that I’ve dived into, and I’m not sure how well it would mesh with writing rather than reading. Needless to say, I’m still figuring out what to do here.

Tumblr

Unexpectedly, this is possibly the social media service I’m most active on. While I don’t engage with any broader Tumblr community, I’ve been using it to keep track of the books I’ve read for a few years. When I began, I’d just take a picture of the book’s cover and include a brief description of the story. Over time, it involved into a micro-review that’s rarely more than two paragraphs. Really, they’re so short that I hesitate to even call them reviews — they’re essentially a brief collection of thoughts about the book.

My anything-goes perception of Tumblr also makes me think that it would be a good place to consolidate all my random thoughts. Book reviews, cool links, clever witticisms, etc. While I think this blog should be focused on writing, stories, and my personal authorial journey, Tumblr could be the metaphorical window into my mind.

Goodreads

You might ask why I’d write book reviews and then post them on Tumblr but not Goodreads. Well, the first Tumblr post I wrote was literally a two sentence summary of King Solomon’s Mines with incomplete punctuation. I had a feeling that wasn’t going to fly on Goodreads. But since then, these posts have grown in length as I’ve injected more personal thoughts on each book. They’re still a paragraph or two, but they’re long paragraphs.

I’ve posted a few of these reviews on Goodreads, but it’s nothing I’ve done on a regular basis. I’m not sure what the standard Goodreads review length is, but I think there’s value in short, paragraph-length reviews that (in my opinion) hit all the main points. The rating system is a big turn-off for me, but I think I could get back to just posting reviews without subjectively rating each book.

– – – – – – –

Going forward, these are the social media sites I hope to use. There are other ones out there (YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, Patreon, Google Plus, etc.) that may merit a new post one day … but for now I think these five will be more than enough for me and my schedule.

All that said, social media is an enormous resource, and it’s not uncommon for companies to devote several employees to maintaining their presence. Fortunately, I’m not aiming to be a great success in that realm. Right now, I view these as opportunities to interact with readers, boost SEO, and basically “get my name out there.” I don’t intend for them to replace writing, and I’m not going to worry about neglecting them if it means I’m focusing my attention on that pursuit.

But enough about me. What are your thoughts on social media? Can you recommend some writers who use it really well? What do you think about its relationship to writing?

Quick Update

In lieu of putting a lot of time and thought into this week’s post, I’ve been focusing on some submissions for Splickety. (See the 2018 themes!) So know that even if it doesn’t seem like I’m writing, I actually am. My goal is to write a few of them in quick succession and then dedicate time to longer projects. Which hopefully means a more substantial blog post next week. See you then!