We want your mysteries! A not-so-secret cabal are going to put together a collection of Monster of the Week mysteries, and we need writers!
It will be a profit share gig, so each piece contributed will earn you a share of ongoing sales.
We’re interested in short (less than 1000 words), creative mysteries that have a cool concept and are easily adaptable to the users’ individual games.
I’ll be including my expanded weirdness rules for games that are more Fringe and X-Files than Supernatural and Buffy, as well, so mysteries that use those would also be appreciated. Get the draft at http://www.genericgames.co.nz/files/MotW_more_weirdness.pdf if you haven’t seen them.
We would also be interested in (in order of desirability) play advice, art, custom moves and other rules variants, and new hunter classes.
If you have ideas for other material, please write up one short sample mystery or other material (up to 500 words) and email it to me at michael.sands@genericgames.co.nz by the 18th of December 2016.
don’t worry about format for the initial submission: just write it up however seems natural, or similar to how I have them in the book.
Woo!
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Deadline?
Hmm, I may give this a shot! For deadline it says 18 December.
18 December is submission deadline.
I haven’t made any decisions about when release will happen yet (and thus final deadline).
Paul McBride Cool. A mystery you’ve run a few times would be perfect.
Woot!
Hmm, I could summarize some of the mysteries I’ve used in my M-Com game.
where do we send it?
Luke Green the email address is in the main post 🙂
Matthew Aaron Your mystery from Dreamation. Ssssssubmit!
I’ll be sending you my favorite among my mysteries.
I see new playbooks is your least desirable kind of submission, but I’ll say anyway that some playbooks I find strong enough I think it’d be awesome if they could be included — Reid San Filippo’s Mad Scientist and Luchador. And the Broken, the Protege, and the Hex, whose creators I’m trying to reach to suggest to them they submit to you.
apocalypse-world.com – Two New Playbooks: the Beat and the Protege
Zed Lopez looking forward to your mystery!
I can’t really see a reason to include an already freely available playbook in there (like the Luchador and Mad Scientist), but would consider others.
Bryanna Hitchcock — check it out!
Oh hell yes. I’ll have an adventure for you.
Max number of submissions? 🙂
Bryanna Hitchcock that depends on how many people submit things. We’re aiming for about 20 mysteries.
Looks awesome, I know I’ve got a few mysteries I’d like to submit. One question though, what is the maximum word count? Is it less than 1000 words or less than 500?
Sir Steelman 500 for the initial submission, will be more for the collection
500 words is … daunting. So – we should send you a basic pitch, then? Concept, Hook, Doomsday clock?
Felix Girke that’s the idea, yes.
How necessary is that Doomsday clock? I’ll have to carve out another 100 words or so somewhere.
Chris Stone-Bush I can handle it if you go a little over the limit
The low limit was in case I had to read 20 or 30 submissions, but so far there’s not too many (unless 20 more of you are about to email me something 🙂 )
Chris Stone-Bush Michael is the arbiter of course, but for my money’s worth as a veteran MotW Keeper… the Doomsday Clock is the backbone of the Mystery. If you make a good one, your adventure will write itself and make more sense. I could go on, but no one wants that.
As a consumer of this project, I’d rather see it go long and include a tight Doomsday Clock than be brief without one.
note that initial submission is really for a core concept and setup, you’re allowed more space for the final version!
Weird that Google just now gave me these notifications. I’d like to stay within the 500 pitch limit, just to get better at that sort of thing. Looks like I need to reduce some of the monster description to fit in that clock.
arturo martinez well, I finish work & take a vacation from next Wednesday, so any time before then would be okay. Hoping to do my reading and deciding while I’m away 🙂
I just sent in my first submission. I’ll be cranking out two more short ones. Working on Tumbleson County stuff tonight
Aaron B just one submission for now will be fine! we’ll sort out how many pieces from who as part of the next stage of the project.
Phew. I’m feeling better about only having time to write up a single submission now. 🙂
Hi all, as the deadline is reached, an update: I’ve got a good pile of things to read through, which I plan to do over the next two weeks over the holidays. I’ll get in touch early January with decisions and then we can get onto working on the final versions of everything.
So far, there are 17 submissions, so I have quite a bit of reading ahead of me!
Michael Sands sounds good. I held off on the clock, is that alright if I send that separately?
Aaron B don’t worry about it – I will be deciding based on the concept overall
Michael Sands Alright then. No pressure.
arturo martinez soon. I’ve read through everything (and it’s all great stuff), but waiting for a second opinion before I start emailing you all.
Looks like this will be a really solid companion: some new rules and some play advice plus loads of great mysteries.
The suspense is killing me!
Update for all those who submitted: decisions are made, but I need to do a bit of setup before I email you all AND I have my major local con coming up in two weeks. I will try to get emails out over the next week, so you all have something to start work on.
Update again: Just finishing up the arrangements (I want to make sure everything is set up right before we start), emails will go out in the next 2-3 days.
Aww yeah! * starts dancing *
Cue my tentative optimism.
Emails are all away! If you submitted something and haven’t got an email from me today, let me know (possibly not by email in case something is in a tube somewhere eating them).