If you've been waiting to see the 10,000 Dawns story I serialized come to print, wait no more! Freshly edited, and with cleaned up versions of the illustrations by Annie Zhu, its a beautiful book I'm really proud to put out into the world. You can buy it right now at Amazon.com: http://a.co/jliz3UC If you're not familiar with 10,000 Dawns, is a big project by a group of friends who played the WARS RPG together in college and decided to come together to tell new stories in their own sci-fi unvierse. This novel is the first story in the setting, and is a sign of all the adventures to come! Check it out, and let us know what you think! Later this year we'll be releasing our frist short story anthology set in the 10kd universe called "10,000 Dawns: Poor Man's Iliad" featuring writers like Time Sutton (Marble Hornets, Slender: The Arrival), Nathan P. Butler (WARS: The Battle of Phobos, Star Wars Tales), Eric R Asher (Vesik, Steamborne), Kylie Leane (Key: Chronicles of the Children), Andrew Hickey (Faction Paradox), and many more! |
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If you've been waiting...The first big 10,000 Dawns story is now complete! You can now read the adventures of Graelyn and Arch from start to finish, and enjoy the dramatic and epic end to their journey.
Its been a real joy bringing these new stories to you guys, and we can't wait to bring you more with 10,000 Dawns: Anthology. "Anthology" will have a more similar feel to WARS, while still not actually being WARS, in that some of the tales in Anthology started as WARS fanfics long ago. We hope you continue on this journey with us, and we hope to also bring you some actual WARS related news soon instead of 10,000 Dawns. But hey, this is news of something from people who love WARS just like you. Check out the links below to learn more about 10kd, and read some great stories! -Jim There are a lot of WARS fans out there who are creating awesome things, and with no new WARS news on the horizon, I thought I'd take the time to let you guys know about a new project the Hanover WARS Muppets and myself have been working on. Long ago, we started writing a bunch of WARS fanfics, and kept them going till they really had nothing to do with WARS anymore. After some discussion, we decided to take some of our original elements, and craft new things out of them. The culmination of that for me is 10,000 Dawns.
This is a new story I've written following a pair of characters Graelyn Scythes and Archimedes, who get involved in an experiment that sends them on an amazing inter-reality adventure. Every Thursday there will be a new chapter on jameswylder.com, so I hope you check it out and spread the word! You can read the first chapter right now: http://www.jameswylder.com/home/10000-dawns-prologue-and-chapter-1 Mark Tuttle was one of the original Decipher Team that worked on WARS. He wrote several WARS short stories, ran the WARS Radio podcast, and much more. He's had an amazing career working in Radio, and for companies like Sony. Its our honor to speak with him on WARS 10th Anniversary! You can follow him on Twitter: @Radioman1017 How did you first get involved in WARS? I had been working with/at Decipher for a couple of years. I started doing volunteer list moderation on AOL for the STCCG. They noticed me, and asked me to do work for them. I was working in Radio at the time and didn't want to give up that gig so we negotiated a contract deal. They then brought me on to do design and playtest for the SWGG and, long story short, hired me full time and moved me to Norfolk. A little bit after that, we were told that we had lost the Star Wars license but would retain the game mechanics. Since we were all very close to those mechanics, there was a lot of discussion about what to do with them. WARS came about as a way to somehow retain the name ("wars") and the sci-fi theme. The intention was for this to be a major multimedia property. We dreamed big and there was discussion of movies, TV, toys and the like. (More on that later.) What was the early development of the Game like? What led to the decision to develop WARS as its own product? There was another team handling development so I was kind of on the outside of that. I was dealing with The Lord of the RIngs and several other properties that we had running at the time. But I got to go to alot of cool meetings and watch the project come together. I eventually got pulled more into it and got to help a little toward the end of development of the first set. The mechanics were pretty much locked since we were using an existing system. We wanted our SWCCG players to be familiar with the game and be able to pick it up right away so little was changed. What led to WARS Radio, and what was it like hosting it? Did you have a favorite moment from it? Wow, WARS Radio. I like to think we were trend setters there. If you look at things like how video gaming is exposed through YouTube and Twitch now, we were really ahead of our time by devoting an audio-only web show to a game. I don't believe anyone else was doing anything of the sort. I remember each week trying to grab different guys to come into the studio to talk about the game. The "studio", by the way, was a broom closet. Seriously, I had to move the mop bucket out of the way to tape. It's hard to pick a favorite moment. It was really just a lot of fun to do all the way around. You also wrote some WARS fiction. Can you tell us anything about the decision to create that line of short stories? Well, as I mentioned above, we had dreams of this being a full-fledged property. To do that, you need story and context. With Star Wars, we had that whole universe to expand upon (which we did quite well, I think.) With WARS, we had the roughly 100 characters at the top of the cards to tell some story, but it's just not enough. We needed more and the call went out to any of us that could write. I'm not saying I can write, but I think I did ok. One of my Favorite (and the most fun) WARS stories is your own "Return to Juno Station". What led to the ideas behind it? Heh. That was fun to write. I had to go back and re-read it to remind myself of what led to it's creation. Although it didn't happen until the end, I really