Do You Want to Walk the Onyx Path?

News

Disclosure Form (public)

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?

We’re looking for some new writers. That’s the long and short of it. We have some really awesome people working on our books right now, but the problem is that some of the same people are working on all our books, and that’s not a good situation long term. Leads to burnout and so forth. And having new perspectives and voices is a good thing.

Here’s the way this is going to work, then.

1) Digitally sign the submission NDA (attached to this post).

2) Attach that with your submission (see below) and send it to opp.submissions@gmail.com. Make sure you include your name, address, a quick CV with any other published work (especially for RPGs), and tell us what game line(s) you think you’d be best suited for.

3) Wait feverishly.

The Submission:

We’re looking for submissions no longer than 1000 words. Ideally, that’s 500 words of setting or fiction and 500 words of mechanics. If the proportions aren’t exactly even, don’t worry about it. What we’re really looking for are writers that can create compelling and evocative game material, and that know how the mechanics work.

We’ll accept mechanics for CWoD, NWoD, and GMC rulesets. If you’re doing NWoD, you’re probably best served doing something compatible with the God-Machine Chronicle rules revisions, because…well, you’ve seen the release schedule, use your imagination.

Want to take a bloodline that appeared in a prior Requiem book and update it to GMC rules? Awesome. Want to make up a faction of mages and give them a few sample spells? Terrific. Write some flash fiction about an unnameable horror from the Deeps and then tell us how it works in a mechanical context? Great.

Some things to consider that are pretty much true across game lines:

1) “Affect” and “effect” trip a lot of people up. Know the difference.

2) “Loose” isn’t the same as “lose.” Know the difference.

3) Avoid using “there is” and “there are.” It’s a passive construction, but more than that, it doesn’t really tell us much. “There is a chair in the corner.” Yawn. “An overturned chair sits in the corner.” Better. At least we know something happened.

4) Different game lines shoot for different tones, but in general you want not quite as chatty as a forum post, not quite as formal as an essay. Don’t talk to the reader (this is OK is some circumstances, but generally don’t do it), and don’t begin sentences with “OK,” “See,” “Now,” “Look,” or “Hell.”

5) Taking inspiration is OK, but if I can recognize that your bloodline is just the Night’s Watch (or whatever) with the serial numbers filed down, that’s not good.

Sound good? OK, let’s see it. There’s no time limit on this; we’re always looking for good writers. But, y’know, the sooner you submit, the sooner we can read your submission. We will try to respond to all submissions with at least a “yes, we’d like to hire you, we’ll let you know when something comes up” or “sorry, your writing isn’t what we’re looking for right now,” but that’ll depend on how busy we get.

Part II: Follow-Up