The Creative Process #4 - Hot Potato

I have a peculiar relationship with getting older. When I was younger, I think I floated through the world, not really marking the passage of time. Then, I couldn’t even imagine being over forty. Or a Dad. Or someone paid a salary. I couldn’t imagine the me I am now.

The standard advice stamped into metal plates for young people to memorise is to go to school, get an education or skills, exploit those skills for capital in the job market, and then something something retire. I have been blessed with the opportunities to not take that too seriously, or fall into what is needed without much forethought. I am always endeavouring to learn new skills or expand into some new area, even though I should be in the “exploit” phase.

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Occasionally this comes back to bite me. Friends or colleagues have picked a lane, devoted their energy to it and gotten great results. I’ve picked all the lanes simultaneously, and wondered why I’m not getting the same results across the board.

In any case, life is what you’ve done and what you’re doing. Never what you’re going to do. I’m slowly coming around to this idea.

I found a certain wisdom in a quote I stumbled across by Kazuo Ishiguro, author of Remains of the Day:

All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become.

Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky.

Years ago I wanted to make cool things that made me rich and famous. Now I just want to have made cool things. A curio store full of stories and creations. Two of my most important things I’ve created — my kids — seem to be going great, and testing a type of creativity I never knew existed. My relationship with my wife is a fractally amazing thing. If I can just make a few gizmos and minor wonders to fill out the shelves, that’d be fantastic.

Creative Noise

That was all the long-term. I guess the more appropriate quote for this immediate month is John Lennon’s:

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans”

There was lots of life and strife this month. My kids got sick - the little man even spent a weekend in hospital, which was exhausting for all, but he dealt with it like a little trooper. He had a fever and was a hot little potato. But you had to balance that with everything else in life, which was tough. He rewarded us with smiles and laughs. He’s learning to grab the world and breakdance in his cot.

My daughter, having sadly complained about not being invited to birthday parties, was invited to a number of them. I got to learn how to be a better Dad and person, when my daughter accidentally dunked herself in muddy water at a party, all the way up her legs, and caking her tutu in thick mud. Before the cake was brought out.

The appropriate verb, courtesy of Alan Watts, is “go-with”. Just go-with it. It’s not a learning experience unless you explain the situation and allow mistakes. It’s not a father-daughter relationship unless you trust her to be a kid, and let her be a kid. To be angry or disappointed is to reject what is going on.

Of course it took me a good dozen deep breaths before I got philosophical. But it’s just mud.

With all these little trials throughout the month, the timeless, platonic creative me was discarded. No time for long-term creative plans. Just do what needs to be done.

Creative Output

But what did I actually do this month?

Regrettably, despite all the inspiration and progress last month, I did no Interactive Fiction. Well, nothing substantial for my project Hand Me Down.

My output this month has been a lot of fast creativity on a deadline. I wrote an episode of Endeavour, the Star-Trek-like tabletop roleplaying game my friend Mike made. We’re at the end of our stint with Endeavour, and every player is running an episode as GM.

I had written an episode a while ago in preparation. Sirra IV. It wasn’t quite working out. I couldn’t see the fun in it for the players. My turn was coming up, so I created something completely new: Juventas. You can get it at itch.io:

As a bit of a spoiler, I mixed the idea of all the tropes of clones in Star Trek, with the recent ethical debates about AI Art and replacing whole strata of workers. It was fun being back in the GM chair, and I think people had fun. I fell into a regular trap for me: setting up a mystery and then being too mysterious about it to my players. Some of that is due to having an idea in my head but the players asking some weird question about it, and my not-helpful instinctive reaction is to say, “Yes, no, um, maybe, somewhat?” Some of it is just GM inexperience.

I was deep into Endeavour for part of this month. In parallel I yearned to do some 3D art, so started doing alternative covers for the different episodes. Here’s the one for Juventas:

I smashed out two versions of this in not-too-long. It’s not amazing, but it’s something I’d stand by as a journeyman 3D artist. I’ve started on a few others, and hope to offer them all as some sort of bonus content for Endeavour.

I managed to do some extra art that I am very pleased about, but to explain it will spoil a surprise. Maybe for a later newsletter!