wanted to tell a story about a Maverick. Jarek starts out as an Earther and through the story changes in a lot of ways. The Earthers were kind of stereotypical and the Quay seemed a little like Klingons, but I wanted to explain why the Mavericks were the way they were. To me, they were the most interesting characters in our setting. Do you have a favorite WARS faction? If you could live in the WARS Universe, would you? Do you think you'd survive? Yeah, I like the Mavericks, of course. But when we created this, it was important to make sure none were just bad guys for the sake of having a bad guy. Each side had a point of view and a justification for their actions. Could I live in the WARS Universe? In a way, I sort of do. We all do. What happened is WARS is really just a snapshot of what the world looks like sometime. Every side has an agenda. Some are stronger than others militarily, some are more primitive and savage, some just want to be left alone. I think the real brilliance of WARS was that the space travel was limited to our immediate system. This wasn't Star Trek and there wasn't going to be ships traveling the galaxy. It was very short range (comparatively) so it was grounded. The story of the Mumon Rift and the superior Shi being severely weakened (down to our level) by coming through was brilliant. It brought the Universe to us. Can you tell us anything about the end of WARS and the decision to put it on Hiatus? At the end of the day, it's all about sales. Decipher had its own internal issues which have been well publicized and the game just wasn't performing as well without the Star Wars name. In business, you have to make business decisions and that's a shame. Was there anything planned for WARS and never realized you were excited for you could tell us about? Well, to this day, I have the next set of cards that few people have ever seen. And no, I can't show them to anyone. I realize that's a terrible thing to dangle out there, but it is what it is. It made me sad because I did a lot to name cards in that set. I had the idea that all of the Earther ships should be named after lost civilizations. We had the Atlantis, the Croatoan, and several others. It was a lot of fun. And if I recall correctly, we worked a lot of the fiction we had written into that set so it made it more "official". You had the experience (if I'm correct) of being at the Decipher Open in Las Vegas, probably the biggest gathering of WARS fans ever. How did the event go back then? That was interesting, to say the least. I remember it wasn't as well attended as we'd hoped and there were the usual issues at the last moment. Still, it was a good time and I think the players mostly had fun. While I understand you might not be able to talk much about it, fans have heard whispers about the WARS Movie that was dreamed of and never occurred. What can you tell us about it? How far along actually was it? I really wasn't involved. I heard a couple of things but nothing concrete. It was probably pitched but I don't know much beyond that. WARS does seem like was fairly far ahead in using the internet and multimedia to market their game like you touched on. Do you think it would have done better in our modern internet environment? Hard to tell. We would certainly have gotten much better reach but we'd also be in a pool of greater competition. So it might have been a wash. If you had a chance to revisit the WARS Universe in another story, is there any element of the story you'd like to play with you didn't get to? Not necessarily in terms of story, but I would have preferred stronger branding. "WARS" is not an easy word to brand. It needed a title that it could own. By not having that, it was really hard to make it stand out. On top of that, the game is very complicated. I have done probably a thousand demos of SWCCG and then WARS. It's a complicated game system. TCGs that come out today don't come near it. Consider that this game was location based. Getting kids with short attention spans to wrap their heads around that is very, very hard. Do you have a message of fans of WARS on this 10th Anniversary? Just to thank everyone that supported that project. I still think it's an incredible property. When I look at some of the garbage on TV that passes for "intelligent sci-fi" I wonder would have happened if we could have followed through with the larger plans. There have been attempts over the years to move the license forward but I don't think anything has come of it. Would I work on this license again? Yeah, I'd love to. Maybe the fans should start writing stories. Find a central place to store them and start hastagging and Facebooking to them. Build a ground swell of support and introduce new fans to a future where a tear opens in our solar system and we suddenly discover we're not alone after all. Congratulations to DON PENNEY the winner of the 10th Anniversary WARS Fanfiction Contest! Don wins a copy of WARS: The Battle of Phobos: Stretti, and we'll be contacting him for where to mail his book to him soon! Thank you to Jim Perry for being our guest judge for this contest, and to everyone who has ever taken the time to write WARS stories! You can read the story RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK, but here's a taste of it to pique your interest.... “WHAT ARE YOU?” Its voice thundered in my mind as I struggled to breathe, struggled to see. Acrid smoke filled what was left of the bridge, while my ears still rung from the decompressions and violent blasts. Slowly sight and sense returned. Sharp pain flared at the slightest movement as I found my bearings, suspended a half meter from the deck and clamped tightly in the grip of a chitinous arm. Held firm and unmoving, it was surely crushing ribs as it lifted me for inspection. I followed the arm to the black mass of the body, feeling the pulsing heat as it seemed to glow from within. Brief understanding gave way to further horror with the realization it was not some exo-suit, but a massive insect-like creature. Its head drew close, the hot wretched breath grew in what was surely my last vision. Yet is paused. Obsidian, alien eyes stared at me for a moment and then it dropped me against the bulkhead. Read more here...
