Kalamazoo Day Two: La Belle Compagnie and "How shall a man be armed?"

This is a video I took with my ipad of the excellent armor demonstration by La Belle Compagnie at the conference yesterday. Though it's late for me (14th-15th centuries) it is still amazing.

For some reason I cannot seem to embed the video, so this link here will take you to it.

D&D and Writing

I think I may have discussed it before, but there are things that differ, fundamentally, from playing D&D and writing, and I think the reason I have such a hard time when writing novel-length endeavors is because I'm stuck in some kind of D&D mode. I finally finished my second manuscript (a clockpunk piece set in 1486 that follows the PoV of a Florentine spy and a Roman nun) and only now have I begun to break out of my DMing chains in writing long-form work. For some reason short stories and I don't have that problem -- maybe because I've written so many of them over the years that my style has been allowed to diverge from the way I run a D&D game.

The precise problem is easy to trace: an overabundance of descriptive words which hangs up the action. In D&D, every time you see something new you have to have it described in detail. Those details matter! They allow your players to make complex decisions (usually decisions that you never even considered) at a moment's notice. Is it important that the stones of the tower are unevenly spaced? Surely, in case someone wants to knock it over. Does it matter that the man you're talking to has a beard? It does if you want to set his face on fire.