I had not planned to create some 3D art and a roleplaying game adventure this month, but that’s what I got. I picked those hot potatoes up, and dropped some others. I’ll return to Hand Me Down soon, or I owe you a drink.

Creative Input

As a creative machine, I need inputs to form outputs. October has my two favourite things of the year: IF Comp and Roguelike Celebration.

IF Comp is the yearly competition for interactive fiction, typically parser- and choice-based fiction. In #2 I talked about my previous entry into IF Comp, Mix Tape, and why it was a mess. I’ve gotten over that now, and working on my own entries. As an honorable person and fan of interactive fiction, I’ve donated heavily to IF Comp, as well as try to review a number of entries. There’s some fantastic stuff in this year’s comp (check out Nose Bleed!) and there’s still a fortnight to go on reviewing. I’d recommend playing the games, even if you don’t rate and review them.

I’m in awe of the IF community who have done a huge amount of rating, reviewing and discussion around the 70+ entries. It’s phenomenal.

One aside on IF I noticed this month: With 3D art I can watch videos to get inspired and enthusiastic about 3D art. With roguelikes I can watch a live stream or talks. With Interactive Fiction, it’s not quite the same. IF demands your interactivity, your attention. You can’t be gently coaxed by it. You need to load it up and read it. Even talks seem to inspire from an academic arm’s length.

I don’t think I’ll defend that idea to the death, but it was interesting contrasting my different communities of interests.

Roguelike Celebration is an online workshop about roguelikes, procedural generation and anything within arm’s reach of that. They run a fantastic online conference with great talks, a MUD-like conference hall, breakout sessions, and just a thoroughly positive and creative vibe. Alas, I could not watch it all live because Australia is blessed with good beaches and cursed with bad timezones. Of what I caught was fascinating.

For example, there was a talk on causal graphs for generating content. For a loooong time I’ve been thinking about an online daily newspaper for a fictional city. One way to do that is be extremely simulationist and then someone extract the newspaper from the roiling chaos of simulation. That’s what I was wedded to for a long time. The talk reminded me of probabilistic graphical models which I know about, and give you a way to generate content without being too prescriptive about the simulation. Things can influence other things and you roll the dice and stuff comes out. This might work better for my idea because I can write a newspaper article template and then update the world, rather than the other way around.

These are the sorts of inspiration lightning-strikes I expect and enjoy from Roguelike Celebration. I’ll make my way through the talks in my own time.

One last element of October was intended to be a creative spark. I was fundraising for One Foot Forward, raising money for mental health initiatives. That went excellently with me meeting my goal of $1,500. As part of the fundraising I was sneaking walks in where I could. I got nowhere near the 60kms. I gave myself plantar fasciitis, which made it painful to walk for One Foot Forward.

My foot is getting better, slowly.

Games slipping through my fingers

Curiously, almost every game I was playing last month I have dropped. It’s just been a different kind of month.

The one game I didn’t drop was Kingdom of Loathing, but I had flirted with the idea. I expected to be able to play the game in fits and spurts, and even automate it with KoLMafia, a game that uses the API to play the game for you. But I had chosen a Jurassic Park-themed ascension path — basically they replace all the foes in the game with dinosaurs, which had an archelon that reflected spells and my character is a spellcaster this ascension…

Long story short, I couldn’t automate it, but was halfway through the ascension. I was slowly dragging myself through the campaign, but managed to power on through to the end tonight (ahem, procrastinating from writing this!) It’ll be good to keep playing but without spending an entire night burning through my turns.

Having abandoned all other games from last month, I dove into Disco Elysium for the second or third time. First time I tried Disco Elysium was early on and I hit a Linux bug. Second time through I didn’t get out of the hotel and didn’t return because I wanted to give the game my full attention and life swept me away. This third time was great. I was solving problems and making progress…

Until I died of embarrassment talking to a pawn shop owner. Naturally.

I didn’t really return to Disco Elysium, but I should. I love the writing and the freedom of play. I just need time to properly savour it.

I’ve noticed my idle brain has been keen on diving into some sort of colony simulation game, which is the worst possible idea. Those games are time abysses! I can’t spent my precious relaxation time on open-ended play!

New month, new potatoes

This upcoming month promises to be insanely busy. Everything seems to be on at once. I haven’t got any solid intentions for my creative work. It might just be reactive to everything else.

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