Hey Everyone, I'm sorry there haven't been any updates.
The good news is "An Eloquence of Time and Space" has garnered a lot of interest, and I'm really happy to have written such a successful book. The bad news is that has been taking up a lot of my time. Until then, I've realized that I need to make sure I get everything together for the 50th Anniversary of WARS. on October 6th and make sure that the things that need to get posted that day are ready! So I'm going to be focusing on that. This blog will resume, twice weekly, once all this hullabaloo is done! Till then during next week unless I finish some posts I'll be posting up some of the other interviews I've gotten instead of articles. Thanks for your patience! -Jim Hey everyone I just wanted to let you know that this blog is going to be going to twice a week now. With my current schedule of things, trying to complete three posts a week has just slowed down two of the posts most of time, and rushed them or left them incomplete. I'd rather the blog be consistent than this constant random post timing. Sorry about the reduced frequency of posts.
Doctor who 3-26-05 If you're a fan of Doctor Who, check out my Doctor Who poetry book I wrote to celebrate the show's 50th anniversary HERE! If you don't know anything about WARS, get a quick rundown HERE! Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Russel T. Davies is putting Together his new version of the Television show Doctor Who. A classic sci-fi series from the 60's it had been in in a sort of limbo between existing and not existing for quite some time after being canceled in the late 80's. It came back for a one off TV-Movie that was meant to be the pilot for a new TV show, but it didn't work out and fans of the show had to wait till 2005 for the show to get new regular episodes. When it came back, the show was re-invented, rejuvenated, and yet still adhered to being the same show it had been when it was a niche show in the 60's. Doctor Who of course became massively popular, and is still going strong with the premiere of the newest actor to take on the leading role, Peter Capaldi, not too long before this writing. Doctor Who as far as we know didn't influence the creation of WARS much, none of the original creators have ever mentioned it as an influence, but it became a success at exactly the time WARS was failing and proving to be exactly the sort of failure the naysayers had anticipated. Both Doctor Who and WARS were new versions of an old concept trying to reinvent themselves for a new market. Unlike Battlestar Galactica, this new version of Doctor Who didn't just last a few years with short lived spin off, it's still going, and had two spin offs that lasted for as many seasons (though not as many episodes because of the lower orders per year of British TV) or more than BSG did, as well as a whole TV show just about making Doctor Who. It even managed a gigantic worldwide 50th Anniversary celebration, with a giant episode screened in Cinemas and posting record breaking viewing figures. Its pretty clear that this is the kind of success that any property dreams it will have, and as fans of WARS looking on at a 10th Anniversary that is rapidly approaching without the hint of anything specifically made to celebrate that Anniversary in the works. Sure, we're far more than grateful for the final trilogy of WARS novellas we'll be getting in 2014, but anniversaries are times to celebrate with something special, and its hard to celebrate when WARS is still trying to get on its own two feet. Doctor Who has of course earned its new-found place in the throne of geekdom, the new 2005 series has managed to constantly reinvent itself over and over again to keep itself fresh. While this has led to charges that the show is constantly dying, constantly being ruined, and constantly terrible from the moment that the first episode of the revival “Rose” aired on March 26th 2005, to the episode that aired the weekend this was written, “Robot of Sherwood”. The show has been constantly changing, and constantly finding a new audience. The show has done everything from dark gritty war stories to wacky comedies, and has changed its tone from everything from an educational science and history show to one about fairy tales, all while managing to have new fans who love and appreciate what the show has become despite all the changes, even while it always inevitably loses a few who hate the new changes. However, Doctor Who was also and is also totally recognizable as itself. No matter what there are always some recognizable elements: the Doctor (an alien who travels around the universe righting wrongs and having adventures), the companion(s) (the trusty sidekick(s) of the Doctor who help him out on his journeys) and the TARDIS (a time traveling blue box that can also travel through space). Sometimes the show will try to do stories without one of these elements, but even then it usually ends up being a story about how that element isn't there and what happens when its not. Even while the show changes, it never strays too far from its core. The essential elements are always still there, or right within reach to bring back in at a moment's notice. Its familiar even when its different. Its amazing how clever Russel T. Davies was when he brought the show back in how he managed to make the show so utterly accessible to new viewers while still respecting the canon of the old series. The way he did it was fairly simple: he simply killed off some of the elements of the setting that were the hardest to explain quickly to new viewers, and then slowly introduced them to the viewers as the Doctor tried to deal with their demise. While it pissed off plenty of fans to have killed off (offscreen!) elements considered so important to the world of the show, the show itself could function easily without them. You just need the Doctor, a companion, and a TARDIS. The audience was totally free from having to deal with the burden of having a massive amount new information dropped on them, and could instead absorb it slowly while picking up the very simple idea of “a guy in a timemachine/spaceship picks up a friend to have adventures with” and gets introduced to the complexities of the world through those adventures. We're also given a figure to identify with through the companion, the first of which in the revival is Rose, a working class girl with few prospects outside of working a job in a shop for the rest of her life. We follow these new alien worlds the Doctor takes her to and share in her wonder and delight at them, and revel as she meets historical figures. Its all very good fun. Less talked about is the careful structure of Doctor Who's episodes. In every season of the revival show there is an episode set in space/the future/an alien world, and episode set in Earth's history, and an episode set in the modern day on Earth, and oftentimes these can be found within the first three episodes of a season. By showing these three types of stories to the viewer, the show reintroduces its basic premise of the kinds of stories it tells so that new viewers are always aware of them, while also providing a structure for the show so it always has certain sorts of thematic beats for viewers to latch onto. Its also terribly clever, and it works so well the show hasn't changed that aspect of its structure even while its experimented with different types and lengths of stories constantly. Its sort of depressing trying to compare all of this to WARS in some ways, because the story of WARS' setting was in many ways secondary to the fact that there was a cardgame. And I mean, of course it was. I'm under no illusions that the stories around the game only exist in order to help sell the card game in the first places, but it does make one wish the stories had reached the level of narrative coherence of something like Doctor Who, even while they were in a different medium far less accessible than television. Essentially, the different between WARS and Doctor Who is that Doctor Who realized that it doesn't really matter if people understand your setting as long as they care about the stories that are set in it. Doctor Who barely has a setting, it changes constantly, but the characters and their stories remain despite the shifting between worlds. WARS took this approach backwards, and cared first about introducing the setting. For all I love the brave ridiculousness or WARS' early “essay stories” which I've gushed about previously for how fantastic they are, and for all I love the weirdness of WARS' setting, we come back once again to the tired tired point this blog has reiterated so often I'm not even sure I need to write it anymore: there isn't one story people can go back to and say “this is WARS”. The essay stories focus almost entirely on not just introducing, but dissecting different elements of the WARS setting, and lest we forget, the first real thing we got to look at was a document introducing the setting and the different factions of the universe. Its all very cool, and if you're invested in WARS, you're going to lap up the massive amount of detail there... ...But what if you don't care at all about WARS? What if you're some casual person dropping in on the setting with no real clue why you should care about it? What is going to make you care? Doctor Who catered to the newbies first, the people who weren't obsessive about it, and it really paid off. WARS was targeted at people who had been playing the Star Wars card game Decipher had already been playing, hoping to get them interested in something new obsessively, but even there we find an issue. You see, Doctor Who has always been similar to Doctor Who. You can always recognize it. WARS is really very little like Star Wars, and while I love the setting for what it is, from a marketing standpoint it probably should have felt a bit more like Star Wars to draw in the people they were targeting. The strangeness of the setting screamed that it wanted new blood, but the way it was marketed screamed that it wanted the old guard. It didn't catch either group with the fervency it wished. All of which is old hat at this point. We know WARS didn't work, and Doctor Who did. Doctor Who celebrated a crazy spectacular 50th, while WARS 10th is filled with hoping that this amazing setting gets more exposure than it has in the past and more stories. But this article has been fairly doom and gloom, so lets take a glimpse to the future. We're not going to go too far down this rabbit hole, but the latest WARS Novellas have been taking lessons from the Doctor Who model: they Novellas have all featured small groups of consistent characters with one central protagonist running through each of the faction's novellas. This gives them variety as they show different perspectives and cultures, while still holding together a narrative consistency. They've removed some of the more complicated and hard to explain elements by setting the Novellas in the past so that they can be introduced and explained slowly as opposed to all at one. The Grail Quest Books Novellas really seem to be doing everything right so far, and they're a heckuva lot of fun. Here's hoping there is another round of them. WARS is a terribly rich setting, and like Doctor Who it can tell a vast array of different types of stories. Its exactly the kind of Sci-Fi that should get the chance to go on and tell crazy stories in the future, but due to its obscurity, might not. We can only hope. Happy anniversary WARS, Happy anniversary Doctor Who, you've both done so well and I love you both. Cheers to dreams of the TARDIS running through the Mumon Rift. Cheers to a long future for us all. |
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